Why do Americans increasingly distrust the establishment media? Aside from its rampant and ever-growing record of dishonesty, deceit, and unfairness, there are articles such as this one, featuring such spectacularly poor reasoning that it is astonishing that even The Atlantic let it get through their system. Are The Atlantic’s editors, and its audience as well, such limited thinkers that no one caught how ridiculous this piece is with its leaps of logic, ad hominems, and logical fallacies by the bushel?
Beinart should beware, as he commits himself to the proposition that all opposition to jihad terror and Sharia oppression constitute a desire to restrict Muslims’ religious freedom. Would he, then, agree with attorney Mary Chartier that to prosecute those who mutilate girls’ genitals is restricting Muslims’ religious freedom? That would open the door to a host of other exercises of Muslim religious freedom that Beinart might not find so appealing.
Much more below.
“When Conservatives Oppose ‘Religious Freedom,'” by Peter Beinart, The Atlantic, April 11, 2017:
On March 28, Pamela Geller, co-founder of the group Stop Islamization of America, wrote a column on Breitbart that offered Donald Trump some advice: “Clean house.” Paul “Ryan has got to go. James Comey, too,” she urged. Then she added a more obscure name: “What’s Eric Treene still doing there?”
Treene, the Special Counsel for Religious Discrimination in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, is at first glance an odd Breitbart target. For starters, he’s a conservative evangelical Christian. His denomination, The Presbyterian Church in America, opposes abortion and gay marriage, and ordains only men….
Despite all this, Treene has become a reviled figure on the Trump-era right. His sin: defending the religious freedoms of American Muslims. Treene, declares Geller, serves as an “errand boy” for “Muslim Brotherhood operatives,” by which she means the leaders of America’s major Muslim organizations.
Beinart’s quotations don’t match his claims. Treene isn’t “reviled,” and he isn’t criticized for “defending the religious freedoms of American Muslims.” Note how Beinart repeats Geller’s charges without examining whether they’re true or false; this is a tried-and-true Leftist tactic: present opposing views as if they were self-evidently false, without bothering to refute them. Beinart doesn’t tell his hapless readers that Treene at the Justice Department was repeatedly kowtowing to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), both of which have demonstrable ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Apparently Beinart thinks that if you don’t cozy up to terror-linked Muslim groups, you must want to restrict Muslims’ religious freedom.
And it’s not just Geller. Treene’s work has also come under attack from his fellow Christian conservatives. When the Justice Department filed an amicus brief defending a Muslim prisoner’s right to grow a beard in 2014, Robert Spencer, who the National Catholic Register has called the “foremost Catholic expert on Islam in our country,”accused Treene and his colleagues of believing that “wherever Islamic law and American law conflict, American law must give way.…
Beinart doesn’t bother to mention that the defense argued that “inmate beards could pose a security risk to guards and the public.” Such details would interfere with his “conservatives want to restrict Muslims’ religious freedom” narrative.
An article in the conservative Catholic magazine Crisis slammed Becket’s support for the mosque in Murfreesboro. So did a Tennessee-based Christian group calledProclaiming Justice to the Nations, whose president sits on the President’s Council of the powerful National Religious Broadcasters association. And this March, the NRB came out strongly against Becket’s position, declaring that “Islam” and “sharia” are “absolutely antithetic [sic] to freedom of speech, freedom of religion or freedom of the press.”
This shift in public opinion has left pro-Muslim Christian conservatives vulnerable to populist challenge.
Here again: is what Beinart’s targets saying ipso facto false, as he would have you believe, or are there good reasons for taking these positions?
Legitimate concerns about mosques? No, for Beinart it’s all bigotry. Yet four separate studies since 1999 all found that 80% of U.S. mosques were teaching jihad, Islamic supremacism, and hatred and contempt for Jews and Christians. There are no countervailing studies that challenge these results. In 1998, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi leader, visited 114 mosques in the United States. Then he gave testimony before a State Department Open Forum in January 1999, and asserted that 80% of American mosques taught the “extremist ideology.” Then there was the Center for Religious Freedom’s 2005 study, and the Mapping Sharia Project’s 2008 study. Each independently showed that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule.In the summer of 2011 came another study showing that only 19% of mosques in U.S. don’t teach jihad violence and/or Islamic supremacism. Specifically: “A random survey of 100 representative mosques in the U.S. was conducted to measure the correlation between Sharia adherence and dogma calling for violence against non-believers. Of the 100 mosques surveyed, 51% had texts on site rated as severely advocating violence; 30% had texts rated as moderately advocating violence; and 19% had no violent texts at all. Mosques that presented as Sharia adherent were more likely to feature violence-positive texts on site than were their non-Sharia-adherent counterparts. In 84.5% of the mosques, the imam recommended studying violence-positive texts. The leadership at Sharia-adherent mosques was more likely to recommend that a worshiper study violence-positive texts than leadership at non-Sharia-adherent mosques. Fifty-eight percent of the mosques invited guest imams known to promote violent jihad. The leadership of mosques that featured violence-positive literature was more likely to invite guest imams who were known to promote violent jihad than was the leadership of mosques that did not feature violence-positive literature on mosque premises.” That means that around 1,700 mosques in the U.S. are preaching hatred of infidels and justifying violence against them.
Sharia meanwhile, mandates death for one who “mentions something impermissible about Allah, the Prophet, or Islam,” (‘Umdat al-Salik 011.10(5).) Freedom of speech and of the press? Not quite. And as for freedom of religion, yes, Sharia guarantees it, as long as the subjugated non-Muslims “pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29).
Conservative Christians who remain committed to religious freedom for Muslims, and even a Christian-Muslim alliance based on shared conservative views, face a fundamental problem. They have fewer and fewer supporters in the pews. The University of North Carolina’s Charles Kurzman notes that between 2001 and 2010, according to an average of nine polls taken during that period, 29 percent of Republicans expressed negative views of Muslims. If you average the nine polls taken since then, the figure jumps to 58 percent. White evangelicals harbor more negative views of Muslims than do any other religious group. Seventy-six percent of them, according to a February Pew survey, backed Donald Trump’s travel ban.
Note the sleight of hand. Do people’s negative views of Muslims mean that they want to restrict Muslims’ religious freedom? Of course not.
This shift in public opinion has left pro-Muslim Christian conservatives vulnerable to populist challenge. In 2014, Robert P. George, a Becket board member, wrote a manifesto in the journal First Things entitled “Muslims, Our Natural Allies.”
He was immediately attacked by Spencer, who along with Geller co-founded Stop Islamization of America. Intellectually, it’s not much of a contest. George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton. Spencer lacks any academic affiliation, and does not even have a PhD….
This, Mr. Beinart, is known as the “argument from authority.” It is classified as the weakest of all arguments, and it’s easy to see why: any fool knows that being a professor with a PhD doesn’t automatically mean that in any dispute with a non-professor without a PhD, the professor will be correct. There are idiots with PhDs, especially nowadays, and geniuses without them. Beinart doesn’t bother to address the substance of my criticism of George; in fact, he links in his piece only to the last of my six-page article, which contained my summation but no evidence — as if to suggest that I hadn’t presented any. In any case, Beinart doesn’t seem to have a PhD either; that means that if a PhD disagrees with him on anything, he will have to apologize and retract his statement. Again, any fool could see the fallacy in this. But there are fools, and then there is Peter Beinart.
Dawn says
Yeah sure you all the freedom you want and more.
somehistory says
I don’t want anyone to have the freedom from prosecution to murder, commit rape, force their ways on others, and a multitude of other things that moslims are infamous for doing.
If that is considered *restricting a moslims religious freedom*…well then., too bad.
underbed cat says
We can stop all this nonsense….once Islam is redefined by sharia law a legal system posing as a religion that has nearly outlawed Christians, Judeism, atheist, Hindus from practicing their religion or living in peace or without threats. The look on his face…must be well practiced….
It has been the enduring patience of good people who really have seen enough of these conflicts and the hate it inspires in the form of commands and terror…plus the command to deceive to protect the longevity of intolerance and crimes for you know who.
no_one says
Exactly. The freedom to kill and rape should be restricted.
marblenecltr says
I don’t know whether or not facts and reason can help Peter Beinart accept following this advice and then start thinking rationally about Islam, but, for the sake of those whom it would benefit, at least read chapters eight and nine of the Qur’an.
Benedict says
Some Christians believe, that when evil fights immorality it turns into a good. What these Christians don’t understand is, that the Devil in order to replace a minor evil with a major one occasionally drives out himself for the sake of deception.
Muslims’ religious freedom is an oxymoron. It comprises the right by force and manipulation to turn man into a reciting parrot and a mechanical puppet. The Muslim idea of freedom of speech is correspondingly the right to impose religious propaganda five times a day from megaphones attached to minarets in close proximity to each other all over a country thus allowing no silent space in between the noise.
mortimer says
Aztec religion would not be permitted under US law … no living human sacrifices would be permitted.
If Muslims don’t like the American way of life and the American constitution, then leave.
Most Muslims will not choose to live in Berzerkistan.
Wellington says
Any religion, mortimer, is permitted under the Constitution for belief purposes. What is not permitted are certain actions that certain religions require, for instance your example of a human sacrifice (whether for the Aztec religion, Satanism, etc.). The key is belief versus action. The former is virtually sacrosanct. The latter not necessarily.
What really ticks me off, and what I think is so stupid and indefensible, is not that Islam is legal in America but that it continues to be described as something good by way too many who should know better by now, examples being Paul Ryan, John McCain and Lyndsey Graham among Republicans, let alone it seems every last damn Democrat. Remember, Nazism and Marxism are also legal in the US under the Constitution, though of course not religions (though in effect they are secular substitute religions), but the former is almost universally looked upon as a negative and so is the latter pretty much to the extent that modern education, and especially college education, hasn’t interfered with one’s common sense and moral intelligence. Same thing needs to occur where Islam is concerned. Hasn’t yet. Damn.
utis says
Following the modern “logic”, religion has become taboo. One does not question or criticize religion. Following the command to not touch religion, in all fairness, Aztec sacrifice should be allowed. Otherwise, the open secret that islam is getting special treatment because of cowardice and mental laziness would have to be addressed.
Replacing the Constitution with sharia is establishing islam. This violates our Constitution and the human rights of many citizens. The reality of human history has been fighting or suffering under political and religious elites. The Care Bear philosophy of “always play nice” does not work in a world full of voracious, barely controlled savages.
Jeanette says
They should all be hauled to the middle east, and dropped off there.
It wouldn’t be nearly as expensive as they are to the West now.
Let them kill each other off there until even their herd breeding program can’t outstrip their violence.
Leave the people of the West in peace.
St. Manuel II Palaiologos says
Yes I do. But, I ‘m not a conservative, I’m a reactionary.
Jeanette says
Being reactionary against Islam IS being a conservative.
It’s taking a stance that will conserve the West.
Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says
Say what you will about Peter Beinart, but he has done his country a great service by giving Donald Trump the winning slogan “Make America Great Again”:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/741347.The_Good_Fight
Terry Gain says
Islam is not a religion.
PRCS says
Well, it is.
Not merely a religion, however, but “a complete way of life”.
If you were to state–in a court of law–that Islam is not a religion, well, stand by to be challenged and chastised.
But if you said it’s “a complete way of life” in that courtroom, you’d be correct—-provably correct.
annmarie says
What about separation of Mosque/Church and State. Sharia Law should never be permitted to take over the Constitution. At the moment we are having a fight to keep Free Speech.
Jeanette says
Islam meets every qualifier used to define a cult, including the BIG ONE that most cults do not meet – human sacrifice.
It is not a religion just because some pedophile from before the Dark Ages said so, and a bunch of primitive savages agree with him today.
As someone else has already said in this comment section, We would not allow Aztecs to practice human sacrifice here.
Why do we allow into our country some other organization that practices human sacrifice, why do we allow Muslims into the country?
A rhetorical question, as I think I know why the the globalist elite are overrunning their own countries with Muslims – they are following orders from the U.N., to further the depopulation plan of U.N. Agenda 2030.
There should be blood in the streets over this all over the West, and I’m not talking about the terrorists shedding the blood of innocents.
Wellington says
Jeanette: Please understand, for First Amendment purposes here in America, Islam is a religion, although I certainly think an evil one but even evil religions are protected under the First Amendment, though not all actions required by such religions are.
It is a complete waste of time to argue that Islam is not a religion per the American Constitution. I mean A TOTAL WASTE OF TIME. Indeed, it actually detracts from what really needs to be done, to wit, have Islam, like Satanism, generally characterized as a giant negative and practiced by losers or worse. Herein lies the key to dealing effectively with Islam in America and not the complete fool’s errand of arguing it isn’t a religion at all but only a cult. But even assuming Islam is ONLY a cult, it is STILL protected under the First Amendment.
I do wish more people would grasp all of this. After all, one needs not only resolve but proper knowledge to fight malevolence.
saturnine says
>George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton
Apt quote from a recent NYT obit:
“I went into the academic world under the illusion that it was a place where people cared passionately about ideas, about teaching, about discourse and about reflecting critically. What I discovered was a world of small-minded, partisan professionals, many of whom were there because they couldn’t figure out what else to do.” – Benjamin R. Barber
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/us/benjamin-barber-dead-jihad-vs-mcworld.html
(No endorsement of Mr. Barber’s viewpoint on jihad implied).
Brian Hoff says
Robert you are so wrong it evangel christian donot defence moslim and Islam freedom of religion. Just wait to when than nonchristian become president than he take away your religion freedom. Thr Church of Jesus Christ and later day saint is fileing than legal brief against the moslim travel ban they remember the attack on they faith by evangel christian where states pass law taken away right to vote.
Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says
Dear Brian Hoff, You remind me of telephone calls I receive from people who identify themselves with an Anglo-Saxon name like “Kevin Wilson” and warn me, in barely understandable English spoken with a subcontinental accent, that my computer is in distress and needs fixing. Brian, I hope some day you learn English, including spelling, punctuation, and coherence.
tom parry says
Hey Brian- repeat in English please-but I’m quite sure I would still be confused.
Davegreybeard says
I think Peter Beinart is actually Brian Hoff – I mean look at the picture, for god’s sake!
duh swami says
The word ‘Religion’ is very powerful…when people hear it they fall down and become helpless…
Jeanette says
And a country full of stupid people is not going to do very well for very long.
Chip says
Islam, By Law, Is Prohibited From U.S. Immigration
“The Immigration and Nationality Act passed June 27, 1952 revised the laws relating to immigration, naturalization, and nationality for the United States. Islamic immigration to the US would be prohibited under this law because the Koran, Sharia Law and the Hadith all require complete submission to Islam, which is antithetical to the US government, the Constitution, and to the Republic. All Muslims who attest that the Koran is their life’s guiding principal subscribe to submission to Islam and its form of government. Now the political correct crowd would say that Islamists cannot be prohibited from entering the US because Islam is a religion. Whether it is a religion is immaterial because the law states that Aliens who are affiliated with any “organization” that advocates the overthrow of our government are prohibited.
http://www.fggam.org/2015/11/islam-by-law-is-prohibited-from-u-s-immigration/
Tom says
Then how come there is so much controversy and opposition to Trumps executive orders regarding immigration or refugees from Islamic countries.
Apparently an amendment to that law of 1952 occured in 1965 which nullified the prohibition and provided for “freedom of religion” which enables the Islamic sedition and subversion of the USA to continue unabated.
The Muslim Brotherhood have been working long and hard in the west as this shows.
Jeanette says
And the People of America have mostly been sitting on their sofas watching Dancing with the Stars, and football.
Steve Klein says
I have Peter Beinart’s book, “The Crisis of Zionism.” It is essentially a prescription for national suicide in my opinion.
One Amazon reader wrote: “This author is anti-Israel, Pro-Terrorist. I will not ever read anything he has written or will write again. Shame on his faulty thinking, and mis-information regarding Israel, Israelis, and Jews.”
Tom says
The only freedoms being stifled are the freedom of thought and speech and those restrictions are slowly being inposed on non muslims throughout the west wherever there is a muslim population.
This is being implemented by those idiots in power in western governments and the dhimmi fools of other left wing parties that support them.
The latest slippery slope attempt at shutting down criticism of the religion of pieces is in Canada with the Idiotic and lamebrain Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his muslim controlled Liberal Party as well as the NDP party who all voted en mass for the motion M-103 which is intended to stop and criticism of Islam and to criminalize any person making any comment that criticizes Islam.
These “death by many cuts” claims of islamophobic criticism must be challenged every time if we are to retain our ability to legitimately criticise Islam for its violent and hatful teachings.
Jeanette says
Islam meets all qualifiers as a cult.
All we need to do is get it re-classified as a cult, not a religion, and we can clean out the vipers’ nest.
To get people to listen, make sure that American women (and English-speaking women everywhere) see 29:00 – 35:00 –
http://bing.com/videos/search?q=ann+barnhardt+video+islam+sexual&view=detail&mid=78659C23DF2A43376AC778659C23DF2A43376AC7&FORM=VIRE
… and let them know that Muslims are beginning to call for the above to be done to ALL girls and women, not just Muslims. That will get the women off their derrieres and into action against Islam in their countries.
Brian Hoff says
Islam is than religion not than cult. You are than racist and bigot. I was born than america citizen with right and one of then is the freedom of religion and to pactive it freely. Unlike some foreign christian from Iraq who donot want than mosque in they area from expanding they mosque which was there before those christian bigot move there.
Brian Hoff says
M103 doesnot take away your freedom of speech at all. The Canadian government will study how to control hate speech which lead to violence against moslim. All arabic and middle eastern look people are being target by islamoprobic bigot and the majority of arab in america are christian being target by christian. Than antihomesexual group is tell homosexual group that CAIR have religious scholars at they event witch which say that the God and the Koran donot approve of homosexual.
Also many of those scholars say we arenot allow to murder then. If God want to rid the world of homosexual like he did in thr old testment He would have to destory the world so He waiting for the last day .
RK says
NOTE TO THE WORLD- being called “racist,” “Islamophobic” and “intolerant” IS a CHIEF STEALTH WEAPON of Islamic supremacists who are attempting to advance the Sharia in the West.
WAKE UP TO THE TRUTH! WAKE UP AMERICA! Be careful what U wish for people…. YES indoctrination IS very real in their game of twists and turns, deceit and pretend, and out right lies of deception to achieve their world order of control caliphate …. That IS written in their Koran- that they openly follow. SO GET REAL PEOPLE, GET REAL. Stop living in u’r land of denial- just look around where other Countries allow them to flourish- ya reality check! Not good, not good.
Its assimilate or get-out and stop making our Countries into the dysfunctional violent inhumane one they left! Ya stay in u’r own Country and continue killing each other there. Enough already, enough! We cannot change this mindset if U allow this Koran crap to take hold in any of our Countries. That’s reality, So Wake the hell up!
“Assimilate” – NEVER meant us to them in our own Country but vise-a-versa, them to us…Period!!! Name calling is nothing but a ploy, a game, to achieve their own self-serving agendas, period!
Jeanette says
Any “assimilation” would very likely be fake, acted out to shut us up until their numbers are high enough to outvote the non-Muslims and/or simply kill them. Taqiyya is the name of the Islamic strategy.
Get them out and contain them in a Muslimland area, where they can kill each other, maim each other, rape each other, torture each other and enslave each other to their hearts’ content.
Guest says
What we want is to protect the rights of everyone. Not take them away.
Jeanette says
The Celts would have been very foolish to worry about the rights of the Vikings. Same thing with those who were brutalized by Ghengis Khan, etc., etc.
If we worry about the rights of the Muslims, the West will be terminated. It’s already well under way.
Guest says
I was talking about the conservatives. To have equal rights also means having the same punishments as everyone else. Your religion doesn’t give u special treatment. That was what I meant
TL says
It’s impossible to take away the rights of people who have no rights.
Terry Gain says
Can this Christophobe tell us how many Mosques have we conservatives burned to the ground in the last 15 years and how many Christian Churches have burned to the ground by Muslims?
davej says
Any organization that will kill it’s members for leaving (or even criticizing) it is automatically a cult and should be investigated and then banned.
Peter says
Given that the only way Muslims can “freely” practice their religion is to live in a society based on shariah and that subjugates, exterminates, enslaves, forcibly converts or expels non-Muslims, then it only makes sense that there be limits to Muslims’ right to “freely” practice their religion.
Robert Brooks says
I don’t remember any other religion that mandated the:
overthrow of the US.
death to all Jews
beheading of ‘infidels’
fgm
non-compliance with any “man-made” laws
world domination
destruction of Israel
death to anyone who leaves their flock.
and forced marriage/child brides
Other than that I have no problem with their religion. I didn’t even have to think on this one………