[Vision2020] Muslim Democrats and Republicans Have Some Ignorant Idaho Detractors

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Hail to the Vision!

This is my low wattage radio commentary for August 15.  Some (but not Crabtree) may also want to read my column "Tolerance for Islam in the Early American Republic" at http://users.adelphia.net/nickgier/AmericaIslam.htm and "Religious Liberalism and the Founding Fathers" at 
http://users.adelphia.net/nickgier/foundfathers.htm. 
 
MUSLIM DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS 
HAVE SOME IGNORANT IDAHO DETRACTORS 
 
by Nick Gier, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho 
 
Congressman Bill Sali and Bryan Fischer of Idaho Values Alliance are making 
fools of themselves once again.  They are now claiming that the election of 
Democrat Keith Ellison, a Muslim representative from Wisconsin, is contrary to 
the Christian principles on which our country was founded. 
 
Sali and Fischer must have missed the civics lesson in which the concept of 
representative democracy was traced back to ancient Greece and Rome, and not the New Testament which advises Christians to suffer the oppression of bad government. 
 
They are also ignorant of the Treaty of Tripoli, whose 11th Article begins: "As 
the United States is in no way founded on the Christian religion. . . ." This 
treaty was sent to the Senate by President George Washington, where it was 
ratified with no recorded debate, and then signed by incoming President John 
Adams. 
 
In a debate on religious freedom in Virginia, a delegate moved to insert "Jesus 
Christ" as "the holy author of our religion."  Thomas Jefferson reported that 
the motion lost by a "great majority, in proof that they mean to comprehend . . 
. the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination."  Did the good Virginians mean to imply that the world's religions have the same God? 
 
Fischer also claims that Islamic nations have "no freedom of religion, no 
freedom of speech, . . . no fundamental rights for women, and no freedom for 
ordinary citizens to choose their leaders." 
 
Fischer obviously has not been following the news of the July 22 election in 
Turkey, where a mildly Islamist Justice and Development Party (AK) won 47 
percent of the vote in an election that drew 85 percent of eligible voters.  
 
Turkish women have voted since 1930, and their number in the 550-seat Parliament doubled to 50, not too far from the 74 women who currently serve in our 535-member Congress.  Women have been elected as prime ministers or presidents of Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, all Muslim countries.  Bangladesh has had two female prime ministers.  
 
During his five years in office, the AK Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has led 
the most successful Turkish government in 50 years.  The free market economy has grown 7.3 percent and there has been lower inflation and record foreign 
investment.  Erdogan has reduced corruption and expanded human rights, although the minority Kurds still complain about injustices. 
 
The real threat to democracy in most Muslim countries is not radical Islamists; 
rather, it is the military. Over the years Turkish generals have intervened to 
preserve the secular ideals of Kemal Ataturk, who founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923, following Greco-Roman republican ideas, not religious ones. 
 
Ataturk's party, the Republican People's Party, has banned Turkish women from 
wearing Muslim head scarves in public and they refused to participate in a 
recent parliamentary vote on Erdogan's candidate for president. The candidate's wife insisted on wearing the head scarf and the Republicans feared that Erdogan would move in the direction of theocratic Iran. 
 
In 1992 an Islamic party won national elections in Algeria.  Military 
intervention plunged the country into a civil war that led to 150,000 deaths. 
Saddam Hussein, a secularist and socialist condemned as an infidel by Osama bin Laden, used his army and police to suppress the majority Shiias, and the now we are experiencing the disastrous results of not allowing religious factions to experience the moderation that full political participation affords them. 
 
Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world with 200 million people, is 
ruled by a democratic government based on Greco-Roman principles, not Islamic ones.  As early as 1974, the Suharto government replaced Islamic marriage customs with a secular marriage act protecting basic women's rights. The current government has established a National Commission on Violence Against Women and the set up a Ministry for the Empowerment of Women. 
 
Fischer warns Congressman Ellison that he had better follow Christian political 
principles, but I'm sure that he will rather follow ancient republicans to whom 
liberal democratic politicians around the world, many representing 650 million 
Muslims, have been firmly committed for decades.