ping for your input, ladies and gentlemen.
I hope you have your flame-suit on.
I have to agree with you about islam, however.
The Muslim culture and specifically the Arab cultures are based on a matriarchal structure. The strongest male female bond is the mother son relationship. Everything is done to prevent the interference of any other females in that relationship. Multiple wives and women and children sleeping separately from the men, from the dress codes to the harem young and desirable women are kept away from men and under the control of the elder women.
Change that relationship and you will change their whole culture.
We are having to deal with this now because of the failure of the 'Crusades'.
Especially in our prisons. Isn't Islam recruiting new members inside our prisons in order to train them for murder within our own country? Surely there are laws against this. Which laws?
Islam the religion is protected by the 1st amendment. Islam the political movement is forbidden by the 1st amendment.
I don't know if we can outlaw the entire religion because it would present serious constititional issues. Who knows, there may even be some benign forms that would compromise the attampt. However, any members of any organization that advocates the violent overthrow of the government can be charged with sedition. I can't explain why Ashcroft has not dusted off this option.
Sounds like a great place to test the constitutional laws of our nation before we have to personaly apply the god given right of self defense ourselves.
Stay Safe !
In 1940, Congress passed the Alien Registration Act, or Smith Act, making it a crime for any person to knowingly advocate, or conspire to advocate, the overthrow of the United States government, or to organize any group which does so. The legislation was intended for use in suppressing Fascist and Communist organizations. Eight years later, authorities arrested Eugene Dennis and ten other leaders of the Communist Party of America and prosecuted them for violating the Smith Act. A federal district court convicted them.
On appeal, the Supreme Court addressed the question of whether or not the Smith Act inherently, or as applied in the Dennis case, violated the First Amendment. In a 6 to 2 decision, the Court upheld the Communists' conviction and declared the Smith Act constitutionally sound. In his plurality opinion, Chief Justice Vinson applied the "clear and present danger" standard established in Schenck v. United States, finding that the eleven leaders' "conspiracy to organize the Communist Party and to teach and advocate the overthrow of the Government of the United States by force and violence created a 'clear and present danger' of an attempt to overthrow the Government by force and violence." The fact that such an attempt would be highly unlikely to succeed did not, the Court found, have any bearing on the case.
Later, the Court modified its opinion in Dennis, upon consideration of Yates v. United States (1957). In this case, the Court found that an overly broad application of the Smith Act might violate the First Amendment. If a group engaged in "advocacy and teaching of forcible overthrow as an abstract principle," restriction of free speech was not in order. Only if a group engaged in "advocacy and teaching of concrete action for the forcible overthrow of the Government" could its speech justifiably be restricted under the Smith Act.
As much as I agree with your premises, beware of what you may wish for. How long would it be before Big Brother would go after "homo-bashing" and "anti-choice" Christians? (Some say they already have---even though I never hear them talk about Moslem's gay-bashing). That is the double-edge sword of the first amendment. It both protects and endangers the good people.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1144825/posts
related topic
Islam is monotheistic and so would have been declared legal in the Roman Empire along with Judaism and Christianity. You know Islam is nothing more than a lazy man's Judaism. It could be compared to the lazy man's Buddhism they are practicing in China: just get that whirligig spinning and it's autopilot the rest of the way.
Yes, It is illegal on my property. Islam is my enemy!
related topic:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1144670/posts
"Islam’s Nazi Connections"
By Mark Edward Vande Pol, aka Carry_Okie
Copyright 2003, Wildergarten Press, all rights reserved.
Most Americans understand that maintaining religious independence requires matters of faith be immune from government influence. The difficulty in accommodating religious freedom isn't the private exercise of personal faith; it is the influence religious values can exert upon matters of policy that affect people who don't share those religious beliefs.
Religious conservatives don't seem to understand that when their beliefs affect public policy, people who do not share those beliefs rightly feel that their freedom has been restricted. Resulting laws can exert strong influences upon the age of consent, marriage, child rearing, divorce, education, or the conduct of businesses (such as TV censorship versus porn, or whether to license bathhouses).
Secular voters consequently confuse legitimate concerns about the fiscal cost of moral decay with dogmatic religious beliefs, discounting such concerns as religious conceit. Thus any effort to impose uniform moral standards in public policy, nationwide, will be fraught with conflict unless all individuals hold the same beliefs.
No problem! Current government policy is to "educate" children from pre-school to after-school allowing totally debauched TV to cover everything else. They'll make sure the little urchins think all alike.
You don't want that for your kids?
Our federal system was designed to balance the need for a unified nation with accommodating variety in community standards, often reflecting various religious practices. The Constitution limited the Federal government from intruding in local affairs, thus allowing a State or community to adopt local ordinances reflecting particular beliefs. Quakers were dominant in Pennsylvania, Catholics in Maryland, Protestants in New England, and so on. More distinctive religious sects seeking near total autonomy such as the Amish, Mennonites, Shakers, Oneida, or Amana formed fairly isolated communities further afield.
That federal ethic started to break down when the courts interpreted the 14th Amendment equal protection clause as superceding other Constitutional limits on Federal power (particularly States rights and individual property rights). Although it may have been a good thing for racial equality (at first), the consequences are slowly evolving into religious oppression.
Nowhere has government intervention into religious freedom been more intense than in issues concerning homosexuals. The Bible has numerous obvious provisions declaring homosexual practice an abomination. As cases charging "discrimination in places of public accommodation" progress through the courts, we are not far from 14th Amendment equal protection being interpreted such that any effort to restrict the activities of homosexuals is considered illegal. Such a ruling might be enforced with the threat of loss of tax-exempt status.
So much for a nation founded in religious freedom. Note the role the 14th and 16th Amendments play in bringing Federal power to bear. It is selectively enforced uniformity.
This Federally enforced "uniform diversity" has made society both more mobile and culturally dispersed, making it more difficult to maintain a group holding strong beliefs over succeeding generations. Remnant groups end up isolated, issuing defensive pronouncements that irritate the secular public who would prefer that the "Fundies" kept to themselves. Unfortunately, such isn't allowed.
America was a haven for religious communities long before the Constitution was written. Since that time, the United States has shown openness to diverse religious beliefs unique in history. The only way to resolve cultural distinctions over religion is to re-institute Federalism citing the right of free association as pre-existing almost all other American law. Respecting that principle, people who prefer moral licentiousness should be free to congregate. Those who seek to restore the free exercise of religion and make a public matter of it should then be able to do so as well. The social and fiscal results of the different communities would speak volumes about the relative merits of these opposing moral standards, as California's fiscal crisis so eloquently demonstrates.
Emphasis upon free association is only a start. Putting enforcement of the equal protection clause and income tax regulations in their proper relationship with property rights and States' rights is also critically important, and not just to religious freedom.
There are, however, limits to free association. There is one major religion operating within this country with a written doctrine that advocates complete overthrow of the Constitution and replacement of our entire body of laws: Islam. When free association is used for purposes of sedition and bigotry we must make exception concerning free exercise. It is a test of our ability as a nation to make distinctions upon individual behavior that may do more to transform an ancient religion for the better than all the soldiers in the Middle East.
The problems we face in reestablishing rights of free association are not only Constitutional but inherent to the manner in which cases are brought to higher courts, something never defined by any legislative or Constitutional process. Appellate cases only test those questions that are raised at a lower level. We often wait decades for critical interpretations of the Constitution that then fail to weigh conflicting elements of that supreme law of the land. Citing but one part of the document as legally compelling in a court of law, without taking the whole of its provisions into account has perverted the intent of the law beyond recognition. A case citing only the 14th Amendment or the commerce clause might bring very different consequences to the same case when citing the 5th or 10th Amendments. It is not only unjust but also dishonest not to weigh all applicable competing considerations in a court of last resort. Not to clarify the full set of considerations in a ruling violates higher standards than the rule of law.
No matter how true it is that adhering to the religious principles upon which this country was founded produces a happy, productive, and peaceful society, to support political arguments citing religious beliefs does a disservice to socially conservative policy proposals. Such arguments are far more effective in political life when citing only their logical necessity, leaving religious citations to matters of family and faith. People with an abiding sense of faith don't need or want religious direction from public officials. In many ways it trivializes matters of faith. In others, it invites the kind of backlash that has worked to restrict religious freedom.
related topic:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1144852/posts
I believe you are. In fact, I completely agree with you. Islam is not a religion, but a religio-political conquista cult, and we should stop calling this a "War on Terror." It is a war against militant Islam, and as we are finding out, militancy is ultimately the true character of Islam. Many Muslims may be nonmilitant, but most (if not all) of them probably a) know very little about their faith, or b) would openly repudiate some fundamental tennets of their faith.
We can justify the suppression of orthodox Islam on the grounds that it is as much a political force as it is a religous force, defining an "orthodox Muslim" as one who puts his loyalty to the political culture of Islam above his loyalty to his country of residency (say, the U.S. or France).