From Tennessee To Pennsylvania, Some Good Old Christian Mania

By AM Monday, March 21, 2011

Share Tweet Share Share Email

Laws to criminalize a minority religion, formal government investigations into disloyalty from a minority group, violent attacks on their place of worship, and the intensity of the hate-mongering … Glenn Greenwald

Just prior to Peter King beginning his official witch hunt against US Muslims the state of Tennessee saw a bill proposed that would make it a felony to follow Sharia Law. Without equivocation Sharia Law, like Canon law, Rabinnic Law, Masonic Law, Demonic Law or any other religious law should have no more status in any society than the rules of the average golf club. Yet the idea that people should not be allowed to adhere to it in their own personal lives while refraining from inflicting it on those who do not want it, is anathema to democratic culture. Tersely put, those in a golf club should be allowed to follow the rules of the golf club insofar as they do not conflict with the rules of society. If they clash with the dominant societal culture so be it. That is a standard feature of democracy which functions by means of, rather than in spite of, a plurality of cultures.

Tennessee, if we need reminding, was home to the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 where the state proved itself very sympathetic to religious intolerance. Tennessee of course became the laughing stock of the world because of its idiocy, a crown it almost ceded to Pennsylvania in 2005 when in a Dover courtroom Christian crackpots took to the stand in a bid to have religion regarded as science. Pennsylvania’s saving grace was that science won the day and the right wing creationist Intelligent Design Movement was humiliated. At the end of last month Lauri Lebo, who covered the Dover Trial – and later went on to write a much acclaimed book about the matter, The Devil In Dover - wrote:

Now, more than 80 years after the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial” in Tennessee, creationism proponents are pushing for state legislation there that could make it easier for teachers to bring unscientific ideas back into the science classroom in public schools.

Christian intolerance is okay in Tennessee, but only Christian. It would not be so bad if the problem was constrained to a few Tennessee Hillbillies. But Ed Moloney, who now resides in the States, has drawn attention to a worrying phenomenon: the US is ‘a deeply and at times frighteningly racist country and in Muslims, white racists are able to indulge both their hatred for non-whites and for non-Christians.’

This makes the argument by the the blogger Atheist Ethicist all the more worrying because of the scenario he outlined: ‘Republicans in general have shown themselves to have a strong aversion to anything that even hints at a rational, scientific investigation of a problem.’

With that setting the tone Why wouldn’t Muslims have cause to be concerned about the Peter King witch hunt? When Alejandro Beutel of the Muslim Public Affairs Council protests that ‘what we're talking about is the demonization and criminalization of an entire American faith community here in our nation’ it is hard to find something to pull him up over.

A former member of the Bush administration, Suhail Khan, said:

We've seen this movie before -- whether it was the attacks on Jewish Americans during the Red Scare, on Catholics, on Japanese-Americans during World War II, on African-Americans and so many others who went through horrendous experiences.

A read through Michelle Goldberg’s book, Kingdom Coming, should suffice to show that Americans have enough to contend with from Christian Reconstructionists and their allies in the Intelligent Design Movement who really would drive the democratic, pluralist and scientific dimensions of American cultural and political life out of being and in its place the rule of the irrational and theocratic.

If Peter King really wants to root out theocratic fascists intent on subverting American democracy he could cast his eye in the direction of the Christians. Even then he would have no justification to persecute the entire Christian community because of the behaviour of a minority in its midst. Why should it be any different for Muslims?

Yet we know it is different. Take the case of the murderous Christian John Thomas who told police he used a rock in a sock to batter to death a 70 year old Pennsylvanian man, Murray Seidman, because the bible referred to stoning homosexuals. As Joshua Holland reports:

If the perpetrator were following the uglier dictates of another book of myths - say the Koran - then this would obviously reflect poorly on all his fellow adherents. As it stands ... well, just a lone nutter.