Ya and your post really had nothing to do with actual religious text being not compatible with the US Constitution. Do you think Deuteronomy explicitly stating that apostates should be killed is in violation with the US Constitution? Therefore Jewish law is incompatible with the US Constitution. But we all know individual Jewish immigrants and citizens are not incompatible because humans are often much more than the religion they were born into. What you described were political and socioeconomic issues that these people came from. And even with that baggage of war torn Muslim theocracies, the average Muslim immigrant and citizen has a higher rate of earning an advanced degree, higher average salary and lower crime rate than the average native born US citizen. So they are doing just fine here.
There were two different discussions. 1) 2/3rds of the 10 Commandments are against the Constitution. That is simply wrong. You meant to say that most of the Rabbinical Law would be, which I would agree with. I was having fun with you about the 10 commandments part. 2) Using the religious texts of Jews as some sort of "see look over there!" in response to hardcore right wingers being concerned about the beliefs of Muslims. Duh, obviously. Right and those are arguments to make back. I offered a very abbreviated version of that. All I'm saying is that when people say they are concerned about thousands of people coming from a country that follows those beliefs TODAY and surveys of those people say they agree with those laws, it's not a valid argument to say "Yeah well Jews have a religious text that says similar things that they haven't actually followed for hundreds of years!" They aren't the same thing.
Those same people also make claims that Sharia Law is incompatible with the US Constitution on a TEXTUAL BASIS. I think a valid counterpoint is to mention that Abrahamic law in general is incompatible with the US Constitution. You might agree with me but those right wingers who do make claims about Sharia law being incompatible do not have the intellectual honesty to evaluate all the other major religions practiced in this country. For the rational fear of migrating people from war torn regions with horrible laws, again, we can point to how Muslims Americans are more law abiding and successful than the average US citizen and that our merit based immigration from Muslim countries is working just fine.
Are you saying American Muslims follow apostasy and blasphemy laws in the US? I mean I'm sure you could find a single anecdote. Again, the level of adherence to hardline religious law has more to do with socioeconomics. Jewish people follow the more benign laws in their religion and I'm sure if their society fell apart, they would adhere to the more hardlined laws I think it's a valid arguments to make that when a right winger says that Islamic law is incompatible with the US Constitution, to mention that the Old testament and Jewish law also is incompatible especially when they are making the claim based on textual evidence which I've seen them do plenty of times.
I get you. The political dialogue is much different between accepting Judaism and accepting Islam. But, to the extent the anti-Islam argument relies on saying its Scripture is incompatible with the Constitution, comparing it to the Old Testament is fair. We made Judaic and Christian scripture subsidiary to the national interest, and we can do the same with Islamic scripture. So the argument that Islam is fundamentally incompatible on that basis is invalid. I have seen the surveys you mention about support for Sharia. Given all of Sharia's breadth and the complexity of the question of how Sharia could co-exist with the Constitution, I don't think it's told me anything useful about how Muslims would really like to see it practiced here in real life. 1 through 5, and #10. None of those are enforceable in the US.
Can somebody please explain what Ilhan said that has people up in arms. Some people did something? Not particularly articulate thing to say but what about that is outrageous? What should she have said? And the outrage is coming from the same people who parse everything Trump says starting with the "grab them in th the P". Unbelievable.
The context matters. Saying that the scripture that Muslims follow is similar to the scripture that Jews or Christians use is very disingenuous because the Jews and Christians don't actually follow, hell even KNOW their scriptures at the same rate that practicing Muslims do. As for the surveys, they do more than simply ask whether they support Sharia. They specifically ask questions about stoning for adultery, religion being law of the land, etc. In many of the countries that people immigrate from the numbers are pretty high. 81% of surveyed Egyptians believe you should be stoned to death for adultery. 82% of Jordanians believe you should be killed if you leave Islam. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Palestinian Territories, Morocco, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia...all with more than 50% of the population that think it's a bad thing that their countries don't follow Sharia more closely than they do. That type of context matters in discussions when comparing their beliefs and their scripture to Western religious beliefs. And @fchowd0311 is correct, their systems are heavily influenced by the high poverty, low access to education, etc. etc. etc. And most of that would change in America. I totally get that and I'm not making an argument that we should ban Muslims from the US, I just think when people are arguing about how to handle these issues it's pretty weak to point out that the scriptures are the same/similar/close/etc.
But we aren’t having the same problems as Muslims in Europe... Your entire basis is that most Jews and Christians are more secular and most Muslims aren’t. I think that’s fair but American Muslims don’t seem to resemble the “scary ones” in general. However, it seems the Christian Taliban is gaining strength in the US... Those Christians who take a more hardline view of their religion are the ones who are passing anti LGBT bills... they are the one who are passing anti abortion bills (death penalty abortion bill failed to move forward in Texas legislatures), and they are the ones passing religious freedom laws (the freedom to discriminate). I think the bigger worry is the radicalization of Christianity again. Your religion’s history ain’t that pretty...
I think Christian fundamentalism has far more clout in US political discourse and any rational person would be more worried about draconian fundamentalist Christian agenda influencing our legislation than Sharia law ever having traction in the US.
Agreed. No, the basis of my argument is simply that the text of the religion doesn't matter really at all. The only thing that matters is how modern day practioners treat that text. It's totally pointless for me to evaluate a modern day Christian by large portions of the Old Testament because A) They don't follow it B) they likely don't even know what's in it. I've made this joke before, but honestly it's weaksauce as well. The Christian conservatives in this country that would like to gain more power don't compare at all to the Taliban. Wanting to end abortion or outlaw gay marriage is not even close to the same thing as slitting the throat of women who have pre-marital sex, butchering gay people, etc. There is a really big scale here, and something I have learned from the Trump election is that I (and we) need to do a better job of not putting everyone on the same point of the scale just because they are different than we are. There is no Christian Taliban or equivalent in America. I agree that those are legitimate concerns. The history of humanity is pretty much full of horror so it doesn't matter where you are in the categories your history "ain't that pretty."
I agree with that, which is why I started this argument. I reacted to the quoted statement from Gorka that Sharia does not comport with the Constitution. I wondered how that was so, googled around, and mostly encountered these arguments that rely on scriptural analysis to say 'The Quran says this, the Constitution says that and we can't make them consistent.' That's decontextualized. That assumes the Sharia a proponent might want to practice in the USA would be executed precisely as described in the text, and that's not in evidence. Gorka wants to intimate that because Ilhan Omar wears a hijab she must deep down inside want to have apostates stoned. That's the argument that lacks context. If you want to tell me that modern Jews probably don't want to stone apostates, fine, I'd suggest that Omar probably doesn't want to stone apostates either.
The argument that right wingers make when they claim that Muslims are not compatible to the US Constitution is TEXTUAL BASED.
I agree with you on your point about Omar. However, Gorka's argument has more context to it than the one that throws the 10 commandments back. (For the record, I can't stand Gorka) His whole argument about Sharia not comporting with the Constitution is contextualized by the fact that a very large percentage of Muslims outside of the United States do believe in a very strict interpretation of Sharia. All of the conversations about Sharia and Islam are really going back to the question of how should the United States deal with immigrating Muslims. That's what guys like Gorka really want to do, bring up international Muslims as a boogeyman. And they have basis for it. On Omar and her hijab thing...this is something that liberals do that is so weird to me. Defending her on the hijab. Imagine a conservative woman in Congress wearing a dress at all times and saying it's because her religion teaches her that wearing the garments of a man is a sin. LOL the left would go nuts on her. It's weird how politics creates such incompatible bedfellows. The liberal embrace of Muslims, even conservative Muslims, because of backlash against conservative racism and fearmongering is something that intrigues me.
BECAUSE THEY PRACTICE THAT TEXT (and they normally aren't stupid enough to say "Muslims" aren't compatible, they normally limit to those that support Sharia law)
I think at this point we are debating in circles. Yes they invoke Sharia Law hence based on textual evidence from the Quran and Hadith hence why were are having this debate.
Ask American Christians if our justice system should based on God's laws and judgement. What do you think the percentage of American Christians especially Southern evangelicals would say that our laws are based on God's laws? How many would say yes to "do you want your government to abide by Christian laws and values?" When you poll Muslims and ask them if they want to live in a place based off of Islamic law, how is that different? Also there are about 1 billion interpretations of what Sharia law constitutes. Every individual Muslim has their own unique idea of what Sharia law is just like every Christian has an unique take on what Christian law and values are.
We could go round and round with this obviously. About half of Christians think gay marriage should be illegal in the United States. 89% of Pakistanis believe you should be stoned to death for adultery. You think those have any equivalence? American Christians don't even know what the Bible says for the most part. Their definition of a legal system based on Christian beliefs just doesn't hold nearly the same weight as a Muslim living in the Middle East or Asia or North Africa. A Muslim in Egypt who says "yes, I support Sharia law" and an Christian in Houston who says "Yes I believe in the Bible" are so far apart in terms their actual literal understanding of what those phrases mean that it isn't comparable.
