Oct. 11, 2013, 6:38 a.m.
Sen. Rand Paul spent his Friday speech to the Value Voters Summit describing a global war on Christianity. And, the senator said, we’ve already been victims of this attack by radical Islamists this year.
The “war on Christianity,” Paul said, “came to Boston this year, just in time for the marathon.” Paul said the April bombing was part of a global religious attack: “You may argue they’re not targeting Christians, but they didn’t attack a mosque. They came to attack our people, a Christian people.”
The Kentucky Republican argued from the beginning of his speech that Muslim antagonism toward Christianity “shouldn’t be understated.” Even though Paul acknowledged that radical Islam is just a small faction of the global religion, it still makes up, Paul says, up to 100 million people.
“There’s 50 million, 100 million, this isn’t going to be fought with a conventional war. It will require Islam to defend Islam”¦. There are times when military action is justified, and necessary “¦ we must be willing and able to defend ourselves against the jihadists.”
Paul’s main argument for fighting radical Islam consisted of stripping funding for Egypt and Pakistan.
Paul did make a point of saying that Islam has nonviolent roots that “paved the way for our enlightenment,” and said that the religion needs to go back to this.
The idea that Muslims aren’t looking out for, or concerned with, extremism doesn’t really hold up. A spring Pew study found growing concerns among Muslims in the areas connected to the Boston bombing suspects about radicalization. That same survey found a wide rejection of suicide bombing.
Another Pew study from May found that Muslim opinion toward the West and Christianity is getting more favorable as Internet use increases.
