Contact: Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, 212-371-3191, pr@catholicleague.org

NEW YORK, May 5, 2014 /Standard Newswire/ -- Bill Donohue (photo) comments on remarks made on May 1 by Secretary of State John Kerry:

Secretary Kerry congratulated the U.S. Embassy staff in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for promoting "a universal message about the rights of people to be free, about democracy, about the ability of people to be able to choose their government and be oppressed when they speak out or say something." He should have stopped there. Here is what he said next:

"This is a time here in Africa where there are a number of different cross-currents of modernity that are coming together to make things even more challenging. Some people believe that people ought to be able to only do what they say they ought to do, or to believe what they say they ought to believe, or to live by their interpretation of something that was written down a thousand plus, two thousand years ago. That's not the way I think most people want to live."

The Ten Commandments are the moral edifice upon which Western civilization was built. It makes absolute prohibitions on a range of issues. Was Kerry aiming his remarks at the Ten Commandments? Or was he taking issue with the teachings of Jesus as found in the New Testament? Or were his remarks targeted at the Koran, the religious text of Islam?

One thing we know for sure: Christians are being beaten, raped, and murdered in many parts of Africa, and the ones who are committing these crimes are invoking Islam as their justification. While there is much dispute about the extent to which these barbarians are distorting, or perfecting, Islam, there should be no ambiguity about who the persecutors are.

Secretary Kerry needs to explain himself.

Contact the State Department: PressDuty@state.gov