In 2008, I made the colossal mistake of voting for Barack Obama. (Not that I regret not voting for John McCain. A presidential nominee who could stoop to choosing a Sarah Palin as his running mate self-disqualifies in my book.) In 2012, I just didn’t vote. Come November, I’ll likely do the same.

In his column of June 23, Cal Thomas fairly well expressed my primary objection to Obama in stating, “Islamists could not have a better friend in the White House had they put one of their own there.”

For starters, Obama has often stated that Islam is a religion of peace. But in Islam, peace means peace under Islamic law; otherwise, war. After all, Islam places all unbelievers in what it calls “the house of war.”

Another falsehood repeated by Obama is that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam. Oh, right — and Muhammad never once boasted of winning his victories by means of terror.

Incredibly, Obama considers it part of his job as president “to fight negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear” (Cairo speech, 2009). But as author Deborah Weiss has observed, “No such presidential duty is even remotely referenced in the United States Constitution.”

Lastly and most tellingly, in an address before the United Nations General Assembly in 2012, Obama declared, “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.”

I highly doubt Obama doesn’t know and approve of the Islamic teaching that all criticism of Muhammad constitutes slander.

William LaRochelle, Lewiston