Reflecting on what Barack Obama said yesterday, I think people are missing something I encounter a lot among so called intellectuals. Liberal intellectuals say things like this:

And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember 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.

And things like this:

Michelle and I returned from India — an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity — but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs — acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhiji, the person who helped to liberate that nation.

And what they really mean is that those cultures are primitive and will eventually evolve to Western standards.

See, what Barack Obama and much of Washington’s elite think is that Islam is roughly 600 years behind Christianity. Christians were still running Crusades in the 1400’s, six hundred years ago. The Spanish Inquisition was just about to get underway 600 years ago. But over 600 years, Christianity took a moderating tone. Heck, Christians were burning people at the stake back then too.

So, in 600 years, Islam will be debating gay marriage and have its own Rachel Held Evans and Episcopalians to deal with. They just need to grow up.

That is a view I see more and more from liberals. It is a condescending view of Islam, that somehow it is just primitive and, given time will grow up. But that view is more widely held than most people realize. It is why so many elites want to take a hands off approach — in the same way they don’t want people contacting jungle tribes of the Amazon any more than necessary. Those groups will eventually evolve.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world does not have six hundred years to wait and, despite this view among intellectuals, it has no basis in reality. But even the President seems to hold that view.