Quebec’s Muslims, Jews Oppose Bid to Ban Religious Symbols in Public Jobs...
MONTREAL, Canada – Quebec’s Muslims and Jews are on the same side of a heated debate over whether the regional government can ban employees in public service from wearing overt religious symbols, such as Muslim women wearing headscarves. Last week, the Quebec government lit a political firestorm by unveiling its “Charter of Values,” under which employees in public sectors or connected with it would be banned from wearing symbols that advertise any religion. Among other things it would mean that Muslim women observing the hijab, Sikh men wearing the turban, Jews sporting the kippah or Christians with larger-than-average crucifixes could no longer do so at government jobs. The Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec has denounced the bill, which...
Thomas Jefferson’s Quran: How Islam Shaped the Founders...
One of the nastiest aspects of modern culture wars is the controversy raging over the place of Islam and Muslims in Western society. Too many Americans say things about Islam and Muslims that would horrify and offend them if they heard such things said about Christianity or Judaism, Christians or Jews. Unfortunately, those people won’t open Denise A. Spellberg’s Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders. This enlightening book might cause them to rethink what they’re saying. Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an examines the intersection during the nation’s founding era of two contentious themes in the culture wars—the relationship of Islam to America, and the proper relationship between church and state. The story that it tells ought to be familiar to most...
Our Founding Fathers Included Islam
[He] sais “neither Pagan nor Mahamedan [Muslim] nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion.” — Thomas Jefferson, quoting John Locke, 1776 At a time when most Americans were uninformed, misinformed, or simply afraid of Islam, Thomas Jefferson imagined Muslims as future citizens of his new nation. His engagement with the faith began with the purchase of a Qur’an eleven years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s Qur’an survives still in the Library of Congress, serving as a symbol of his and early America’s complex relationship with Islam and its adherents. That relationship remains of signal importance to this day. That he owned a Qur’an reveals Jefferson’s...
Survey: Muslim Americans Happier with Conditions in US than Broader Public...
For the most part, Muslim Americans disavow Islamic extremism, are happy with the way things are going in the country and in their lives, and are about as religious and educated as the general American public. Those are a few of the lessons from a new report from the Pew Research Center that surveyed Muslim Americans and paints a detailed portrait of their demographics, experiences, opinions, and perceptions. Pew’s last survey of this group was in 2007, and the current one was sparked, in part, by a desire to know whether recent concerns about home-grown terrorism and other pressures had led to increased alienation and anger among Muslim Americans and support for extremism, says Scott Keeter, Pew’s director of survey research and a...
Those Defending US Constitution from Sharia Must Have Failed High School Civics...
There are those who would have you believe that Islamic law, or sharia, is taking over America. They seem to allege that the 1 percent of the American population that is Muslim is on the verge of a total takeover of the United States, and if Americans are not vigilant, soon we’ll all be stoning adulterers and chopping off the hands of thieves. Take Rep. Allen West (R) of Florida, who recently alleged that, “there is an infiltration of the shariapractice into all of our operating systems in our country as well as across Western civilization. So we must be willing to recognize that enemy.” If that kind of hyperbolic statement sounds ludicrous, it’s because it is. Yet nearly two-dozen states have...
France Has Problems With All Religions — Not Just Islam...
A couple of months ago, the French media reported on yet another clash between religious extremists and state authorities. Fifty boys from a private religious school near Paris arrived at a public lycée to take their final examination; however, when two women serving as their proctors met them, there was a standoff. The students, citing religious scruples, refused to enter the room. After a few tense minutes, the school authorities blinked first: They agreed to replace the two female proctors with men. The students, by the way, were wearing yarmulkes. This latest bulletin from the battered no-man’s land that lies between republican France and its religious radicals came to mind as I read René Guitton’s “La France des...
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