There was a bit of a discussion yesterday about the public accomodations and concessions being given to Muslims around the nation, with our own Kim, Glenn of Instapundit, and Bryan of Hot Air all chiming in on this editorial.
Me? I had my say on it over a year ago.
But I would like to suggest that this beginning of a backlash is long overdue. We, as a society, need to start being a tad more heavy-handed.
The First Amendment is quite clear: the government can not and will not endorse any one religion, nor — within reason — interfere with any. (When there is a conflict between the actions of a religion and the law, the law prevails — hence the bans on polygamy, restrictions on animal sacrifice, and enforcement of age of consent to marriage laws, just to name three.) The ACLU has succeeded wonderfully at laying the groundwork for the battle against these submissions to Islamist demands: we have literally volumes of precedent saying that public funds and resources shall not be used to subsidize or promulgate any single faith — or even faith itself.
What is happening right now is a very bad thing. We are responding to threats and demands by making concessions — and, as has been proven repeatedly throughout history, giving in to such demands never works well. “Once you pay the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.”
Factor in the Islamist tradition of “once some place or some thing is Islamic, it is Islamic forever,” and you’ve got a recipe for disaster down the road. Look up Al-Andalus some time. Or look at Israel — Jewish for a very long time, until the Romans kicked them out; conquered by Islam and fought over by the Muslims and Christians; finally resettled by the Jews. They are so desperate to once again repossess this island of democracy and freedom that they frantically try to re-write history to eradicate any evidence that it ever was Jewish, and proclaim Jerusalem “the third holiest site in Islam” despite its not appearing even once in the Koran.
Unless something is done, these “concessions” to Muslims on campuses and other places will eventually become permanent — and exclusive. I kept reading the accounts of these “meditation areas” looking for some Muslim giving visitors some grief when they did not remove their shoes or sexually segregate themselves upon entering — some young Christian couple choosing to pray together, for example. I didn’t see it, but I can see it happening.
And if you’re honest, so can you.
The message needs to be sent, loud and clear: America will tolerate religions, but it will not adapt to them. The faiths need to adapt to America. The Constitution is our “Holy Book”, our highest law. If you want to change it, that’s fine — there’s a very clear process that has been use more than two dozen times.
But you will NOT supplant it.
(Quotation marks around “Holy Book” added per Rovin’s suggestion below. I’m kicking myself for not putting them there in the first place. Thanks, Rovin.)
