Should Muslims be Able to Hold Public Office in the United States?

by:Gary DeMar 

Can a Muslim swear an oath to uphold the Constitution when the Constitution is contrary to his beliefs? The Constitution states that the document’s drafting took place “in the year of our Lord” 1787, a clear reference to Jesus Christ. For a Muslim, Jesus is not Lord, so his oath would contradict what the Constitution actually states, even if he took his oath with his hand on the Koran. 

The First Amendment’s comment on religion states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .” A Muslim could not take an oath to uphold this constitutional right because Islam requires that only Islam can be established as the religion of a nation and all other religions must be disestablished and outlawed. 

Muslim are burning churches, killing former Muslims who become Christians, and imposing the Jizya, a “religiously required per capita tax levied by a Muslim state on non-Muslim subjects permanently residing in Muslim lands under Islamic law” in Islamic nations. 

Try building a Christian church in Saudi Arabia.

“Saudi Arabia allows Christians to enter the country as foreign workers for temporary work, but does not allow them to practice their faith openly. Because of that Christians generally only worship within private homes. Items and articles belonging to religions other than Islam are prohibited. These include Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, items with religious symbols, and others.”

We hear from Muslims that “Islam Will Dominate the World.” There is talk of conquering countries, if not by the sword then by breeding with the “infidels.”

“They have lost their fertility, so they look for fertility in their midst. We will give them fertility! . . . We will breed children with them, because we shall conquer their countries – whether you like it or not, oh Germans, oh Americans, oh French, oh Italians, and all those like you. Take the refugees!” (H/T: The Blaze) 

Long before Dr. Ben Carson made his comments about Islam, some of our founders had things to say about Islam. In his “The Rights of the Colonists” (1772), Samuel Adams wrote:

“In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practised, and, both by precept and example, inculcated on mankind. And it is now generally agreed among Christians that this spirit of toleration, in the fullest extent consistent with the being of civil society, is the chief characteristical mark of the Church. Insomuch that Mr. Locke has asserted and proved, beyond the possibility of contradiction on any solid ground, that such toleration ought to be extended to all whose doctrines are not subversive of society. The only sects which he thinks ought to be, and which by all wise laws are excluded from such toleration, are those who teach doctrines subversive of the civil government under which they live.” 

Islam is a subversive ideology masquerading as a religion. “The U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s stated goal in America is to ‘destroy the Western civilization from within’” using our democratic process, so say the authors of Star Spangled Sharia. This has been the long-term goal of Islamists. It was something that Benjamin Franklin pointed out in a March 23, 1790, letter published in the Federal Gazette:

“Nor can the Plundering of Infidels be in that sacred Book [the Quran] forbidden, since it is well known from it, that God has given the World, and all that it contains, to his faithful Mussulmen, who are to enjoy it of Right as fast as they conquer it.”

Elias Boudinot (1740-1821), a delegate and representative from New Jersey to the Continental Congress, was an informed critic of Islam. 

“In his The Age of Revelation, a response to [Thomas] Paine's Age of Reason, Boudinot asserted that ‘Mahomet aimed to establish his pretensions to divine authority, by the power of the sword and the terrors of his government.’1 Boudinot, following earlier sources such as English theologian Humphrey Prideaux's widely read The True Nature of Imposture Displayed in the life of Mohomet, cast the prophet Muhammad as a religious fraud.”2 

John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson on July 16, 1814 where he described Mahomet to be “a military fanatic,” like other military fanatics throughout history, who “denies that laws were made for him; he arrogates everything to himself by force of arms.”3
John Quincy Adams wrote the following in a series of essays dealing with the Russo-Turkish War, and on Greece:

“The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.”4

image: http://cdn1.godfatherpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Adams_Precepts-of-the-Koran.jpg
Consider the work of Joseph Story (1779-1845) who served on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1811 to 1845. He was also the author of Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. Here are some of his comments on the place of Christianity in America’s founding:

“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.”

Story goes on to explain the intent of the First Amendment, that it was not designed to “level all religions” as if they had equal legitimacy:

“[T]he real object of the [First] amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism [Islam], or Judaism, or infidelity by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects [denominations] and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government (1833). 

We know this is true because some of the states had religious test oaths, something the Federal Constitution prohibited (Art. VI, par. 3) but did not outlaw for the states. For example, the Constitution of North Carolina in 1776 provided the following:

“That no person who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this State.”

This provision remained in force until 1835, when it was amended by changing the word “Protestant” to “Christian,” and as amended remained in force until the Constitution of 1868.

Let’s not forget the Barbary Wars where American citizens were kidnapped and sold into slavery.
While our founders did not discriminate against individuals who embraced the Islamic faith, they had a great deal to say about Islam, the terrorist tenets of its founder, and its political designs on nations.

1. Elias Boudinot, The Age of Revelation: The Age of Reason Shewn to be an Age of Infidelity (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, [1801] 2009). [image: http://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/72x72/21a9.png
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2. Thomas S. Kidd, “The Founders and Islam,” Faith and the Founders of the American Republic, eds. Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 91. [image: http://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/72x72/21a9.png
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3. Originally in Latin: “Jura negat sibi cata, nihil non arrogat armis.” [image: http://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/72x72/21a9.png
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4. John Quincy Adams, The American Annual Register for the Years 1827-8-9 (New York: E. & G. W. Blunt, 1830), 274. [image: http://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/72x72/21a9.png
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