Dem Senator to lead hearing on Muslim civil rights

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.) announced Tuesday that he will hold Congress’ first-ever hearing on the civil rights of American Muslims next week. The hearing comes a little more than two weeks after a Republican in Congress made headlines by holding a controversial hearing on the radicalization of Muslim Americans.

The release announcing the hearing said it is in response to the “spike in anti-Muslim bigotry in the last year including Quran burnings, restrictions on mosque construction, hate crimes, hate speech, and other forms of discrimination.”

[Note: In 2009, the latest FBi statistics available, anti-Islamic hate crimes accounted for 9.3 percent of the 1,376 religiously motivated hate crimes recorded. That’s far less than the 70.1 percent that were anti-Jewish.]

“Our Constitution protects the free exercise of religion for all Americans,” [see article below] Durbin said. “During the course of our history, many religions have faced intolerance. It is important for our generation to renew our founding charter’s commitment to religious diversity and to protect the liberties guaranteed by our Bill of Rights.”

The panel of witnesses scheduled to testify at the hearing include Muslim civil rights leader Farhana Khera; Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick; Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, the Obama Administration’s top civil rights official; and former Assistant Attorney General Alex Acosta, the Bush Administration’s top civil rights official.

Durbin will lead the hearing next Tuesday in the subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, which is part of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Earlier this month, Republican Rep. Peter King (N.Y.) received an onslaught of criticism for leading a hearing in the House Homeland Security Committee on the radicalization of American Muslims. Critics said he was unfairly targeting Muslims, even though non-Muslims have committed acts of terrorism in the U.S. as well.

Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, one of two Muslims in Congress, accused King of “ascribing the evil acts of a few individuals to an entire community” and said the hearings could make the country less safe.

King said that he believes “the overwhelming majority of Muslim Americans are outstanding Americans and make enormous contributions to our country” – but added that “there are realities we cannot ignore” about the threat of radicalization.

So, I asked Lisa Piraneo of ACT! for America if there was any chance that this hearing was going to have any semblance of balance, like looking into the civil rights of ALL Americans. This is her answer:

“They are holding a hearing specifically on Muslim’s civil rights.

“Though there are indeed strong Republicans on the Subcommittee, the hearings are controlled by the majority which, in the Senate, happens to belong to the Democrats. This is clearly a response to the recent hearings by Rep. King in the House Homeland Security Committee on Muslim radicalization.

“The Subcommittee is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights. Further info below:

The Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights Jurisdiction: (1) Constitutional amendments; (2) Enforcement and protection of constitutional rights; (3) Statutory guarantees of civil rights and civil liberties; (4) Separation of powers; (5) Federal-State relations; (6) Interstate compacts; (7) Human rights laws and practices; (8) Enforcement and implementation of human rights laws.

Membership – 6:5
Democratic Members
Dick Durbin, Illinois (Chairman)
Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont
Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island
Al Franken, Minnesota
Christopher A. Coons, Delaware
Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut
Republican Members
Lindsey Graham, S.C. (Ranking Member)
Jon Kyl, Arizona
John Cornyn, Texas
Michael S. Lee, Utah
Tom Coburn, Oklahoma

http://www.themoralliberal.com/2011/03/23/islam-and-the-first-amendment-privileges-but-not-rights/

Islam and The First Amendment: Privileges But Not Rights

By Bryan Fischer

The First Amendment was written by the Founders to protect the free exercise of Christianity. They were making no effort to give special protections to Islam. Quite the contrary. We actually at the time were dealing with our first encounters with jihad in the form of the Barbary Pirates, which is why Jefferson bought a copy of the Koran. He was told by the Bey of Tripoli that Islam requires Muslims to rob, kill and pillage infidel Christians wherever they find them. Jefferson naturally found that hard to believe, so he bought a copy of the Koran to read it for himself. Sure enough, it�s right in there, in the 109 verses of the Koran that call for violence against the infidels.

Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment.

Our government has no obligation to allow a treasonous ideology to receive special protections in America, but this is exactly what the Democrats are trying to do right now with Islam.

From a constitutional point of view, Muslims have no First Amendment right to build mosques in America. They have that privilege at the moment, but it is a privilege that can be revoked if, as is in fact the case, Islam is a totalitarian ideology dedicated to the destruction of the United States. The Constitution, it bears repeating, is not a suicide pact. For Muslims, patriotism is not the last refuge of a scoundrel, but the First Amendment is.

As Joseph Story, a long-serving Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court said: “Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.

“The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.”

Story, writing as a constitutional historian, is quite clear. The purpose of the First Amendment was not “to advance Mohametanism” but to “exclude all rivalry among Christian sects.