Posted on 09/16/2010 1:48:29 AM PDT by Rashputin
What Are D.C. Police Doing Enforcing Shariah Law?
Police officers, at the direction of an imam, remove six Muslim women from the Islamic Center. Their crime? Worshiping peacefully.
The Islamic Center, housed in a magnificent building in Washington, D.C., has been around for over a half-century, but it is seldom in the news. Unless you drive by (on Embassy Row) you would not know that it there. Because it is supposed to be a peaceful place of worship, we would not expect local police to enter.
Yet last March they did. Three D.C. Metropolitan police officers entered the center, at the direction of an imam, and removed six Muslim women. Their crime? They were worshiping peacefully in the main prayer hall after the imam announced that women were forbidden to enter that area.
What happened in Washington, D.C., should remind us of the peaceful sit-ins of the 1960s. The courts found that the police action removing people from private businesses violated the Equal Protection Clause.
In a series of cases the lower federal courts and the Supreme Court reversed convictions of black and white civil protestors who were convicted under state criminal trespass or disturbing the peace laws when they sat in the “white-only” section of various lunch counters and restaurants and refused to move after having been ordered to do so by the agent of the establishment.
Neither state nor federal laws at the time required the restaurants to serve blacks, but the courts found “state action” that violated Equal Protection. In Garner v. Louisiana (1961), for example, the Supreme Court reversed the convictions (under a state disturbing the peace statute) of those who had engaged in a sit-in, because the record was “totally devoid of evidentiary support” that petitioners caused any disturbance of the peace. They sat there quietly.
Peterson v. Greenville (1963) reversed the trespass conviction of blacks who had engaged in a lunch counter sit-in. The store manager asked the blacks to leave because integrated service was “contrary to local customs” and a local ordinance. The Supreme Court held that “these convictions cannot stand,” whether or not a local ordinance supported the store manager. In Lombard v. Louisiana (1963), decided the same day, the Court reversed the trespass convictions of three blacks and one white who had sat in a privately owned restaurant that served only whites. The case involved no statutes or ordinances, but the police did say that “no additional sit-in demonstrations … will be permitted.” Justice Douglas, concurring, argued that there was state action when the state judiciary “put criminal sanctions behind racial discrimination in public places.”
There are precious little differences between the sit-in cases of the 1960s and the Muslim sit-in cases. We knew, in the 1960s, that the Equal Protection Clause forbids discrimination based on color. We know now that the Equal Protection Clause forbids discrimination based on gender. We know that the lunch counters were open to anyone who wanted to eat, except blacks, or blacks had to sit at a special section. We know that the mosque is open to anyone who wants to worship God, except that women must sit at special places — sort of like “back of the bus.”
And we know that the discrimination based on race or sex could not exist without the help of the local police. The question is why the D.C. police — who have real crime to worry about – are spending their time and taxpayer dollars to enforce sharia law.
Our First Amendment protects the right of people to believe whatever they want to believe. But there are limits to how they can act on their beliefs. For example, a religion may believe that racial segregation is God’s way. They can believe that, but the state cannot aid that belief by, for example, giving federally subsidized loans to colleges that discriminate on the basis of race. The people of Washington, D.C., should not be enforcing shariah law.
Ronald Rotunda is the Doy & Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at the Chapman University School of Law.
So if a Segregationist Church were to hold it's ceremonies in it's own building and members of another race show up and, through thier presence alone, disturb the otherwise peaceful congregation - the church has no recourse but accept?
I think not.
This is exactly, precisely, identically, the same thing as enforcing Jim Crow laws
Denying a group access to facilities / businesses that serve the general public (bars, restaraunts, buses etc ...) can not be justified as no persons personal beliefs / liberties are infinged upon by allowing blacks, hispanics, etc ... access. That has nothing at all to do with forcing a religious group to accept persons it deems uncapable of worship access to it's sanctums.
Regards
I do not know what odors outside of the mosque have to do with anything, but it appears you are saying we cannot call the police to remove trespassers unless we have private security?
They were apparently breaking the law.
Are these women still alive?
“The police have no role in enforcing private membership rules and/or beliefs.”
Keep in mind, you are reading a news story, which could be
completely false to only part true. I doubt that you or anyone else knows all the facts.
That being said, let me draw an analogy.
If I own a private club, for members only, and some non members enter, I can ask them to leave, and if they refuse, I call the police.
The mosque is probably a private, not public, operation.
Who says that the mosque, does, or should have a private security force?
Islam a crime against humanity!
Fortunately the police removed them before they could be killed.
I clicked on the “American Thinker” link in the title, and it came up “Pajamas Media”.
Something stinks about this.........
and searched American Thinker for the article ......
no match.
Dogs are clean and nice.
Bacon is good.
Women should not be beaten.
Animals are not for sex.
Stones are not for throwing at people or praying at.
:)If you dissagree with someone dont cut off their head.
That wasn’t the case. The women were in a section of the mosque that had been designated men only. It was not a case of trespass. Same as the blacks at the lunch counter, the restaurant was not “members only”, the counter was whites only.
However, whether Islam specifically or just Islamic men, they have a variety of sex-segregation rules.
It’s not a church, it’s a club.
And if the people in there are discussing public disturbances and attacks on Americans, it’s not a club, it’s a criminal syndicate.
“It was not a case of trespass.”
No? Is the mosque not private property?
You are falling into the mistake of assuming that all churches/mosques are public property. They are not !
As for the lunch counter, it was a PUBLIC restaurant, not a private club. There is a distinction.
Even if I go into a public restaurant, I can not demand to be seated wherever I like.
As for sex segregation, are not all restrooms, public or private, sexually segregated?
By your logic, I should be able to go into any restroom,
male or female, if it is “public”.
You are comparing apples to oranges.
I don’t see what the issue is. Do we not have a right to have police remove trespassers from private property?
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I prefer identifying Islam as many of the founders did —”the cult of Mahammet” They defend their charismatic throat cutter
mad prophet as if he were deity—much like the folk who followed Jim Jones-or David Koresh defended their cult hero.
A club I reserve more for the pervs that visit “gentlemens clubs”
So the question is, is a gutter religion a private business!!!
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