Freedom of religion is not ‘absolute’ according to the laws of the U.S., States, Constitution

Obama and scores of academics and ultra-liberal know nothings among inane/insane politicians such as Mayor Bloomberg and radio/television “journalists” do not, cannot acknowledge and prefer to remain willfully deaf, dumb and blind with regard to the Middle East, “allies” like our “friends in Afghanistan and Iraq and so MUST accuse us – ordinary, decent, law-abiding and patriotic Americans with charges of Islamophobia, and worse, bigotry of every sort that includes racism, homophobia, greed, and of course, INTOLERANCE and IGNORANCE.

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The sad truth is that the shoe is on the other foot. Not one of these paragons of virtue who claim sophistication and Ivy league degrees can even explain that the American Constitution does NOT ABSOLUTELY guarantee Freedom of Religion and that both Federal and State Law have taken action against the practices (not the beliefs) and consequences of dangerous and immoral behavior. This was the issue that forced the confrontation of the government against Brigham Young and the elders of the Church of the Latter day Saints (Mormons) to alter their “religion” and accept that American law and citizenship were not congruent with plural marriage or the exploitation of young teenage girls. The Utah territory would not have entered the Union without this confrontation when state power forced a “religion” to change its practices. The same has been true in many Appalachian states, especially Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Arkansas, West Virginia and North Carolina  where state authorities forbade the practice of the so called serpent churches among several Pentecostal denominations after the deaths of numerous individuals handing venomous snakes. The states forced churches and church members to accept that the state had a priority to protect individuals from reckless behavior and protect human life in spite of the claims of “religious freedom”. Had the government moved earlier, the absurd and grotesque suicidal deaths of   more than 900 people, most of whom were American citizens, might have been prevented. These naïve followers of the Reverend James Jones ended their lives in the greatest act of mass suicide in American history. This occurred on Oct. 18, 1978 in Georgetown, capital of Guyana. His “Peoples Temple” was a Church – i.e. a Religion, whom these same Leftwing and Liberal advocates of tolerance for Islam believe is protected by the Constitution ABSOLUTELY without any qualifications.  His “religion” led to the greatest SINGLE LOSS of AMERICAN CIVILIAN LIFE IN A NON-NATURAL DISASTER BEFORE 9/11. The fact that it happened in Guyana was due to the real fear of Jones that he would not be able to continue his church in the United States because he knew that his cult was not permitted ABSOLUTELY by the Constitution to practice acts that could endanger human life. Yet, the self appointed Liberal, tolerant Intellectuals who are shedding tears over the possible need to move the Islamic “Cultural Center/mosque” from Ground Zero have undoubtedly never read any part of the Koran or any part of the Sira and Sunnah or done any research on the use of Jihad to expand the Dar al-Islam, yet stridently label anyone as a bigot or intolerant who has, and is aware of the potential danger.

Court Decision, 1940

In the Minersville School District vs. Gobitis case (1940), the Supreme Court upheld a local Pennsylvania ordinance ordering schoolchildren to salute the flag of the United States in the daily morning pledge of allegiance.  Two Jehovah's Witness school children, 10 (William) and 12 (Lillian) years old, were suspended from school because of their refusal to salute the American flag. Consequently, their father had to pay for them to enroll in a private school. The parents alleged that their children's' due process rights had been violated by the school and sued. In an 8-1 Court Decision with Justice Frankfurter writing the majority opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that the school district had a strong interest in creating national unity that was sufficient to permit them to force students to salute the flag. This case required the Court to balance the religious interests of the Jehovah's Witness children with the secular interests of the school district.  Obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs such as the pledge of allegiance was held to outweigh the “religious convictions” which contradict the relevant concerns of a political society. According to Justice Frankfurter, the nation needed loyalty and the unity of all the people and saluting the flag was a primary means of achieving this legitimate goal, an issue of national importance. It is hard today to imagine that a Supreme Court with a “liberal majority” in the Roosevelt administration in 1940 agreed that the state had a right that overrode religious convictions, supposedly regarded by many as an “absolute right.”

NEW DECISION, 1943

Justice Harlan Stone, the only one who voted in favor of the right of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1940 wrote a strongly worded objection to the decision and only three years later, the Court did reverse its decision in the case of the West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette in 1943.  With Justice Jackson writing the majority opinion, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the school district violated the rights of several students whose families were Jehovah’s Witnesses by forcing them to salute the American flag. The reason for the reversal many observers believe was due to the fact that the 1940 case provoked bullying against the children involved and caused hardship on the families who had to take their children out of the public schools.  In the new decision, the Court argued that the fact that some students refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in no way infringed on the rights of other students who did participate and that the pledge indeed did force students to declare a belief that might be contrary to their faith thereby constituting a violation of their rights. In his lone dissent, Justice Frankfurter, often looked on as a fierce supporter of the New Deal and President Roosevelt, argued that the law in question was not discriminatory because it required all children to pledge allegiance to the flag, not just some and that Freedom of Religion was not ABSOLUTE; it did not entitle members of religious groups to ignore a law when they didn't like it. Religious liberty means freedom from conformity to the religious dogmas of others, not freedom from conformity to the law because of their own religious dogmas. The difference between past issues involving such clear issues as the protection of the wellbeing, health and safety of women and children in the case of the Mormons, and of all members of the Serpent Churches should be clearly enunciated and brought to public attention in the matter TODAY of those mosques (not all) where sedition and identification with the principles of Jihad are clearly preached. Many such mosques with these values exist throughout the West and not only in the United States. It should be in the fundamental interests of all Muslims who are loyal citizens to extirpate these institutions that act in their name. The background of those behind the plan of the “Cordova Project” to build a “community Center/Mosque in Lower Manhattan at Ground Zero raises such doubts. The existing partially-free press in Lebanon, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia, Pakistan and Egypt and the Arabic press in Great Britain admitted in numerous editorials that the conflict in Iraq following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has not been a civil war but that Jihadi terrorists have flocked there from as far away as Indonesia and Chechnia to sow death, destruction and mayhem to intimidate all those who oppose the extremist Islamist view of the world. If we are to learn anything at all from history, it is that the Islamist concept of jihad was unequivocally understood as “violent holy war” against the infidels and not subject to interpretation. It remains a political weapon that has been used quite similarly by the last Ottoman Caliph, the Taliban, the Iranian mullahs, Al-Qaeda and rival extremist Sunni and Shi'ite clerics in Iraq today. It is still attractive to much extremist opinion in large parts of the Arab world, Chechniya, the Sudan, Pakistan and even in Indonesia. Its attraction throughout the 20th century for those autocratic and dictatorial European leaders who sought to become “Protectors of Islam” and “borrow” it, was to exploit its violent and evil appeal for their own purposes.   The editorial in the April 15th, 2007 issue of the London based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, the leading Arabic International Daily Newspaper, repeated essentially the same message and had this to say: essentially the same message and had this to say:

“To make the picture clearer… This religious war has nothing to do even with the major issues, slogans related to which are raised in the terrorists’ literature itself, like Palestine, Iraq, the U.S., etc. These are people who want martyrdom, that is, they want to fight war, anywhere in the world, and for any cause that has a religious angle. They are not fighting for money, public reform, or for… the environment, and they are not nationalists, pan-Arabists, or communists… They are not jokers, hippies, or oppositionists. They are seekers of martyrdom, meaning that they are in a hurry to go to Paradise. They are not interested in the life of this world, and they want to take with them to the grave the greatest number of people possible. I know that this is an issue that is difficult for the Westerner to understand. It is also difficult for many of the Muslims themselves to accept this, and they always try to justify it with issues that they consider legitimate and comprehensible. But the truth is that these terrorists want death for the sake of Allah… That is, even if the Americans left Iraq tonight, and the Jews fled Palestine, and extremist religious governments were established in Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt - this would not satisfy them… They want Paradise, and for this they will travel to the ends of the earth, to the North Pole and the South Pole, "to fight the infidels.”

It is incumbent on all of us to make certain that no connection whatsoever exists between this view of Islam and requests to establish a mosque in Manhattan or Tennessee or elsewhere in the United States.