Very few of the Republican presidential candidates are standing out of the herd, but occasionally, one of them will rear their head and make an utter and complete fool of themselves.
Michelle Bachmann with the John Wayne Gacy slip up, Newt Gingrich with the “I loved my country so much I had an affair,” and so forth.
But Herman Cain last week may have taken the utter-fool cake.
In a Fox News interview with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday,” Cain said that towns could prohibit Muslims from building mosques.
“Yes, they have the right to (block building a mosque),” Cain said. “That's not discriminating based upon religion — against that particular religion. There is an aspect of them building that mosque that doesn't get talked about. And the people in the community know what is it and they are talking about it.”
He goes on to say that because Islam has a set of laws, Sharia laws, that it is not just a religion, but a set of rules as well, and that this status — as something between religion and law — disqualifies it from the protection of the First Amendment.
He has been opposed to this project from the start, telling The Associated Press reporters “it is an infringement and abuse of our freedom of religion.”
That is hypocrisy so outright I have no words to capture it, so I hope you can see why my head is spinning.
Cain has also come under fire for stating he will “take a harder look” at any potential Muslim members of his cabinet in case they turn out to be terrorists.
Because, clearly, Muslims are more likely to be terrorists than any other religious denomination.
Just look at the FBI's official website. They have a list of every terrorist attack on U.S. Soil from 1980 until 2005. Obviously, anyone who thinks Muslims aren't more likely to be terrorists will get their comeuppance there ... oh wait.
Or not.
The FBI's database shows that Muslims commit roughly six percent of terrorism that happens on U.S. soil. Groups other than Muslims commit 94 percent of U.S. terrorism. In fact, extremist Jews have committed more acts of terror than Muslims have.
But where are the claims that Judaism is not a religion because it has a set of laws?
Cain said that “traditional” religions are just about religion, not about laws. But when any other “traditional” religion is given more than a millisecond of inspection this is clearly false. Even the most traditional religion, Judaism, has a set of laws. In fact, the Torah, the Jewish holy book, is a book of laws. Hasidic Jews' lives are completely governed by strict rules about what to eat, when to eat it, how to look, speak, act and so on.
And don't get me started on Catholicism. They have an entire country governed by canonical law. The Vatican is a country governed by religious laws.
It shocks me that it is acceptable in today's society to blatantly claim that one religious group is more dangerous than any other. If Cain were to have said a Catholic church should be banned from Murfreesboro, Tenn., or a synagogue, or, heaven forbid, that African Americans should be banned, think of the backlash. To say that about Muslims is to go against what America was founded on: religious freedom. People fled to this country to escape the type of persecution now being done to Muslims.
In the horrific light of the attacks on Norway this week, not only is it clear that it is not just Muslims who commit terrorist acts, it is also apparent that this despicable language and complete disregard for the rights given to U.S. citizens is not the solution to the problem.
Terrorism has no religion; it is a denomination of fear and control and it must be stopped. But to tell a group of peaceful people who simply want to worship whichever God they have chosen that they cannot do so because their religion is not a religion, because they might be terrorists, or because we are simply afraid of what we do not understand, just feeds the power of those who would shoot up a camp of teenagers or fly planes into the World Trade Center. Discrimination is not the solution but the problem.
If we want to fight terrorism, we must cure the cause, not the symptoms.
Reach the columnist at omcquarr@asu.edu
