Shouldn’t America Practice Separation of Mosque and State As Well?

Without a doubt, the United States of America is the greatest experiment in freedom and liberty in all of mankind’s history on this planet. Our ancestors migrated to this ‘New World’ centuries ago in large part to escape religious persecution and have the freedom to exercise, or not exercise the religion of their choice, without fear of repercussion from the state for deviating from a “State Religion.”

Nowhere has this concept been shown better than after gaining our Independence from Britain’s King George and putting a constitution in place, our founding fathers wrote in the very first of our 10 Bill of Rights, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…” Placed before all other rights, our freedom to practice the religion of our choice, unhampered by the state was established.

For most of our history, Christianity, in all of its various factions was the predominant religion, alongside Judaism, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and others to much smaller degrees. Still, everybody practiced freely with few if any problems. Communities held Christian ceremonies and holidays while showing honor and respect to the smaller religions when they held their holidays and ceremonies.

Many of my teachers when growing up were Jewish who all received days off to recognize their holidays. We recited the Lord’s Prayer every morning until the early 1960’s when an atheist woman successfully had prayers in school banned nationwide, citing “separation of church and state,” a concept not recognized in our country until a 1947 Supreme Court Ruling in Everson v. Board of Education that relied on a few words contained in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists stating, “... I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

Since then, we have seen a very gradual expansion of just what is said to be religious expression in government. Prayers once common in school were banned. Displays of the 10 Commandments were demanded removed from court houses and judges courts. Christmas Nativity scenes banned from display in government buildings and public parks unless all other religions holy days were equally displayed. Veterans Memorials containing a cross torn down or lawsuits filed to have them torn down. Military Chaplains cautioned on sermons concerning Jesus. It’s almost as if Christianity, still the majority religion in the country has been consigned to the dark back corners of a closet, ridiculed and banned all over.

Judaism, while more tolerated has seen a rise in anti-Semitism, especially as Palestinian groups continue to launch wave after wave of propaganda concerning Israel, expressed in the Charter of Hamas as, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” Subsequent claims of no longer holding that view are specious at best and not to be trusted as Hamas continues to launch rocket attacks into Israel from Gaza nearly every day.

Although that concept of a “wall of separation between church and state” remains firmly entrenched, meaning to me that religion is not to hold influence in government; Islam appears to gaining influence in government.

While Christianity is all but kept out of schools, efforts in our state to include Islamic studies in public schools is sparking outrage.

Iranian born Gubernatorial candidate Shahram Hadian, a former Muslim who founded the TIL Project to expose creeping influence of Islamic religion into government with hopes of imposing oppressive Sharia law, denounced efforts by The Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) to grant special accommodations for Muslim students that are not granted Christian students in school.

In September 2010, the Texas State Board of Education “approved a one-page nonbinding resolution urging textbook publishers to limit what they print about Islam in world history books, by a 7-5 vote,” in hopes of curtailing what they viewed as “a creeping Middle Eastern influence in the nation’s publishing industry.”

A Massachusetts school district ended up having to issue and apology to parents of sixth graders for a September 2010 “field trip” to a nearby Mosque where the children did not just observe Muslim services, but were “separated by gender and the boys were asked to join the Muslim adults in their prayer.”

While there, a spokeswoman for the mosque was videotaped telling students, “You have to believe in Allah, and Allah is the one God, the only one worthy of worship, all forgiving, all merciful.”

Can you imagine how fast the ACLU would file a lawsuit against any school district who took 6th graders to a Cathedral or Synagogue where they were instructed as they were in the Mosque or urged to participate in religious services?

More recently, a young Christian student in Grand Junction, Colorado drew attention for quitting a school choir after he was supposed to sing a song “composed in the style of Islamic prayer chants.” Efforts to remove the song from the program were rebuked by the Choir leader and others within the school system with the claim of “bringing diversity to the students and showing them other things that are out there.” This, as we see increased pressure for traditional Christmas music not to be played around Christmas time.

Days ago we see Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs blog in an effort to counter an anti-Catholic ad ran in the New York Times that urged Catholics to abandon their religion over their refusal to abandon a basic tenet of their religion by Barack Obama, rebuked by the New York Times who won’t run her identical ad urging Muslims to come out of Islam.

I first broached this notion of “Separation of Mosque and State” back in July 2007 in my earlier days of blogging where I posted then condemnations of all prayers in schools by atheist groups who strangely enough, remained silent on several inclusions and accommodations to Islam back then.

I brought out a San Diego school adjusting its schedule to accommodate Muslim worship.

We see back in 2007 where some schools were granting special treatment to Muslim students so they could practice their worship during school hours.

In October 2011 an American Judge Ruled American Courts Can Use Sharia Law in settling cases.

Do you think the ACLU would tolerate a Judge ruling it was proper for courts to settle cases based on Biblical scripture?

More and more every day we see this concept of no religious influence in government chipped away as under the cry of “diversity,” Islam is allowed publicly where Christianity is not.

I’m not a particularly religious person, but if we are to truly honor the spirit Separation of Church and State, keeping religious influence out of government and schools, then we must also begin imposing a “Wall of Separation Between Mosque and State as well.”

If not, our offspring just may end up with a State Religion, something our founders abhorred.