I am far removed from being anything even remotely related to a constitutional scholar or expert or hobbyist or bemused enthusiast, although enthusiastic admirer of the American constitution I certainly am - but regardless, to me, reading the first amendment and the guaranteeing of free speech and the right of assembly etc etc - ya know, the concrete upon which democracy is built - I find it it revealing that the establishment clause precedes the free speech stuff - as if the founders saw religion as a threat to free speech and so wanted to settle that question first - which I take to be the point of the establishment clause ie this amendment is all about sanctifying not god or religion, but free speech. Seems to me in defining the threat of Islam to the western tradition it’s there where you have to start - yes, our constitution guarantees freedom of religion but it does so for the explicit purpose of safeguarding free speech - if the goal of your religion is to suppress and abrogate free speech, in other words if the goal of your religion is to void the first amendment and thusly upend the very idea of democracy as the founders understood it and attempted to enshrine in the constitution thereof - then what does that say about your religion vis a vis deserving protection? If Hitler had been a pontiff and Nazism therefore a religious movement, would the founders have judged Nazism consequently fit for protection?
Of course the founders were well educated and clearly understood the dangers of politicised religion - but also understood as christians, an inherently apolitical religion, that Judaism and Islam had robust political components to them - and so, as it relates to the first amendment, how did they view religions that were, unlike Christianity, inherently political? Did they see protection of speech as enough of an antidote to this poison? Was this an oversight, the thought of Islam and Judaism playing much of a role in American life seeming so remote at the time? Or was it that contra Islam history had bequeathed to Judaism a very different relationship with Western values and therefore it’s only Islam that the founders failed to consider seriously as a religion that did not fit very well with the establishment clause? I dunno - possibly the problem is addressed in the Federalist Papers - still, we’re getting to the kernel of why Islam is a problem, no?
Anyway, point being Andrew McCarthy over at NRO nails the ‘Muslim’ question and properly frames what I usually refer to as the rationalists’ approach to the threat posed by Islamism and Islamist ideology - the threat of Islam is not the faith per se, but rather its political component as it exists robustly in the more fundamentalist expressions of the religion. You have to focus on the political dynamic when talking about Islam, not only because that’s where the danger lies - but also because only by raising the debate to a rational argument about politics can you immunise yourself against charges of racism and open the door for moderate Muslims, who understand what the problem is, to enter the discussion. Of course the left is still going to hurl charges of racism against you because they have no other options for ‘defending’ their point of view - but at least by focusing relentlessly on the political argument you can mitigate the damage - because the debate about Islam has absolutely nothing to do with race and everything to do with a highly problematic political culture the religion advocates - and ‘advocates’ is too soft a word - as more than one prominent Muslim has said, Islam and the state are one and the same thing - and that’s a big problem if you believe in Western values and democracy.
