28 July 2010 Beautiful state ugly people

28 July 2010 Beautiful state ugly people


Director, Islamic Studies, U. of Delaware Muqtedar Khan Associate professor, political science and international relations; Fellow of the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding

“Sharia is based on Ten Commandments

“There is an emerging preemptive anti-Sharia movement in America as manifest by an Oklahoma legislator who is seeking to introduce a bill that will ban Sharia law in his state. Lt. Gov of Tennessee Ron Ramsey claimed recently that Islam was not even a religion and so Muslims should be exempted from the protections of the First Amendment. More and more Americans are beginning to think of Islamic religion as something to be feared and rejected.”

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/muqtedar_khan/2010/07/islamic_shariah_is_based_on_the_ten_commandments.html?hpid=talkbox1

The greatest benefit from this column will be found in the readers comments. They are the frightening part, as always.

I don’t agree with the entire premise in this article. While all religions tend to borrow from prior works, Sharia draws from other sources as surely as do Christianity and Judaism. Single source inspirations discovered by unlettered nomadic figureheads are entirely too convenient and the comparison offered here is the work of a religious legalist, not the careful construction of some long-ago prophet.

What is evident is the author’s intellect. Compare that with the decidedly un-learned utterances by Tennessee Lt. Governor Ramsey. Ramsey responded to a question by an equally un-learned supporter at a campaign appearance by declaring Islam a cult, not a religion, and indicating that it might be a nationality. He then went on to all but call for the removal of civil rights from Americans of Islamic faith.

Tennessee, like many Appalachian and southern states, has an unfortunate reputation for having poorly educated citizens of limited intellect and bigoted natures. The current election cycle has brought this depiction to the foreground. Ramsey’s campaign ads that are playing in N.E. TN, the incredibly beautiful portion of the state, are calculated to appeal to the poorly educated, unemployed, anti-intellectual, rural inhabitant. He attacks directly, not by innuendo, immigrants. By intentional slur, he attacks the U.S. government, non-Christians, progressives, who might vote for gun control, for abortion, and for universal health care, public education, and other matters that the GOP has traditionally opposed.

Ramsey has categorized Moslems as un-American, demanded that they drum others out of their faith, and continually pushes hatred of outsiders as a campaign plank. I see his television ads, read comments he made that are quoted in the local newspaper, and it is easy to see the danger he represents. He calls himself the “real conservative.” Translate that as white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant and you begin to see that stupidity, bigotry, racism, and intolerance are still valid campaign planks in the un-reconstructed “old South.” The GOP has played to this voter base since Nixon’s days. Reagan made it into a tradition. Today, it is just as ugly as when George Wallace carried the banner of “conservatism in the South.” Wallace, at least, was honest about his bigotry; while Ramsey has an ad agency and professional liars to cloak his message in words that let the voter pretend that he/she is voting for financial and political principles rather than voting to pretend that the Confederacy was morally correct, that a century of segregation was justified, and that the South should become a theocracy, ruled by the professionally incompetent, morally bankrupt, educationally-lacking.

I am seriously considering declaring myself to be a Republican in order to vote against Ramsey in the primary this week. But I won’t do that. Ramsey is running last in a three-way race. I’d like to know that my fellow citizens of Tennessee have the intellect and morality that can bring them to vote against Ramsey. November is another tale to be told.