A Palestinian Muslim protests against remarks about Islam made by Pope Benedict XVI in a speech in Regensburg, Bavaria. (CNS/Reuters)

Barack Obama and George W. Bush have many political differences, but they share this in common: Both treat Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance.

Obama repeatedly characterized Islam that way in the speech he delivered today to the world’s Muslims, before an enthusiastic audience at Cairo University. From the perspective of political pragmatism, this might make good sense.

But Obama’s portrayal of Islam comprehensively misrepresents the doctrinal content and historical record of Islam, according to this detailed critique of Obama’s speech posted by Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch.

Here is a sampling of Spencer’s analysis. In his introductory remarks, Obama said this:

We meet at a time of tension between the United States and Muslims around the world – tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of co-existence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

Spencer responds:

“Co-existence and cooperation”? When and where, exactly?
Note that Obama lists only ways in which the West has, in his view, mistreated the Islamic world. Not a word about the jihad doctrine, not a word about Islamic supremacism and the imperative to make war against and subjugate non-Muslims as dhimmis. Not a word about the culture of hatred and contempt for non-Muslims that existed long before the spread of American culture (“modernity and globalization”) around the world, which Obama D’Souzaishly suggests is responsible for the hostility Muslims have for the West.