A Muslim advocacy organization is requesting a Department of Justice investigation into whether comments made by Lancaster’s mayor were unconstitutional.
In his State of the City address last week, Mayor R. Rex Parris said Lancaster was “growing a Christian community.”
“And don’t let anybody shy away from that,” he said to an audience of ministers. “I need [Lancaster residents] standing up and saying we’re a Christian community, and we’re proud of that.”
The Greater Los Angeles area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations sent a letter Friday to the department requesting an investigation into whether Parris’ comments violated the Constitution’s Establishment Clause, which bans the government from supporting or endorsing a religion.
“The divisive statement made by the mayor, when analyzed in context of other recent developments, represents a disturbing pattern by the city of Lancaster,” said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR-LA…
This piece is confusing on one level. What a mayor states in a “state of the city” is one thing. But what one states to “an audience of ministers” is rather something else.
Regardless, the comment in the “state of the city” raises a whole of host of cross-questions. For one, replace the word “Christian” in that observation with the word “white”? It would be hard to believe that mayor would ever have said that. (Although had it been “black” or “Hispanic,” depending on the locale, that sounds rather different; and we have heard black mayors, and black politicians in most “black communities” come very close to speaking that way.)
There is no question the U.S. is a “Christian country“. By that one means “country” with a small “c”. That because some 8 out of 10 people living within its boundaries label themselves “Christian.”
There is also no question the U.S. does NOT have a “Christian government”. It functions under a secular constitution. In it, Christianity is unmentioned, “establishment” is prohibited and the free exercise of all religions is protected.
Interestingly, the group terming itself the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) here has made a groundbreaking assertion insofar as its Islamic faith is concerned. For nowhere in the world where Islam is practiced as the major faith, is any society nearly as “secular” governed as is the U.S. The closest example is Turkey; but even Turkey is deeply divided of late, and is currently governed by a self-proclaimed (divisive?) Islamic political party.
Once, in mostly Christian lands, Christianity and the “public space” were virtually inseparable:
But in the last 400 years, Christianity has slowly been being ejected from that “public space.”
Interestingly, where followers of Islam predominate, there is no hesitancy to “seize” a “public square”.
Because in Islam one cannot “separate” religion from state. For Islam cannot be separated from life. So Islam dominating the “public space” is merely the proper order of life.
So what we have here is a change. Meaning why this minor offering from a smalltown mayor is newsworthy at all is due to it having come from a Christian politician who overtly makes such a comment while in office. That after it had long become deemed out of bounds for such statements to be made. In turn, it is now a “Muslim group” that cites the secular U.S. Constitution as the basis for attacking that Christian politician’s comment.
Yet there is no good reason to believe if the U.S. had had a mostly Muslim population in 1787 that it would have composed the U.S. Constitution on its own. Or would have wanted to. Or would even have thought to.
Because followers of Islam had no desire that Islam not be at the heart of their lives. So given Islam’s view of “the public square”, Muslims voicing being disturbed over someone else momentarily “seizing” the “public square” is itself not altogether surprising. But what is different in this case is the citing of a secular constitution to do so.
And if the religions were reversed? If enough Muslims had inhabited the U.S. historically there is no reason to believe a Muslim mayor would not have uttered the same thing, or that city engaged in a similarly “disturbing pattern” of behavior. Indeed, the mayor probably wouldn’t have had to say as much, because he would have merely taken it for granted, and so would most of the populace.
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But in that case, there would in all likelihood have been in place no U.S. Constitution for non-Muslims to point to for relief from that “‘establishment”. Yet even where there is legal Christian “establishment,” in the 21st century there isn’t necessarily “establishment” in spirit. The Telegraph:
The BBC’s head of religion has accused the Church of England of “living in the past” and said that the corporation should not give Christianity preferential treatment.
Aaqil Ahmed, a controversial executive whose appointment last year prompted more than 100 complaints, said: “I think all the faiths should be treated in the same way. I don’t believe in treating any faith differently.”…
In the secular West today, that is hardly a stunning opinion to hold in terms of a broad-based view of “the world.” But it is worth bearing in mind that the BBC is also a “public space”: it is a taxpayer-funded state broadcaster in a “Christian country” that is also (unlike the U.S.), officially Christian. So in a narrow job sense, as head of religious broadcasting for the BBC, that is a decidedly curious editorial stance for Mr Ahmed to suggest be pursued.
At least one might think it is, until one realizes Mr Ahmed is Muslim.









