Rebuttal Against Religious Intolerance

I received the following forwarded email one day last week.

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Barack Obama, during his Cairo speech, said: "I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of  America 's story."

AN AMERICAN CITIZEN'S RESPONSE:

Dear Mr. Obama:

Were those Muslims that were in America when the Pilgrims first landed? Funny, I thought they were Native American Indians.

Were those Muslims that celebrated the first Thanksgiving day? Sorry again, those were Pilgrims and Native American Indians.

Can you show me one Muslim signature on the United States Constitution?

Declaration of Independence?

Bill of Rights?

Didn't think so.

Did Muslims fight for this country's freedom from England? No.

Did Muslims fight during the Civil War to free the slaves in America? No, they did not. In fact, Muslims to this day are still the largest traffickers in human slavery. Your own half brother, a devout Muslim, still advocates slavery himself, even though Muslims of Arabic descent refer to black Muslims as "pug nosed slaves." Says a lot of what the Muslim world really thinks of your family's "rich Islamic heritage," doesn't it Mr. Obama?

Where were Muslims during the Civil Rights era of this country? Not present.

There are no pictures or media accounts of Muslims walking side by side with Martin Luther King, Jr. or helping to advance the cause of Civil Rights.

Where were Muslims during this country's Woman's Suffrage era? Again, not present. In fact, devout Muslims demand that women are subservient to men in the Islamic culture. So much so, that often they are beaten for not wearing the 'hajib' or for talking to a man who is not a direct family member or their husband. Yep, the Muslims are all for women's rights, aren't they?

Where were Muslims during World War II? They were aligned with Adolf Hitler. The Muslim grand mufti himself met with Adolf Hitler, reviewed the troops and accepted support from the Nazi's in killing Jews.

Finally, Mr. Obama, where were Muslims on Sept. 11th, 2001? If they weren't flying planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or a field in Pennsylvania killing nearly 3,000 people on our own soil, they were rejoicing in the Middle East. No one can dispute the pictures shown from all parts of the Muslim world celebrating on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and other cable news networks that day.  Strangely, the very "moderate" Muslims who's asses you bent over backwards to kiss in Cairo, Egypt on June 4th were stone cold silent post 9-11. To many Americans, their silence has meant approval for the acts of that day.

And THAT, Mr. Obama, is the "rich heritage" Muslims have here in America.

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention the Barbary Pirates. They were Muslim.

And now we can add November 5, 2009 - the slaughter of American soldiers at Fort Hood by a Muslim major who is a doctor and a psychiatrist who was supposed to be counseling soldiers returning from battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That, Mr. Obama is the "Muslim heritage" in America.

EVERY AMERICAN MUST READ THIS!!

Be Sure to SEND IT to All. Even Print it out and Send by Snail Mail!!

Now just maybe we are beginning to understand our “new foreign policy.”

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The following is my response. Please keep in mind that I am not usually a politically minded person, and I am a far cry from being any sort of activist. I did a bit of research and cited sources where possible, but this is not something I do with any regularity and I was mostly just following my gut. As such, if you are the type of person who eats this stuff up frequently, you may find a few faults in the way I've gone about it, but I think it gets the job done. Here we go.

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I don't normally get involved in conversations about politics and religion, because such conversations invariably turn friends, family, and colleagues against each other, if only temporarily. I'm known to sit quietly and wait the conversation out or to find some way to leave the room and return when it's done. But this email moves me to the point that I feel morally obligated to respond. It makes me feel ashamed to be part of an American culture that is so intolerant and disrespectful of other cultures; I want to delete it and pretend I didn't read it. I cannot for the life of me understand how the dominant religion of this land, which so fervently claims to advocate an altruistic viewpoint and proposes such agreeable themes as love and harmony, could be the source of such generalized hatred and dismissal of the more than 1.5 billion followers of Islam worldwide.

This email is an attack on words uttered by President Obama in a speech given nearly a year ago. I did a quick search online for the words "obama cairo islam story" and the very first result was the entire transcript of the speech from which this excerpt came [http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/remarks-by-the-president-at-cairo-university-6-04-09]. If you will read his speech, you will find that the overlying theme is one of mutual peace. In it, he extends the figurative olive branch to a people with whom there have been tremendous tensions and violence on a global scale. It takes a man whose desire is to see an end to hatred and intolerance to offer those words. We live in what is arguably the most powerful nation on earth, past or present; but evil begets evil, hatred begets hatred, and violence begets violence. There is only one way to bring about an end to this vicious cycle, and that is to lay down weapons and offer an open hand.

The context of the aforementioned quotation is completely removed when it is presented alone and subsequently followed by angry, intolerant misinformation. I would like to share the following excerpt, which follows immediately after the one that originally spurned this hateful email. It is literally the next sentence in his speech:

The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President, John Adams, wrote, "The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims."

I wonder if Adams would now feel ashamed of his words, which seem to mock him in light of events that transpire in today's society. There is much worse than enmity in store for Muslims; there is open hatred and hostility.

The following excerpt is from just a bit later in President Obama's speech, directly after he declares part of his responsibility as President of the United States to "fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear":

The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words -- within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum -- "Out of many, one."

He reminds his audience, as we are reminded in reading, that our very country was born out of a revolution. Many settlers who first came to America did so out of a desire to practice their religion freely. Puritans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists, among others, were free to pursue their faiths. It was this freedom in faith that was incorporated into the Constitution from the beginning: the protection under the First Amendment of every citizen’s right to freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.

This freedom was granted and protected at the very birth of this nation, and make no mistake, Muslims were present then as well.

I will now address a few specific points from the forwarded email.

Did Muslims fight for this country's freedom from England? No.

Did Muslims fight during the Civil War to free the slaves in America? No, they did not.

It has been estimated that 15-30% of all enslaved African men in North America were, in fact, Muslims. [Encyclopedia of religion in the South, Samuel S. Hill, et al, 2005, p. 394] Some 5,000 African-American men fought as soldiers during the Revolutionary War, some of whom were Muslim, some of whom may not even have been slaves. In particular, records exist that document the efforts of Yusuf Ben Ali, also known as Joseph Benhaley, who served in South Carolina, as well as Bampett Muhamed, a Corporal in Virginia; Francis Saba, a Sergeant; and Joseph Saba, a fifer. Records also indicate the enrollment of an African man named Max Hassan, a Muslim, who served as a porter in service during the Civil War. Muslims indeed fought for freedom during America’s earliest years, freedoms that are now used to spread spiteful intolerance of them by the culturally uneducated.

Can you show me one Muslim signature on the United States Constitution?

Declaration of Independence?

Bill of Rights?

Didn't think so.

A Muslim may not have signed any of these important documents, but there was one man in particular who was learned in the Islam faith and supported tolerance of their ideals: Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence himself. Jefferson, along with James Madison, originally wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which would later form the groundwork for the First Amendment. In it, he wrote that it was the ultimate goal of the law to “comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.” Furthermore, Jefferson advocated that “no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever” and that no one should suffer in any way based upon religious opinions or belief. [What Jefferson Really Thought About Islam, Christopher Hitchens, 2007, http://www.slate.com/id/2157314] [Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson, 1786, http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/lynch/religious-freedom.html]

Would Thomas Jefferson, who staunchly advocated religious tolerance, be ashamed of the way Muslims and other religious minorities are treated by his descendants? Would John Locke, a tremendous influence upon Jefferson, feel ashamed as well? [The Three Greatest Men, Thomas Jefferson, 1789, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm033.html] Locke wrote in 1689 that “neither Pagan nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion.” [A Letter Concerning Toleration, John Locke, 1689, http://www.constitution.org/jl/tolerati.htm]

Finally, it is worth mentioning that ordinary citizens of Virginia agreed with these viewpoints, when they provided the following petition to the state assembly in 1785:

Let Jews, Mehometans and Christians of every denomination enjoy religious liberty . . . thrust them not out now by establishing the Christian religion lest thereby we become our own enemys and weaken this infant state. It is mens labour in our Manufactories, their services by sea and land that aggrandize our Country and not their creeds. Chain your citizens to the state by their Interest. Let Jews, Mehometans, and Christians of every denomination find their advantage in living under your laws. [The Founding Fathers and Islam, James H. Huston, 2002, http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0205/tolerance.html]

Returning now to the original forwarded email:

Finally, Mr. Obama, where were Muslims on Sept. 11th, 2001? If they weren't flying planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or a field in Pennsylvania killing nearly 3,000 people on our own soil, they were rejoicing in the Middle East.

The actions of a few individuals do not necessarily reflect on the masses. As such, it is short-sighted and irresponsible to hold the masses accountable for the actions of a few. There are untold crimes committed by Christians, Jews, and people of every other religious denomination each day. Some of the most heinous crimes in history, not just those associated with the Islamic faith, have come about as a result of religious fundamentalism.

Who do you suppose was responsible for the Crusades? Consider that the Crusades were military campaigns waged by much of Christian Europe over a period of around 200 years, during which approximately 2 million Europeans died in the Middle East alone. Make no mistake, this was religious warfare, perpetrated by a Christian people against non-Christians. But to hold all of Christianity and all followers of the faith accountable to the modern era for those actions is not wise. Indeed, if you are a Christian, do you feel the burden of guilt for those crimes?

The real problem is not Islamic faith. The problem is also not Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other religion. The problem is the stubborn unwillingness of a believer of any faith to openly accept one who does not practice the same faith, the refusal to embrace the diversity of human culture, and the insistence that those who are different are dangerous. This mindset is the source of and cause for many of the most reprehensible acts ever committed against humanity throughout the history of civilization.

I don’t practice religious intolerance and I don’t wish to view any subsequent materials advocating a hateful, ignorant, intolerant view of any religion, ethnicity, or culture. I challenge you to to forward this email to those who forwarded you the original email, and for those people to forward as well, as so on.

Thank you.
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Special thanks to Joe Bildhauser, who spent close to eight hours researching and discussing the topic with me as I wrote. His assistance also proved invaluable during the editing process. It's entirely likely that this would not have been completed without his help.