Republican Presidential candidate and former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain, a darling of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, has been opposing a proposed mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. That was bad enough, but today, in an interview with Fox News, he decided to double down on his blatant disregard for the First Amendment by saying that as a general matter of principle, communities that want to ban mosques have a right to do so.
How does he explain away this rather obvious disregard for the First Amendment? Why, it's easy if you're either a big enough hypocrite or sufficiently ignorant (and I suspect that he may qualify on both counts):
"Islam is both a religion and a set of laws -- Sharia laws. That's the difference between any one of our traditional religions where it's just about religious purposes," Cain told Fox News Sunday.
For those who had any doubts about whether opposition to the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" (which was neither at Ground Zero nor primarily a mosque), Cain today should have removed those doubts:
Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Cain said he came out against the Tennessee mosque after talking to members of that community. He said the site is "hallowed ground" to Murfreesboro residents and that they're concerned about "the intentions of trying to get Shariah law" -- the code governing conduct in Islamic societies.
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It was pretty ludicrous that a site in a run-down commercial area of Manhattan several blocks from Ground Zero was "hallowed ground," but if the proposed site of the Murfreesboro mosque is also "hallowed ground," then I guess pretty much everything in America is too.
As to this insane argument that Muslims aren't entitled to the same First Amendment protections as our "traditional religions" (by which I'd guess that he means Christianity and Judaism), I wonder -- hasn't Herman Cain ever read what Jews call the Torah and Christians call the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament)? Has he never even even skimmed parts of the Books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, which consist of highly detailed legal codes? Has he never heard of the Talmud, which is, at least as far as this Gentile understands it, largely a working out of the details of the law as set forth in the Torah, much as Sharia law is a working out of the details of Islamic law?
And while Christians frequently claim that our faith is one that is not based on the law, has he never heard of the fact that there are canon lawyers? Has he never heard the arguments of many on the Right that legalization of same-sex marriage is invalid because it's "against God's law?" Is he unaware of the efforts by many on the so-called Religous Right to place the Ten Commandments in court houses and other government buildings? What does he think the Ten Commandments were supposed to be, if not the basics of a system of law?
It's very simple, Mr. Cain: Islam is as much a religion as Christianity, Judaism, or any other faith, and the First Amendment gives Muslims as much religious freedom as it does the members of any other faith -- including the right to build mosques and community centers anywhere the members of any other faith have a right to do so. Given the fact that Muslims constitute a tiny minority group virtually everywhere in this country, I'm not exactly worried that Sharia law is going to be imposed upon us anytime in the lifetime of anybody now alive, or indeed, the lifetimes of the great-great-great-grandchildren of anybody now alive. But we not only have freedom of religion, we've got freedom of speech, and if American Muslims want to urge the adoption of Sharia law here, they've got every right to do it. (I know several American Muslims, though, and none of them have ever remotely suggested that they want to see Sharia law imposed here.)
Do you have any idea, Mr. Cain, that Article 11 of the Treaty of Algiers, which was signed by President John Adams and unanimously ratified by the Senate in 1797, provided as follows:
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
I think, Mr. Cain, that President John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson, who ws President of the Senate when it ratified this treaty, and the members of the Fifth United States Congess, knew a good deal more about the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment than you ever will.
Frankly, Mr. Cain, my far more realistic worry than Muslims somehow using mosques to impose Sharia law on the rest of us, is that some of the members of my own Christian faith are going to try to impose their own narrow view of Christianity upon the rest of us, Christians and non-Christians alike. In fact, they're already seeking to do it, and many of them are your supporters. But as for the First Amendment, it either protects ALL of us or it protects NONE of us.