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| Yes | 38% | 56 votes | Total: 146 votes | |
| No | 62% | 90 votes |
Yes
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Add to FavoritesBottom line: Americans who happen to be Muslim are no more dangerous to our way of life and our political system than are those of other faiths so long as their first priority is preservation of American values and our political system. But a person who puts Islam first - above his or her loyalty to the US Constitution, to our political system and to the values that are uniquely American is an imminent danger to our way of life; whether he or she holds political office or not.
The interests of Islam are inimical to the interests of Western democracies, and are especially at odds with the interests, historical development, and values of the American Republic.
That's not to say that American-born or fully acculturated naturalized citizen Muslims share the same values system as do Muslims from North Africa, Southwest Asia or South Asia who almost universally lack understanding of traditional American values and cultural structures.
Having lived in and worked throughout the non-Western Muslim world for more than three decades I have come to some basic conclusions about the people in those parts of the world, which are:
1. Islam is the beginning, the middle, and the end-point of their existences.
2. The only permanent institutions in any of those countries are Islamic institutions, i.e., government is an adjunct of Islam which is both a tool of the petty dictators and imperial monarchs that run the political state; and the state is a tool of the Mullahs & Imams who prop-up the dictators & monarchs so long as they ensure the supremacy of the Mullahs' & Imams' position within the society.
3. Allegiance to Islam must come first for every Muslim, then comes allegiance to whatever sect of Islam (Sunni, Shia, Wahabi) prevails; then tribe, then clan, then the individual's family...and then and only then, if there's any room for allegiance left, do these people feel national allegiance.
American Muslims, for the most part, are different from their kin and fellow Muslims who live outside of the United States in that most see themselves as Americans first, then other allegiances follow; including their fealty to Islam. American Muslims generally hold many of the same values as other Americans and are often indistinguishable from Americans of other faiths.
Placing the values and interests of the Islamic religion ahead of loyalty to the US Constitution and our system of government and traditional American values should disqualify any person from holding any public office in the United States.
Learn more about this author, James Coles.
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No
I remember the time in Oklahoma
You tried to blame an Arab but the whitey was the bomber
You be jumping to conclusions
I think you spent your whole life, watching cable in seclusion...
- Spearhead, "Chocolate Supahighway"
The events which have transpired over the past several decades have led Americans by and large to treat Islam as an insurgency rather than as the monotheistic extension of the Judeo-Christian ethic. To insinuate that the faith a person professes is inherently dangerous to their ability to govern is akin to the centuries of prejudice which declared a black man unfit to hold office. It is the type of prejudice which runs anathema to the credo that states that 'creed should have no bearing in how we judge our candidates fit for office.'
The United States, at least in theory, is a great melting pot where disparate cultures, philosophies and peoples come together in one common purpose. Yet in action, the government has far too long been the exclusive club of rich white Protestants, almost entirely male, who pander to their rich corporate-bound friends while ignoring the needs of the constituencies which elected them. By this logic, it is imaginable that a Muslim politician could pose a danger to the U.S. political system, if he or she was the type of individual who actually had a vested interest in a personal ethos bound in sensible interpretations of the religious philosophies which guide his or her life.
This, though, could be considered equally true for a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, a Hindu, a Buddhist... in this great secular society, where our state is repeatedly asserted to be separate from our churches while at the same time our politicians try to evoke the sympathies of like-believing individuals to slide their (largely-personal) agendas through, to assert that a man's religion automatically raises a red flag about his stability as a political leader is to micturate upon the Bill of Rights.
But what's new in the United States? These same questions were raised about John F. Kennedy, who in the run-up to the 1960 election was accused of being a lackey of the Vatican. A person's past can prejudicially stigmatize them before day one in the legislature, as Al Franken can attest. Religion is a tool by which we can guide our daily lives, learning life lessons which can be applied in a variety of situations. At its face, these lessons are the same amongst the monotheistic religions - there's plenty of violence throughout Christian history, and anyone who thinks the Jews nothing but docile obviously have failed to tuck into the Old Testament lately.
So to assert that Muslims in office pose a danger to the U.S. political system is to "blame the Arab while the whitey is the bomber". While the leaders already in power - still largely white, still largely Protestant, still largely male - spent the past eight years carving up those inalienable rights to which we thought we were entitled, sitting here debating the efficacy of a hypothetical Muslim politician is foolhardy. Allowing prejudices to preclude our understanding of an individual's intricacies is a far greater danger to our political system than any religion could ever be...
Learn more about this author, Zach Bigalke.
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