Trump’s Muslim Immigration Ban Should Touch Off a Badly Needed Discussion
by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY December 8, 2015 3:59 PM
(National Review) Donald Trump’s rhetorical excesses aside, he has a way of pushing us into important debates, particularly on immigration. He has done it again with his bracing proposal to force “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” I have no idea what Mr. Trump knows about either immigration law or Islam. But it should be obvious to any objective person that Muslim immigration to the West is a vexing challenge.
Some Muslims come to the United States to practice their religion peacefully, and assimilate into the Western tradition of tolerance of other people’s liberties, including religious liberty — a tradition alien to the theocratic societies in which they grew up.
Others come here to champion sharia, Islam’s authoritarian societal framework and legal code, resisting assimilation into our pluralistic society. Since we want to both honor religious liberty and preserve the Constitution that enshrines and protects it, we have a dilemma.
The assumption that is central to this dilemma — the one that Trump has stumbled on and that Washington refuses to examine — is that Islam is merely a religion. If that’s true, then it is likely that religious liberty will trump constitutional and national-security concerns.
How, after all, can a mere religion be a threat to a constitutional system dedicated to religious liberty?
But Islam is no mere religion. As understood by the mainstream of Muslim-majority countries that are the source of immigration to America and the West, Islam is a comprehensive ideological system that governs all human affairs, from political, economic, and military matters to interpersonal relations and even hygiene. It is beyond dispute that Islam has religious tenets — the oneness of Allah, the belief that Mohammed is the final prophet, the obligation of ritual prayer.
Yet these make up only a fraction of what is overwhelmingly a political ideology. Our constitutional principle of religious liberty is derived from the Western concept that the spiritual realm should be separate from civic and political life.
The concept flows from the New Testament injunction to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s. Crucially, the interpretation of Islam that is mainstream in most Muslim-majority countries does not accept a division between mosque and state. In fact, to invoke “mosque” as the equivalent of “church” in referring to a division between spiritual and political life is itself a misleading projection of Western principles onto Islamic society.
A mosque is not merely a house of worship. It does not separate politics from religion any more than Islam as a whole does. There is a reason why many of the fiery political protests that turn riotous in the Middle East occur on Fridays — the Muslim Sabbath, on which people pour out of the mosques with ears still burning from the imam’s sermon. SHARE ARTICLE ON FACEBOOKSHARE TWEET ARTICLE
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428201/donald-trump-muslim-immigration-policy-discussion
My comments: Islam is an Evil Religion based on the Koran that Incites Violence against Everyone, including its own. It has been such from the beginning and is such today. Most Americans are Ignorant of the Diabolical Nature of the Koran.
by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY December 8, 2015 3:59 PM
(National Review) Donald Trump’s rhetorical excesses aside, he has a way of pushing us into important debates, particularly on immigration. He has done it again with his bracing proposal to force “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” I have no idea what Mr. Trump knows about either immigration law or Islam. But it should be obvious to any objective person that Muslim immigration to the West is a vexing challenge.
Some Muslims come to the United States to practice their religion peacefully, and assimilate into the Western tradition of tolerance of other people’s liberties, including religious liberty — a tradition alien to the theocratic societies in which they grew up.
Others come here to champion sharia, Islam’s authoritarian societal framework and legal code, resisting assimilation into our pluralistic society. Since we want to both honor religious liberty and preserve the Constitution that enshrines and protects it, we have a dilemma.
The assumption that is central to this dilemma — the one that Trump has stumbled on and that Washington refuses to examine — is that Islam is merely a religion. If that’s true, then it is likely that religious liberty will trump constitutional and national-security concerns.
How, after all, can a mere religion be a threat to a constitutional system dedicated to religious liberty?
But Islam is no mere religion. As understood by the mainstream of Muslim-majority countries that are the source of immigration to America and the West, Islam is a comprehensive ideological system that governs all human affairs, from political, economic, and military matters to interpersonal relations and even hygiene. It is beyond dispute that Islam has religious tenets — the oneness of Allah, the belief that Mohammed is the final prophet, the obligation of ritual prayer.
Yet these make up only a fraction of what is overwhelmingly a political ideology. Our constitutional principle of religious liberty is derived from the Western concept that the spiritual realm should be separate from civic and political life.
The concept flows from the New Testament injunction to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s. Crucially, the interpretation of Islam that is mainstream in most Muslim-majority countries does not accept a division between mosque and state. In fact, to invoke “mosque” as the equivalent of “church” in referring to a division between spiritual and political life is itself a misleading projection of Western principles onto Islamic society.
A mosque is not merely a house of worship. It does not separate politics from religion any more than Islam as a whole does. There is a reason why many of the fiery political protests that turn riotous in the Middle East occur on Fridays — the Muslim Sabbath, on which people pour out of the mosques with ears still burning from the imam’s sermon. SHARE ARTICLE ON FACEBOOKSHARE TWEET ARTICLE
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428201/donald-trump-muslim-immigration-policy-discussion
My comments: Islam is an Evil Religion based on the Koran that Incites Violence against Everyone, including its own. It has been such from the beginning and is such today. Most Americans are Ignorant of the Diabolical Nature of the Koran.
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