??? Muslims
I got an email today, purporting to explain why a Muslim could never be a ‘good American’. Apparently their faith forbids them from following or meeting infidels (non believers), and also prevents them from living under our Constitution, laws, and government. According to this email. It is a chain mail, so apparently some others have seen this stuff, too.
Many of these arguments — submitting to religious authority over secular authority, belief that religious concerns outweigh laws — place Catholics outside the bounds of being a ‘good American’. I recall the consternation about allowing a Catholic to be President of the US (Kennedy). The bible teaches that a man should not beat his wife with a stick larger than his thumb, nor longer than his forearm (this is a favorite in Ireland, according to the John Wayne movie ‘The Silent Man’, and several other references I have come across). The average age of marriage in the colonies before the US was formed was 13 years. Only in the last 50 or 60 years have businesses overcome religious obstacles to buying, selling, and manufacturing on Sunday (or the Sabbath).
Only if a Muslim adheres to the use of violence to overthrow the government do they irrevocably violate the constitution. The four wives is a issue for the courts — if they were married before entering the US, are the marriages all legal? Would states amend their laws and regulations to permit a 2nd or more marriage? That would be up to the state. And various state laws would apply to the age of the bride.
This message didn’t address the often violent reaction Muslims have to ’sin’ — fornication, drugs, alcohol — which in some Muslim countries are considered capital (death penalty) crimes. In some ways the Muslims almost remind me of our own Ku Klux Klan — which was organized to combat ‘papists’ (Roman Catholics) in the US.
I understand the prophet Mohammed was Judeo-Christian, about 400 A.D. That the God of Abraham and of David is the same as Allah. Where Christians call the Old and New Testament the Word Of God, and Jews call the New Testament ‘religious fiction, a favored entertainment of the Jewish people’ (according to a bus tour guide in Jerusalem), the Muslims started out from the Bible. Apparently, though, the Muslims believe that only they have the corrected version (Qaran). Like the Book of Morman, for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, that details for Mormons the visit of Jesus to the Americas after his Ascension, but other Christians consider a hoax.
I was in the Navy when they started enlisting women (1970’s). I heard many complaints at the time, some sounded a lot like this list. And I found that admitting women caused a lot of re-thinking on safety, efficiency, and approaches to problems and to daily routine. And I believe the Navy grew stronger as it adjusted to the new members.
I would hate to think that the Muslims learned about bombings for faith reasons from watching us, but our zealots bombed abortion clinics and churches long before 9/11 and even before the fall of the Shah of Iran in the early 1970’s. Whether abortion clinic bombers are ‘good Americans’ should be obvious — violence and death violate the law, but some congregations and individuals have argued for the practice, and for lenience with the bombers.
Whether the cute saying is ‘Show me!’ or ‘The proof is in the pudding’, I am not prepared to blindly label all Muslims as ‘violent extremists, mortal enemies of all that is American’. Why would they want to become American, if they felt that America is the Great Satan? Muslims have lived in the US for many year. I prefer to ‘live and let live’ until there is a problem. I don’t want what all that hatred would do to me.
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