Sorry if any of this has been pointed out already on this threat, but there is NOTHING wrong with have a Muslim president - or a Jewish president,
Buddhist president, or atheist president. In fact, I look forward to the day when we begin to elect presidents who share a broader spectrum of
religious views. There is no reason to start fussing about Obama being Muslim - even though he isn't. He is guaranteed this right by the Constitution
of the United States, Article IV:
"no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust in the United States."
And let us not forget the FIRST AMENDMENT!
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
When it boils down to it, we were never truly a Christian nation. "In God We Trust" was placed on our currency during the Civil War, and it was a
move during the Cold War to put "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.
What about the Treaty of Tripoli, signed in 1796?
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character
of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never have entered into any war, or act of hostility
against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of
the harmony existing between the two countries."
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
Along similar lines, this statement by John Tyler:
"The United States have adventured upon a great and noble experiment, which is believed to have been hazarded in the absence of all previous
precedent -- that of total separation of Church and State. No religious establishment by law exists among us. The conscience is left free from all
restraint and each is permitted to worship his Maker after his own judgment. The offices of the Government are open alike to all. No tithes are levied
to support an established Hierarchy, nor is the fallible judgment of man set up as the sure and infallible creed of faith. The Mohammedan, if he will
to come among us would have the privilege guaranteed to him by the constitution to worship according to the Koran; and the East Indian might erect a
shrine to Brahma, if it so pleased him. Such is the spirit of toleration inculcated by our political Institutions."
Thomas Paine:
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the
Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them
all."
John Adams:
"Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds,
if there were no religion in it!"
James Madison:
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places,
pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
Thomas Jefferson:
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we
have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in
anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
Yeah, Jefferson also said that if there had been no priests, there would be no infidels, and that the purpose of religion was to give power to the
system, and to limit those who think for themselves.
Sorry for the rant, I just feel that it needed to be said. I'm not anti-religion by any mean, but I just feel that we will not progress as a people
(humanity in general) until we start to accept and respect those who are different from us. It is no different from the struggle of civil rights in
the 1960s, and completely vital for humanity to realize that we are, to quote the Dalai Lama, part of global tribe.