Congress Can Constitutionally Define Religion To Exclude Jihad

Congress Can Constitutionally Define Religion To Exclude Jihad

The Founders understood that religion advanced civil order and morality, and there is no reason why Congress cannot make that explicit.

Huck Davenport for American Thinker 

Let’s stop pretending: Islam is not a religion in any sense of the word. Love thy neighbor? Hardly. Temperance and self-control? Laughable. Do unto others? Well, maybe, if that doing includes jihad.

The incontestable truth is that Islam is a violent, misogynistic, intolerant political system that has been on a millennium-and-a-half-long global holy war to conquer the globe by conversion, enslavement, and murder. Denial of this basic historical fact is akin to denying the moon landing.

And we don’t have to go back to the Battle of Tours, the Crusades, or the fall of Constantinople to appreciate this; just turn on the news. This week alone, we had an attempted terrorist bombing in NYC, the actual bombing of a synagogue in Michigan, and a shooting at Old Dominion University in Virginia by, wait for it, “Mohammed” Jalloh.

Still not convinced? The French think tank Fondapol published a study showing that since 9/11, Islamic terrorists have committed 64,678 attacks, killing a quarter of a million people.

And yet, despite these shocking realities, Western countries have opened their doors to Islamic immigration out of either suicidal masochism, suicidal empathy, or suicidal historical illiteracy. Take your pick, but the keyword is “suicidal.”

Europe is already finished, but here in America, it’s barely been a generation since we all watched the Twin Towers crumble at the hands of our Allahu Akbar enrichers. And worse, in the immediate aftermath, all those “good” Muslims we’re lectured about erupted into spontaneous celebrations from every corner of the Islamic world.

How did America go from having a visceral revulsion toward Islam to voting a Muslim the mayor of not only its financial capital but Ground Zero for the 9/11 attack? How did we throw our doors open to, as Winston Churchill described it, the most “retrograde force in the world,” which is as “dangerous in a man as [rabies] is in a dog.”

The list is long, but none of this would have been possible without the original sin of George W. Bush.

Before the bodies were buried, President Bush had the audacity to quote from the Quran a lie that would dwarf his father’s “read my lips” pledge, proclaiming, “Islam is Peace.” The spectacle was so grotesquely absurd he could have called Pearl Harbor the “Great Pacific Luau” or Hiroshima “Atoms for Mercy” and been closer to the truth.

The transformation from U.S. president to Islamic dhimmi was shocking. Two days after his speech capitulating to Islam, the Pentagon announced the mission name for its counteroffensive against the terror attack as “Infinite Justice.” The mullahs were not happy, as if anyone should care. But in his second act of astounding appeasement, Bush ordered the operation’s name changed to the more Islamically sensitive name of “Enduring Freedom.”

It was worse on the battlefield. Bush declared mosques off limits to the U.S. military. Terrorists then proceeded to militarize them and carry out their murderous attacks on American soldiers under this presidential shield of protection.

But this essay is not to make the case against Islam, as if that needs to be made, or document the manifest errors that have brought us here. It’s about the much more pressing question: “What to do about it?”

That question can be answered with brutal simplicity: ban the burqa, burn the Qurans, raze the mosques, and outlaw not just Sharia, but Islam itself. But short of Trump declaring, as Lincoln had, that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact”—and I’m not ruling that out—our First Amendment makes that all but impossible.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble …

Nineteenth-century jurisprudence on religion was, of course, more sensible than today’s. After the Edmunds Act made polygamy a felony and required voters to swear they were not polygamists in order to vote, Samuel Davis, a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints and a polygamist, sued on the grounds that the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom made the law unconstitutional.

To the shock of no one in the 19th century, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that religious practices that “shock the moral judgment of the community” are unprotected, and went further to limit religion as “one’s views of his relations to his Creator” and not to “protect against legislation for the punishment of acts inimical to the peace, good order, and morals of society.”

It is hard to imagine anything more inimical to peace than Islam.

But sensible jurisprudence couldn’t survive the Warren Court. Faced with conscientious objector suits filed to avoid service in Vietnam, the Court expanded religious protections and struck down the UCMJ’s standards for exemptions as unconstitutional. A religion didn’t need to meet any practical standard of practice, morality, or justice; it only had to be a “sincere and honest belief.”

Certainly, the throngs of Muslims turning Times Square into Mecca aren’t going to fail the “sincere and honest belief” test. When they chant “Death to America,” I have no doubt they’re being sincere and honest.

But the Court is not the final word, because the Constitution, thankfully, does not define religion. In its absence, and lacking any congressional guidance, it was within the province of the Court to provide one. But that in no way binds Congress from doing so. And therein lies the first step in ridding the country of the scourge of Islam.

Even so, Congress cannot simply ban Islam. It would violate the Equal Protection Clause, the Due Process Clause, and a host of other statutes. It must tailor its definition to be neutral, unbiased, and well supported by compelling state interests. Fortunately, Islam is so fundamentally different from the rest of the world’s faiths that any reasonably honest definition of religion would exclude it.

The first step is to establish what a religion is for federal law. These simple statements of what a religion is and what it is not are workable for all faiths:

Religion is a system of sincerely held beliefs addressing ultimate questions of life, purpose, morality, or the transcendent that holds each and every one of the following precepts:

1. Human dignity: affirmation of the equal worth of all persons;
2. Nonviolence: rejection of violence or cruelty as sacred duty;
3. Non-coercion: rejection of forced conversion, compelled observance, or civil subjugation as sacred duty;
4. Truthfulness and good faith toward non-adherents;
5. Peaceable civic coexistence;
6. Rule of law: respect for and good-faith obedience to neutral, generally applicable secular laws.

And equally important, what religion is not:

1. A religion may not call for violence or physical punishment;
2. A religion may not mandate the civil or legal subordination of persons by status, including sex, caste, or ethnicity;
3. A religion may not advocate for deception, coercion, or sabotage of civil order;
4. A religion may not be premised upon political supremacy or theocratic rule, including replacement of, subordination to, or categorical rejection of the constitutional order or applicable laws;
5. A religion may not adhere to, give support to, or advocate for terrorist groups

Is this enough? Certainly not, but it’s a start. While we try to win the war of ideas, we do not need to be giving income tax exemptions, property tax exemptions, zoning exemptions, and tax deductions to those who are unabashedly working to overthrow our country, our way of life, and Western civilization itself.

Image (edited) by Michael Foran. CC BY 2.0.