Friday, November 27, 2015

If "Sharia Law" As An Excuse For Massive Bigotry Why Not Canon Law? Why Not The Rules of The Mormon Church?

MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Tuesday night quizzed Rep. Steve King (R-IA) about the conservative congressman's belief that Muslim immigrants from the Middle East are largely unwilling to assimilate into American culture.

Hayes played a clip of King saying earlier on Tuesday that he has not seen an example of Muslim immigrants having "assimilated" into the U.S. The MSNBC host asked King if he could back up his statement.

"Well, Chris that’s a reference to groups of people, not individuals. Of course individuals have assimilated into the broader American society. But yeah, no one has shown me an example of large groups of people that have settled into America from that part of the world that have assimilated into the broader American society," King responded.

He listed places like Dearborn, Michigan, and Little Mogadishu in Minneapolis and said that those communities appear to be similar to Middle Eastern cities.

Hayes asked if King felt that those communities with concentrated populations of immigrants were different from Chinatown in New York City.

"Of course I do," King responded. "They bring with them Sharia law, which is completely contradictory to the Constitution itself. It’s incompatible with the Americanism."

Hayes then asked, "Do you think fundamentally Muslims from the Middle East are incompatible with American democracy?"

"I believe that Sharia law is incompatible with American democracy," King responded.

What a bald face lie, in no place in the United States does Sharia law enter into the legal code of the United States,  its only presence in the United States is as an internal matter among private citizens. It doesn't have the force of law in the United States on any but a strictly voluntary basis.  

The argument that Steve King makes is just a modern version of the accusation that if John Kennedy was elected that he would rule under the laws of the Catholic church or any other, similar line of bigotry which as gone out of style.   

The Republican Party is the fascist party of the United States, it is American style fascism and, with the Republican establishment nervous about a loose cannon like Donald Trump being the leader in the polls, they're counting on what they believe is the more sell-able fascism of Ted Cruz and Steve King to get them back into the White House.   Me?  I'd trust them less than I'd trust a big-mouthed bully boy like Trump.  Not that Cruz and King are far behind in their blatant appeals to bigots and know nothings.   

For you fans of irony, Steve King is a Roman Catholic. 

For comparison, here, from an old edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia 

Thus, John Jay, of New York, who afterwards became Chief Justice of the United States, succeeded in fastening upon the Constitution of his own state a provision which denied the privilege of citizenship to every foreign-born Catholic unless he would first abjure and renounce all allegiance to the pope in matters ecclesiastical. This provision remained in force until 1821, when the power and influence of the Federal party had well nigh disappeared. During the administration of the Federalist president, John Adams, 1798-1802, that same party forced the passage of the Alien Act, under which the president might expel from the county all aliens whom he might regard as disaffected towards the Government, as well as that other Act requiring a residence of fourteen years in the country before any foreign-born person could be admitted to citizenship. In brief, the Federalists were the Native Americans of their day, and Knownothingism, as the latest and, because of its excesses, the most odious manifestation of the Native American spirit, may be said to have had its genesis in the prejudices nursed by the Federalists against foreign-born citizens and in their intolerance of their fellow-citizens professing the Roman Catholic faith. These offensive, not to say unlawful, sentiments found numerous advocates, not only among political demagogues and aspirants for public office, but also in the pulpit and in the religious press of those days. The tide of immigration which had set in was largely Irish and soon became distinctively Catholic in character. One of the inducements to this immigration was the hope it held out of release from the civil disabilities and the religious proscription under which the immigrants had laboured in their native land. When, therefore, a powerful party was founded exerting itself to exclude these immigrants from the privilege of citizenship because of their race and creed, it was most natural that they and their co-religionists of whatever race should, as they did, ally themselves with the opposing political party which supported those principles of political equality and freedom of religion which had been proclaimed as distinctive principles of the American scheme of government. The growing immigration and the increase in the number of naturalized citizens strengthened the party with which these immigrants had become identified, and the extension of their political influence, as shown at the elections, was used by the advocates of proscription as a justification of their policy. Throughout the various Native American and Knownothing movements which America has witnessed, political hostility and religious prejudice, the one supplementing the other, appear as the motive and inspiration. Knownothingism was only the development and application of the principles of Native Americanism whose character and origin we have briefly sketched.

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