Thomas Jefferson and the Ground Zero Mosque
By GARY DEMAR
President Obama stepped into it over the weekend. Speaking Friday August 13, 2010, at a White House dinner to honor Ramadan, the President told his audience, “Muslims have the right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country,” an obvious reference to the controversy surrounding the Ground Zero mosque. On Saturday, while spending the day in the Gulf, the president attempted to clarify his earlier remarks: “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.”
Utah’s attempts at statehood were held up over the religious practice of polygamy. It wasn’t until Utah agreed to include in its constitution a ban on polygamy that the territory was considered for statehood. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.
Prior to Utah’s statehood, the Supreme Court had ruled that “Bigamy and polygamy are crimes by the laws of all civilized and Christian countries”[1] and “the spread and practice of polygamy is . . . . contrary to the spirit of Christianity and of the civilization which Christianity has produced in the Western world.”[2] So contrary to President Obama, it’s not true that all people have “the right to practice their religion.” The First Amendment does not give unlimited freedom to individuals or groups who act in the name of religion, especially when that religion’s goal is the domination of the world or even a part of it by force.
On a side note, Judge Vaughn Walker, in the Proposition 8 decision, is arguing that the more than seven million people who voted to define marriage as between a man and a woman have no standing in their appeal of the case because they could not prove how homosexual marriage harms them.[3] The same argument could be made over bigamy and polygamy since no one is forced into multiple marriages and thereby can’t suffer harm by the polygamous practices of others. The Supreme Court in 1890 saw great societal harm in the religious practice of polygamy. In my estimation, the same argument can be made for Islam. Consider that German authorities “have closed a Hamburg mosque used by the Sept. 11 attackers as a meeting place before they moved to the United States. A statement by Hamburg officials says the Taiba mosque was shut down and its cultural association was banned” August 9, 2010.
The First Amendment begins: “Congress shall make no law. . . .” There is no prohibition on municipalities, counties, or states. Constitutionally, Congress, since it is supposed to be the only law-making national body, cannot make any law regarding religion that would affect the states. Cities, counties, and states can make determinations based on religion. An appeal to “our founding” will prove this to be true. Nearly all the state constitutions at the time had particular requirements dealing with religion over which the national government had no jurisdiction. If the states wanted the same, less, or more freedoms than found in the national constitution, the states had to provide for them in their constitutions. For example, here are the religious provisions in Alabama’s constitution:
That no religion shall be established by law; that no preference shall be given by law to any religious sect, society, denomination, or mode of worship; that no one shall be compelled by law to attend any place of worship; nor to pay any tithes, taxes, or other rate for building or repairing any place of worship, or for maintaining any minister or ministry; that no religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this state; and that the civil rights, privileges, and capacities of any citizen shall not be in any manner affected by his religious principles.
Why include these words if the First Amendment applied to the states?
President Obama and other supporters of the Ground Zero Mosque appeal to our nation’s “founding,” in particular Thomas Jefferson. Here are some additional comments the President made on August 14 in reference to Jefferson:
And tonight, we are reminded that Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity. And Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been a part of America. The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan—making it the first known iftar[4] at the White House, more than 200 years ago.
First, Islam is not noted for its religious diversity. Christians cannot evangelize in Muslim countries. Churches are burned while police do nothing. Muslims who convert to another religion can be executed. Even the presence of the Bible is prohibited by our own military and the behest of Islamic officials when American soldiers are deployed in Muslim nations:
Bibles were confiscated and destroyed after Qatar-based Al Jazeer television showed soldiers at a Bible class on a base with a stack of Bibles translated into the local Pashto and Dari languages. The U.S. military forbids its members on active duty—including those based in places like Afghanistan—from trying to convert people to another religion. Reuters quotes Maj. Jennifer Willis at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, who said “I can now confirm that the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera’s clip were, in fact, collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They were never distributed.”[5]
Second, President Obama’s favorable appeal to Jefferson is only part of the story. The Koran’s peace initiatives are Orwellian: “Submission to Islam is peace.” Peace is the absence of any religious or political opposition. This is the indisputable history of Islam as Paul Johnson writes:
Koranic teaching that the faith or “submission” can be, and in suitable circumstances must be, imposed by force, has never been ignored. On the contrary, the history of Islam from Arabia was followed by the rapid conquest of North Africa, the invasion and virtual conquest of Spain, and a thrust into France that carried the crescent to the gates of Paris. It took half a millennium or reconquest to expel the Moslems from Western Europe. The Crusades, far from being an outrageous prototype of Western imperialism, as is taught in most of our schools, were a mere episode in a struggle that has lasted 1,400 years and were one of the few occasions when Christians took the offensive to regain the “occupied territories” of the Holy Land.[6]
What did Jefferson learn from his study of the Koran? As early as 1786, Jefferson, who was serving as the ambassador to France, and John Adams, the Ambassador to Britain, met in London with Ambassador Abdrahaman, the Dey of Tripoli’s ambassador to Britain, in an attempt to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress’ vote of funding. Peace would come at a price. If America wanted “temporary peace,” a one-year guarantee, it would cost $66,000 plus a 10% commission. “Everlasting peace” was a bargain at $160,000 plus the obligatory commission. This only applied to Tripoli. Other Muslim nations would also have to be paid. The amount came to $1.3 million. But there was no assurance that the treaties would be honored. In vain Jefferson and Adams tried to argue that America was not at war with Tripoli. In what way had the U.S provoked the Muslims, they asked? Ambassador Abdrahaman went on to explain “the finer points of Islamic jihad” to the Koranically challenged Jefferson and Adams. In a letter to John Jay, Jefferson wrote the following:
The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.[7]
Abdrahaman was paraphrasing the Koran’s “rules of engagement” found in the 47 Surah: “Whenever you encounter the ones who disbelieve [during wartime], seize them by their necks until once you have subdued them, then tie them up as prisoners, either in order to release them later on, or also to ask for ransom, until war lays down her burdens.” Unless a nation submitted to an Islamic nation, whether it was the aggressor or not, that nation was by definition at war with Islam. Jihad means “to submit.” A non-aggressing nation is still at war with Islam as long as it hasn’t embraced Islam. Islam’s goal is to conquer the world, either by the submission of one’s will or by Allah’s sword.[8]
When President Jefferson refused to increase the tribute demanded by the Islamists, Tripoli declared war on the United States. A United States navy squadron, under Commander Edward Preble, blockaded Tripoli from 1803 to 1805. After rebel soldiers from Tripoli, led by United States Marines, captured the city of Derna, the Pasha of Tripoli signed a treaty promising to exact no more tribute.
President Obama is not the first person who has tried to whitewash Islam’s history with America. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Muslim, took his constitutional oath on Jefferson’s copy of the Koran. How ironic given Jefferson’s disdain for Islam’s principles. There’s a reason the “Marines’ Hymn” begins with these words:
From the Halls of Montezuma,
to the shores of Tripoli.
The line “To the shores of Tripoli” refers to the First Barbary War, specifically the Battle of Derne in 1805. Jefferson, embroiled in a war with Islamic terrorists in his day, commented, “Too long, for the honor of nations, have those Barbarians been suffered [permitted] to trample on the sacred faith of treaties, on the rights and laws of human nature!”[9] Little has changed since Jefferson’s day. The Muslims of the Ground Zero Mosque will say one thing and mean another.
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ACLU Again Refuses to Ask U.S. Supreme Court to Review Ten Commandments Case
The ACLU has allowed the time to expire without filing a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court requesting review of the Ten Commandments case in ACLU v. Grayson County, Kentucky. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which upheld the Ten Commandments in the "Foundations of American Law and Government Display," now stands. Since 2005, this is the fourth time the ACLU has lost a Ten Commandments case and refused to ask the Supreme Court to review the matter.
The case began in 2002, when the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Grayson County and a federal judge ruled against the display. Mathew Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, presented the winning oral argument on behalf of Grayson County in April 2009 at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Liberty Counsel did not charge the counties for attorney's fees in this case. In fact, we never charge clients for any legal work. Your generous donations enabled us to vigorously fight this battle. Please continue to support our efforts to defeat the ACLU in other cases like this. You can donate online or by mail to PO Box 540774, Orlando, FL 32854. You can also order resources from the Liberty Counsel online store.
Read our News Release to learn more about this display.
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Let the Obama Administration Know Where You Stand on Marriage
Many who support marriage and believe that it is defined as the union of one man and one woman, were shocked when Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, decided to single-handedly throw out Proposition 8, California's voter-approved constitutional amendment defining marriage.
Throughout the trial, Judge Walker revealed his bias against the amendment itself. He discarded constitutional arguments in favor of whatever "facts" were presented by opponents of marriage and also refused to recuse himself even though he is openly homosexual. His poorly-developed ruling reflects his prejudice towards both religion and marriage. The judge even states in his decision that "religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians."
As Judge Walker's decision is appealed to higher courts, another case in Massachusetts challenged the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The Defense of Marriage Act merely defines marriage -- for federal purposes -- as being between one man and one woman, and protects states from having to change their state definitions. Not surprisingly, a liberal court in Massachusetts -- after a weak defense from the Obama Justice Department -- ruled DOMA unconstitutional. Amazingly, the federal government appears to be dragging its feet as they contemplate whether or not to EVEN APPEAL the decision! If the Department of Justice does not appeal, it is unlikely outside defenders of marriage will even be allowed to defend marriage in court.
The Department of Justice is supposed to vigorously defend statutes passed by Congress, not to roll over to appease President Obama's political base. Please sign our petition asking the Justice Department to either file an appeal or get out of the way and allow others to take up the case!
Thank you and God bless you.
Please sign the petition and insist that the U.S. Justice Department do its job and defend marriage!
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Time to impeach Judge Vaughn Walker
Contact your representative today and urge him to start impeachment proceedings
Yesterday (August 4), U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker single-handedly overturned California's Prop. 8, which elevated protection for one-man, one-woman marriage to its state constitution.
In doing so, he frustrated the express will of seven million Californians who went to the polls to shape their state's public policy on marriage.
Since marriage policy is not established anywhere in the federal Constitution, defining marriage, according to the 10th Amendment, is an issue reserved for the states. Judge Walker never should have accepted this case in the first place.
Under Judge Walker, it's no longer "We the People," it's "I the Judge."
In addition, Judge Walker is an open homosexual, and should have recused himself from this case due to his obvious conflict of interest.
What can be done?
Fortunately, the Founders provided checks and balances for every branch of government, including the judicial branch. Federal judges hold office only "during good Behaviour," and if they violate that standard can be removed from the bench.
Judge Walker's ruling is not "good Behaviour." He has exceeded his constitutional authority and engaged in judicial tyranny.
Judges are not, in fact, unaccountable. They are accountable to Congress, which can remove them from office.
Impeachment proceedings, according to the Constitution, begin in the House of Representatives. It's time for you to put your congressman on record regarding the possible impeachment of Judge Walker.
Take Action
Email your representative today and urge him to launch impeachment proceedings against Judge Vaughn Walker for his outrageous ruling against natural marriage.
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"In God We Trust" Again Upheld by Federal Appeals Court
In a 3-0 decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington, DC, ruled that the National Motto, "In God We Trust," is constitutional and does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Quoting the 1970 decision in Aronow v. United States, the Court wrote: "It is quite obvious that the national motto and slogan on coinage and currency 'In God We Trust' has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion."
Read our News Release to learn more about the history of our motto.
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Georgia Voters Overwhelmingly Approve Nonbinding Pro-life "Personhood" Amendment
Voters in 46 counties in the state of Georgia overwhelmingly cast a nonbinding vote in favor of an amendment to the Georgia State Constitution supporting the pro-life "Personhood" amendment. With the counties averaging 75 percent approval, every single county that presented the amendment passed it. While most of the votes were taken on the Republican primary, a Democratic ballot in Butts County also asked the question, and it approved the amendment by 71 percent. The amendment states the "right to life is vested in each human being from their earliest biological beginning until natural death," and that right should be protected by law.
The right to life is the right of all rights. The right to property, speech or religion means nothing to a corpse. Without the right to life, all other rights are illusory. We must restore a culture of life in America.
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Help promote 2010 voter guides!
As part of our “2010 Online Outreach” program, we have just released our new Voter Guide Widget and we need your help to promote it.
So what is a “widget”? In short, it is a piece of code that you can add to any blog or other website, and in our case it provides a form that site visitors can use to sign up to help distribute Christian Coalition voter guides before the election this November.
(Click here to visit the widget download page)
It is a great way to help spread the word about voter guides to visitors of other websites and get them involved!
You can customize the widget dimensions to suit your own site, get your custom code and then place it on any website that you control. In fact, you can even place a widget within a blog entry, or any place where you can post html.
That’s it! The widget does the rest by allowing your site’s visitors to sign up. We will then follow up with an email to them and let them know when voter guides are ready.
Visit our widget download page and get your own customized widget today!
Also, if you know anyone else who has a blog or other website that they can place a widget on, send them a link to this page today and encourage them to do the same.
Help us spread the word!