Went out to dinner with our RRFs (Rich Republican Friends) the other night. They, as always, were up to date on Fox News talking points, which they used to guide what had been a sociable discussion toward the Muslim Threat. Why, did we know there are Muslims in Detroit, Muslims with mosques? Mosques with minarets and loudspeakers, loudly playing the muezzins’ calls to prayer five times a day? Muslims with mosques who want to impose Sharia Law on their fellow Detroiters, just as they’ve done to Christians in the UK and Europe?
All this by way of getting to their main point, which was opposition to the building of a new mosque in New York City, the one misleadingly called the “Ground Zero mosque” and, while we’re at it, the construction of any additional mosques anywhere within the United States of America. Oh, and let’s outlaw PDI — Public Displays of Islam — too: veils, burqas, calls to prayer. We will not submit to Sharia!
I swear, if they’d kept going, pretty soon we’d have been hearing about Muslims poisoning wells, spreading plague, and grinding up the bones of Christian babies to make tabouli.
But I interrupted, reminding my RRFs that the First Amendment prohibits congress from making laws restricting the free exercise of religion.* Americans can’t tell other Americans they can’t build churches or that they can’t worship in accordance with their religion’s dictates. Unless, of course, said religion involves forced marriage between 80-year-old bigamists and 14-year-old girls . . . oh, wait.
But my RRFs were way ahead of me. Fox & Friends had prepared them for this argument. The First Amendment doesn’t apply, you see, because Islam is a cult, not a religion.
Would there have been any point in citing the slippery slope? That if you run the Muslims out of town, you open the door to those who’d like to round up the Jews? That if you say Islam isn’t a religion, you open the door to those who say the founding fathers never intended blacks to be counted as “natural born citizens”?
No. There wouldn’t have been any point. I’m ashamed for my RRFs. They’ve abandoned the values and morals they were raised with. What part of “illegal” don’t they understand? Any part that gets between them and their (Christian) God-given right to take legal protections away from people they disapprove of.
* “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Update (8/2/10): I’m being far too hard on my RRFs, Donna says, and she’s right. They are friends, after all, and who isn’t guilty of prejudice from time to time? I certainly am. I’ll cheerfully admit that I’ve always thought Mormons are creepy . . . but more to the point, that I share my friends’ distrust of Muslims and don’t want to see women wearing veils or men kneeling in prayer on American streets . . . so I know where they’re coming from. But damn it, two wrongs don’t make a right, and it was not Islam that attacked this country on 9/11. It was Al Qaeda, and where the hell is Osama bin Laden’s head? It should have been severed from his body and displayed on a pike in front of the White House nine years ago!
I continue to be amazed at the blatant disregard for The Constitution in this country. I see a lot of the “Mosquegate” here at work. Of course, in this business there ware plenty who share your RFFs points of view.
Funny, being the token Libertarian, I often get labeled the liberal of the bunch yet when surrounded by liberals…
These chuckle-heads screaming about mosques are as poorly informed as my sister screaming about NASCAR (I re-read your earlier post this morning – thanks for taking the time to post the dissenting opinion BTW.)
Funny how remarkably similar Judaism, Islam and Christianity are when you get right down to basics. All Abrahamic religions follow the same basic tenet, they’ve just morphed into various sects with over the years, their teachings twisted in an attempt to expand their power base and exert more control over the masses.
My Chaplain comes by for a coffee every Sunday morning (after services) and the discussion will occasionally cross over into the theological. I point out that the Almighty’s message hasn’t changed and it’s still good. Religion on the other hand, is simply man’s perversion of it.
Back to your RFFs and all things extreme. I think it comes down to simple ignorance. They’ve no knowledge of Islam (other than what they hear from Glen Beck) and react accordingly. Radical Jihadists have little or no knowledge of Christianity (most of them seem to have little knowledge of Islam also). Radical Republicans seem to have little knowledge of what’s right and wrong, while radical Democrats can’t seem to carry a thought all the way through to its logical conclusion.
So here’s to finding a middle ground someplace.
And good luck avoiding those tacks!
Gopher, pundits say this sort of thing is common whenever times are bad. They’re probably right. And the Constitution, for all its vaunted protection of the rights of minorities, never stopped mobs from going after whoever they hate at any particular moment. It didn’t help Japanese-Americans in WWII, and it won’t help Hispanics or Muslims now. And gays? Katie bar the door! We need a massive WPA program to get people back to work. Then maybe all this crap will stop.