That’s the headline from Erick Erickson today, commenting on President Obama’s address to the UN General Assembly.

Here’s what President Obama said:

The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. Yet to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see when the image of Jesus Christ is desecrated, churches are destroyed, or the Holocaust is denied. Let us condemn incitement against Sufi Muslims, and Shiite pilgrims. It is time to heed the words of Gandhi: “Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.” Together, we must work towards a world where we are strengthened by our differences, and not defined by them. That is what America embodies, and that is the vision we will support.

(The full text of Obama’s speech, incidentally, is here.)

So … how did Erickson get from “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” to “President Obama declares the future must not belong to practicing Christians”?

Like so:

It is an orthodox Christian belief that Mohammed is not a prophet. Actual Christians, as opposed to many of the supposed Christians put up by the mainstream media, believe that Christ is the only way to salvation. Believing that is slandering Mohammed. That’s just a fact. If you don’t believe me, you go into the MIddle East and proclaim Christ is the way, the truth, and the life and see what happens to your life.

Erickson seems to see no difference between believing in the truth of one’s own religion and actively demeaning someone else’s religious belief. Here’s an easy example:

I’m Jewish and, as such, I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ or the revelations of the Christian Bible. But my lack of belief doesn’t impact Christians in any way; it doesn’t encourage their own disbelief, it doesn’t demean them, and it doesn’t slander either Jesus or the Bible.

The same is true about the Prophet Muhammad, who is not one of the prophets I recognize.

I’m sure that Christians and Muslims think I’m wrong and I suppose that a fair number of them think that things will go badly for me in the future as a result of my wrong-headed beliefs. But there’s an obvious difference between my lack of belief in the divinity of Jesus or Muhammad as a prophet and, for example, the “Innocence of Muslims” video, which is openly hostile to Islam and slanderous with regard to Muhammad.

It’s hard for me to imagine that someone can reach adulthood without learning the difference between pluralism of belief and insult to belief. But apparently that’s what happened with Erick Erickson.

HT: Jordan Soliz.