Former NBA star, columnist and author Kareem Abdul-Jabbar echoed President Barack Obama’s recent remarks about the Islamic State on Monday, telling the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the terror group is analogous to the Crusaders and the KKK.
“You can make parallels to things that have happened here in America,” Abdul-Jabbar said of ISIL to co-host Joe Scarborough. “Like the Ku Klux Klan saying they are the Christian knights of the Ku Klux Klan.”
“They do not practice Christianity,” he added.
Abdul-Jabbar then brought up the Crusaders, specifically Christian warriors of the First Crusade in the eleventh century.
“The first people that they sacked were Jews living in Europe,” he said. “They devastated them, took all their wealth, and kept on their way to the Holy Land.”
Co-host Mika Brzezinski changed the subject to Abdul-Jabbar’s new book.
The President made similar remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 5,
saying that, “during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”
“In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ,” Obama added.
Watch the video, courtesy of MSNBC:
