JIHADIST MUSLIMS SIGN DOCUMENT THEY'LL LIKELY NEVER ADHERE TO
"American Charter of Freedom of Religion and Conscience"
The American Charter of Freedom of Religion and Conscience is an initiative of the Religious Freedom Institute in partnership with Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion with funding from the Templeton Religion Trust.
The American Charter of Freedom of Religion and Conscience is the result of a collaborative initiative to:
- Restore civility to public discourse on religion and freedom of religion and conscience in American society.
- Explore the meaning and value of freedom of religion and conscience as a foundation of American democracy and national and international prosperity.
- Build a multi-faith, non-partisan coalition working to affirm freedom of religion and conscience as a vital safeguard for people of all faiths and none.
ISLAM & FREEDOM DON'T MIX IN NEW CHARTER (PART ONE)
BY ANDREW HARROD
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Award-winning religion reporter Richard Ostling recently noted a “neglected story” from 2018, namely the November 29 signing of the American Charter of Freedom of Religion and Conscience. This deeply flawed document, “at 5,000 words needlessly repetitive” in his description, includes several nefarious exponents of political Islam in an initiative that will ultimately do little to promote freedom.The charter correctly emphasizes that religious freedom is a “fundamental right grounded in the dignity of the human person” and correspondingly notes the 1776 Declaration of Independence with its expression of natural law. America’s founding document is part of the “great tradition of freedom-loving peoples and their ringing declarations” such as the 1215 Magna Carta and the 1791 United States Constitution. This tradition evinces that “Americans’ political commitment to the Republic is rooted in deep pre-political conviction.”
The charter notes that religious freedom “has played an irreplaceable role in the story of our nation” and created “social capital…vital for human flourishing.” Correspondingly, the charter lauds the religious leadership in American reform movements, such as those against slavery and segregation. The charter thus announces its “distinctively American,” character while its authors universally “commend the vision, principles, and goals of the Charter to other nations.”
Yet the leadership of a prominent conservative Montana evangelical church (they believe in “young-Earth creationism” and that “Roman Catholicism is a counterfeit Christianity”) scorns the charter’s underlying ecumenical universalism. The church’s popular website Pulpit and Pen (PP) criticizes the fact that the charter “places oppressive religions like Islam in the same category as Christianity and credits them all with equal contributions to the American way of life.” While the American abolitionist and civil rights movements drew heavily upon Christian faith, the charter’s general terms are “gutting America of its theological underpinnings, minimizing its Christian heritage.”
The 19th-century French intellectual Alexis de Tocqueville provides compelling witness for PP’s valid observation that “America’s commitment to Christianity is responsible for its national exceptionalism.” American “pre-political” human rights values come from the “uniquely Christian doctrine” of mankind being made in the “Imago Dei.” By contrast, as the esteemed Catholic intellectual Robert Reilly has lucidly analyzed, Islamic orthodoxy’s denial that humanity shares a divine likeness has resulted in Islamic denigration of the human reason that underlies free societies.
Notwithstanding the charter’s prioritization of “pluralism” in America and abroad, observes the Christian commentator Cody Libolt, “some cultures are better than others.” The charter’s citation of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) among freedom’s “ringing declarations” ignores the fact that the UDHR resulted from centuries of human rights advocacy in which Christians were preeminent. All the other “ringing declarations” merely represent the “great tradition of freedom-loving peoples” in Anglo-American culture.
PP rightfully suspects that certain charter language would prevent policymakers from exercising precisely such necessary cultural awareness with respect to Islam. The charter vaguely opposes “any governmental policy that would discriminate against individuals or groups based on their religion.” The charter further condemns “rhetoric and actions by governmental leaders and others that demonize individuals or faith communities” or that “hold entire faith groups collectively responsible for the evil deeds of a few.” As PP observes, the charter apparently targets “policies like that threatened by President Trump” to “place a temporary moratorium on immigrants from primarily Islamic nations who want to destroy the United States.”
Review of the charter’s Muslim signatories only confirms PP’s wariness towards multiculturalism. Both Mohamed Magid and Sayyid Syeed, a man who wants to “to change the constitution of America” that is so praised by the charter, have not-so-“freedom-loving” pasts, as evidenced by both men’s leadership of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). This Muslim Brotherhood (MB)-derived organization and terrorism-financing unindicted co-conspirator demonstrated its continuing Islamic supremacism at ISNA’s 2018 annual conference with a rogue’s gallery of jihad terrorism apologists and Israel-haters.
Likewise Eftakhar Alam and Anwar Khan represent Islamic Relief USA, the American branch of another global MB organization known for antisemitism and terrorism support. Omar Suleiman’s apologetics for honor killings and sex slavery, along with his vicious antisemitism and Islamic myths that deny Jewish Temple Mount history, hardly befit the “dignity of the human person.” The Shiite Imam Hassan Al-Qazwini is similarly anti-Semitic, as indicated by his Dearborn, Michigan, Islamic Center of America hosting Louis Farrakhan as well as a 2010 memorial service for Hezbollah leader Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah.
“Free exercise of religion and conscience requires other fundamental rights also guaranteed by the First Amendment, including the freedoms of speech,” the charter proclaims, yet its Muslim signatories have consistently belied this sentiment. Al-Qazwini called in 2012 for censoring the internet film Innocence of Muslims as a form of incitement, while Suleiman has aided Google’s suppression of “Islamophobia.” Maha ElGenaidi wrote to Stanford University about her horrified opposition to a 2017 lecture by the “well-known national fomenter of Islamophobia,” Jihad Watch’s own Robert Spencer.
Similarly, Princeton University Muslim Life Coordinator and Chaplain Imam Sohaib Sultan tried to stop a 2009 address by the Egyptian-American Muslim convert to Christianity Nonie Darwish. His fellow signatory Asma Uddin once promoted the deranged leftist Israel-hater, academic fraud, and “Islamophobia” scam artist Nathan Lean at a Washington, DC, event by the Rumi Forum, part of the shadowy Islamic Fethullah Gülen network. She has correspondingly downplayed Islamic sharia law’s dangers and has wrongly argued that state law prohibitions on judicial application of foreign laws like sharia in violation of constitutional rights would ban private Islamic religious arbitration.
The Muslim charter signatory Usra Ghazi’s speech raises troubling questions of its own. She once responded to the internet sensation of a woman who wrote about concealing her Muslim identity to other Muslims, because she feared their condemnation for wearing traditionally non-Islamic female attire such as shorts. Ghazi argued that such “chastisement comes from a place of love” and is “taking really literally and personally the Koranic commandment [i.e. Quran 3:110] to enjoin good and forbid evil for the sake of the salvation of other Muslims.” While under the law in free societies such as America, she may debate such Islamic hijab dress codes for women, other women globally know from bitter personal experience how oppressive such Islamic enjoinment can be.
The charter proclaims with sacral invocations a religious freedom “commitment that is, at its heart, covenantal, based on a solemn and binding promise between citizens as embodied in the U.S. Constitution.” Yet the charter’s Muslim signatories inspire little confidence that they will embrace any such solemn commitment and its Western moral and theological underpinnings. By contrast, these dubious individuals will benefit from the legitimacy of associating with such a lofty-sounding charter and its implied opposition to “Islamophobia.” However, the charter will provide less benefit in protecting the religious freedom concerns of the charter’s often naïve non-Muslim signatories, as a forthcoming article will analyze.
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Islam and Freedom Don’t Mix in New Charter (Part II)
BY ANDREW HARROD
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
The November 29, 2018, American Charter of Freedom of Religion and Conscience claims as supporters a “multi-faith, non-partisan coalition” that includes several sharia supremacist charter signatories, as previously disclosed. Yet these and other dangers raise little alarm among the charter’s Christian signatories, who promote a flawed religious freedom defense.The disturbing Muslim charter signatories receive no critical corrective from non-Muslim signatories such as Charles Haynes, Religious Freedom Center (RFC) founding director at the Washington, DC, Newseum Freedom Forum Institute. While Haynes has written about the “Islamophobia” concern he shares with his fellow signatory and RFC colleague Asma Uddin, the RFC has welcomed noted British Salafists. In a parallel situation, the evangelical Bob Roberts has suggested censoring Innocence of Muslims while praising the extremist Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
Roberts has a longstanding relationship with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). His fellow evangelical signatory Chris Seiple has also had a similar lengthy relationship with Suhail Khan, an American Muslim with numerous close ISNA and other Muslim Brotherhood (MB) ties. The CATO Institute’s past laughable pronouncements on sharia law’s compatibility with libertarianism and dubious Muslim “libertarian” advisers meanwhile make suspect the credibility of signatory Ilya Shapiro, a CATO legal scholar.
The Catholic signatories such as conservative intellectual luminary Robert George always seem to show affection for all things Muslim, including his fellow charter signer and friend Hamza Yusuf, notwithstanding his radical affiliations. Similar outlooks are found among George’s fellow Catholics at Washington, DC’s Religious Freedom Institute (RFI), including its executive director Kent Hill, who over-optimistically advocates pro-life Christian-Muslim alliances. Georgetown University Professor Timothy Shah’s past policy prescriptions for Middle East Christians have likewise emphasized encouraging Muslim respect for religious freedom rather than Christian realpolitik defensive measures.
RFI’s Thomas Farr has carefully assessed strategies “to help Muslim reformers win the war of ideas” for religious liberty in Islamic societies, a key tool “to forestall religion-based violence and terrorism.” Yet he has concluded that, while Ground Zero Mosque initiative leader Faisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan “have said some highly inflammatory things, their lives of service and outreach belie the charge of extremism.” Farr would amaze National Review Online writers such as Andrew C. McCarthy and Ibn Warraq, who have amply demonstrated how “Rauf is a master of double talk and prevarication.”
Meanwhile, the Jewish leaders who signed the charter often profess leftist pieties about peace and multiculturalism, such as American Jewish Committee (AJC) general counsel Marc Stern. The AJC has drawn Jewish criticism for forming a Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council with ISNA while on the other hand not opposing affirmative action programs inimical to Jewish students. Rabbi Jack Moline has previously responded to jihadist violence not with criticism of Islamic doctrines, but rather with calls for gun control. Rabbi Michael G. Holzman is a member of the rabbinic cabinet for the George Soros-funded J Street, a leftist group with a fraudulent “pro-peace, pro-Israel” slogan.
Holzman and his fellow charter signer Usra Ghazi both supported statements opposing Israel’s 2014 campaign against Hamas terrorism in the Gaza strip. Ghazi signed a letter condemning “Israel’s illegal and immoral actions in the Occupied Territories” and calling for suspending military aid to Israel. Holzman issued a joint letter with the former ISNA president Mohamed Magid that presented Israel’s defense against Hamas’ jihadist aggression as a matter of “vengeance and blood-feud” and “tribal urges.”
Among all the charter signatories, the popular Baptist website Pulpit and Pen (PP) spotlighted Russell Moore, the leader of the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). PP noted his lifelong leftist tendencies at variance with the SBC’s Christian conservatives and his leading role in the Soros-funded Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT). EIT’s pro-immigration positions are fine with Moore, who has decried building a border wall as a “golden calf,” and with his “social justice warrior-companion,” the Hispanic evangelical and charter signatory Reverend Samuel Rodriguez.
While Moore and other Christian charter signers might seek good relations with leftists and Muslims, increasingly these groups are forming somewhat paradoxical red-green political alliances opposed to Christian conservatives. In particular, even Islamist groups such as ISNA have expressed support for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) laws that would punish Christians and others for opposing homosexuality and “transgender” gender dysphoria.
In contrast, the charter makes the critical concession that “[l]ike all human rights, freedom of religion and conscience is not absolute.” As a press release states, the
American Charter frankly acknowledges today’s controversies involving tensions involving freedom of religion and conscience, including those involving the equal protection of the laws and domestic security.The press release expresses the pious hope amidst the pelvic Left’s take-no-prisoners assault upon Christians and other traditional sexual morality supporters that what “unites us as Americans is greater than what we disagree” on. Invoking the “civility” mantra particularly in vogue among America’s modern Left, the charter states the desire to “counter the incivility of the last half century of culture-warring.” As Haynes has written in conjunction with Oliver Thomas from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the charter responds to a “divided, dangerous moment in our history.”
Correspondingly, one charter signatory, National Association of Evangelicals President Leith Anderson, has accepted a so-called compromise on SOGI laws paired with religious exemptions. Yet Farr has previously accurately reported from America’s culture wars that today the “greatest threat to religious freedom” is same-sex “marriage” proponents like the ACLU, who have “such anger and vindictiveness that it’s frightening.” Thus Moore and Rodriguez, among others, have rejected Anderson’s belief that religious exemptions could ever defuse the inherent threats of SOGI laws.
However, in the charter, notes Christian commentator Cody Libolt, Moore “continues his pattern of speaking up for non-Christians while saying nothing about the massive and escalating infringements of the rights of Christians in this country.” While the charter proffers peace to secular LGBT agendas and makes previously noted nods against “Islamophobia,” he is “taking a stand for groups that are known to take advantage of tolerance until they come to power.” Notwithstanding commitments to human equality, Libolt concludes, “principled Christians should not lift even one finger to assist the agenda of groups explicitly hostile to Christianity or to the security of our nation.”
No wonder PP dismisses as “feckless, cowering, ecumenical claptrap” the charter and its broad church of signatories. Among them appear religious freedom stalwarts and jihad opponents such as former representative Frank Wolf as well as Suhag Shukla, whose Hindu American Foundation promotes supremacist Hindutva Hindu nationalism. It is doubtful how much the American Charter, with its carefully calibrated compromises, code phrases against “Islamophobia,” and motley crew coalitions with groups varying in their sincerity towards liberty, will protect religious freedom.
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Freedom of religion and conscience: Restoring civility, protecting pluralism - Part 1
On September 13, 2017, Brookings hosted a discussion with the American Charter Project on the vital role that religious pluralism and freedom of religion and conscience play in fostering civility and unity in our democratic republic. https://www.brookings.edu/events/free... (transcript available)
PART 2
