Muslim wants to take oath of office on Koran; Prager is shocked

David G. writes:

On Dennis Prager’s show the other day he reported that Keith Ellison, the newly elected Muslim Congressman from Minnesota, wants to take his oath of office on the Koran instead of the Bible. Prager was unsure of the accuracy of the story but he was aghast at the thought of it and stated—and I’m paraphrasing—that it should be a non-negotiable issue and that if a Muslim cannot swear his oath on the Bible then he should not run for office. Our society is built upon Judeo-Christian values and to use the Koran would be to deny the significance of our own traditions. Robert Spencer, his guest that hour was equally aghast and in full agreement with Dennis.

I think that this is one of those stories that could prove to be a watershed moment. Regardless of whether or not Ellison wants to do this it’s still an issue that other elected Muslims are sure to raise. What a great symbolic victory that would be for the Sons of Allah if the U.S. government goes multicultural on us and allows this travesty to take place.

LA replies:

Prager’s and Spencer’s response is typical of right-liberals or liberal conservatives. Prager supports mass immigration and is a passionate crusader against “racism” (he even labels as “racist” people who prefer to marry people of the same race). Spencer for his part proposes a rather demanding questionnaire that prospective Muslim immigrants would have to answer to demonstrate that they are not believers in jihad, but beyond that he does not criticize America’s non-discriminatory immigration policies or call for the end of Muslim immigration or even its reduction. Prager and Spencer both believe that Muslims, with the exception of those nasty radical Muslims whom they want to screen out, can be assimilated into America. But then Prager and Spencer express shock and outrage that a Muslim American who has been elected to Congress intends to take his oath of office on the Koran. Well, what did they expect? Did they think that even a moderate Muslim would want to take his oath on the Jewish and Christian scriptures?

Of course, Keith Ellison is not an immigrant but an American-born black who converted to Islam in his teens. But that does not change the fundamental issue. Ellison’s election to Congress is part and parcel of the ongoing Islamization of American life that has been brought about mainly by Muslim immigration. Without that immigration, Islam would have remained a tiny insignificant element in America, and Ellis would not have been elected to Congress. Or, if he had been elected, it would have been seen as a freak occurrence, not conveying the threatening message that we are losing control over our culture and institutions. In any case, Muslim immigrants and children of immigrants will inevitably be elected to Congress and other offices in the future, and will inevitably want to take their oath on the Koran, and what will the right-liberals say then?

Prager’s and Spencer’s reaction exemplifies the incurable superficiality of right-liberalism. The right-liberals assume that all human beings are the same, and therefore that all non-Western peoples including Muslims (except for certified extremists) can be assimilated into America. The right-liberals then are surprised that these aliens believe in their own, non-Western religions. Their surprise proves that the right-liberals have never subjected their universalist belief system to the slightest critical examination. They have never asked themselves if it is really true that all people can assimilate into America. They have never said to themselves, Gosh, if we admit Muslims into America, won’t they want to make Islam a part of America? Somehow they assumed that no matter whom we admitted into America, America would remain the same—that Muslims would somehow stay in some private, insignificant sphere, doing their jobs, paying their taxes, raising their children, without actually becoming active members of our society and thus bringing their own desires, preferences, and belief systems into the public sphere where they would visibly affect and transform America.

By contrast, traditionalists recognize that Muslims are (and here comes the little fact that endlessly shocks the liberals) Muslims. That’s right, folks: Muslims are Muslims. The people with whom Muslims share a sacred bond of solidarity are their fellow Muslims (including jihadists and terrorists), not Jews and Christians. Their model of behavior is Muhammad, not Jesus. Their law is the sharia, not the Constitution. Their holy book is the Koran, not the Bible. From which it follows that if we don’t want elected officials in this country to be taking their oath of office on the Koran, we must do whatever is necessary to prevent the increase of the Muslim population. We must, at a minimum, not admit Muslim immigrants. We must, at a minimum, deport Muslim non-citizens. And to the extent that Islam is already here, as a result of immigration or conversion, we must restrict and delegitimize it, as a belief system that is totally incompatible with the laws and customs of our society and our character as a people.

Prager and Spencer seem to want the effects of such a policy—they want Ellison to be stopped from swearing on the Koran—without articulating the policy itself. That is, they don’t want to say that Islam, as a religion incompatible with our Constitution, must be deprived of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. In brief, they think they can have traditionalist, non-liberal results (namely the preservation of a recognizable and cohesive society based on a common culture), without embracing traditionalist, non-liberal principles.

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Stephen T. writes:

I’ve listened to Prager since the 1980s and he is a long-time romanticist of immigration and immigrants. But, as with most Bush conservatives, said new arrivals simply HAVE to be Mexicans. About two years ago he said this: If his wife needed some chores done while he was out of town and told him she intended to go to a street corner and randomly hire a Mestizo Mexican day laborer in the country illegally to work around the house with her in his absence, he would feel completely relaxed and have no worry whatsoever about her safety. However, if she said she was going to hire an American man to do the same thing, Prager said he would greatly fear for her well-being. That is the degree to which he exalts and idealizes Mexicans over Americans, and it is typical of the conservative’s overpowering emotional need to believe that Mestizo Mexicans are the “Dream Immigrant.”

LA replies:

That is one sick liberal. He has not even read in the papers of the endless series of rapes and murders of white Americans, not to mention lesser crimes, performed by Mexican and other Hispanic illegal aliens, including murders of their white employers?

writes:

Well it’s just as you have stated so well: the fervent belief in, and allegiance to, “The Other.” You don’t have to be a liberal to have it. Dennis Prager (like his twin Ben Stein) has a deeply heartfelt, emotional investment in believing that, while Americans are turning their backs on “conservative values,” there is somewhere else on the face of this earth a superior “other” culture—a simple, pious, goodhearted folk, who will work as servants for his family for practically nothing and who embody the old-time values he reveres. And that group necessarily HAS to be Mestizo Mexicans. (He has little use for Africans, never mentions Asians and devoutly hates northern Europeans.) When reminded of the rampant corruption, immorality, violence, and cruelty which these same Mexicans have created in abundance in their failed, backwards country of origin, Prager typically excuses it all as entirely the accidental quirks and flukes of a broken political system—having nothing to do with any sort of cultural or societal ills of Mexicans at large. I live in Los Angeles and I also know where Dennis Prager lives: it’s an outlying, heavily private security-guarded community nowhere NEAR any of these “other” people whose values he supposedly admires so much. His kids have all attended exclusive private schools (not the LAUSD, with its Mexican-style 60% dropout rate) and I doubt Mr Prager socializes with many of the working Americans he delights in seeing downgraded from middle-class status to the level of third world peasants.

David G. writes:

As I read over the commentaries on the Prager post I was reminded of another “conservative” that deserves some of the criticism you aimed at Prager and Spencer and that person is Michael Medved. A few months back I wrote down this commment of his: “Tom Tancredo is a nutburger.” Medved said this in part because Tancredo either expressly or tacitly agreed with the statement, in regard to immigration and population, that “America is full”. Medved went on to declare that “America is not full” we have a booming economy and there is still plenty of room. Of course, Medved did not take into account what our population will look like in thirty or forty years a la the Rector Report. Like Prager, Medved remains a liberal on immigration issue and I do belive that you are indeed correct—these folks have a deep seated animosity for the traditional Euro / American people. Prager is definitely out of the “proposition nation “ school—he has stated openly that “America is an idea.” Medved is fond of touting economic factors and the decline of Europe’s population as factors that justify continued immigration. These folks believe that American Exceptionalism will serve to assimilate anyone. Well, maybe, maybe not. Peter Brimelow’s query is still cogent: Why should we take that risk? Medved an old leftist by his own admission and has substituted one form of idealism for another. His thinking is still dominated by a utopian and messianic view of America. When he was on the left he wanted to change America and now that he’s on the right he still wants to change America. Eiher way, from the left or the right, the traditional American was never progressive enough for Medved.

Paul T. writes:

I remember reading Medved’s early (first?) book, Whatever Happened to the Class of ’65?. He wrote it about 1975-76. It consists basically of interviews with people he went to high school with a decade earlier—the cheerleader, the jock, the cool existentialist, the hopeless nerd and so on. But one interview was with the school’s ‘fast’ girl, who told him that while still in highschool she’d had sex with over 400 men and boys, and threw in some suitably sleazy details. I remember thinking: Medved puts this into a book which he knows the girl’s parents will see? How could he do such a thing? And I’ve held him in the deepest suspicion ever since.

Spencer Warren writes:

I predict that in the new Democrat-controlled Congress the opening prayer at times will be given by a Muslim cleric. (If it has not already, for all I know!)

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 24, 2006 07:28 PM | Send