I am as impressed with the ACLU today as Lloyd was with Harry in Dumb and Dumber: “Just when I thought you couldn’t get any dumber, you go and do something like this…and totally redeem yourself!”
Minnesota’s ACLU is taking on Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in Inner Grove Heights for using public funds to promote Islam with prejudice. The ACLU has long feared pestering Muslims with lawsuits, so I commend this prodigal son for attempting to be principled on the Establishment clause. I wrote an article about Islam’s preferential treatment in America over a year ago, so I’ve added it below to provide context to how important the MN ACLU’s lawsuit is. As Christopher Hitchens often quips, “Mr. Jefferson, build up that wall.”
(I’ll be at OCS Jan 22 to March 21, but I’ll give Rob some throw-back articles to post if something in the news like this comes up again to make them relevant.)
The Most Equal Religion
Pat Knapp, November 2007
“All animals are equal,” declared the communist pigs of Orwell’s Animal Farm, “but some are more equal than others”. Human-run apartheid thrived on this motto in Boulder, CO and Berkeley, CA until the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) replaced pet “owners” with “legal guardians”. It still thrives in Postville, where, despite PETA filming the “horrific cruelty” of the throat-cutting without stunning at a kosher slaughterhouse in a 2004 sting, the slaughterhouse rabbi insists the shtick is perfectly kosher.
While US law permits Kosher and Islamic “Halal” slaughter – both involving throat cutting – PETA has not yet reported a Halal sting. Nor has PETA protested a Deereborne, MI McDonalds’ decision to serve Halal McNuggets, even though this involves unnecessarily noisome throat slashes rather than the PETA-prescribed painless gas poisoning. Its website reports that Michael Vick is taking its “Developing Empathy for Animals” course as penance for dog-fighting, but it has nothing to say about Islam’s notorious “unclean” status for dogs, nor about the Islamic Republic of Iran’s recently revamped efforts to confiscate the unclean mutts from their Persian guardians.
Whether PETA fears or reveres Islam too much to call it out, it is not the first interest group to treat Islam more equally than other religions. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) opposes crosses and Christmas carols in public schools, nativity scenes on public grounds, and Louisiana’s authorization of public funds for a church in August, but it has been remarkably silent in response to the fad of publicly funded Islamic ritual foot-washes. As the University of MI-Deerborn and airports in Kansas City and Indianapolis race to spend taxpayer dollars on these Islam-friendly facilities, the ACLU has not once this year filed a separation-of-mosque-and-state complaint. Instead, it has defended the rights of public officials to wear headdresses, witnesses to swear on the Koran, and a single Muslim student to not have to endure a graduation ceremony in a Baptist Church.
Minnesota extends Islam a special equality. The Minneapolis Community and Technical College allocated public funds for foot-washing facilities last spring. In response to the local Muslim American Society chapter’s 2006 fatwa against cabbies transporting alcohol, the state briefly proposed funding a cab-roof light apparatus to help bottle wielders identify friendlies. Some Muslim cashiers at local Target stores refuse to scan pork. If Target retaliates, the ACLU, not to mention the MN legislature, will be ready to pounce. In Minneapolis last year, when six imams on an airplane demanded seat-belt extenders, denounced America, and chanted “Allah Akhbar”, frightened passengers requested the takeoff be canceled. Little did they know, Minnesota would not immunize them from lawsuits backed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) avenging the Imams’ detainment,.
CAIR endorses equality under the law, but primarily for Muslims. Though CAIR’s chairman Parvez Ahmed served as a board member of Florida’s ACLU, he once warned CAIR defamers that “The First Amendment does not protect defamation.” Nor, according to CAIR, does it protect anti-islamist Dr. Robert Spencer’s right to give speeches. Yet judging by CAIR’s silence, it protected Ahmadinejad’s right to speak at Columbia University last month.
Students wore black on September 20th to support the Jena 6 (or was it 7?), but few regret Stanislav Shmulevich’s plight – the Pace University student arrested and awaiting trial for putting a Koran in a toilet. And none wore black for the peaceful anti-Islamist protestors arrested in Brussels on 9/11/07.
If Catholics had protested Burger King for making blasphemous ice-cream desserts, as have Muslims, would they be recalled? If the religious affiliations had been switched in the case of the Your Black Muslim Bakery employee shooting a Catholic investigative-journalist point blank with a shot-gun, would CAIR have spoken out? When Amsterdam threatened to revoke anti-Islamist politician Ayan Hirsi Ali’s citizenship and Islamists publicly murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and politician Pim Fortuyn, where were the “Dutch 3” rallies? If the United Nations requested that the press and Hollywood portray Christianity in a more positive light – as it intends to do for Islam – who wouldn’t call it censorship? Communism is dead, but Orwell’s pigs live on.
Minnesota’s ACLU is taking on Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in Inner Grove Heights for using public funds to promote Islam with prejudice. The ACLU has long feared pestering Muslims with lawsuits, so I commend this prodigal son for attempting to be principled on the Establishment clause. I wrote an article about Islam’s preferential treatment in America over a year ago, so I’ve added it below to provide context to how important the MN ACLU’s lawsuit is. As Christopher Hitchens often quips, “Mr. Jefferson, build up that wall.”
(I’ll be at OCS Jan 22 to March 21, but I’ll give Rob some throw-back articles to post if something in the news like this comes up again to make them relevant.)
The Most Equal Religion
Pat Knapp, November 2007
“All animals are equal,” declared the communist pigs of Orwell’s Animal Farm, “but some are more equal than others”. Human-run apartheid thrived on this motto in Boulder, CO and Berkeley, CA until the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) replaced pet “owners” with “legal guardians”. It still thrives in Postville, where, despite PETA filming the “horrific cruelty” of the throat-cutting without stunning at a kosher slaughterhouse in a 2004 sting, the slaughterhouse rabbi insists the shtick is perfectly kosher.
While US law permits Kosher and Islamic “Halal” slaughter – both involving throat cutting – PETA has not yet reported a Halal sting. Nor has PETA protested a Deereborne, MI McDonalds’ decision to serve Halal McNuggets, even though this involves unnecessarily noisome throat slashes rather than the PETA-prescribed painless gas poisoning. Its website reports that Michael Vick is taking its “Developing Empathy for Animals” course as penance for dog-fighting, but it has nothing to say about Islam’s notorious “unclean” status for dogs, nor about the Islamic Republic of Iran’s recently revamped efforts to confiscate the unclean mutts from their Persian guardians.
Whether PETA fears or reveres Islam too much to call it out, it is not the first interest group to treat Islam more equally than other religions. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) opposes crosses and Christmas carols in public schools, nativity scenes on public grounds, and Louisiana’s authorization of public funds for a church in August, but it has been remarkably silent in response to the fad of publicly funded Islamic ritual foot-washes. As the University of MI-Deerborn and airports in Kansas City and Indianapolis race to spend taxpayer dollars on these Islam-friendly facilities, the ACLU has not once this year filed a separation-of-mosque-and-state complaint. Instead, it has defended the rights of public officials to wear headdresses, witnesses to swear on the Koran, and a single Muslim student to not have to endure a graduation ceremony in a Baptist Church.
Minnesota extends Islam a special equality. The Minneapolis Community and Technical College allocated public funds for foot-washing facilities last spring. In response to the local Muslim American Society chapter’s 2006 fatwa against cabbies transporting alcohol, the state briefly proposed funding a cab-roof light apparatus to help bottle wielders identify friendlies. Some Muslim cashiers at local Target stores refuse to scan pork. If Target retaliates, the ACLU, not to mention the MN legislature, will be ready to pounce. In Minneapolis last year, when six imams on an airplane demanded seat-belt extenders, denounced America, and chanted “Allah Akhbar”, frightened passengers requested the takeoff be canceled. Little did they know, Minnesota would not immunize them from lawsuits backed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) avenging the Imams’ detainment,.
CAIR endorses equality under the law, but primarily for Muslims. Though CAIR’s chairman Parvez Ahmed served as a board member of Florida’s ACLU, he once warned CAIR defamers that “The First Amendment does not protect defamation.” Nor, according to CAIR, does it protect anti-islamist Dr. Robert Spencer’s right to give speeches. Yet judging by CAIR’s silence, it protected Ahmadinejad’s right to speak at Columbia University last month.
Students wore black on September 20th to support the Jena 6 (or was it 7?), but few regret Stanislav Shmulevich’s plight – the Pace University student arrested and awaiting trial for putting a Koran in a toilet. And none wore black for the peaceful anti-Islamist protestors arrested in Brussels on 9/11/07.
If Catholics had protested Burger King for making blasphemous ice-cream desserts, as have Muslims, would they be recalled? If the religious affiliations had been switched in the case of the Your Black Muslim Bakery employee shooting a Catholic investigative-journalist point blank with a shot-gun, would CAIR have spoken out? When Amsterdam threatened to revoke anti-Islamist politician Ayan Hirsi Ali’s citizenship and Islamists publicly murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and politician Pim Fortuyn, where were the “Dutch 3” rallies? If the United Nations requested that the press and Hollywood portray Christianity in a more positive light – as it intends to do for Islam – who wouldn’t call it censorship? Communism is dead, but Orwell’s pigs live on.
1 comment:
Your article kind of reminds me of a camping trip where some of the fishers were more equal than others.
jk pat
Seriously, go ACLU (not, i hate you).
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