A colleague has sent me a post from Lydia McGrew replying to my case against anti-Sharia laws. McGrew has written some very helpful things in the past (I think in particular of this post), but I take strong exception when she writes:
We need to fuel precisely the concerns that Schmitz and many others want to call “bigotry.” And those concerns need to lead to a broader approach, of which anti-sharia bills can be only a part. [ . . . ]
To my mind, then, the real danger (if we should call it that) of anti-sharia bills is not that they will foster negative ideas about large numbers of Muslims in America but that they won’t.
McGrew is arguing something that none of my other critics has so far: namely, that the correct approach to Islam really is the dialing up of animus against American Muslims. I believe this is wrong as a matter of Christian charity and, secondarily, as a matter of liberal tolerance. We no doubt do face a challenge integrating Muslims into American society, but the correct way to meet that is with light and not heat, with clear discernment and careful cultural and legal efforts. We emphatically do not need simply to “foster negative ideas about large numbers of Muslims.” Setting aside questions of basic decency, I am at a loss to understand how McGrew could consider such a broad and blunt response appropriate for what she acknowledges is a complicated problem.
None of this, of course, touches on the legal arguments. The correct solution to countering misapplications of the law is applying the law correctly, not passing another law that then can be misapplied. A judge too dense to protect our constitutional liberties today will not suddenly be enlightened by a tautological bill declaring that unconstitutional things indeed are unconstitutional, as I explain in a new post at the Corner replying to Andrew McCarthy and David Yerushalmi.
June 18th, 2012 | 1:02 pm
If I understand the fear of those like Ms. McGrew, it is that some day we might have a state where there is a majority of people who believe that wife-beating and honor killing are legally permissible. These people would then enact laws in accordance with these views and then the laws would apply to everybody in the state.
If this is the fear (perhaps I am mistaken), these feared laws would be declared unconstitutional as violating the gender component of the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause. The state cannot enact a law that permits husbands to beat their wives, or parents to kill their daughters.
I suppose if the population of the entire United States was sufficiently convinced that wife-beating and honor killings were really important to protect in law, they could try to amend the US Constitution (kinda hard to do) or they could see to it that enough Supreme Court Justices were appointed to overturn current interpretations of the Constitution. And if the population of the United States decided to do these things, then they would be acting in accord with our Constitution, which provides that the consent of governed is the sovereign.
But is anybody seriously arguing that Muslims, who now make up less than 2% of the population are ever going to have the political strength or will to undertake such actions? They would need to become the overwhelming majority of US citizens in order to change our constitution, and if they did become the overwhelming majority then why shouldn’t they have the same power to control the constitution as everyone else has had since the constitution was enacted? Article V of the US Constitution lays out the only limits on amending the constitution.
I simply can’t understand the hysteria that seems to be driving these anti-Sharia campaigns. I don’t like many of the things that are sometimes justified in the name of Sharia. But that does not mean that the laws of the United States have to be changed or that we have to spur people on to fear and hate Muslims.
June 18th, 2012 | 5:29 pm
It is not helpful, in this issue, to portray one’s opponent as being motivated by extremity. There may be those who are hystercal, but in thi venue, let us address the more sober members of the opposition.
June 18th, 2012 | 9:43 pm
Pastor Spomer, have you read the websites of those who are advocating anti-sharia laws? If you can find a sober member of that community, I would appreciate learning of them. I’ve been researching this issue for 4 months and have not found a single reasonable argument in favor of the laws. I have contacted elected representatives who have sponosored anti-sharia measures, and the two members I spoke with simply repeated the talking points provided by David Yerushalmi, none of which holds up to serious scrutiny.
If someone can point me to a serious and credible authority on this question, I would appreciate it.
June 18th, 2012 | 9:47 pm
IMHO we need to constantly be returning to the foundations of this country in order to be faithful to its Founders and the vision embodied in its founding documents. We need to portray the Founders as accurately as can possibly be done. for example they were neither outright Christians founding a “Christian nation’ nor radical secularists founding a ‘new world order’ without any trace of Judaeo-Christianity or any other religion in ‘the public square’.
There was a time, in which Protestant Christians thought that Catholics were the worst possible threat to America, thank God our Christian brethren have changed that perspective [They have been replaced by the radical secularists however]. The Founding Fathers established a secular nation with Deist and Christian underpinnings. That in itself was a feat. However, the Deism of that generation faded as the decades marched on and was ‘replaced’ by a Protestant interpretation of America [this is not a criticizing statement, simply fact]. By the mid twentieth century, the Protestant interpretation of America was succeeded by incorporation with the wider Judaeo-Christian vision.
However, now we have a radical secularist interpretation of our Founding which I fear is a far more serious threat to our country and its future than Sharia law. This is partly due to the fact that the Enlightenment period of history has run its course, and America definitely was founded within the Enlightenment. If America and Americans do not reach deeper than the Enlightenment values that have served us in the past to the Natural Law-Judaeo-Christian deeper roots of our country, originally understood as fundamental by our Founders, than I am not sure what we will have in the near future.
In terms of Sharia Law, the very nature of our country is a distinction but not divide between Caesar and God. That is fundamental to the American identity and vision. Certainly, American Moslems will need to wrestle with this fundamental issue. However, in those aspects of Sharia law that witness to Natural Law and which have commonality with Judaeo-Christianity they can be integrated into the American identity and vision
June 19th, 2012 | 4:07 am
Botolph
In my submission, it is a fundamental principle of natural justice that tribunals everywhere should recognise and enforce the lawfully acquired rights of the parties before it. Contracts lawfully entered into in one jurisdiction should be enforceable everywhere. Questions of personal status (marriage, divorce, legitimacy, guardianship, heirship) should be determined according to the “proper law” (le statut personnel) of the parties, usually the law of their citizenship or domicile at the time the status was acquired.
Anti-Sharia laws require the abandonment of this principle, common to the laws of all nations, supposedly civilised.
June 19th, 2012 | 11:55 am
I suspect the fear is more accurately something along the lines of the Selma Analogy that R.R. Reno has written about recently and posted on today. We now have several protected classes of people under our law, about whom it is now essentially forbidden to speak negatively. The institutions of society bend over backwards to defer to the sensibilities of these protected classes, as those sensibilities are construed by the loudest purported spokesmen for the protected classes (e.g., Al Sharpton). To tread on these sensibilities is to be a “racist” or a “sexist” or a “homophobe” or some other type of unacceptable “bigot,” who must be reeducated, trained in sensitivity, or maybe just fired from his job and cast out of polite society.
The loudest spokesmen for Muslims in America would dearly like to force you to refrain from eating lunch at your desk during Ramadan, or a ham sandwich any time. They’ve succeeded in doing just that in parts of the UK in the name of sensitivity, diversity, tolerance, etc. Muslims are not remotely a majority of the community in the UK. And that’s in their interactions with the native population. The police turn a blind eye to what goes on in the “Asian” (i.e., Pakistani Muslim) community, because enforcing universally applicable laws against things like spousal rape or wife-beating or bundling your rebellious teenage daughter off to Pakistan in order to marry her off to her first cousin would be “racist.” And so tribal Pakistan comes to Bradford, Yorkshire. And Dearborn, Michigan, too.
There’s a legal component to all of this, but there’s also a mental blinder. Civilized people aren’t racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., I wish to be regarded as civilized, therefore I must not say or even think anything that could be deemed racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., therefore I will not even notice things that might cause me to have such thoughts.
The loudest spokesmen for Muslims in America would like to add Islam to the list. They don’t need to be a majority, any more than black Americans are a majority or gays are a majority. They just need the great and the good to decide that any criticism of them and their folkways is taboo. And again, the folkways in question are defined by the loudest spokesmen.
June 19th, 2012 | 1:06 pm
RL
We should not overlook the extent to which many Muslims in the West and, especially, Muslim women are themselves protesting about the “folk ways” you describe.
Thus, Sihen Habchi, the president of the Muslim women’s movement « Ni Putes Ni Soumises »
[Neither Sluts nor Door-mats] in a forceful attack on “multiculturalism” has demanded “No more justifications of our oppression in the name of the right to be different and of respect toward those who force us to bow our heads”
She was seconded in this by the then Garde des Sceaux [Minister of Justice], Rachida Dati, herself a Muslim, who told the National Assembly, “The Republic is alone capable of uniting men and women of different origins, colours and religions around the principles of tolerance, liberty, solidarity and laïcité (secularism) making the Republic truly one and indivisible”
On the subject of the headscarf ban in schools, yet another prominent Muslim woman, Fadela Amara, then Secretary of State for Urban Policies in the Sarkozy government, declared that “For this generation, the crucial issues are laïcité (secularism), gender equality and gender desegregation, based upon living together in harmony throughout the world, and not only in France”
June 19th, 2012 | 2:07 pm
@SallyRogers
“If I understand the fear of those like Ms. McGrew, it is that some day we might have a state where there is a majority of people who believe that wife-beating and honor killing are legally permissible. These people would then enact laws in accordance with these views and then the laws would apply to everybody in the state.”
In the UK and France, Muslims are not even close to a majority. Yet, what you promise won’t happen here has come to pass there. No, Sharia hasn’t officially been codified. But, then again it doesn’t have to. Just go to one of the several hundred European No-Go zones and you will see Sharia up close and personal.
It’s not that there is some defect in our Constitution (as Justice Jackson said, our Constitution isn’t a suicide pact), or that Sharia will someday magically be inserted into an Amendment. No. Like in Europe, there exists here plenty of enablers. By enablers, I mean people who consistently give cover (either legally, through PR campaigns, or politically). We see this in many public schools, universities, and on many city councils. These efforts are in no way bad in and of themselves. But, there exists a media and civic black-out concerning the darker side of Islam. We saw this with the Ft Hood Bombing; the recent attempts at suicide bombings and other terror incidents. We no longer report on the ties many terrorists that exist between stateside terrorists and mainstream mosques in many of our cities. The Multi-Culti crowd not only ignores the misogyny, the sexual assault of women and gays, but also the forced marriages, the polygamy, and the violence.
In Europe, and within the No-Go zones, Sharia reigns supreme. The local police and city governments long ago gave up enforcement of civic laws. If you’re an infidel and accidently enter into one of these neighborhoods, you’re on your own. The Police won’t enter unless ordered to do so.
Yes, in many ways there are difference between Europe and here. We never allowed so many guest Muslims into our nation like the Europeans did. We are very large, and our populations are diverse. But then again, we are making the same mistakes. Diversity ueber alles trumps reality. Hear no evil, see no evil. Europe slept. Will we?
June 19th, 2012 | 6:39 pm
JP says: In Europe, and within the No-Go zones, Sharia reigns supreme. The local police and city governments long ago gave up enforcement of civic laws. If you’re an infidel and accidently enter into one of these neighborhoods, you’re on your own. The Police won’t enter unless ordered to do so.
- So I’ve heard, but I wonder about the reality behind this story. Where exactly are these areas where the law of the country no longer applies? I think this might be a bit of an exaggeration. What exactly does a “no-go area” mean – are you beaten and robbed if you show up there? I find this hard to believe.
Go to New York and Chicago and people celebrate China Town, Little Italy, the Irish communities. You’ve got restaurants, stores, religious houses, schools – they create a community. Some people might not feel comfortable there – so must we outlaw these? And how would you go about outlawing a culture?
I visited an elderly couple in a Muslim working class part of London at Christmas, and they were extremely secure there. The local muslim cab service takes the couple to Mass every week for free. There is very little crime, no one looks askance if you don’t wear a headscarf. Notably, there was not a single act of violence or rioting in this area last year, even when the rest of London was the real “no-go” area if you didn’t want to run into looters. If you’ve seen the binge drinking hooligans on the streets in many parts of London, I believe you’d prefer to live in this Muslim area.
Regardless, how would a “sharia ban” in a statute counter such a supposed “no go” area? If we aren’t going to maintain some kind of basic civility and rule of law now, aren’t going to prosecute supposed rampant crimes against women and girls under existing laws, how will a law telling courts not to consider Sharia help?
June 20th, 2012 | 10:39 am
@ Sally Rogers,
It sounds like you are saying, “Not all Muslim enclaves in the West are wholly bad, some are quite decent, and lots of Westerners are decadent.” All undoubtedly true, but it does not follow that we should be unconcerned about the Muslim enclaves in the West that are pretty bad, or that we should be unconcerned about importing a large population of an alien religion with a centuries-long history of hostility toward our own and numerous present-day loudmouths trying to stoke that hostility and to resist assimilation to Western norms (while living on the taxpayer’s dime, in many cases).
As for the anti-sharia laws, your point sounds awfully like Mrs. McGrew’s: The proposed statutes will not solve the problem (because judges as a breed tend strongly toward corrupt liberals, and cops follow the orders of their political superiors, who likewise tend strongly toward corrupt liberals) and may lead to complacency about the problem. I agree the anti-sharia laws are not a complete solution. But it is a necessary first step to tell the Islamic loudmouths that we will not be pushed around. Would that we could tell the other leftist pressure groups in our society the same.
June 20th, 2012 | 11:26 am
If all you want to do is tell the “loudmouths we won’t be pushed around” you could just pass a joint resolution saying so. But passing a law that will make much of life a confusing mess for innocent people is not a good way of making a rhetorical point. Instead you are saying “Your contracts won’t be enforced, your marriages won’t be valid, your will won’t be enforced properly, and we won’t know whether or not you are divorced.” This won’t help with any of the problems people think they are confronting.
June 20th, 2012 | 12:11 pm
I really do not see the prospect of these statutes making “much of life a confusing mess for innocent people.” (That much of life is inevitably a confusing mess for innocent people, regardless of human law, I think no one will deny.) Nor is it the case that the anti-sharia statutes as a general matter annul contracts, marriages or wills entered into abroad.
Shall we allow a man to rape his wife and plead as justification that he is Muslim and sharia permits his conduct? Shall we allow a Muslim who watches a parade, sees a character dressed as Mohammed and engaged in antics inappropriate to a prophet of God, and punches the character’s lights out, to plead as justification that insulting Mohammed is illegal where he comes from? Shall we hold valid a contract of lifetime indentured servitude on the ground that it was valid when and where the servant’s parents sold her into that state? Shall we recognize as valid polygamous marriages on the ground that they were valid when and where entered under sharia? Shall we recognize as valid a forced and incestuous marriage on the same ground? Should an American making child-custody decisions disregard the interests of the child where a parent claims that sharia justifies conduct that Americans would regard as flagrantly abusive? Several of these examples are ripped from the headlines in America or the UK.
I am not suggesting that an anti-sharia statute solves any of these problems definitively, any more than the existence of the First Amendment solves all problems relating to freedom of speech or free exercise of religion. I am suggesting that there should be one law for all of us, that we should recognize that many cultural practices that may seem right to foreign-born Muslims are inimical to the peace and good order of our country, and that we shouldn’t tolerate them in the name of the PC gods of diversity, tolerance, sensitivity, etc.
June 20th, 2012 | 1:11 pm
@Sally
“- So I’ve heard, but I wonder about the reality behind this story. Where exactly are these areas where the law of the country no longer applies? I think this might be a bit of an exaggeration. What exactly does a “no-go area” mean – are you beaten and robbed if you show up there? I find this hard to believe. ”
There used to be Interpol stats on the number of No-Go Zones in Europe. But, it appears that Interpol no longer provides the numbers. Here’s a link below that provides a modicum of information concerning them:
http://technorati.com/politics/article/no-go-zones-for-non-muslims/
Most of these areas have/had signs warning tourists and local inhabitents of the dangers of these neighborhoods. And yes, police are very loathed to respond to calls or even patrol these areas. It isn’t anythiing they will ever admit to. But, it is becoming a very real social and political problem in the UK, Belgium, and France. Some of the violence and lawlessness can be attributed to gangs. But, one you have religious police harrassing women, gays, and other “infidels” there are problems.
And in Europe, this didn’t occur overnight.
June 20th, 2012 | 1:32 pm
Sally Rogers
You are absolutely right
What particularly saddens me about these laws is that the United States has been a member of the Hague Conference on Private International Law since 1964. As I am sure you know, this is an international organization with a membership of over 70 states, dedicated to building bridges between legal systems and reinforcing legal certainty and securities for individuals and businesses in the midst of increasing globalisation. Many non-member states have ratified one or more of the conventions
Through its Conventions, it seeks to address precisely the issues you raise around contracts, marriage, divorce and wills, as well as the more humdrum, but important questions of the validation of documents for use abroad, the service of process and many more. At the moment, it has working groups on such topical questions as of E-commerce and Insolvency
Its work and similar schemes of international co-operation in the field of Private International Law can only be hampered by ill-considered legislation that many member states will view as a calculated insult to their sovereignty and a gratuitous source of injustice to their citizens.
If this were not bad enough, some of the draft bills forbid the use, not only of Sharia, but of International Law too.
June 20th, 2012 | 5:49 pm
@Michael PS,
While I will not defend poorly drafted statutes that muddle the already unclear field of conflict of laws, the hostility to “international law” broadly speaking is intelligible on different grounds than the hostility to sharia. The leading example in my mind is the US Supreme Court’s decision in Roper v. Simmons, which decided that the constitutional prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” meant that a murderer who was under age 18 at the time of his offense could not be liable to capital punishment. Twenty-five American states had laws setting lower minimum ages and the federal government had declined to ratify a treaty that would have set a nationwide minimum of 18. Six of the nine justices of the Court appealed explicitly to the norms of other countries in reaching their conclusions. And Americans lost another little bit of their ability to rule themselves, rather than submitting to the rule of leftist lawyers.
June 20th, 2012 | 6:24 pm
Shall we allow a man to rape his wife and plead as justification that he is Muslim and sharia permits his conduct? (etc., etc.)
In case you don’t know it, all of the things you point to in your comment are already against the law. There are statutes that apply to every single one of those actions, and if you claim that these statutes are not currently being enforced, passing another statute saying that the actions are not legitimate is not going to change anything in the world.
I know about the incidencts you cite to. None of them are legal. The single “outrage alert” over the New Jersey incident is the only one that was a real legal issue and it was very simply over-turned by the appeals court. It dealt with a case that is actually a difficult legal issue regardless of Sharia issues. The law of rape is complicated by the fact that the entire crime turns on issues of consent and the state of mind of the defendant. Most other crimes, you simply look at the fact that something happened – the thing was stolen, the person was shot, and that’s usually pretty clear. But with rape, the action (having sex) is not a crime unless the woman did not consent and the man should have known she did not consent. Having taught criminal law, I can tell you that marital rape is one of the more complex areas of criminal law, and one that involves some very tricky presumptions that any defense lawyer can challenge.
So the fact that a district court judge made a mistake regarding the issue is not unique, and it happens very frequently, whether or not Sharia is involved. You would think from the way this case has been exploited that there has never in history been a situation in which a district court judge got the law wrong. You would be incorrect. But those other cases (not involving sharia) don’t sell what the Sharia ban people are trying to make people believe.
The appeals court did not need an addtional statute telling them anything about Sharia in order to correct the District Court judge in that New Jersey case. The whole campaign is based on a false premise, and the law of unintended consequences says that passing un-necessary laws is a bad idea.
June 20th, 2012 | 8:11 pm
JP,
As a British person living in Bradford, I can quite clearly testify to the fact that there are absolutely no no-go areas in Bradford.
RL,
Many of the things you here related to Sharia law are not actually Sharia law punishments, such as the infamous stoning punishment.
As for honour crimes, believe it or not, Honour crimes are outlawed in Islam. Murder is simply not condoned at all.
Rape is also something not condoned in Islam, infact, it is one of the most henious crimes and is punished most severley.
Neither forced or incest is condoned in Islamic law.
In all cases Sharia law is often misunderstood due to some extremely strict and misinterpreted rulings across the globe, what you have to understand is unlike Christianity, there is no central authority. There is no Church that is responsible for saying this is true, this isn’t true. It is left for people to take God’s message for themsevles, hence the various interpretations of rulings. What I can tell you is that the things mentioned above, have never and never will be entered into Islamic law simply because they contradict what is within the Quran. It is like saying Peadophilia is endorsed by the Catholic Church and all Catholics because some priests are peadophiles.
In regard to America, I am of the understanding the American nation was established as a secular nation and so has no preference to any particular religion, henceforth no Muslim, or indeed anyone of any religious persuasion should be penalised for their beliefs unless, and I mean unless, there is proven, documented, unbiased (The key point) that there are clear areas within said religion that act to the grave detriment of society.
The level of hysteria that has been dumped on Islam has made Islamaphobia socially acceptable, both in America and Europe, more often then not peddled by tabloid trash.
Substitue some of the literature used to describe Muslims with the word Jew and then look up a certain Adolf Hitler’s speeches and read the similarities.
I cannot express my deepest regret that there are those Muslims out there who are so deluded either by their own hate or by ‘teachers’ who have no real knowledge that they carry out acts of violence in the name of Islam when in fact, they often commit grave and terrible crimes.
June 21st, 2012 | 7:18 am
RL
But Romer v Simmons did not raise any question of International Law at all, whether Public or Private. Had the case involved an alien, it could well have involved questions of the age of majority (arguably a question of Private International Law) and of State Responsibility to the state of which he was a national (a question of Public International Law). Neither applied in this case.
It amounted to no more than the use by SCOTUS of analogies drawn from foreign practice, an entirely different question and one that all jurists would agree is an entirely domestic matter.
June 21st, 2012 | 10:41 am
There are no-go areas in Chicago, but they don’t have anything to do with Sharia. They have more to do with weekly body counts blamed on gang violence, drug trade, and “youth” with weapons settling their petty scores. Anyone in Chicago will tell you where these areas are, but unfortunately, the gangs don’t post signs informing the ignorant.
June 21st, 2012 | 11:40 am
@ Sally Rogers,
OK, I’ll take off the cloak of anonymity enough to admit that I’m a lawyer, too, although I don’t practice in the criminal law field. I share your concerns in general about vaguely worded statutes that don’t address specific problems. I would even agree that a number of the anti-sharia statutes are blunt instruments that could use some refinement. However, there is a real problem. As we continue (for reasons unfathomable to me) to allow Muslims to immigrate to this country, our legal system continues to come under pressure to allow them to import the norms of their homelands. Sometimes that’s fine, and sometimes it isn’t; I gather we agree about that. I am therefore puzzled at the suggestion that we should do nothing (or nothing of any effect) to defend our laws and our customs against alien incursions. It simply will not do to write off all concern about the problem as bigoted or paranoid (I’m not accusing you of doing that, to be clear). And I am quite concerned that our leftist judiciary is going to keep on doing to our law what it has done to Eighth Amendment law — rendering the words on paper in the statute book meaningless and looking instead to (the judge’s view about) contemporary norms and evolving decency in a maturing society. Sharia is one tool in the box. Can we stop judges from being lawless revolutionaries, short of violence or impeachment? Perhaps not, but neither should we roll over for it.
@Michael PS,
I understand and agree with your point, although I think the majority’s opinion in Roper v. Simmons relied on foreign law to a greater degree than you admit; my view on the matter is largely that of Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion. However, my point in the post was only to note the source of the hostility to “international law.” We are rapidly ceasing to be our own masters, in part because a lawless judiciary wishes to rely on the decisions of legislatures in other countries to overrule the judgments of our own legislatures. That is fundamentally illegitimate.
@ FP,
I wish to be delicate about this and to avoid attacking you or what I gather to be your religion. However, I categorically reject the reductio ad Hitlerum, and I reject any claim that America has an obligation to be neutral about Muslim immigration. Your post is a perfect example of the problem posed by liberal legal principles combined with the importation of Islamic law: The liberal principle of neutrality is in reality a one-way ratchet that pushes the historic Christianity of our people aside at the request of the nearest loudmouth with an ACLU lawyer (whether said loudmouth is Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist or anything else is of no consequence), but the liberal principle of tolerance means that we must bend over backwards to avoid criticizing the “protected” groups, lest we be cast out of polite society for “racism,” “homophobia,” “Islamophobia,” or whatever the “-phobia” du jour may happen to be. Thus does our freedom erode under the remorseless pressure of political correctness.
America is not a secular country, it’s a republic. The question is whether we, the people, shall be our own masters, or whether we will be ruled over by the great and the good, who wish to remake us in the image of liberalism, to stamp out everything that they view as irrational hatred and to force us all to pretend we live in harmony.
June 21st, 2012 | 1:24 pm
RL,
Forgive me if you thought I meant by saying the USA is a secular state that it should disavow it’s Christian past, it isn’t that. What I am saying is that the state itself, not the people is religionless, not overtly atheist, but without any specific religion, this is in keeping with the traditions of the founding fathers.
Here is an extract from the Treaty of Tripoli, ratified in 1790 and ended the Barbay conflicts in North Africa:
“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
President Obama said on a visit to Turkey, “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation…We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”
When I say you are a secular nation, I mean the state itself is secular. Not you as a people, nor do I ask that you disregard any part of your historic or cultural past.
I would like to make clear, I hold no concept of a ‘protected group,’ the closest I get to a protected group is saying Children should be protected.
There is complete free speech, there is hate speech and then there is the middle, should debate be polite with valid concerns then fair enough, it should neither be censored nor thrown out, however, when you have people like Geller and Spencer who peddle simple hate speech, that is where one should step in and say enough.
America is a secular republic with a Christian past, forgive me if I am wrong but is that not what the nation was founded as? John Adams had a copy of the Quran with him in his personal collection, as did Jefferson.
I am not saying that there is nothing wrong with Islam, but there are good things too. I take exception to your point I quote, “Muslim immigration.” Can an American not be Muslim? Or are all Muslims immigrants?
I may remind you that like Christianity and Judaism, Islam came from the Middle east.
I would like to say that the mass hysteria over Islam is overtly indulged. Whilst I support freedom of speech and do firmly believe political correctness should be toned down, I do not believe that people have the right to peddle hate speech.
“to stamp out everything that they view as irrational hatred and to force us all to pretend we live in harmony.”
I can’t say that I want to force everyone to love everyone else because I know that such a thing is impossible, people disagree, if I don’t agree with you, no matter how irrational, I have the right to my point, as does the other. Where the problem arrives is when one attempts to persecute another because of that view point. If one prays to Mecca instead of Jesus, should they be profiled? Subject to searches and all manner of stereotypes simply because of that? Both the UK and the US are founded on the guiding principle within law of innocent until proven guilty.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact