Mirkinson in Salon.com. First, Ahmed Mohamed, 14, was
arrested, handcuffed, and interrogated by police in Irving,
Texas, for bringing to school a homemade clock that teachers
decided looked like a bomb; that absurd overreaction was later
defended by the town’s Republican mayor and conservative
luminaries such as Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. Then,
at a town hall event for Donald Trump, the GOP frontrunner
cheerfully promised to “look into” the concerns
of a supporter who called President Obama a foreignborn
Muslim, ranted about Islamist training camps,
and declared, “We have a problem in this country—
it’s called Muslims.” Finally, on Meet the Press, GOP
presidential candidate Ben Carson said that he “would
absolutely not agree” with putting “a Muslim in charge of this
nation” as president. Carson’s bigoted view of Muslims is actually
“a majority sentiment” in today’s Republican Party, said Jonathan
Chait in NYMag.com. As the primaries loom, brace yourself for
more nasty appeals to “right-wing Islamophobia.”
Islamophobia is a myth, said Kyle Smith in The New York Post.
Since 9/11, liberals have searched in vain for “evidence, any evidence,
that Muslims are facing deep-seated discrimination,” and
all they’ve come up with are nonstories like Ahmed Mohamed’s.
Ahmed’s “clock,” let the record show, was a “scary tangle of
wires” that looked very much like a bomb, and he chose to bring
it to school in a “zero tolerance” era in which dozens of students,
mostly white Christians, have been suspended or arrested for
drawing guns on paper, mentioning guns in homework assignments,
or even just wearing National Rifle Association T-shirts.
As for Carson, said Jonah Goldberg in NationalReview.com, all he
said was that he personally wouldn’t vote for a Muslim president,
not that Muslims should be barred from the office.
How is that different from liberals openly scorning
candidates with strong Christian beliefs? The truth is
that “a candidate’s faith is deeply relevant,” and liberals
think so, too, when they’re not feigning politically
correct outrage. Besides, Islam isn’t just a religion, said
Andrew McCarthy, also in NationalReview.com. It’s an
entire “political-social ideology” that sets out very clear,
strict rules for how people should live their lives. Whether
liberals like to admit it or not, Islam is opposed to the
separation of church and state, free speech, democracy, and
freedom of religion. Carson was right: “Islamic ideology is
inconsistent with the Constitution.”
“The overwhelming majority of Muslim scholars
would disagree” with that view of their faith, said Michael Gerson
in The Washington Post. So would nearly all American Muslims,
who live happily in a secular society. By painting all of Islam as
extremist, violent, and inherently un-American, Carson is siding
not only with “the worst elements” of our society but also with
the Islamic extremists themselves. “Ben Carson is right about
something,” though, said Dean Obeidallah in TheDailyBeast.com.
Religious extremism is incompatible with democracy and the U.S.
Constitution—and that conflict is not purely theoretical. There
are several religious extremists running for president this year—all
of them Christian. Carson, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and
Ted Cruz all have bitterly complained that the Supreme Court had
no right to contradict the biblical definition of marriage, and all
insist that Kentucky clerk Kim Davis’ “religious freedom” trumps
her duties as a public official. So in accordance with “the Carson
doctrine,” all presidential candidates should be asked: Will you
pledge to place our Constitution above the Bible and your religious
beliefs? It will be fascinating to hear their responses.
