“Diversity, equity and inclusion” is inherently and in always and every case a gateway to the preferential treatment of the Left’s favored groups.
I joined Muslim leaders from across Mass. at the State House office of Sen Eldridge to enthusiastically discuss his bill establish a Muslim American Commission, SD.2376
An Act promoting the civil rights and inclusion of American Muslims filed with Rep. Vanna Howard. pic.twitter.com/M6RRLvIAOK— Tahirah (@tahirahaw) February 23, 2023
“Massachusetts Bill Privileges Muslims in State Government,” by Dexter Van Zile, Focus On Western Islamism, March 15, 2023:
The Massachusetts state legislature is considering a bill that would promote and privilege the participation of Muslims in state politics. The bill (“An Act promoting the civil rights and inclusion of American Muslims in the commonwealth”), put forth by lawmakers from central and north Massachusetts in January, would establish a commission charged with promoting the participation of Muslims in the governance of the state. In particular, the commission would “identify and recommend qualified American Muslims for appointive positions at all levels of government, including boards and commissions, as the commission considers necessary and appropriate.”
The bill is “an unprecedented and unconstitutional effort to promote one religion, Islam, over all others,” said Steve Resnicoff, director of DePaul College of Law Center for Jewish Law and Judaic Studies. “It would clearly violate the principle of separation of church and state.”
It would be one thing if the proposed commission were intended to combat discrimination against Muslims, Resnicoff said, but that’s not the case with this bill. “Instead, it calls for the creation of a government entity that would broadly endeavor to benefit the interests of Muslims,” he said.
In addition to identifying and recommending Muslims to serve in appointive positions in the state government, the commission would also advocate for the community. Such advocacy would target leaders in the fields of business, education, health care and state and local governments. It would also “serve as a liaison between government and private interest groups” on matters of interest to the state’s Muslim community.
Members of the commission — who would serve three-year terms — would be appointed by officials including the state governor, the attorney general, and members of the state legislature. In addition to state funding, the 11-member commission would be authorized to solicit donations to cover the cost of its operations, which would include the hiring of a paid executive director, staffers, and volunteers.
A sheet promoting the bill’s passage says a commission is necessary because the perspective and experiences of American Muslims “are often absent in policy conversations on issues that directly impact the community.”
The proponents of the bill, Senator James B. Eldridge (D-Middlesex and Worcester) and Representative Vanna Howard (D-17th Middlesex), have not responded to repeated requests for comment — including a personal visit to the Statehouse — but it appears the bill was filed with input from the Massachusetts chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
In February, Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, CAIR-MA’s executive director and chief legal officer, posted a celebratory tweet about the introduction of the bill. It shows Eldridge standing alongside Amatul-Wadud, an astonishing scene, given Amatul-Wadud’s professional background.
Writing in The American Spectator in 2017, Orwin Litwin reported that Amatul-Wadud, was “deeply enmeshed in one of the most dangerous extremist groups in the United States.” In addition to serving as a lawyer for the group in question, Muslims of America (MOA), which has sent its members to Pakistan for extremist indoctrination and military training, Amatul-Wadud has promoted the conspiracy theories put forth by MOA’s founder, Pakistani cleric Mubarak Ali Gilani. Litwin reports that in 2015, Amatul-Wadud “shared a Facebook post “from MOA of a long and unhinged 2014 article by Sheikh Gilani himself.”
Litwin reports that in the article Amatul-Wadud retweeted, “Gilani claims that the terror group ISIS (and indeed, Wahhabism itself) is a creation of British intelligence, that 9/11 was an inside job, that WTC-7 was destroyed by controlled demolition, and that America was manipulated into fighting Nazi Germany and Saddam Hussein for the benefit of the Jews.”
The article Amatul-Wadud promoted on Facebook declares, among other things, that “there was no need for America to go to war against Hitler. Hitler was not the enemy of America or the American people. There was a mutual animosity between Hitler and the Jews. So, the American people paid a very heavy price for fighting someone else’s war.”
CAIR-MA has not responded to repeated requests for comment on the bill from FWI.
“The proposed legislation seeking to aid Islam is unconstitutional on its face,” said Karen Hurvitz, a Massachusetts attorney who serves as legal counsel for Education Without Indoctrination, a group that fights against anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda in K-12 schools. In particular, it flies in the face of 1947 Supreme Court ruling, Everson v. Bd. Of Education which states, “The ‘establishment of religion’ clause in the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can … pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.”…
Efforts to elicit a response from the American Civil Liberties Union, which regularly inveighs against the influence of conservative Christians on government policy in the United States, were unsuccessful.
Javaman says
This is without a doubt unconstitutional. If the courts don’t stop this immediately, the Constitution has been rendered useless.
Lisel Sipes says
I live in MA. What can I do do to stop this bull….?
somehistory says
Print out a copy of the Constitution’s part where it says the government is not to promote or favor one religion over another, make copies and send them to your reps.
It probably won’t get them to make a difference. Save a copy or two to send to the local news people so when the commission is formed, the news people can see it’s against the law.
And, many states in the early days, wrote Christianity into their state constitutions. MA may be one of those. Wouldn’t that be something to share with your state government, if in fact, it was?
” An article on religion was referred to members of the clergy, which resulted in a form of religious establishment entirely unlike that later adopted at the federal level.[2] Adams advocated for an end to that establishment when revisions to the constitution were considered in 1820 and his views were adopted in 1832.[6]
The next several Articles within the “Part the First” in the original 1780 Constitution of Massachusetts called upon the people of the Commonwealth as being their “right as well as the duty of all men” (Article II) to a strong religious conviction and belief.
Article II. It is the right as well as the duty of all men in society, publicly and at stated seasons, to worship the Supreme Being, the great Creator, and Preserver of the universe. And no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping God in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his conscience, or for his religious profession or sentiments, provided he doth not disturb the public peace or obstruct others in their religious worship.
[12]
Article III continued by noting that “the happiness of a people” and “preservation of civil government” is explicitly tied to religion and morality. This article established the possibility of “town religions” by allowing the state legislature, though Massachusetts cannot declare or recognize a state religion, to require towns to pay for the upkeep of a Protestant church out of local tax funds, with the town to determine by majority vote the denomination it would support as its parish church.”
there is more at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Massachusetts#:~:text=The%20Massachusetts%20Constitution%20was%20written%20last%20of%20the,seven%20years%20later%2C%20which%20used%20a%20similar%20structure.
Hoi Polloi says
A commission to produce a state-sponsored religious presence of “qualified American Muslims” is obviously unconstitutional.
I would, however, support a commission to require that any muslim seeking office in the US be required to denounce sharia and submit to rigorous, ongoing examination of compliance with said denouncement, in full recognition of sharia’s incompatibility with the US constitution. As a bonus, they’d need to prove non-association with the many entities acting counter to US interests and agree to never sue for their myriad imagined affronts.
somehistory says
A commission you would support, will never happen. biden said mozlums would be at all levels in his *fake* administration and it appears that MA wishes to do the same.
“Snakes in Suits.” Dr. Robert Hare. A worthy read to understand the psychopath in all professions. Government is rife with them.
Hoi Polloi says
TR has a new vid out today about the flood into Ireland and the lengths to which they’re going to criminalize free speech. A prior report of his said not only are the hotels getting very lucrative remuneration for housing the UK flood, but that they get six year contracts with taxes and fees and refurbishment costs paid on top of exorbitant daily costs. True psychopaths in action because pols obviously get their cut.
somehistory says
“It’s enough to,” as was the saying when I was a kid, “make a preacher cuss.”
Just as the Southern border of the U.S. is being overwhelmed with those who believe they have the *right* to invade and demand accommodations, such as speaking their language, free food, housing, etc., the mozlums being invited in and given everything free…to them, not to the working citizens obeying the laws…expect and demand and the pols gleefully comply.
It all shows just what a stupid world we are now seeing on its collision course.
One cannot hand over to termites their house and expect that they will still have a home.
ChrisFromCincinnati says
Here Here!
Brian Ozzy says
I think you meant “hear, hear”?.
PRCS says
No way they’ll denounce sharia in its entirety.
But, yes, a commission to define–once and for all–which of its aspects are clearly and unequivocally incompatible with our secular, man-made laws.
Hoi Polloi says
They definitely will not denounce sharia, but the country should see them actively refuse and thereby gain a better understanding of what’s at stake, and have sharia’s unconstitutional nature highlighted. In my dreams.
Hudders. says
Or they will just lie as their book says they can.
Hoi Polloi says
Oh, they’ll absolutely lie, but forcing the issue into the open, grilling them on every point, and legally pursuing them for it all is, as RS has repeatedly pointed out, the best way; using our laws as written. The US has engaged in such against its own and should do the same with them.
somehistory says
Stealth warfare out in the open and being aided by fools who somehow believe they will be spared when the murderous warfare is in full swing.
The fools and idiots who want the assistance of mozlums to help them destroy what others built, have no idea that when they eliminate all who oppose these actions, they will be forced to bend the knee, and the back, to islam.
Meanwhile, they and their mozlum couzins, care nothing for the Constitution and the Laws set forth hundreds of years ago.
ChrisFromCincinnati says
Senator James B. Eldridge (D-Middlesex and Worcester) and Representative Vanna Howard (D-17th Middlesex) are literally pushing the agenda of Extremists. They are Democrats, I see. I guess that’s not a surprise.
Hoi Polloi says
You’re right; it’s not a surprise.
Ron says
Pardon me,,, but what happened to the separation of church and state?
࿗Infidel࿘ says
That’s there. What the Left will claim is that there is no separation of mosque and state explicit in the First Amendment, and then use several extensions and penumbras to somehow interpret that a merger of those 2 is actually constitutional
Keith O says
This should be called
Diversity
Inclusion
Equity
Because that’s what they want other cultures and religions to do. DIE!
James Lincoln says
I don’t pretend to be an attorney, but promoting a specific religion is likely unconstitutional.
somehistory says
James, I’m not an attorney either, and I don’t play one on t.v., But, I have read the Constitution and although it was only in Jefferson’s personal documents and not the Constitution about a “separation,” the government is not to establish nor promote any particular religion.
” forbids Congress from making any law that establishes a state religion, or that gives preference to or forces belief in any one religion1,2,3,4. It also prohibits government actions that favor religion over non-religion, or vice versa3,4.”
summarized from five sources
1. britannica.com2. legaldictionary.net3. unitedstatesnow.org4. law.cornell.edu5. mtsu.edu
“Establishment Clause
The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” This clause not only forbids the government from establishing an official religion, but also prohibits government actions that unduly favor one religion over another. It also prohibits the government from unduly preferring religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/Establishment_Clause
this thing in MA, is “unduly favoring one religion” over all others. Unconstitutional for sure!
Ginny says
So when have we followed the law, common sense or morality recently in this country? This will happen. We just elected a new sheriff in my MA county, who says she will not cooperate with ICE. See a problem coming?
James Lincoln says
Yes, that’s the way that I understand it somehistory.
tgusa says
Diversity, equity and inclusion regarding islam. At some point these leftists will have two choices. Jettison most of what they support or go to war to defend what they support. My money is on jettison as they dont have the resolve for a real and nasty fight and they dont have the capability to win a real and nasty fight. In any event, in the future, it sucks to be them.
Jim says
Leftists promote such laws because they insist Islam is fully compatible with Americanism and beneficial to America. If they denied this principle, they would be denying that mass muslim immigration is a good thing. But this is on the Democrat agenda, and nothing on this agenda should ever be discredited. So, no matter how much harm this does, the Democrats will all praise it as good, just as Joe and the MSM always endorse and praise the insane policeies of the Democrat party under Obama and Biden, etc.
joanofark06 says
Like California and New York, another state to put on my list of the ones I would never dare live in!