Monday, June 20, 2011

Defend Muslims, Defend America By Aziz Huq - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/opinion/20huq.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

New York Times

The Opinion Pages

Op-Ed Contributor

Defend Muslims, Defend America

By AZIZ HUQ
Published: June 19, 2011
Chicago

WITH an eye toward the 2012 elections, legislators in six states have been debating laws explicitly prohibiting courts from considering or using Sharia law, with 14 more looking at wider bans on “foreign law.” They’re taking a clear cue from Oklahoma’s wildly popular Sharia ban, which voters approved as a state constitutional amendment last year by more than 70 percent.


Such laws are discriminatory and pointless. Civil liberties groups are fighting them in court and calling on state legislators to abandon such bills. But there is an additional reason everyone, including would-be proponents of the laws and the federal government, should oppose them: they pose a significant threat to national security.

To begin with, the bans’ justifications are thin. Despite the worries voiced by candidates in the recent Republican candidates’ debate in New Hampshire, no state, county or municipality is about to realign its laws with religious doctrine, Islamic or otherwise. Nor does any state or federal court today in Oklahoma, or anywhere else, need to enforce a foreign rule repugnant to public policy. Under the legal system’s well-established “choice of law” doctrines, the courts are already unlikely to help out someone who claims their religion allows, say, the subordination or mistreatment of women.

Instead, the bans would deprive Muslims of equal access to the law. A butcher would no longer be able to enforce his contract for halal meat — contracts that, like deals for kosher or other faith-sanctioned foods, are regularly enforced around the country. Nor could a Muslim banker seek damages for violations of a financial instrument certified as “Sharia compliant” since it pays no interest.

Moreover, these bans increase bias among the public by endorsing the idea that Muslims are second-class citizens. They encourage and accelerate both the acceptability of negative views of Muslims and the expression of those negative views by the public and government agencies like the police.

Such indignities arise amid a pattern of growing animus toward American Muslims. Reports of employment discrimination against Muslims to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which declined after a post-9/11 peak, have recently surged. Gallup, Pew and ABC polls confirm a new spike in anti-Muslim views. Most troubling, tallies of hate crimes collected by nongovernmental organizations show the same trend.

In this context, bans like the one in Oklahoma will serve to chill cooperation by the Muslim-American community with counterterrorism efforts. This makes sense: in such an environment, it would be fair for Muslims to pause before, say, passing on a lead to the police, worrying about whether the police would then look at them with suspicion as well.
But the likelihood of such a chill is also supported by four large, random-sample surveys that I conducted with two colleagues, Tom Tyler and Stephen Schulhofer. Our data, collected from Muslims and non-Muslims in New York and London, suggest that the experience and perception of private discrimination have a significant negative effect on cooperation.

This not only affects everyday public safety, but also the interaction necessary to gather information about self-radicalization and domestic efforts to recruit terrorists. After all, it’s simply impossible for the government to gather all that information. For that it must rely on the public, both as a filter and as an aid in interpreting it. If the government lacks strong ties to the Muslim-American community, that kind of filter falls apart.

To prevent the erosion of such support, the Justice Department should better publicize its support for a pending challenge to the Oklahoma amendment. It should also announce that it will challenge similar measures as violations of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion. Doing so would not only protect the rights of Muslim-Americans, but also send a signal that they can rely on the federal government’s support.

To be sure, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has taken steps against anti-Muslim bias, for example by supporting a California schoolteacher’s suit challenging her dismissal for taking time off to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. But these steps are inadequate compared to the scope of public and private discrimination facing Muslim-Americans.

America has been here before. In 1952, Attorney General James P. McGranery filed a legal brief for the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education, in part, he said, out of national security concerns. “Racial discrimination furnishes grist for Communist propaganda mills,” he said, and “raises doubts even among friendly nations as to the intensity of our devotion to the democratic faith.”

McGranery’s insight remains true today. The federal government needs to do more to defend equal access to the law regardless of faith. To do so is not simply to uphold our core values — it is also to work to improve our nation’s security.

Aziz Huq is an assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago.

Christians are more militant than Muslims, says British Government's equalities boss - The Telegraph - UK

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8584030/Christians-are-more-militant-than-Muslims-says-Governments-equalities-boss.html#.Tf5Sm_U1hdc;email

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Christians are more militant than Muslims, says Government's equalities boss

Muslims are integrating into British society better than many Christians, according to the head of the Government's equality watchdog.

Trevor Phillips, Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission
Trevor Phillips, Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission  Photo: GRAHAM JEPSON



Jonathan Wynne Jones
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent
9:00PM BST 18 Jun 2011


Comments1873 Comments


Trevor Phillips warned that "an old time religion incompatible with modern society" is driving the revival in the Anglican and Catholic Churches and clashing with mainstream views, especially on homosexuality.

He accused Christians, particularly evangelicals, of being more militant than Muslims in complaining about discrimination, arguing that many of the claims are motivated by a desire for greater political influence.

However the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission expressed concern that people of faith are "under siege" from atheists whom he accused of attempting to "drive religion underground".

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph ahead of a landmark report on religious discrimination in Britain, he said the Commission wants to protect Christians and Muslims from discrimination, admitting his body had not been seen to stand up for the people discriminated against because of their faith in the past.

In a wide-ranging intervention into the debate over the role of religion in modern Britain, Mr Phillips:

* warned it had become "fashionable" to attack and mock religion, singling out atheist polemicist Richard Dawkins for his views;

* said faith groups should be free from interference in their own affairs, meaning churches should be allowed to block women and homosexuals from being priests and bishops;

* attacked hardline Christian groups which he said were picking fights - particularly on the issue of homosexuality - for their own political ends;

* told churches and religious institutions they had to comply with equality legislation when they delivered services to the public as a whole.

The report, published by the Commission tomorrow, says that some religious groups have been the victims of rising discrimination over the last decade.

It shows that in the course of the last decade, the number of employment tribunal cases on religion or belief brought each year has risen from 70 to 1000 - although only a fraction of cases were upheld.

Mr Phillips spoke after a series of high-profile cases which have featured Christians claiming they have been discriminated against because of their beliefs, with a doctor currently fighting a reprimand from the General Medical Council for sharing his faith with a patient.

While the equalities boss promised to fight for the rights of Christians, he expressed concern that many cases were driven by fundamentalist Christians who are holding increasing sway over the mainstream churches because of the influence of African and Caribbean immigrants with "intolerant" views.

In contrast, Muslims are less vociferous because they are trying to integrate into British "liberal democracy", he said.

"I think there's an awful lot of noise about the Church being persecuted but there is a more real issue that the conventional churches face that the people who are really driving their revival and success believe in an old time religion which in my view is incompatible with a modern, multi-ethnic, multicultural society," Phillips said.

"Muslim communities in this country are doing their damnedest to try to come to terms with their neighbours to try to integrate and they're doing their best to try to develop an idea of Islam that is compatible with living in a modern liberal democracy.

"The most likely victim of actual religious discrimination in British society is a Muslim but the person who is most likely to feel slighted because of their religion is an evangelical Christian."
Senior clergy, including Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, have attacked equality laws for eroding Christianity and stifling free speech, but Phillips said many of the legal cases brought by Christians on issues surrounding homosexuality were motivated by an attempt to gain political influence.

"I think for a lot of Christian activists, they want to have a fight and they choose sexual orientation as the ground to fight it on," he said.

"I think the whole argument isn't about the rights of Christians. It's about politics. It's about a group of people who really want to have weight and influence."

He added: "There are a lot of Christian activist voices who appear bent on stressing the kind of persecution that I don't think really exists in this country."

However, Mr Phillips, who is a Salvationist from a strong Christian background, expressed concern over the rise in Britain of anti-religious voices, such as Richard Dawkins, who are intolerant of people of faith.

"I understand why a lot of people in faith groups feel a bit under siege," he said.

"There's no question that there is more anti-religion noise in Britain.

"There's a great deal of polemic which is anti-religious, which is quite fashionable."

Phillips said that the Commission is committed to protecting people of faith against discrimination and also defended the right of religious institutions to be free from Government interference.

The Church of England is under pressure to allow openly gay clergy to be made bishops, while the Catholic Church only permits men to be priests, but the head of the Government-funded equalities watchdog said they are entitled to rule on their own affairs.

"The law doesn't dictate their organisation internally, in the way they appoint their ministers and bishops for example," he said.

"It's perfectly fair that you can't be a Roman Catholic priest unless you're a man. It seems right that the reach of anti-discriminatory law should stop at the door of the church or mosque.

"I'm not keen on the idea of a church run by the state.

"I don't think the law should run to telling churches how they should conduct their own affairs."
The intervention by the Commission comes after criticism of its £70 million annual budget, which is to be cut drastically.

Mr Phillips, a former Labour chairman of the Greater London Assembly and television producer was criticised for his £110,000 a year salary and was accused of "pandering to the right" by Ken Livingstone, the former Labour London mayor, for saying that multiculturalism had failed.
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I have never felt as racist as I do right now.Had these immigrants just taken our gift of citizenship with some sort of gratitude, racism might be largely redundant.
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is he talking about the 2000 reported groups of muslims planning mass slaughter of our women and children. Is that what he calls integration . What about the racist  muslims paedophile gangs grooming our kids . Trevor phillips has forgot to mention this so i have mentioned it for him. For a public servant on the best part of a million pounds a year he has done abosolutely nothing for the white population of this country EVER
sarpedon1
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"In contrast, Muslims are less vociferous because they are trying to integrate into British "liberal democracy", he said."

You've got to be kidding me!  Helen Keller would be more observant than this man..  and Goebbels, on his best day, couldn't utter that statement.

Britain, where have you gone? 

Why are you allowing the inmates to run the asylum?

The wages of Political Correctness is loss of freedom.

Equality equals freedom.
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We,so called hard line Telegraph readers, who don't believe in the liberal minorities ruling the roost over the majority of the country, are the only hope this country has.

Liberals like Martyj can castigate us for our unwavering belief that Britain is a Christian country,or that marraige is one of sanctity between a man and a woman.But the irony here is that should any of the said minorities,such as the gays, become persecuted under the upcoming Islamic fascist regime that Europe is about to adopt,then we Telegraph readers are the real muscular liberals they will want on their side.People like Philips will run for the hills while the very people who are derided for their Conservative views  will be the ones standing tall.

So,I say to you liberal idiots:be kind to us, for one day you will need our help.
WARNING: David sparks is not who he says he is
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Muslims are better integrated into British society than Christians?  In words of one syllable, you Brits are out of your tree!
DirtClod
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Phillips is a typical black racist- Christianity has always been viewed by black racists as "the white man's religion"..and Islam as the brown man's...regardless of the fact that MANY Muslim's kill black Christians and other black Muslims...this is what racial hatred does to you Mr Phillips-makes you an idiot and open to all sorts of ignorant thinking.
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Denial is not just a river in egypt....somebody please ask him what color is the sky in his little world
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"Muslims are integrating into British society better than many Christians,
according to the head of the Government's equality watchdog.

"

So let's see if I have this right: a Christian (Anglican and Catholic) society exists.  Muslims emigrate.  The Muslims "integrate" better than the existing society?  How, exactly, does that work?  It's utterly nonsensical.

Let's say my family invites someone into our home for a student-exchange program.  What does integration into our family look like?  Does it look like our abandoning our foundational principles and morals as a family to "accommodate" our guests? 

Because from where I sit, it seems to me that British society is bending over backwards to accommodate Muslims into their society . . . and now being bashed for not going far enough?  British society is not the problem here; it is what it is.  That it doesn't fit a completely different culture, worldview, belief system is not surprising, but why is it assumed that the Brits need to change their own culture and heritage to accommodate alien foreigners?  And exactly how far do they have to go?  All the way to the global caliphate?  Because nothing less will appease Islam--both the religion and the political movement.
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maybe because "christians" are a minority in this country now....

I find this both racist and discriminitory.. This coming from a government official too....

We need a change....


Why do we keep allowing our own government to belittle us, take away our freedoms and tax us to hell. For what? for them to call us all terrorists and worse than muslims?
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Time to get rid of this particular quango.
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Britain needs a bonfire of the vanities. Quangos like this are the ultimate manifestation of the vanity of the left.
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Would help if they removed the bible from churches and replaced it with Dawkins, same with mosques, schools should teach Dawkins and not religion, mind you Dawkins is becoming a religion to.

But my view of this guys motives is that he's drumming up work, he certainly isn't calming tensions.
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That would be equivalent to removing science texts from laboratories and science sections of libraries and replacing them with Bibles, Qurans and Sutras and the like.

In other words, it would be STUPID beyond belief!

Who's the magical "they" that would have the authority to barge into churches or mosques and perpetrate this stupidity anyway?

Jackbooted atheist stormtroopers perhaps?


BTW - Dawkins is one particular individual proponent of science, not a subject in and of himself.
DirtClod
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Oh ya John and we see how Godless atheist societies treated their fellow men..Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler- hundreds of millions dead.
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Trevor has lost his mind or just wanted some publicity for his department. Should be made redundant IMHO
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Possibly the most dangerous man in the UK & a bigger threat to our culture than Adolph Hitler.
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I posted here a few days ago, but haven't time to go through all the responses.  I wonder whether there is ANYONE who has defended Phillips' utterances?
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One does not try to defend the indefensible.
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Yep, a few of the usual useful idiots, martyj being the prime example and I'm sure nzafar has poked his nose in at some stage.
Hmmm...either you can't read, or purposefully talk bullsh1t...

At no point have I said that what's claimed above that Phillips said was a good thing. What I DID say was that the text and the quotes are completely different to what many of the more mentally challenged cases on here like yourself believe him to have said.


For example, he didn't say British Christians had to do more, nor did he say they were more militant in the aggressive sense posters took from the word used by the Telegraph. He said Christians had recently felt threatened; become more organised and vociferous; groups with a political agenda could take advantage of that; and that his group were perceived not to have done enough to support that, so they would make some changes.

Understood that? If not, just read through again, and ask for help if necessary. Now no offence, but unlike you, my little BNP chum, I've got work in the morning...
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This imbecile comes out with an outrageous statement every couple of years, or so, to justify his non-job to the Left-wing loonies that put him there.   We can't remove him so he's better ignored for the cretin that he is.