Of Muslims, Mosques and Morons

WARNING: Political con­tent ahead!

Sometimes I won­der if the lead­er­ship of the Democratic Party isn’t infested with Republican moles (cue the cries from the false – equiv­a­lency brigade that all politi­cians are hor­ri­ble). If not, then they cer­tainly epit­o­mize the words of wis­dom offered by the ven­er­a­ble Dark Helmet, “Evil will always win, because Good is stupid.”

Take, for instance, the over­all reac­tion to the reports of a new poll show­ing that one in five of the inbred hicks that make up the pop­u­lous of this nation believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim. The Democratic lead­er­ship, as usual, is flail­ing about try­ing to main­tain some sort of worth­less air of sophis­ti­ca­tion, when the only sane response should be the fol­low­ing; prefer­ably deliv­ered by Obama dur­ing prime time from the Oval Office:

My fel­low Americans. Recently a poll was con­ducted in which it was deter­mined that one-fifth of you believe me to be a Muslim. I come to you tonight to set the record straight.

First of all, my reli­gious beliefs, or lack thereof, are a per­sonal mat­ter and have no bear­ing on the gov­er­nance of this great nation. In their great wis­dom the Founding Fathers of this nation enshrined in the very first amend­ment to the Constitution of the United States the notion that every per­son has the undis­puted right to prac­tice the reli­gion of their choice, or to not prac­tice reli­gion at all. This free­dom of reli­gion is one of the cor­ner­stones of our soci­ety, and fun­da­men­tally sep­a­rates us from the reli­gious ide­o­logues such as the ones who mas­ter­minded and per­pe­trated the vile acts of ter­ror­ism that shook this coun­try on September 11^th 2001.

Having said that, I will affirm that I am a Christian, not because there is a spe­cial virtue in that fact but to high­light the false­hoods that are being spread by mem­bers of the media such as Fox News and par­ti­san mem­bers of the Republican Party. For too long the media has been allowed to shame­lessly pro­mote patent untruths offered by mem­bers of the Republican Party regard­ing myself, mem­bers of my admin­is­tra­tion and leg­is­la­tion that we are attempt­ing to imple­ment. The very same First Amendment that guar­an­tees us all the right to choose our own reli­gious beliefs also guar­an­tees us the right to free­dom of expres­sion, but it does not guar­an­tee that lies will go unchallenged.

Earlier I spoke of the hor­ri­ble tragedy of 9/11. Right now there is debate under­way regard­ing the site of that tragedy and the ques­tion of if a Muslim com­mu­nity cen­ter should be allowed to be located near that site. The very fact that we are hav­ing that debate, along with the fact that the ques­tion of my reli­gion is even con­sid­ered ger­mane aptly demon­strate how the media and mem­bers of the Republican Party have used a base­less fear of Islam to manip­u­late pub­lic opin­ion. Islam, like any other reli­gion, has both ide­o­logues and ide­al­ists, dem­a­gogues and dream­ers. That the Cordoba House should gen­er­ate any more con­tro­versy than a Jewish or Catholic com­mu­nity cen­ter is shame­ful. In the words of Ted Olson, who lost is wife to this very act of ter­ror­ism, “We don’t want to turn an act of hate against us by extrem­ists into an act of intol­er­ance for peo­ple of reli­gious faith.”

Well, I can dream can’t I.