Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 11:58pm

Is Islam Becoming The De Facto Established Religion of the United States?

The title is meant to be hyperbolic.  Obviously Islam is not the official religion of this country.  However, there are signs that Islam is beginning to receive a deference in this country that is denied to other faiths.  Points to consider:

1.  The Prophet Mohammed-Newscasts routinely bestow upon Mohammed the title of Prophet.  I think I would faint if I head a member of the Mainstream media refer to Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  A little thing perhaps but the Mainstream Media is usually a good barometer of liberal opinion in this country.

2.  Sensitivity Training-The US military is ramping up Islamic Sensitivity Training for our troops.

3.  Government Censorship-After Mona Eltahawy, journalist, activist and publicity hound, defaced an anti-Jihadist post in the New York Subway, the Metropolitan Transit Authority amended its policy on advertisements to ban those that “would incite or provoke violence.”  This of course gives a heckler’s veto over advertisements.  The woman behind the poster, Pamela Geller, also a publicity hound, vows a fight in the courts.

4.  Obama and the Mohammed Video-President Obama has gone out of his way to denounce the Mohammed video.  Other faiths are routinely mocked in this country:  the Piss Christ of Andres Serrano which received an award in 1987 paid in part by the National Endowment of the Arts, an agency of the Federal government, there is a hit play running on Broadway, The Book of Mormon, which savagely denounces the Mormon faith,  in 2010 the Loveland Museum in Colorado City, city owned and operated, displayed a painting,  The Misadventures of Romantic Cannibals, which was a bitter attack on the Church.  When Christians have complained about such insults, they have usually received a lecture on the First Amendment, told not to view it if it offends them, and, in general, told to suck it up.

5.  First Amendment-Last week I wrote a post, which may be read here, in which Christopher Johnson fisked University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner’s view that the First Amendment was not an absolute bar to banning anti-Islamic statements.  Last year Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court seemed to indicate that the burning of a Koran might be equivalent to yelling fire in a crowded theater.

 

6.  Government Policy-There have been incidents under the current administration that have been very odd in regard to Islam.  One of the odder ones was the statement by Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator, that the top priority for NASA according to President Obama was “and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me  to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with  dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic  contribution to science … and math and engineering.”

It could be argued that most of this nonsense is due to the tense situation with Islamic states abroad.  Perhaps.  However, additional factors come into play.  One of the prime ideological components of modern-day liberalism is a belief in the utility of government to favor certain groups.  Muslims are certainly in this favored category as far as most liberals are concerned.  Islam is useful as a stick to wield against Christians in the ongoing culture war in this country.  Anti-Israeli attitudes are fairly common on the Left in this country.  All of these add up to Islam enjoying a favored status for much of the Left in  this country, and where liberals wield political power this favored status is coming to the fore.

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Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 5:40am

Three bits of observation:

1. From Richard John Neuhaus: “What is the function of intellectuals, but to tell us that things are not as ordinary people perceive them?”

2. From Thomas Sowell: “Too often such attitudes are based on nothing more substantial than a desire to be part of the self-anointed elite who are one-up on everyone else. Being one-up is so important to some people that it colors the way they see every issue”

3. From Steven Sailer: “The default human tendency is toward concentric loyalties. If you look at people in Szechuan or Paraguay or Burkina Faso, you’ll notice that they tend to feel the most duties and allegiance toward people whom they consider most like themselves, moderate amounts toward people moderately close to them, and so forth onward and outward.
But the Western liberal is noteworthy for feeling loyalty toward his inner circle, however defined, then ostentatiously leapfrogging over a whole bunch of people who are kind of like him but whom he despises, in order to embrace The Other. ”

—-

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 6:11am

This regime is giving us a number of teachable moments.

If somebody’s opinions outrage you you may vandalize their media; blast something to smithereens (huge buildings filled with civilians work especially well); kill somebody (best practice videotaped beheading using a dull butcher knife); . . .

Scott W.
Scott W.
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 6:51am

Thick as thugs.

Anil Wang
Anil Wang
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 7:47am

WRT “Prophet Mohammed”, I disagree. Mohammed is a very popular name, just like Mary, so it needs further qualification. This is why even atheists that disbelieve the virgin birth call Mary, the Virgin Mary. WRT Christ, Christians don’t refer to him as Jesus Christ, the Son of God in daily conversations, they refer to Jesus Christ (i.e. Jesus the Messiah) …the same name the media uses if there is any confusion.

Pinky
Pinky
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 9:48am

I agree with Anil on this. If they started adding the “pbuh”, then it would get creepy. But in general I agree with this article. Nicely done.

t shaw
t shaw
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 9:57am

I hate both.

However thuggee and Mohammedanism have one vital aspect in common. They are both organized brigandage.

Mary De Voe
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 10:31am

The poster belongs to Pamela Geller as free speech. Mona Eltahawy can post her free speech, but Mona Eltahawy is not free to destroy Pamela Geller’s poster as it is not her property. Using violence is not exercising freedom but the obliteration of freedom as seen by the spray paint. A conversation cannot be complete if one person’s opinion is defaced.

Anil Wang:

If the “Prophet Mohammed” was truly a prophet, bearing truth and light as prophets are called to do, why are his followers deliberately obliterating freedom of speech? The immanent scourge of death does not bring forth the sons and daughters from afar as is inscribed in the book of Isaiah, the prophet. How many children will the victims of death bring forth to prophesy in the name of God?
WRT “Prophet Mohammed”, I disagree. Mohammed is a very popular name, just like Mary, so it needs further qualification. This is why even atheists that disbelieve the virgin birth call Mary, the Virgin Mary. WRT Christ, Christians don’t refer to him as Jesus Christ, the Son of God in daily conversations, they refer to Jesus Christ (i.e. Jesus the Messiah)

Mary De Voe
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 10:44am

Sorry, did not erase this posting as was necessary. Perhaps because atheists who can believe or disbelieve as they choose, are not the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is her own sovereign person. Immaculately conceived, as all mankind’s human, rational and immortal souls are created in original innocence, the Virgin Mary was preserved from original sin and maintained her virginity in sovereignity. Mary is our fallen nature’s solitary boast, as the poets say. Jesus Christ was crucified as the Son of Man.

John Nolan
John Nolan
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 10:59am

In the summer of 2001 the BBC, always a didactic institution since the days of Lord Reith, ran a series of programmes on Islam, particularly in in its British manifestation; the clear aim was to counteract ‘Islamophobia’ which is a nonsensical term anyway, since a phobia by definition an irrational fear or anxiety; to fear being blown up by Islamists is far from irrational. Then came the events of 11 September.

The contribution which Islam has made to civilization is grossly exaggerated; the Arabs, being a nomadic desert people, navigated by the stars and gave them names which we still use. Everything else was borrowed from other civilizations, Byzantine, Persian or whatever. Even what we call Arabic numerals were in fact devised by Syriac Christians whom the caliphs employed for their learning. And while the Catholic Church encouraged scientific enquiry in order to better understand God’s creation, Islam reverted to an obscuranticism from which it has never emerged. I object strongly when the mad mullahs and their fanatically deluded followers are described as ‘medieval’ – this is to insult the Middle Ages.

A recent TV programme examining the origins of Islam, in the way that similar programmes examine, non-dogmatically, the origins of Christianity has had to be pulled for the sake of ‘public order’. The PC idea of not giving offence has spread like a cancer, extinguishing free speech in the very countries which invented it; Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope would have a hard time nowadays. And our enemies, who don’t give a fig about our hard-won freedoms, are exploiting our liberal, namby-pamby nostrums for their own evil ends.

John Nolan
John Nolan
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 11:05am

Sorry, a couple of typos in the above. Apart from anything else, it should be ‘obscurantism’. On this issue, I find it hard to be temperate.

Mary De Voe
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 11:28am

John Nolan “to fear being blown up by Islamists is far from irrational.” Well said.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 8:39pm

Liberals and Muslims have much in common: abhorrence of America, hatred of freedom and disdain for the US Constitution.

Obama and his imbecilic worshipers are either unprincipled cowards or outright traitors.

PM
PM
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 8:43pm

Saw the following list, and thought it would fit here.

Pres. Obama’s record in regard to Christians and Biblical values

Posted on 1 October 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

The fight for our religious liberty is really just beginning.

Remember how Pres. Obama said at Notre Shame that he was interested in “common ground”? Remember what he promised Card. Dolan?

I was sent this list by a reader. It recounts Pres. Obama’s actions in regard to Christian values.

Take a look at this list and then ask yourself: In a second term, would he be better in this regard or worse?

1. Acts of Hostility Toward People Of Biblical Faith:
?a. April 2008 – Obama speaks disrespectfully of Christians, saying they “cling to guns or religion” and have an “antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”
?b. February 2009 – Obama announces plans to revoke conscience protection for health workers who refuse to participate in medical activities that go against their beliefs, and fully implements the plan in February 2011.
?c. April 2009 – When speaking at Georgetown University , Obama orders that a monogram symbolizing Jesus’ name be covered when he is making his speech.
?d. May 2009 – Obama declines to host services for the National Prayer Day (a day established by federal law) at the White House.
?e. April 2009 – In a deliberate act of disrespect, Obama nominated three pro-abortion ambassadors to the Vatican ; of course, the pro-life Vatican rejected all three.
?f. October 19, 2010 – Obama begins deliberately omitting the phrase about “the Creator” when quoting the Declaration of Independence – an omission he has made on no less than seven occasions.
?g. November 2010 – Obama misquotes the National Motto, saying it is “E pluribus Unum” rather than “In God We Trust” as established by federal law.
?h. January 2011 – After a federal law was passed to transfer a WWI Memorial in the Mojave Desert to private ownership, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the cross in the memorial could continue to stand, but the Obama administration refused to allow the land to be transferred as required by law, and refused to allow the cross to be re-erected as ordered by the Court.
?i. February 2011 – Although he filled posts in the State Department, for more than two years Obama did not fill the post of religious freedom ambassador, an official that works against religious persecution across the world; he filled it only after heavy pressure from the public and from Congress.
?j. April 2011 – For the first time in American history, Obama urges passage of a non-discrimination law that does not contain hiring protections for religious groups, forcing religious organizations to hire according to federal mandates without regard to the dictates of their own faith, thus eliminating conscience protection in hiring.
?k. August 2011 – The Obama administration releases its new health care rules that override religious conscience protections for medical workers in the areas of abortion and contraception.
?l. November 2011 – Obama opposes inclusion of President Franklin Roosevelt’s famous D-Day Prayer in the WWII Memorial.
?m. November 2011 – Unlike previous presidents, Obama studiously avoids any religious references in his Thanksgiving speech.
?n. December 2011 – The Obama administration denigrates other countries’ religious beliefs as an obstacle to radical homosexual rights.
?o. January 2012 – The Obama administration argues that the First Amendment provides no protection for churches and synagogues in hiring their pastors and rabbis.
?p. February 2012 – The Obama administration forgives student loans in exchange for public service, but announces it will no longer forgive student loans if the public service is related to religion.

2. Acts of Hostility From The Obama-Led Military Toward People Of Biblical Faith:
?a. June 2011 – The Department of Veterans Affairs forbids references to God and Jesus during burial ceremonies at Houston National Cemetery ..
?b. August 2011 – The Air Force stops teaching the Just War theory to officers in California because the course is taught by chaplains and is based on a philosophy introduced by St. Augustine in the third century AD – a theory long taught by civilized nations across the world (except America).
?c. September 2011 – Air Force Chief of Staff prohibits commanders from notifying airmen of programs and services available to them from chaplains.
?d. September 2011 – The Army issues guidelines for Walter Reed Medical Center stipulating that “No religious items (i.e. Bibles, reading materials and/or facts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit.”
?e. November 2011 – The Air Force Academy rescinds support for Operation Christmas Child, a program to send holiday gifts to impoverished children across the world, because the program is run by a Christian charity.
?f. November 2011 – The Air Force Academy pays $80,000 to add a Stonehenge-like worship center for pagans, druids, witches and Wiccans.
?g. February 2012 – The U. S. Military Academy at West Point dis-invites three star Army general and decorated war hero Lieutenant General William G. (“Jerry”) Boykin (retired) from speaking at an event because he is an outspoken Christian.
?h. February 2012 – The Air Force removes “God” from the patch of Rapid Capabilities Office (the word on the patch was in Latin: Dei).
?i. February 2012 – The Army orders Catholic chaplains not to read a letter to parishioners that their archbishop asked them to read.

3. Acts of Hostility Toward Biblical Values:
?a. January 2009 – Obama lifts restrictions on U.S. government funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad, forcing taxpayers to fund pro-abortion groups that either promote or perform abortions in other nations.
?b. January 2009 – President Obama’s nominee for deputy secretary of state asserts that American taxpayers are required to pay for abortions and that limits on abortion funding are unconstitutional.
?c. March 2009 – The Obama administration shut out pro-life groups from attending a White House-sponsored health care summit.
?d. March 2009 – Obama orders taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research.
?e. March 2009 – Obama gave $50 million for the UNFPA, the UN population agency that promotes abortion and works closely with Chinese population control officials who use forced abortions and involuntary sterilizations.
?f. May 2009 – The White House budget eliminates all funding for abstinence-only education and replaces it with “comprehensive” sexual education, repeatedly proven to increase teen pregnancies and abortions. He continues the deletion in subsequent budgets.
?g. May 2009 – Obama officials assemble a terrorism dictionary calling pro-life advocates violent and charging that they use racism in their “criminal” activities.
?h. July 2009 – The Obama administration illegally extends federal benefits to same-sex partners of Foreign Service and Executive Branch employees, in direct violation of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
?i. September 16, 2009 – The Obama administration appoints as EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum, who asserts that society should “not tolerate” any “private beliefs,” including religious beliefs, if they may negatively affect homosexual “equality.”
?j. July 2010 – The Obama administration uses federal funds in violation of federal law to get Kenya to change its constitution to include abortion.
?k. August 2010 – The Obama administration Cuts funding for 176 abstinence education programs.
?l. September 2010 – The Obama administration tells researchers to ignore a judge’s decision striking down federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
?m. February 2011 – Obama directs the Justice Department to stop defending the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
?n. March 2011 – The Obama administration refuses to investigate videos showing Planned Parenthood helping alleged sex traffickers get abortions for victimized underage girls.
?o. July 2011 – Obama allows homosexuals to serve openly in the military, reversing a policy originally instituted by George Washington in March 1778.
?p. September 2011 – The Pentagon directs that military chaplains may perform same-sex marriages at military facilities in violation of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
?q. October 2011 – The Obama administration eliminates federal grants to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for their extensive programs that aid victims of human trafficking because the Catholic Church is anti-abortion.

4. Acts Of Preferentialism For Islam:
?a. May 2009 – While Obama does not host any National Day of Prayer event at the White House, he does host White House Iftar dinners in honor of Ramadan.
?b. April 2010 – Christian leader Franklin Graham is dis-invited from the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer Event because of complaints from the Muslim community.
?c. April 2010 – The Obama administration requires rewriting of government documents and a change in administration vocabulary to remove terms that are deemed offensive to Muslims, including jihad, jihadists, terrorists, radical Islamic, etc.
?d. August 2010 – Obama speaks with great praise of Islam and condescendingly of Christianity.
?e. August 2010 – Obama went to great lengths to speak out on multiple occasions on behalf of building an Islamic mosque at Ground Zero, while at the same time he was silent about a Christian church being denied permission to rebuild at that location.
?f. 2010 – While every White House traditionally issues hundreds of official proclamations and statements on numerous occasions, this White House avoids traditional Biblical holidays and events but regularly recognizes major Muslim holidays, as evidenced by its 2010 statements on Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr, Hajj, and Eid-ul-Adha.
?g. October 2011 – Obama’s Muslim advisers block Middle Eastern Christians’ access to the White House.
?h. February 2012 – The Obama administration makes effulgent apologies for Korans being burned by the U. S. military, but when Bibles were burned by the military, numerous reasons were offered why it was the right thing to do.

philip
philip
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 9:30pm

Deliver us from Evil….
WWII, WWI, Korean War, Vietnam, Gulf War, Iraq War, Abortion War, and the War on American Freedom.
Dear Father restore our land, govern our leaders, and please, for the sake of all our national heros, the fallen veterans who’s sacrifice was made on the alters of Freedom, protect us from false patriots.
We rest in you and confidently place our Trust in Your Name. Jesus, Father and Holy Ghost.

St. Theresa the lil’ flower pray for our Nation.

Rozin
Rozin
Monday, October 1, AD 2012 9:41pm

Both Progressives and Islamist fundamentalists believe each can use the other to achieve totalitarian control. Only one can be right. I’d bet on the Progressives. The Progressives are defeated from within (human nature) since only robots could follow its requirements top to bottom without irritation or subversion. This is why Progressivism devolves into a death cult with abortion, infanticide and euthanasia as its prime goods.

trackback
Tuesday, October 2, AD 2012 12:01am

[…] Is Islam Becoming The De Facto Religion of the U.S.? – D. McClarey, The Amrcn Cthlc […]

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Tuesday, October 2, AD 2012 3:01am

“Anti-Israeli attitudes are fairly common on the Left in this country. “

Anti-Zionism addresses fundamental needs in leftist ideology. Robert Redeker suggests that, post Cold War, the left has replaced “sovietophilia” with “islamophilia,” and that “Palestinians and the contemporary Muslim masses replace the proletariat in the intellectuals’ imagination” as the pure, ideal alternative to Western capitalism.

Pierre-Andre Taguieff argues in his « La Nouvelle Judéophobie » that the new “judeophobia” originated in Islam and Arab nationalism, however it now extends to a movement consisting of “neo-Christian humanitarianism,” “third-worldists,” and anti-globalization activists. On one side, Taguieff continues, stands the “cosmopolitan Satan,” the unholy trinity ‘United States/Israel/The West.’ On the other side stands the “dominated and the oppressed.” Thus the new judeophobia recycles old stereotypes such as the rich Jew and the dominating Jew under the “varnish of progressivism.” The Jew is once more the stand-in for capitalism, imperialism, cosmopolitanism, indeed the whole economic order.

Ivan
Ivan
Tuesday, October 2, AD 2012 9:00am

T.Shaw the majority of the thuggees were Mohamedans .

The so-called Arabic number system or what is called the decimal number system, which we all use is an invention of the Hindus. It is ridiculous to assign whatever was achieved in the lands the Arabs conquered to the influence of Islam, when it was the surviving Christians, Jews and Persians who were responsible for most of them. This is akin to saying that since Isaac Newton and CF Gauss wrote in Latin, their achievements should be credited to the Roman Empire. Indeed what is is worse is that when the Muslims turned the screws on the conquered peoples as is their wont, their alleged golden age ended. It is even more ridiculous when sometimes the same historians, more properly regarded as propagandists, who wax eloquent about the nonexistent tolerance and support for learning among the mullahs, dismiss the contemporaneous West Europeans as Dark Age savages and the Byzantines as murderous schemers and sybarites. When in truth, the Europeans reeling under countless invasions from the Asian steppes and the depredations of Islam, had always maintained a boundless curiosity and retained their technical ability, to be nurtured to great heights by the Roman Catholic Church. It is way past time that the nonsense spread in the main by Protestant fools who for their purposes had to invent their version of a ‘jahaliyyah’, where everything before the inaptly named Reformation was in darkness, is laid to rest. Old Albert said that his pen was smarter than him, by which he meant that without pen and paper he would not have been able to cogitate and develop his theories. When the Islamic hordes spread across North Africa, cheap papyrus was immediately put out of reach of the learners in Europe, books had to be made from expensive sheepskin and became correspondingly much more expensive or even unobtainable, thus contributing in a material way to the spread of ignorance in Europe. The irony here is that these same Islamic hordes are credited by Whiggish idiots with preserving learning.

bearing
Tuesday, October 2, AD 2012 1:35pm

FWIW, I see “Jesus Christ” or simply “Christ” in the news media all the time. Granted, it might just be that they’re unaware that the word means “Messiah,” but it’s if anything an even more notable acknowledgement than calling Mohammed by the title “prophet.”

Ivan
Ivan
Tuesday, October 2, AD 2012 7:41pm

Most Christians like myself unless taught otherwise, would also assume that Christ is Jesus’ family name. But don’t let the bums in on the secret; this is akin to the change from AD/BC to CE/BCE in dating historical events to accommodate various aggrieved parties. “CE” can be just as easily read as Christian Era instead of Common Era.

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, October 2, AD 2012 8:29pm

PM says:
“Pres. Obama’s record in regard to Christians and Biblical values.”

There is not one single founding principle in the list of 50 human rights violations enacted against the sovereignty of the human person by Obama. Any individual who denies the founding principles forfeits his own citizenship. If Obama refuses to be an American Citizen let him suffer the results of his choice.

It is the duty of the Department of Justice, the Supreme Court, and the Legislative body, Congress, to demand that our president, Obama, espouse the founding principles of America or be relieved of his citizenship. Since Obama has entered into the realm of the dead and removed crosses and religious symbols from graves as in the cross on Mt. Soledad and prohibited the peace of rest for those fallen heros, Obama deserves no cross, no human sympathy, no human compassion. “God makes us human” from Bishop Fulton Sheen.

Let all those who deny our founding principles go into the pit.

philip
philip
Wednesday, October 3, AD 2012 1:19pm

Thanks Mary. Barry the king Obama is antihero. PM is dead on.

Jim McGovern
Wednesday, October 3, AD 2012 2:35pm

Last week the 2000th American soldier was killed in Afghanistan… and we are not counting the wounded or the billions in cost. Now we are retreating and the Islamists have won. The British, French, Germans, and Russians. The top Canadian, General Crear said not to go unless they would stay at least 20 years. And guess what? Obama wants you to vote on his record. Do what he asks.

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