"What is authentic Islam? Is ISIS an authentic form of Islam, or is it not? I think it's very important that the United States government shut-up about that question," Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, declared at the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Faith Angle Forum.
"It used to annoy me enormously when President [George W.] Bush, for whom I was working, would say, 'Islam is a religion of peace,'" continued Abrams, who served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser.
Abrams was speaking on a panel, "Religious Conflict and the Future of the Middle East," with Shadi Hamid, a fellow with the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
The "real response" to Bush, and later President Barack Obama, declaring the Islam is a religion of peace, he said, should be "where is their theology degree from?"
"For American government officials to be telling Muslims, 'I know real Islam' ... is ridiculous," he added. "... It would be an outrage about Judaism and Christianity as well. ... For government officials who are 99 percent Christians to be trying to find what is authentic in Islam seems to me to be a fool's errand." Read on and comment » | Napp Nazworth, Christian Post Reporter | Friday, November 21, 2014
