By Debbie Schlussel

In the past, I’ve noted that Obama’s ass-kissing and pandering to the Islamic world was no different and no more egregious than that of Bush.  Both of them are equally disgusting in their brown-nosing of Islam.  But now, Obama’s taken it a step further.

I warned of a similar action by Obama before on this site–Obama’s softening of America’s lip service to free speech around the world, in order to please Muslims and protect Islam from criticism by  others, something which disturbed even hardcore liberals.  Now, he’s softening America’s lip service to freedom of religion around the world.  In the past, America has always voiced a strong insistence upon religious freedom for all people in any nation.  It was merely talk, as we’ve repeatedly tolerated, and even financed and propped up religious intolerance by Muslims–as in Iraq, where Christians are now persecuted and from which they are fleeing in droves (thanks, Bush).

But now Obama is voicing a softened stand on religion, as I warned he would, last year.  And he’s using silly, liberal intellectual semantic tricks.  Even a bipartisan commission to which Obama, himself, appointed members, rips him on this.  And they get it–it’s being done to condone Muslim persecution of Christians around the world.

A bipartisan U.S. commission on religious freedom says President Obama is softening his stand on protecting the right to one’s faith at a time when religious persecution is on the rise, according to an annual report to be released today.

The 11th annual report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom says Obama’s recent call for nations to respect “freedom of worship” rather than “religious freedom” allows regimes to claim they are not oppressing certain religions if those faiths exist in a form acceptable to the regime.

(Read the report, though I have to note that the cover photo is particularly misleading, not to mention obnoxious, given the contents of the report and the statements in this article.)

“When you start narrowing the discussion, the signal the administration is sending to the international community is that as long as they prop up a few churches or houses of worship (of minority faiths), there isn’t going to be a problem,” Leonard Leo, the chairman of the commission, told USA TODAY.

The report also criticizes the administration for failing to nominate an ambassador-at-large for religious freedom.

The ambassador-at-large post, which falls under the State Department, is a requirement of a 1998 law that mandated religious freedom be an aim of U.S. diplomacy.

The commission was established to monitor religious freedom and issue an annual report on U.S. efforts in that area. Commission members are appointed by Congress and the White House. It recommends which countries should be named “countries of particular concern” (or CPCs) for egregious violations and suggests penalties. . . .  The label requires the administration to consider whether to levy sanctions against the nations.

The 2010 annual report notes that Obama spoke about the importance of religious freedom in speeches in Turkey and Cairo early in his term. But since then, Obama has stopped using the term, it says. . . .

The commission report slams U.S.-supported nations, such as Iraq and Pakistan, for failing to protect members of minority faiths who have been targeted with violence or discrimination.

Hmmm . . . where is the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens–you know, the same guy who says Iraqi Muslims love freedom and democracy more than we do in the West? Crickets chirping.

In April 2009 in Ankara, Obama said that “freedom of religion and expression lead to a strong and vibrant civil society that only strengthens the state.”

In subsequent speeches in China and Japan, Obama appeared to dial back his vision on religious freedom, according to the report. He referred to “freedom of worship” in Japan on Nov. 14 and used the same phrase in a town hall meeting with Chinese students two days later.

More Obama subtle sleight-of-hand in the continuing decline of U.S. from the moral high-ground, as we prefer to pander to Muslims instead.

Nauseating to the Nth.