You’re a true patriot. Thank you, sir for speaking out against this inane
bigotry.

IANAM, but from what I understand, it’s _much_ harder to get a shariah-compliant loan. Since the return for the lenders is smaller, they have to be more careful with who they lend to. A non-Muslim / imperfectly-observant-Muslim would have to have a damn-near perfect credit rating to even have a chance. A fully observant Muslim, who never took out any interest bearing loans, would of course not have much of a credit score at all, but they’d also be heavily scrutinized.

“There is separation of Church and State, you may not discuss why this policy is based on religious ethics”?

“a group body count for the last 100 years of like 4″: How quickly you forget: the biggest terrorist attack on US soil prior to 9/11 was the Oklahoma City bombing, an attack by a Christianist terrorist organization called the Army of God, which is linked to Operation Rescue, and group which has quite a following within the GOP and the Tea Party.

That guy was a wacko – and, as has been pointed out, he wasn’t even Christian (even by his own stated beliefs, much less by any third party attempt at rational categorization).

You also forget the “holy” war Christianists in the US started against Iraq, which resulted in a minimum of 100000 direct deaths (up to 1 million indirect ones). Oh, and let’s not forget the 6 million Jews and 2 million other “indesirables” which were murdered by the very Christian Nazis (Gott mit Uns).

OK, and those two are completely insane. The war in Iraq was a “holy” war like a fish needs a bicycle (yes, that made no sense – that was the point). Go read any of the media at the time that was actually begun (and the year or two before) and find me ANYTHING that was religious about any of that. The body count bit is also completely ridiculous, since the body count under the existing regime was also crazy high.

And the Nazis socialist and primarily worshiped the state, followed by pagan racial-supremacist mysticism, who occasionally (not even that often) wrapped that stuff up in Christian vocabulary to confuse the ignorant. You seem to be confused by that.

So yeah, in terms of “Islam vs Christianity”, Christianity is still several orders of magnitude behind in the body count for at least the last century, which would be the point I was referring to (your claim that the Christian right is currently a bigger threat than Islam).

John Spragge:

Yes, I certainly have no problem with most Muslims holding office, and I am well aware of what the Constitution says, thanks, but you are reading “family” as equivalent of “faith” in terms of the treason bit, which is not the same thing.

The point is not that Muslims can’t hold office, it’s that nothing related to their faith is supposed to be looked at at ALL – hello Times Square bomber, HELLO Nidal Hasan (“It’s not related to Islam, pay no attention to the cries of “Allahu Akbar” as he killed them.”).

I am not advocating they be barred from office. I am advocating that their Islamic faith be given the same level of scrutiny that Christian faith is given.

Just as a Christian with some kind of distorted believe that abortion doctors should be murdered would be scrutinized, we should be sure that someone of Islamic faith is not a member of any group which believes in literal Jihad holy war against the West. And since such groups have a key belief that lying to infidels is to be encouraged, that takes just a little checking.

That’s all I’m saying. Deliberately treating the group that most wants to kill us with the least scrutiny is STUPID.

Like other areas of the word – Japan comes to mind – there is an ebb and flow of progress…to try and set yourself up as chosen as in “I am better”…is riding for a fall from grace through arrogance.

The BRIC’s economies are hungry.

So there.

In the context of the democracy envisioned by Hamilton, Madison, Franklin, and Washington, for the purposes of service with your federal government, the multiple innuendos about Huma Abedin mean exactly nothing. Your constitution repudiates the category of thinking these charges reflect tout court. It takes the time to say, in so many words, that family guilt or dishonour does not exist, even in cases of actual treason.

These blowhard bigots who piss their pants every time they imagine a Muslim delivering their mail, doing pickups on their garbage route, or working in some governmental capacity. These asshats believe that any Muslim employed means Sharia law is directly around the next corner; and suicide bombings are sure to become commonplace.

Now I know how so damn many Americans got behind the extermination of the Native Indians a century ago….

For shame.

You’ve got some problems with your history. McVeigh, at the time of the bombing, was an agnostic and voted Libertarian.

I’m not going to bother with Iraq — if you couldn’t keep up with Saddam’s use of terrorism (primarily with Abu Nidal) as a tool of statecraft, then you’re not going to be convinced of anything.

Finally, the Nazis weren’t exactly Christian. I understand I’m at risk of committing the “no true Scotsman” error, but you should really acquaint yourself with the Party’s actual belief systems. If you can find it, I recommend “Blood and Soil” by Anna Bramwell, which details the influence of Nordic racialists (i.e., pagans) in the Nazi Party.

Finally, I would point out that our view of the objection to Ali comes through the prism of the media. If this is anything like what we’re finding out about Huma Abedin, there might actually be more substantive objections to Ali. (I haven’t seen them yet, though.)

The major incidents in the Islamic World *were* limited to a few incidents, rather than the almost-routine actions taken against Jews in Christian Europe.

You’re arguing for collective punishment.

@38 – So, you’re saying you’ve never tried to minimize your tax bill? Say, what’s this “Sports” thing? Or… yea, you follow your own rituals.

You also forget the “holy” war Christianists in the US started against Iraq, which resulted in a minimum of 100000 direct deaths (up to 1 million indirect ones). Oh, and let’s not forget the 6 million Jews and 2 million other “indesirables” which were murdered by the very Christian Nazis (Gott mit Uns).

It seems to me that the right is very quick to point the other side’s body count, but ignores its own.

If we could just leave the bronze age superstitions in the bronze age we might have a more peaceful world. I’m sure we’d find reasons to kill each other but at least we’d clear out the cobwebs a bit.

Considering that Communism has a body count (both in literal terms and in population % terms) that makes all religious groups in human history look like cute cuddly pre-schoolers playing with toy guns, yeah, I think we’d still manage to kill each other.

Let’s get rid of that terrible RELIGION that’s so bloodthirsty… um, yeah.

McCarthyism isn’t dead – it just changed targets.

Funny thing about McCarthy – he was correct. Oh, you can talk all you want about “methods” or whatever (and have some merit – the way the Left treats the Right, for instance, matches that pretty well in many cases), but what he was trying to destroy was real.

Generally, the people who scream “McCarthyism!” never like to bring that up. They’re also, generally, using that scream to actually do what they’re complaining about.

White Christian Nationalism: The Official Doctrine of the Republican Party!

Yeah, it’s the Republicans that are racist… I can tell by how often they are called it. /sarc

Let’s apply the same standards to all organizations and see who is most racist: percentage of group that is all one race.

Lefty groups win that one in every race category, hands down (even white, though not by as large a margin, due in large part to simple demographics and in part due to the small white supremacist groups, which have NOTHING on the black and hispanic supremacist groups on the left).

The biggest danger in this country is the christian right, not muslims.

So, the biggest danger to this country is a group that been here for generations, makes up at least 40% of the population, and has a group body count for the last 100 years of like 4 (all from that one abortion doctor murderer years ago).

Yeah, I’m convinced.

What’s the body count from muslims activity again? Heck, not even counting 9/11, it’s a lot bigger than 4.

It is, of course, the constitution of the United States of America.

Wow, I’m in awe of your highly original attempt at irony or humor – never seen that before. And sure, I’m totally not familiar with the Constitution, that thing I angrily mention anytime the Supreme Court ignores it.

Now, you MIGHT notice that I didn’t actually call for punishing or otherwise limiting people from office based on their religion (a small detail, I know). Just as we would not want someone as President who actually wants bad things to happen to our country, we wouldn’t want that in any other office, either. And it so happens that there is a group of Muslims, 100 millions+ of them, even if they only make up 10% of the Islam, that wants our country destroyed. I think it’s very reasonable to make sure that someone holding an office in this country is not a member of said group, religious or not. (There have been Christian groups that fit that description, by the way. People were a lot more sane about making sure any Christian was not one of “those”.)

That such a thought is controversial is, frankly, insane. That’s why I was pointing out that the crazy righties in this scenarios (who do indeed do some dumb and crazy things) are the intelligent party in this discussion.

For 1300 years, the Jews lived quite peacefully as a whole under the Muslims. Yes, sometimes community leaders suffered and there were a few notorious incidents…but it was minor compared to the systematic expulsions, the blood libels and pogroms of Christian Europe…to say nothing of the Inquisition!

The Inquisition was bad for everyone!

And yes, if one side gets the “a few notorious incidents” excuse and the other doesn’t, well, yeah, that side looks a lot better.

The Jews have been treated badly by almost all other people groups, historically speaking. They’ve been scape-goated too many times to count.

However, I will yield the point that the Crusades were bad for the Jews – both sides treated Jews worse than they did under other circumstances.

That doesn’t change the fact that Europe should certainly have been defending itself (and in a far more organized, less directly religious fashion), nor does it suggest we shouldn’t engage our modern opponents.

In fact, if it has any lesson to teach, it’s that the bystanders who try not to get involved suffer worse than the participants!

Weren’t you basically arguing not to fight back against the people who are trying to start a war with us? Doesn’t seem like good advice, on any level, to me…