UPDATE: We had hoped this could go without saying, but apparently we must make it clear: comments promoting anti-Muslim bigotry and, especially, violence against Muslims will not be approved. Sadly, there are plenty of forums for that kind of trash. This isn’t one of them.
Texas Eagle Forum’s website has posted an essay that calls for exempting Muslims from the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee for religious freedom, firing Muslims from government jobs, barring them from running for elected office and monitoring their houses of worship. The essay, written by Elijah Abraham, an evangelical Christian convert from Islam, is among the most strident, hate-filled pieces of paranoia that we have read. You can read the whole thing here. Excerpt:
In the U.S., there are Muslim training camps across the country actively planning attacks on American soil. Young Americans are being converted to Islam in our jails, our military, public schools and universities, and in churches that preach Liberation Theology. Muslims have gained two seats in the U.S, Congress and have won seats in state and local races. Public school textbooks are becoming pro-Islam and anti-Christian. Muslims are buying Fortune 500 companies and high tech companies. There is a Dow Jones Islamic Index. Islamic banks, insurance companies and mortgage companies are springing up across the country. Our open borders welcome Muslims.
The challenge to America is to stop the spread of Islam in the U.S. before it is too late.
SOLUTIONS:
- Congress MUST outlaw Shariah and international law
- Eliminate Muslim government employees
- Outlaw Muslim terrorist organizations, such as The Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR, etc.
- Muslims should be ineligible to run for political office
- All Muslim military personnel should be removed from the U.S. armed forces
- Monitor mosques
- Shut down terrorist training camps in the U.S.
The essay’s gross generalizations — “torture is a way of life” and “the sanctity of human life is meaningless to a devout Muslim” — are repulsive. And the writer absurdly tries to justify legal, government-directed persecution of Muslims in America because some Muslim-dominant countries do indeed have barbaric laws and punishments, such as stoning and the execution of gay people and adulterers.
We would note, however, that there are some fundamentalist Christian extremists who (based on their literal interpretation of Scripture) have called for barbaric laws, such as executing gay people. Some have even given aid and comfort to supporters of a Ugandan law providing for just that — killing people because they are gay. In addition, a number of far-right Christian groups call for requiring that civil laws in the United States pass a biblical litmus test. David Barton‘s WallBuilders organization in Texas is one of them. But to suggest that all Christians — conservative, moderate or liberal — support such extremism would be absurd and an example of outright bigotry. The same is true for people (who often know little about Islam beyond the smears and stereotypes in which they traffic) who try to demonize all Muslims.
The Texas Eagle Forum and other religious-right pressure groups claim to support religious liberty. The reality is that they support religious freedom only for those who share their fundamentalist beliefs. In short, they want government to pick and choose which religious beliefs to favor or disfavor in our laws and our society. Right now they want government to persecute Muslims. In the past they targeted Jews and Catholics. Who will be next?
What Texas Eagle Forum supports is tyranny — the same kind of tyranny that our nation’s founders fought and worked so hard to prevent.
