Admittedly, I’m as guilty as most when it comes to whipping out the Nazi trump card all too quickly when ridiculing far-right wing ideologues or politicos. I do it because it’s fun, but more often than not out of sheer laziness. After all, calling Ann Coulter a bowel baby of Hitler is easier than providing a lengthy diatribe on why her political compass points directly to the poetical prose of Mein Kampf. And by “poetical” I mean sociopathic ramblings. But as I mature and spend an increasing amount of my hard-earned on Just For Men hair coloring, I have refrained labeling anyone ‘Mein Fuhrer’ for a considerable period. Unfortunately, however, my personal Hitler metaphor moratorium was forced out of retirement yesterday while watching Fox News Sunday.
Appearing on the program, Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain said that communities have a right to ban Islamic mosques. The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO said protests and legal challenges to a planned mosque in Tennessee are an example of local residents pushing back, as if this were an example of what President Reagan had in mind when he proclaimed his shining city upon a hill.
Cain said his view doesn’t amount to religious discrimination because he says Muslims are trying to inject Sharia law into the U.S. (Sharia is a set of core principles that most Muslims recognize and a series of rulings from religious scholars. It covers many areas of life and different sects have different versions and interpretations of the code.)
“Let’s go back to the fundamental issue that the people are basically saying that they are objecting to,” Cain said. “They are objecting to the fact that Islam is both religion and (a) set of laws, Sharia law. That’s the difference between any one of our other traditional religions where it’s just about religious purposes. The people in the community know best. And I happen to side with the people in the community.”
In America, this is the stupid shit politicians on the right say when they want to win votes from white Christian evangelicals, and this kind of stuff is red meat for those terrorists who spell terrorism with a capital Tea. Now we can wax lyrical about how his comments are unconstitutional and un-American until the cows come home, but there is something even more sinister lurking beneath his remarks. *Here comes my Hitler card* His comments echo the statements used to stoke the flames of the Jewish holocaust, and mirror the policies undertaken by the Nazis.
Herman Cain Goering would be well advised to refer to a history book, so as to learn what took place throughout Germany on the evening 8 November 1938. Here he will discover what happens when communities are allowed to take matters into their own hands when it comes to banning places of religious worship. Historically, we refer to this evening as the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ (Kristallnacht), whereby 1,668 synagogues were ransacked, and 267 set on fire.
As an atheist and a staunch protector of the separation between church and state, I’m not a big fan of any mosque, church, or synagogue. It’s where stupid happens. It’s where praying often leads to thinking about politics. Therefore, at least hypothetically, I could be persuaded to help shut down all religious houses of worship, but that’s happening on it’s own, anyway, as modernity continues to swallow the last generation of the superstitious throughout the Western hemisphere. But history has demonstrated in the clearest and most heinous terms what happens when you single out a minority faith for exclusive treatment. Metaphorically, it’s an ugly snowball rolled down the hill, which is brought to a halt with unimaginably horrific consequences.
As far as American Muslims wanting to implement Sharia law, well, that’s the boogey man card. There are less than 3 million Muslims living in the U.S today, representing less than 1% of the population, and current polling suggests that as many as 90% of American Muslims believe in the principles of separation of church and state. In fact, it’s the reason a majority of Muslims say they immigrated to the U.S in the first place i.e. to flee theocratic regimes such as Iran.
Ultimately, the cultural divide between red state and blue state ideologues is wider than any time I can recall. Possibly, the 2008 election sandpapered over these chasms while the nation was stumbling punch drunk in the night after eight long years of Bush. But the far right of 2009-2011 is a far more vicious and xenophobic animal than its Karl Rove led brother of 2004. Social Conservative Christians are coming, make no mistake, and Herman Cain’s remarks, like those of Bachmann and Palin, show the animal is hungry.
CJ Werleman
Author ‘Koran Curious’ and ‘God Hates You. Hate Him Back’
This article is bang on!!!!! Great Job CJ!
Well said, CJ. Thanks.
Great post CJ. Some might brand me an Atheist, but still, while a strong proponent of separation, I also support freedom of religion or no religion. As you suggest, the politicians play hard to the Christian “conservatives” who, wish their own brand of “Sharia” law.
Herman Cain would also be well advised to check to see whether Christianity is a set of laws as well. Like, I don’t know, say about TEN laws…most of which are incredibly useless and stupid.
I like the fact that Herman Cain is helping to water down Christianity to a state of completely meaningless tradition. “Our religion is just fluff, it’s not something powerful and serious, like Islam. It’s religion-Lite. Great taste, less stoning.” Thanks, Herr Mann.
I bet these are the same good folk who mistakenly believe America is a “christian Nation.”
Sometimes I feel sorry for mentally retarded people, but then I realise that being a Republican is a choice and goes against nature.
i like this mans surname – i would name my first son after him!
Hi there CJ & folks,
I just got here, late. Really haven’t had much time recently to save the world.
Man, you are prolific! I will read much more of your material, but your comments on “taking it easy on Islam” do raise a small red flag.
Irrespective of who is actually driving the main world-wide reaction against the spread of the Islams, the simple fact is that, like the Catholic Church of the Inquisitions, it is an institution firmly anchored in the 13th Century (C.E.), but vastly more dangerous, thanks to modern technology and vast funding.
While I will certainly read your latest book, your external commentary is not, to my mind, encompassing the necessary scope required to understand the actual position in the affairs of Humankind that the major religions hold. They are actually nothing more than the tools of the few very intelligent and clever psychopaths that own us, and it is basically a waste of time to pontificate on the origins of the various Bibles and their internal conflicts.
(Like for one moment believing that an illiterate shepherd could conceive of, much less execute such a political tome for its times. (Mein Kampf ?)
However, the threat of the expansionist Islams (there are several competing internal groups, the most successful of all appearing to be the Wahhabi) is very real for the families on the ground in the Western world.
Indisputably, absolutely indisputably, the entire existence of the Islams has been one of extreme violence and abject failure to socially evolve.
The vast spin-doctoring that is being carried out by “interested parties” to obfuscate the actual facts of the history of the Islams such as laying claim to the invention of the zero (India, thousands of years before), amongst hundreds of others that were merely the result of documenting the inventiveness of the rest of the world, while managing to totally ignore the fact that wherever an Islamic society has been established (always by the sword), that society has languished for ever more, thanks to the usually sick interpretations of sharia and the animalistic subjugation of the intelligent sex, without whose freedom and genuine participation nothing much happens anywhere.
So what could possibly make the Islams “the fastest-growing” religious business in the world? In one word, breeding.
While the rest of the world (even the snail’s pace evolution of the Catholic Church) is moving toward curbing the insanity of population growth, Islamics are continuing to breed at 12th century rates, while taking advantage of 21st-century western medical innovation.
In every Western country, the political structure is being infiltrated and infected and the results are becoming quite frighteningly evident where, even in the home of modern modern law, the British system of government is being subverted to the degree that Sharia *will* become a codified second legal structure.
What does “hypothetically I could be persuaded to help shut down all houses of worship” mean ? 99% of your rantings are distortions and ad hominem. Your blog is just as dangerous as some of those you criticize.