After All, It's Just The Facts

A month ago Ace Of Spades made an interesting argument, that Islam is the de facto state religion of the United States.  Why?  I'll let him explain it to you.

Supposedly we don't have a state religion. Such a thing is forbidden by the Constitution. But increasingly, we do have a de facto state religion -- Islam.

Because when state-funded, quasi-governmental institutions protect one religion and punish those who insult it, but allow any other religion to be mocked, reviled, and even blasphemed against, what else would you call that?

How would a true official state religion be handled any differently? We'd see the exact same treatment -- the official religion would be protected by legal and quasi-legal measures, whereas other religions would be treated as inferior and therefore proper subjects for mockery and blasphemy.

Dhimmitude -- catch the fever.

This came in the context of a situation where the College Republicans at San Francisco State University were charged with - i kid you not - "blasphemy" against Allah.  They were exonerated, but check out Ace's post for the details.

Well, paraphrasing the words of the Great Communicator, here we go again.  This time it's Tufts University, and the  conservative student newspaper, The Primary Source, is in trouble for publishing verifiably factual but unflattering statements about Islam on their pages during "Islamic [sic] Awareness Week."  A sample from the troubling advertisement:

FRIDAY: Ibn Al-Ghazzali, the famous Islamic theologian, said, “The most satisfying and final word on the matter is that marriage is form of slavery. The woman is man’s slave and her duty therefore is absolute obedience to the husband in all that he asks of her person.”

It apparently is to the point with Islam where you can find yourself in trouble simply for stating facts and quoting followers of Islam accurately.  As Ace wonders, how would it be different if Islam were heralded as the official state religion?  Of course, the same question could be asked of a lot of things, but I'll leave the list to your imagination.  Think for a minute.  Could anyone imagine that a newspaper would be charged with anti-Catholic hate speech and harassment for bringing up the priest pedophile scandals or the Inquisition?

Others blogging include: Captain's Quarters, Flopping Aces, Wizbang, Blue Crab Boulevard

5/14/07 1915: Kim Priestap at Wizbang points out an Examiner editorial discussing the Animal Farm status of religion in America, where at this point, largely due to fear - of lawsuits, of backlash against its practitioners, of violence - some, or rather one religion seems in many cases to be more equal than the others.

Why Muslims in America aren't furious with the Islamists for foisting this murderous image upon them, I'll never know, because this kind of image will follow them around for a very long time, causing Americans to look at even the most kind, gentle Muslim as suspicious.

The problem is clearly not that most followers of Islam are violent - they're not.  The problem is also not that most are inclined to take offense at people reacting naturally to the violent side of the small minority.  The problem is that the large number of Muslims in America, and elsewhere, refuse to condemn, to reject in the strongest terms, to distance themselves as far as possible from the malpractitioners of their faith.  If they could generate the same kind of outrage - or greater - at, say, the London train bombings or the Fort Dix plotters as they do at the John Does who reported the flying Imams we may well be able to slow the spread of the jihadist wing.