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Islam: Official Religion of USA
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit
Establishes Islam as “Official Religion”
of the U.S.A.
By allowing Islam to be taught in public schools under their
jurisdiction and then ruling against our own pledge of allegiance, the 9th Circuit
Court of Appeals has de facto violated the Constitution and established
Islam as the “official religion” of the United States. However, as has been pointed out by others, since all the
Justices sitting on that court took their oaths of office by swearing “so help
me, God!” with one hand on a Bible, their offices are unconstitutional, their
seats in those offices are unconstitutional, they are not legally employed, and
their “rulings” are therefore likewise unconstitutional and totally without authority.
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“Become a Muslim warrior during the crusades or during an ancient jihad.” Thus read the instructions for seventh graders in Islam: A Simulation of Islamic History and Culture, 610-1100, a three-week curriculum produced by Interaction Publishers, Inc. In classrooms across the United States, students who follow its directions find themselves fighting mock battles of jihad against “Christian crusaders” and other assorted “infidels.” Upon gaining victory, our mock-Muslim warriors “Praise Allah.”
Is this a legal activity in American public schools? Interaction says it merely urges students to “respect Islamic culture” through identification with Islam. But the Thomas More Law Center, a public-interest law firm based in Michigan, disagrees and last week filed a federal lawsuit to prohibit one school district, in Byron, California, from further using the Interaction materials on Islam.
The Interaction unit contains many other controversial elements. It has students adopt a Muslim name ("Abdallah,” “Karima,” etc.). It has them wear Islamic clothing: For girls this means a long-sleeved dress and the head covered by a scarf. Students unwilling to wear Islamic clothes must sit mutely in the back of the class, seemingly punished for remaining Westerners. Interaction calls for many Islamic activities: taking off shoes, washing hands, sitting on prayer rugs, and practicing Arabic calligraphy.
Students study the Koran, recite from it, design a title page for it, and write verses of it on a banner. They act out Islam’s Five Pillars of Faith, including giving zakat (Islamic alms) and going on the pilgrimage to Mecca. They also build a replica of the “sacred Kaaba” in Mecca or another holy building.
It goes on. Seventh graders adopt the speech of pious believers, greeting each other with “assalam aleikoom, fellow Muslims” and using phrases such as “God willing” and “Allah has power over all things.”
They pronounce the militant Islamic war-cry, “Allahu akbar” (“Allah is greatest”). They must even adopt Muslim mannerisms: “Try a typical Muslim gesture where the right hand moves solemnly… across the heart to express sincerity." [Allah is absolutely not the God of the Bible, no matter what Muslims and the liberal press would have you to believe.
In the same pious spirit, the curriculum presents matters of Islamic faith as historical fact. The Kaaba, “originally built by Adam,” it announces, “was later rebuilt by Abraham and his son Ismail.” Really? That is Islamic belief, not verifiable history. In the year 610, Interaction goes on, “while Prophet Muhammad meditated in a cave … the angel Gabriel visited him” and revealed to him God’s Message” (yes, that’s Message with a capital “M.”) The curriculum sometimes lapses into referring to “we” Muslims and even prompts students to ask if they should “worship Prophet Muhammad, God, or both.”
The Thomas More Law Center is absolutely correct: This simulation blatantly contradicts Supreme Court rulings which permit public schools to teach about religion on condition that they do not promote it. Interaction openly promotes the Islamic faith, contrary to what a public school should do. As Richard Thompson of the center notes, the Byron school district “crossed way over the constitutional line when it coerced impressionable 12-year-olds to engage in particular religious rituals and worship, simulated or not.”
Islam: A Simulation serves as a recruitment tool for Islam, for children adopting a Muslim persona during several weeks amounts to an invitation to them to convert to Islam. (One can’t but wonder did John Walker Lindh take this course?) The educational establishment permits this infraction due to an impulse to privilege non-Western cultures over Western ones. It never, for example, would permit Christianity to be promoted in like fashion (“Become a Christian warrior during the crusades,” for example.)
Militant Islamic lobbying groups want Islam taught as the true religion, not as an academic subject. They take advantage of this indulgence, exerting pressure on school systems and on textbook writers. Not surprisingly, Interaction Publishers thanks two militant Islamic organizations by name (the Islamic Education and Information Center and the Council of Islamic Education) for their “many suggestions.”
Americans and other Westerners face a choice: They can insist that Islam, like other religions, be taught in schools objectively. Or, as is increasingly the case, they can permit true believers to design instruction materials about Islam that serve as a mechanism for proselytizing. The answer will substantially affect the future course of militant Islam in the West.
The writer is director of the Middle East Forum (www.DanielPipes.org).
For more information about Islam:
"Moderate" Muslim Student Flushed Out
A Messianic Jew Responds
Allah is not God
Evangelicals Declare "Allah is God"
Five Pillars
Islam and the Bible
Islam Index
Islam’s History
Major Sects of Islam
Minor Sects of Islam
Muslim Response
Palestinian National Covenant
Petition to Protect the Holy Land
Six Doctrines of Islam
The Nazi-Palestinian Connection
The Qur'an
The Rise of Islam
The Twelfth Imam
The Vocabulary of Islam
The “Jesus” of Islam
U.S. Court Votes to Bar
Pledge of Allegiance
Use of ‘God’ Called Unconstitutional
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 27, 2002; Page A01
The Pledge of Allegiance, recited by millions of American children at the start of each school day, is unconstitutional because it describes the United States as “one Nation, under God,” a federal appeals court ruled yesterday.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled 2 to 1 that the reference to God, which was added to the pledge by Congress in 1954, amounts to an official endorsement of monotheism. Thus, the San Francisco-based court said, both the 1954 law and a California school district’s policy requiring teachers to lead children in the pledge violate the First Amendment prohibition against the establishment of a state religion.
If the ruling is allowed to stand, schoolchildren could no longer recite the pledge, at least in the nine western states covered by the court.
“A profession that we are a nation ‘under God’ is identical … to a profession that we are a nation ‘under Jesus,’ a nation ‘under Vishnu,’ a nation ‘under Zeus,’ or a nation ‘under no God,’ because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion,” Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, an appointee of President Richard M. Nixon currently serving as a semi-retired senior judge, wrote for the three-judge panel. Goodwin was joined by Stephen Reinhardt, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter.
The case was brought by Michael A. Newdow, a Sacramento atheist, who did not want his daughter to have to recite the pledge in her second-grade class in the Elk Grove school district. After a federal district judge dismissed his lawsuit, Newdow, arguing the case himself, appealed to the 9th Circuit.
The ruling comes as patriotic and religious feelings are running high because of the war against terrorism — and on the day before the Supreme Court was set to redefine the church-state boundary in a major case regarding taxpayer-funded vouchers for private and parochial education.
It immediately rekindled an issue whose incendiary potential was demonstrated during the 1988 presidential election. Republican candidate George H.W. Bush blasted Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis for his decision as Massachusetts governor to veto mandatory recitation of the pledge in the state's public schools.
Yesterday, President George W. Bush led politicians of both parties in a chorus of denunciation, saying through spokesman Ari Fleischer that the court’s decision was “ridiculous.”
House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) called it “sad” and “absurd.”
House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), a possible presidential candidate, said, “I see no reason to change the time-tested, venerable pledge that is such a central part of our country’s life and our nation’s heritage.”
Another possible contender, Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), called the ruling “wrong.”
House members gathered on the front steps of the Capitol to recite the Pledge of Allegiance en masse. The Senate unanimously approved a resolution sponsored by its Democratic and Republican leaders that expressed support for the reference to God in the pledge, and instructed the Senate’s legal counsel to intervene in the case. The vote was 99 to 0, with Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) absent.
Calling the decision “just nuts,” Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.), yet another possible Democratic presidential candidate, urged the entire body to be on hand this morning when the Senate begins its work by saying the pledge. Few senators usually are on hand for the pledge.
Fleischer said the Justice Department is considering “how to seek redress.” The options include asking the full 9th Circuit to reconsider the case or taking the matter directly to the Supreme Court.
If the ruling stands in the 9th Circuit, it is likely the high court would review it, since it clashes with a decision by the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upholding the pledge.
School is out for the summer, but the 9th Circuit's ruling would not take effect for 60 days, pending the government’s appeal. The states that would be directly affected are Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
Critics of the ruling echoed views expressed by the lone dissenter on the panel, Senior Judge Ferdinand F. Fernandez, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush. Fernandez contended that there is only a “minuscule” risk that the use of the phrase “under God” would “bring about a theocracy or suppress someone’s beliefs.”
Under his two colleagues’ view, he wrote, “‘God Bless America’ and ‘America the Beautiful’ will be gone [from public places] for sure, and … currency beware!” Coins and bills carry the slogan “In God We Trust.”
Goodwin’s opinion insisted that the 9th Circuit's ruling was merely the logical extension of Supreme Court cases that have prohibited organized prayer in the classroom and at high school graduations and football games.
“Under these precedents,” Goodwin wrote, “the officially sponsored recitation of the phrase ‘under God’ — added at the height of the Cold War for the express purpose of distinguishing American values from the atheistic norms of the Soviet Union — amounted to not only state endorsement of religion, but also a subtle form of coercion over elementary school students.
“Although [individual] students cannot be forced to participate in recitation of the pledge, the school district is nonetheless conveying a message of state endorsement of a religious belief when it requires public school teachers to recite, and lead the recitation of, the current form of the pledge,” Goodwin wrote.
Although the 9th Circuit is the most liberal federal appeals court in the country — its rulings are frequently reversed by the more conservative Supreme Court — legal analysts from across the ideological spectrum said yesterday that it was not stretching the high court’s past cases.
“I don't think this is necessarily a wacko 9th Circuit result,” said Washington lawyer Christopher Landau, a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, who dissented in the cases the 9th Circuit cited to support its decision. “This is the Supreme Court reaping what it sowed.”
“It is eminently defensible,” said Eugene Volokh, a specialist in church-state law at UCLA Law School. “I’m not sure it’s ultimately the right result. But the court is applying principles the Supreme Court has established.”
Volokh suggested, however, that a majority of the court may ultimately decide that “under God” in the pledge, like the cry of “God save the United States and this honorable court,” which opens each Supreme Court oral argument, qualifies as what the late justice William Brennan once called “ceremonial deism” — traditional references to a higher power so frequently invoked that they have lost any specific religious meaning.
“There is still a very credible argument that at some point you have to stop trying to relentlessly extirpate religious symbolism from the life of a country that is after all very religious,” said Volokh, who served as a law clerk to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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