Posted on 09/22/2015 9:16:06 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
There is a subtle problem with Dr. Carson's comment that he wouldn’t support a Muslim for president.
I see three issues at work here.
1. Old Islamic law is incompatible with the Constitution.
Easily proven:
Old Islamic law does not allow for the separation of mosque and state, while our Constitution guarantees that separation.
Old Islamic law does not allow for freedom of religion, while our Constitution does.
Old Islamic law does not allow for free speech with regard to religion, while our Constitution does.
Those three elements prove that this archaic law disqualifies itself for the modern world.
2. The Constitution does not allow a religious test.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
No religious test applies here, not even remotely. The religious test would be if a candidate were prevented from running or serving if elected. The voter is free to apply any and all criteria to the process of determining whom to vote for.
This FACT is totally lost on the talking heads.
Ben Carson never said that a Muslim cannot run for President [Mark Levin kept pounding at it in and challenging any liberal to say otherwise his show].
Carson said that he personally would not advocate and support a Muslim if he were to run for President.
He already gave his reasons — concerns about believing in Sharia Law being foremost in his mind.
What Article 6 of the constitution essentially says is a Muslim can run for public office and not face constitutional scrutiny over his religion (public scrutiny is another matter).
Carson is referring to PUBLIC SCRUTINY, not the constitutional test.
No one is preventing anyone from running for president. if the media would look, they would confirm that with the 16 republican candidates now running. Anyone can run. That does not mean anyone should win.
Even the delegates to a convention are free to apply whatever religious test they please. A political party is not a governmental entity. (I know, conventions are a mere formality these days.)
Exactly. Your post 5 says it perfectly. I didn’t see it until after my post 6 or I wouldn’t have bothered.
I’m not sure I agree islam is a religion, it is a form of gov’t.
As a matter of fact, I believe I’m correct in saying that presidential electors are free to vote for (or against) anyone on any basis.
We certainly should follow the example of all the Islamic countries that have set up democratic constitutional republics that are even better than our own, all of which would be more than willing to elect a president who happened to be Christian or belong to any other religious faith other than Islam. After all, most of the freedoms and minority protections that we tried to enshrine in our constitution were actually rooted in Sharia law, so I can certainly see no reason why a devout member of a religion like Islam - who has a lifelong devotion to democratic principles like free speech and protecting the rights of women, minorities, and individuals in general - should have any problem taking an oath of office in our country to “protect and defend” a constitution that does the same.
Besides, what is the right afraid of if we had a Muslim president?
What? Are they worried that:
* A radical Islamic government, like Iran, might someday get a nuclear weapon?
* Our ally, Israel, would be antagonized?
* The president might say things like “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” or “the sweetest sound I know is the Muslim call to prayer”.
* Radical Islamists, knowing the president’s ideology and thus unafraid of U.S. reprisals, would begin a genocide against Christians in the Middle East?
* Millions of Christian, non-Islamic and secular Middle-East residents would begin a mass migration to Europe and other areas, including our own, as they fled persecution from the emboldened, more powerful, and more numerous radical elements in their own country.
Geez - get real folks, nothing like that would happen if we had a Muslim president.
And yes, this post, much like my underwear, is tagless, and also requires some attribution (thanks RL) for the “what if” comments
THAT is the issue people are debating about Islam. Is it simply a religion? Or is it a theocracy?
As the article states, While it is rare that Islamic scholars today intend to update Islam, they do exist.
Radicals would call such a Muslim office seeker an apostate, but more moderate ones would not.
So, theoretically, it would be possible to support a Muslim for the presidency, much like Rep. Keith Ellison won supporters in Minnesota.
Whether the rest of America will one day vote like Ellison’s congressional district is another matter.
Folks can call me whatever names they wish, but...
Electing a muslim for POTUS would be samey same as electing a Nazi for POTUS during WW2... or ever.
Of course, commiescum of whatever idiot brand they call themselves is just as dumbass and evil, but we’ve been doing that lately.
OLD Islamic Law?
There is no such thing as NEW Islamic Law. It is all OLD.
The words of Mohammed cannot be deleted or revised. Any public attempt to do so will be met with the same treatment they gave to Salmon Rushdie.
Anyone who claims to be a Muslim therefore must believe in OLD Islamic Law.
There is no conflict with our constitution or traditions when you accept the undeniable fact that Islam is an inhuman political system disguised and costumed as a religion and dedicated to our subjugation, death and destruction.
We all know that every US government elected official, bureaucrat, employee, and service member takes an oath of office.
The president vows to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Almost everyone else (except the president and judges) takes an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
(why the exception for the president and judges?)
Islam is certainly a foreign enemy dedicated to the overthrow of the US Constitution and to the subjugation of the American people.
So why would any American patriot want an Islamist as president and commander of the US military?
CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood mean to overthrow our tattered Republic form of government and replace it with a caliphate which is what Islam is A Form of Government.
“But in the real world, a Muslim won’t be president in our lifetime or, probably, ever.”
I nominate this line from the article as the most absurd statement written in the year 2015. The time period is, of course, subject to expansion.
I hasten to remind everyone that a mere 5 years ago, Oklahoma voted in a referendum to inscribe in their state constitution, a ban on considering Sharia law for their court cases.
The law was challenged by an official of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). In November 2010 a federal judge ruled the law to be unconstitutional and blocked the state from putting it into effect.
So, there you go...
By “expansion” I’m sure you mean moving several years back, not forward. And I second that nomination!
I think you don't really mean that. What is involved is application by the population and its representatives of the PRINCIPLES of the Constitution and its enumerated freedoms guaranteed in the Amendment(s).
Those three tests of First Amendment conformance were also certainly rejected by Roman Catholicism as practiced in Europe, doubled down, under penalty of death and dismemberment, until the Reformation finally brought in some form of freedom to believe in the Bible as written, the outcome of which was the opening of North America for settlement by dissenters.
How can it be that few now recognize its effect on preventing practicing Catholics from attaining public office in America for so many years?
The only individuals publicly professing Catholicism to reach high office have been those who are only nominally associated with this form of religion, but not committed to it through and through, who were able to divorce their public behaviors from their private religious leanings.
The First Amendment is, of course, a principle of tolerance for individual opinion and practice proceeding out of the Enlightenment, the nemesis of statist religion, and neither Catholicism, Mohammedanism, nor Communism can fit under an uncompromised Constitution of the United States, as written and initially revised by its creators.
In America, the choices have been to compromise the Constitution, or the conduct of these faiths in politics, or both. Only Protestantism, with its plurality, has flourished under the Constitution, with its Institutes making our nation the greatest ever on the earth.
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