Muslim elected to Congress!!!

[blackhorse]

Keith Ellison(D-MN) was the first Muslim elected to Congress in November. You can read all about this shmuck here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Ellison_%28politician%29.

This cannot bode well for the USA.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

People are making a big deal out of this, but I see no danger. This USA is still a free country and separation of church and state is a fundamental principle. What the man believes is his own private affair.

I have no doubt he will be monitored closely so that he does not extend those aspects of his personal beliefs that are contrary to the USA system into the legislative realm.

Michael

[mweiss]

I see evidence of religion popping up all over the place now. Today on Hennikan & White, they were talking about a NJ school teacher who was preaching in class in public high school to the effect that if anyone doesn't believe that Jesus died for our 'sins', then they were going to Hell. A student recorded the lecture and the school is defending the teacher, but some parents are upset about it.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I see evidence of religion popping up all over the place now. Today on Hennikan & White, they were talking about a NJ school teacher who was preaching in class in public high school to the effect that if anyone doesn't believe that Jesus died for our 'sins', then they were going to Hell. A student recorded the lecture and the school is defending the teacher, but some parents are upset about it.

Mark,

Those parents have every right to be upset. I hope they make trouble.

Are you only seeing religion pop up now? When I went to public school, some of my teachers led the class in prayers. This was in the 60's.

I have an opinion, but it is only that since I was absent from the USA for over 3 decades. I think religion has been with us all these years--it didn't go anywhere or recede or grow--but it is getting more airplay in the news recently because of the recent acts of terrorism and the sudden focus on Islamist world-domination countries.

As I have seen churches grow, I also have seen secular entertainment, atheistic organizations, etc. grow in reasonable proportion.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

When I was 9, my family moved from Dubuque, Iowa, to Houston, Texas. This was in 1962.

By and large the transition from one public elementary school to another was no big deal. It did feel a little weird at first to attend class in a temporary building (the local term for such things was straight and to the point--they were called "the shacks"). Oh, and there were prayers every day. My parents thought that was very weird, as there was no shortage of religious people in Iowa, yet no one led prayers in a public school there.

Public school prayer became illegal a few years later, courtesy of a Supreme Court decision. The efforts of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and Donald Wildmon and Ralph Reed and James Dobson have yet to bring it back.

Robert Campbell

[mweiss]

Hi Michael,

It seems like religion has only started making a lot of headlines since the Bush administration.

Back when I went to school, we went to a little red building with a bell tower and four classrooms. The teachers taught the basics, reading writing and 'rithmatic. We only had the pledge of allegiance. No religion.

Of course, when I was much younger, I went to Sunday School under Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science. But later, in public schools, I saw no religion outside of my parochial schooling earlier.

The scary part is that today, the purveyors of religion are becoming brazen and bold and coming out of the woodwork all over the place, like maggots from an infested log which, from the outside, looks relative intact.

[Chris Grieb]

I attended public schools in five different states before the Supreme Court decision in 1962. The only cermony at these schools was the Pledge of Alliagance. These schools ranged in size from a two room to large schools in Ohio, Alaska, and California. In 1965 when I was stationed in Dallas Texas and attending NBI one of the other students mentioned that they were still praying at the high school he attended. I think prayer in school was more likely to occur in the South and East before the Supreme Court decision. This teacher in New Jersey absolutely crossed the line. To go back to the orginial tread the Muslim elected to Congress is a supporter of CAIR and sounds bad. Look at Powerline which is out of Minneapolis where he is serving from.

Edited November 18, 2006 by Chris Grieb

[blackhorse]

If Rep. elect Keith Ellison was friendly to this muslim group; http://www.freemuslims.org/ , than I would not mind so much. But he is a hardline liberal who has his hands dirty with the likes of CAIR and Nation of Islam.

[Robert Campbell]

From the sources that were linked, at least, I'm not satisfied with Ellison's present-day account of his involvement with Louis Farrakhan's group, the Nation of Islam.

It's ironic that the original Nation of Islam, led by Wallace D. Fard and then by Elijah Muhammad, was considered heretical by mullahs in the Middle East, because it preached a racist myth of the creation of the White man by the evil angel Yakub, and looked forward to the eventual extermination of the devil race by a fleet of divinely ordained spaceships.

After Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, his son Wallace D. Muhammad (more often referred to today as Warith Deen Muhammad) changed the name of the group and brought it into the mainstream of Islam, by abandoning the racial myths and even accepting white converts. Louis Farrakhan broke off in 1981 and revived the old name for the sect because he objected to abandoning the racial myths. I don't know how many congregants follow Warith Deen Muhammad today but they greatly outnumber Farrakhan's adherents (I've seen an estimated of 20,000 for the latter). You would never know that from the press coverage...

Robert Campbell