muslim

After campaigning to make construction workers take a pledge that they would refuse to work on the planned Park 51 Islamic community center, Andy Sullivan is now leading the charge to make people commit to stop the “creeping of Shariah into our American way of life.” Sullivan, the leader of the “9/11 Hard Hat Pledge,” is one of the most vocal opponents of Park 51 and even launched a boycott of musician Justin Bieber after reading a satirical article which made-up a quote of Bieber criticizing mosque opponents.

Now, Sullivan wants people to take an oath against Sharia: “It’s going to be an oath, and it’s going to say, ‘You will fight against any element of sharia being put into any kind of policy or legislation in this nation.’ If you sign that oath, and you live by that, then I will give you all the support that I can muster. So all of the sudden, the Anti-Sharia Oath was born.”

“Dark forces are using our own laws and freedoms against us,” according to the oath, “to promote Islamic doctrine and incorporate it into our finances, places of work, culture, courts, schools and most disturbingly our Legislative offices.”

The oath reads:

I the undersigned, will actively protest and vote against the implementation of Shariah or Islamic Law in all Judicial and Legislative matters. The War on Terror is not just being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan it is being waged in every aspect of our American life. Dark forces are using our own laws and freedoms against us to promote Islamic doctrine and incorporate it into our finances, places of work, culture, courts, schools and most disturbingly our Legislative offices. The Muslim Brotherhood have [sic] long declared that this war against the West will be won without spilling one drop of blood. They are counting on the Media, leftist groups and Politicians who stand for nothing more than another term of office, to achieve their goals. I stand with the 100,000 signers of The 911 Hard Hat Pledge who have sworn not to participate in the building of the Ground Zero Mosque as I take the Anti-Shariah Oath. I believe in the United States Constitution and the American way of life and will protect both.

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Last week, the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer declared that the First Amendment does not apply to Islam and therefore, Muslims have no right to freely practice their religion in this country.

A few days later, Fischer was in Iowa to broadcast his radio program from the Rediscover God in America conference where he lined up an all-star list of guests, including Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Haley Barbour. 

As such, People For the American Way released open letters to Gingrich, Huckabee, and Barbour, asking them not to give Fischer credibility by appearing on his program or, at the least,to denounce Fischer's bigoted views.

Not surprisingly, our request was roundly ignored.

Yesterday, Fischer dedicated nearly the entirety of his two-hour radio program to railing against Islam and demanding an end to immigration from Muslim nations and a ban on the construction of mosques in America.  So I edited down the audio of his rant and decided to merge it was photos of these GOP leaders sitting side-by-side with Fischer just last week in order to produce this short video:

This is where George Bush was simply plain wrong: he believed that there's a hunger in every human heart for freedom. Not true. That hunger for freedom does not exist in the Islamic heart. It's not in their DNA. Why? Because the spirit of God is absent in Islam. There is no spirit of God in Islam. It is the spirit of Satan. It is the spirit of darkness. It is the spirit of tyranny. It is the spirit of bondage.

The Quran is based on hallucinations. These hallucinations, I think Mohammad really experienced something, but what he experienced was what Paul refers to as the Angel of Light. This was a messenger of Satan masquerading as a messenger from God. You want to see what a religion looks like when it has been revealed by the Prince of Darkness, you look at Islam and the Quran.

From now on, no more immigrants from Islamic countries. Can't have it. It's going to corrode western culture. No more mosques because these are places of subversion, places where Sharia law, places where jihad is inculcated, where it is taught and where they are recruits made for jihad.

The First Amendment of the Constitution provides no specific protection for the free exercise of the Islamic faith. So that's a matter of courtesy. They behave themselves, we're glad to give them the opportunity to exercise their religious faith. but they've got to behave themselves. They start becoming subversive, they start releasing a toxic ideology into our culture, then we have the right to do something about that.

Congress can say 'no more Muslim immigrants to the United States.' They have the constitutional authority to do that. So that's one part of a solution. Congress exercising its constitutional authority to control immigration by restricting immigration from Muslim countries. Then, they could - a state could pass a law prohibiting the building of any more mosques in their state. They could do that, would not be in violation of the federal Constitution. And then state and local governments have the authority to refuse permits to the building of mosques. They can do that. So those are the things that we need to do to stop the spread of Islamization in America.

Bryan Fischer's anti-Muslim bigotry has become such a standard part of his rhetoric that it is getting to the point where it is difficult to determine whether his latest outburst warrant mention any more ... even when he is calling for a ban on immigration by Muslims and for local communities to ban the construction of mosques since he has made both of these demands before.

But so long as Fischer is going to continue to voice his bigotry and assert that First Amendment protections do not apply to Muslims, we are going to keep making note of it:

Immigration is obviously a matter for Congress, since authority to control immigration is vested by the Constitution in Congress. But we must never forget that immigration to the United States is a privilege, not a right, and that we should follow the wisdom of the Founders who urged that we only admit to our shores those who will strengthen our nation and assimilate themselves into it, adopting our flag, our history, our heroes, and our values. This is something that devout Muslims simply cannot do. The privilege of immigration should be reserved for those willing to integrate into our culture, become unhyphenated Americans, and adopt American values.

So immigration is a congressional issue. But as I explained above, states have considerable latitude in religious liberty matters, and states are thus free to ban the building of any more mosques within their borders. If states won’t do it, then local planning and zoning commissions can and must do it. And if we understand the Constitution as given to us by the Founders, there is no constitutional impediment in their doing so.

There is clearly no reason for Fischer to be concerned that he will ever be held accountable for his rhetoric in any way, as he has been spewing his bigotry on behalf of the AFA for years now and still Republican leaders continue to flock to appear on his radio program.

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Aaron Klein, the right-wing’s go-to conspiracy theorist on foreign policy issues, knows the real reason that the US is intervening in Libya: George Soros. Writing for WorldNetDaily in an article picked-up by Fox News, Klein asserts that Soros is behind the allied bombing against the Qaddafi regime because he has ties to proponents of the Responsibility to Protect, a foreign policy doctrine which claims that humanitarian intervention is permissible because governments forfeit their sovereignty when they wage violence against their own people. Other right-wing commentators including Bryan Fischer even believe that Obama is intervening to support Al-Qaeda. Klein’s article also plays on far-right fears over the supposed erosion of national sovereignty:

Philanthropist billionaire George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the global organization that promotes the military doctrine used by the Obama administration to justify the recent airstrikes targeting the regime of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. The activist who founded and coined the name of the doctrine, "Responsibility to Protect," sits on several key organizations alongside Soros.

Also, the Soros-funded global group that promotes Responsibility to Protect is closely tied to Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights.

…

An organization calling itself the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect is the world's leading champion of the doctrine.

Activist Gareth Evans, who sits on the global group's advisory board, is widely regarded as the founder of the Responsibility to Protect principle.

…

Evans sits on multiple boards with Soros, including the Clinton Global Initiative. Soros is on the executive board of the International Crisis Group, a "crisis management organization" for which Evans serves as president-emeritus.

WND previously reported how the group has been petitioning for the U.S. to normalize ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition in Egypt, where longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak was recently toppled.

Aside from Evans and Soros, the group includes on its board Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, as well as other personalities who champion dialogue with Hamas, a violent offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

WND also reported the crisis group has also petitioned for the Algerian government to cease "excessive" military activities against al-Qaida-linked groups and to allow organizations seeking to create an Islamic state to participate in the Algerian government. Soros' own Open Society Institute has funded opposition groups across the Middle East and North Africa, including organizations involved in the current chaos.

While the American Family Association claims that one of its founding objectives is to defend “the rights of conscience and religious liberty from infringement by government,” its chief spokesman Bryan Fischer continues to show his contempt for religious freedom. Fischer, the AFA’s Director of Issues Analysis, repeatedly demanded that the US deport all Muslims and prohibit and purge Muslims from the military, and also called for the banning and destruction of mosques. Fischer today attempted to reconcile his ardent opposition to Muslim religious liberty with the Constitution’s First Amendment by claiming that the Constitution actually doesn’t apply to or protect Muslims at all:

Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment.

Our government has no obligation to allow a treasonous ideology to receive special protections in America, but this is exactly what the Democrats are trying to do right now with Islam.

From a constitutional point of view, Muslims have no First Amendment right to build mosques in America. They have that privilege at the moment, but it is a privilege that can be revoked if, as is in fact the case, Islam is a totalitarian ideology dedicated to the destruction of the United States. The Constitution, it bears repeating, is not a suicide pact. For Muslims, patriotism is not the last refuge of a scoundrel, but the First Amendment is.

Of course, the founding fathers certainly did construct the First Amendment to protect all people, including non-Christian groups like Muslims. George Washington’s letter to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island clearly demonstrates that non-Christians were intended to be protected by the Constitution, and the Treaty of Tripoli crafted under Washington and ratified by John Adams makes clear that the “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,” [Muslims].

But evidently, plain historical facts aren’t enough for Bryan Fischer.

On today's broadcast of "Wallbuilders Live," David Barton and Rick Green discussed the "Islamic Flood is Coming to the United States " with former FBI agent John Guandolo whom, as Barton explained, was forced out of the Bureau after it was taken over by those with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood:

Barton: John used to be the guy who briefed the FBI on terrorism and radical Islamic terrorism and so many Islamic folks worked their way into the FBI, they got him thrown out. They said "he keeps speaking bad about Islam, he keeps saying bad things about radical Islam, you need to get rid of him." But he's part of Team B and he's the guy who keeps bringing out and bringing to light stuff, so John, we thought he'd be a good guy to have examine this because he is a national expert, he did brief the FBI until the Islamic folks kind of took him and got rid of him.

I mean, this is the kind of level of ignorance that is a real problem and that's why John is really good at what he does. And you can understand why [Eric] Holder and others in the FBI wouldn't want Guandolo around there. These are the kind of people they are chasing off because you're starting to see the Muslim Brotherhood actually get in to some of our institutions.

Green: Unreal.

Now that is one way to explain how Guandolo suddenly left his position with the FBI in December 2009. Another way would be to speculate that he resigned when it was discovered that he had been sleeping with a key witness in the corruption case against former Congressman William Jefferson. As reported by The Times Picayune:

As the corruption case against former Rep. William Jefferson was about to go to trial in June, prosecutors learned from their star witness that she had had a sexual relationship with the undercover FBI agent who drove her to all the meetings where she secretly taped and delivered cash to the New Orleans Democrat.

But according to court documents unsealed last week, the FBI and its Office of Professional Responsibility knew at least as far back as last December that the agent, John Guandolo, "had had an intimate relationship with a confidential source that he thought could damage an investigation."

Apparently, the Muslim Brotherhood is so powerful that it managed to get Guandolo to sleep with the key government witness he was supposed to be protecting in order to discredit him and stop him from exposing their plot to take over the United States.

* This post was updated on 4/18/11.