Note Stan Welch’s Seems to Me column can be found each week in The Journal.
By Stan Welch
Well, I suppose Donald Trump’s campaign organization should be grateful to Dr. Ben Carson for giving their candidate a break from being on the media bull’s eye for a while at least. It isn’t easy to shove the Donald out of the spotlight, but Dr. Carson did it with one hand tied behind his back.
How? Why, he simply answered one question, and the latest media feeding frenzy was on. Dr. Carson was asked if he could support a practicing Muslim for president of the United States. One can only suppose that this question, asked during an election cycle in which a Muslim is about the only type of candidate that isn’t already running, is a result of Trump’s failure to defend Obama when a citizen at a Trump campaign event called the current president a Muslim.
Carson responded that he would not support a Muslim for president, essentially because of the Muslim belief in Shariah law, a law based on the tenets of Islam. Carson said, correctly, that the U.S. Constitution is the paramount legal authority in America, and that anyone whose religious beliefs took precedent over that should not be president.
Predictably, the media lost its collective mind and began to call for Carson’s head; which seems appropriate, given the propensity for beheading under Shariah law. Soon CAIR, the Council on American Islam Relations, were calling for Carson to withdraw from the race for the Republican nomination.
This is the same CAIR that was listed by federal prosecutors in 2007 as one of many “co-conspirators and/or joint venturers” in the efforts of the Holy Land Foundation, in its efforts to funnel twelve million dollars to the terrorist group Hamas. A year later, several officials of the Holy Land Foundation, the largest Muslim charity in the United States, were convicted in the case and sentenced to anywhere from fifteen to sixty five years in prison.
This is the same CAIR whom federal law enforcement agencies , as well as a number of Senators and Congressmen, have associated with terrorists groups such as Hamas. Even more remarkable than this group’s nerve in daring to demand that an American candidate withdraw is the fact that they are still allowed to function within the United States, in any role. It’s good to have friends in high places.
Aside from the sheer common sense of Carson’s position that a Muslim could and should reasonably be suspected of split allegiances between his religion and his oath of office, let’s examine the compulsion in the media, and increasingly, across the political spectrum to value tolerance above the basic values which our nation was founded upon.
Let’s start with the precept that we are one nation under God; in other words, that America was founded on Christian principles; which are given precedence, even as minority rights are maintained. Put simply, why shouldn’t America proudly and openly declare itself a Christian nation? Muslim nations abound – Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, none are ashamed to declare their religious bent. Why then does America insist on making tolerance of the minority more important than recognition and acknowledgment of the majority?
Muslims make up a smaller percentage of the American population than even homosexuals, who at four per cent are four times as numerous as Muslims in America. Speaking of tolerance, that same four per cent, who whine and gripe about their “inferior” status in American society, would be quickly stoned, crucified, beheaded, or burnt alive for their perversions in any of the Muslim nations.
As a fan and an observer of irony in the world, I have noticed countless times the close relationship between irony and hypocrisy in such situations. And I find the hypocrisy especially thick when Muslims in America demand the protections of the Constitution and the attendant legal system when it suits them, while imposing Shariah law whenever they can.
Shariah law simply cannot coexist with the laws of man which are encapsulated in our legal system. Our laws, however flawed or poorly applied, still comprise the rule book under which we all live. Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Catholics, and Jews all live under these laws, even though those laws may chafe the observance of various liturgical and theological exercises. But because America is a nation of laws, those who resent them either obey them or strive to change them. Only the Muslim would simply ignore them, claiming an allegiance to a different kind of law.
Allow me to digress briefly, to address both a pet peeve and a crucial element of this whole matter. Time after time, I have heard supposedly educated and informed pundits and scholars and social commentators refer to the racism of being opposed to Islam. Poppycock! Islam is not a race, not an ethnic circumstance. It is an ideology that allows and encourages some pretty horrific behavior in the name of Allah. To reduce it to an issue of race makes sense only to those who wish to avoid matters of fact.
But to refer to Islam as a race is so absurd and so inherently wrong; nay, impossible that anyone who does so should immediately and forever be muted, like a Barry Manilow video on Youtube. There is simply no benefit to listening to either.
As for Dr. Carson, I have a feeling that this Muslim as president issue may very well become the same sort of impetus producing moment that immigration was for Trump. Just as Trump made clear the American people’s views on border security and illegal immigration, Carson’s entirely appropriate declaration on the issue of a Christian nation being led by a Muslim president has great potential to ignite a firestorm among the American people.
Stand your ground, Dr. Carson. To those who haven’t seen it in a long time, it’s called leadership.
