BEN CARSON's Comments relooked. Is Islam compatible with the Constitution of the United States?

Well, not to bring our current president into the fight here, but when he applied for a scholarship to the Chicago School of Law, he first applied as a Christian black student (US citizen). He was denied. He reapplied as a foreign, black, MOSLEM, and got a free ride. So, since he apparently went over to Christianity (though, judging from his "spiritual adviser" from his first term as senator on back leads one to believe "not god BLESS America, but god DAMN America" might have been just as bad as what radical Moslems think) FROM the Moslem faith, according to the Que'ran, he should be killed. Huh. I wonder why so many Moslems in our country voted for him then, since he was the antithesis of the Moslem Faith, a traitor to the cause, etc?

Mr Obama certainly wouldn't have been elected president as a Moslem, would he? So was it expedience that had him switch religions, or was it a change of heart, or faith, or what?

We've seen several general officers get "retired by force" or canned for being evangelical Christians. I myself got one unit commander orders after he started saying prayers before commander's call. NOT because of the prayer itself, mind you, but because it made EVERYONE uncomfortable. And those who did not bow their heads were sort of obvious.

So we had a Leadership Climate Assessment soon after myself, leading a sort of a coalition of officers and enlisted to the IG to try to put a stop to it. He was ballsy enough to, at the next commanders call AFTER he got talking to from the Wing King, to open the commander's call with the following statement. "Since some of you apparently did not like the fact that I start every commander's call with a prayer (he also put one of the base chaplains up to it too), those who don't wish to pray may leave the auditorium for the prayer, and return after it is finished".

Let's see, and HOW would you identify those folks who narc'd you out? I could care less what my commander did on personal time, even if he was going door to door bible thumping. As long as he did not do it in uniform, nor mention his connection with the military, at least. But when you start bible thumping on company time, I take exception to this. As we ALL know (even you commanders out there), commander's call, to nearly all of us, in this electronic age, is a waste of time as far as disseminating information. Let us attend remotely. (we're talking base OR unit level here).

But do NOT moralize, or proselytize on military time. I can do a lot of work in 48 hours (figuring the time spent walking to and from commanders call along with the time wasted listening to things we already know), and this does not include BASE commanders calls, which, if monthly, waste about 3 to 4 hours each. Seems some of the more rabidly religious folks forget the prime movers of the military.

Give me the resources, training, authority, manpower, and budget to do what you want done, and then get the hell out of the way and let me do my job! We have the UCMJ. Those are OUR laws folks! We get held to a higher standard than the rest of our society to begin with. We can get shitcanned for adultery, but it's not illegal for a civilian. The UCMJ equates SODOMY as anything from your wife giving you a hummer in the privacy of your bedroom to boinking a sheep. (though I wonder what they're doing to change that now that gays and lesbians are allowed to serve openly. Because if it was NOT modified, you can SAY you're gay, but you still can't do gay sex. I'd hate to the the legal team trying to figure that mess out! But hey, that's both a MORAL AND RELIGIOUS issue for many people. Just like Gay Marriage is.

The KEY here folks, is MODERATION! ACCEPTANCE. Like it or not, Moslems are here to stay. Ask any Army commander how many DIFFERENT chaplains they have (branding wise). If they even know. We had a group chaplain for a while in my unit, since we were basically deployed somewhere in the world nonstop since I came in back in 1983 and we still are today. Rough on famiies, finances and tempers. I think we might have had THREE Jewish folks in our group. We had a Rabbi for our Chaplain. Nobody complained, other than the poor guy was continually rumpled. He was cursed that way. He'd even demonstrate for us. He'd make a show of putting on a new, crisp, starched to hell uniform and in an hour it would look like he slept in it for a week. We ALL liked him. Nobody accused him of being part of a Zionist Conspiracy (something the Wahabbi's seem to think EVERY jewish person is neck deep in).

He was well educated, witty, and eminently practical. Then, on a particularly hectic, bad day you'd hear the famous OY VAY! echoing down the hall, and we'd all laugh and tell ourselves that we wouldn't want his job at ANY pay scale.

HE was our chaplain and NOT our commanding officer. He was familiar with nearly every religion that has a single diety (god), and he could have easily been ordained in any of them due to his encyclopedic knowledge of them all. (yes, Christian wives are supposed to follow their husbands two paces behind and to the right of them, I think, and NEITHER a "true Christian, nor a true Moslem can charge interest on a loan. The Saudis call it a "handling fee", but banking IS the traditional realm of Jews since before the old testament, I imagine.

If I need professional advice, I'd go thru my immediate chain f command, on up as far as I needed to go. For spiritual advice, we go to our unit chaplain (in the field at least) or our minister, or whatever your head honcho is in YOUR religion. Separation of Churth AND STATE.

To me, issues of religion and sexual orientation are pretty much the same. Don't come onto me, don't try to convert me, and don't punish or retaliate against me when I tell you to back off, or worse if you do NOT back off. What you think in your own mind is your business, not mine. Considering how much blood has been spilled on BOTH sides of the "Christian-Moslem-Jewish-all other religions front", I prefer being a Jedi....and equate the FORCE with God. If he exists, then he's all around us, all the time (that or he got totally fed up with the free will clause and took his marbles and went to play somewhere else in the galaxy and tried again)

One good thing the military DID teach me was to TAKE PEOPLE AS THEY COME. As INDIVIDUALS. Anyone who says he never judges people is lying thru his teeth, after all. We can't control it. We can but try, but we ARE HUMAN, after all, and to err, IS HUMAN.

There are European countries (Denmark is one, I think and there are more) who ALLOW the Moslem slums to self rule under Shariah law., Mainly because they don't obey the laws of the country they're in (unless it's convenient for them) and since a Moslem male can marry and divorce simply by saying "I divorce you" three times in front of some number of male witnesses, he can populate those same low rent districts (slums again) with dozens of kids, and the state pays to raise them because it's usually far EASIER for the state to pay for raising the kid than trying to even FIND the father. Much less get him to pay child support.

In those areas, that are not just primarily but EXCLUSIVELY Moslem, many local police forces don't DARE go into them. Because ANYTHING they do there will be newsworthy.

I still marvel at how WE, as AMERICANS, allow MOSLEM TERRORISTS to be under the Geneva Convention when they are TRULY illegal combatants, yet whenever they capture one of OUR troops, they behead him on internet TV and drag his corpse thru the streets? REALLY? What jackass made that ruling? I've been to GITMO, and believe me, a cell and the facilities THERE are HEAVEN compared to how most of them live at home. Remember the Wahabbis want to live back in the stone age. Rural Afghanistan should suit them all just fine.

So does ISIS. Or ISIL, or whatever it is this week. WHY do we allow this? If they want to be considered lawful combatants, let them put on uniforms or even an armband or something. Yet they are COWARDS. They hide behind women and children. They kill far more of their own than they'll ever manage to kill from our side (americans). I remember in the Green Zone, one enterprising car bomber figured out that we weren't really stopping cars that had women and children in them like we would a single male driver or a group of males (yes, PROFILING, DO IT!). So he carjacked a vehicle, shot the male driver, the man's wife and kid in the back seat. He promptly loaded the car up with explosives, drove it in, locked the car with the woman and kid in it and blew it up remotely using a cell phone.

I don't think the "disciplining a wife for insubordination" clause covers blowing someone ELSE'S WIFE up, does it?

Anyway, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of Sharia law becoming imbedded in our constitution. I've also heard of a few jurisdictions (including the one in Michigan mentioned here) allowing Shariah law, but to deal with up to misdemeanors, not felonies. I think that is a stupid idea as well. NO other country caters to immigrants, legal or illegal, like we do here. But our constitution DOES say that we're founded on the idea of religious freedom, or at least tolerance. I remember the backlash on Iranian students when the Shah's regime fell. 90% of them that I was around considered themselves PERSIAN, NOT Iranians, and did their level best to distance themselves from that regime. And rednecks still beat the crap out of them here anyway, even though they had nothing to do with the embassy takeover and were horrified of what they would have to RETURN to when they finished up school..

I'm all for that slogan from the 60's made by the "establishment man" (Alfred E. Neumann was a communist, after all, right?). America, love it or LEAVE it. (or at least stop your whining and bitching and keep it to yourself)

Hope this made you folks think a bit. And by the way, my first, and ONLY girlfriend since my wife passed away in 2009 (from lung and brain cancer at 40 years old, went in for an earache and went out in a box a week later) WAS MOSLEM, Raised in Jakarta, Indonesia, and went to the same HIgh School as, yes, you guessed it, BARRY OBAMA! She had never even HEARD of Shia vs Sunny (like mad magazine's spy vs spy) until she came here for college. She married a Christian. (not me) and while her parents weren't happy about it, they dealt with it. She was a great gal too, just not for me.

But I do have a rather intimate knowledge of Islam from that 17 month education she gave me. I've read the english translation of the Que'ran and had HER read the arabic version to me when I had questions (that supersession thing really sucks, trust me) . Never once tried to convert me either. Her parents liked me a lot as well. So like I said, please TAKE EACH PERSON AS THEY ARE. Don't do the PREJUDICE thing (that's pre-judging a person before meeting them and finding out who they really are, for those of you who still don't understand what it means)., If they're bad people, then don't befriend them. Do a background check on the internet (15 bucks is cheap to vet a friend who can be trusted, believe me)

Nuff said!

Now, where'd I put that hyperdrive relay at? LOL

Dave

51 percent of U.S. Muslims prefer Shariah

There are now an estimated 3 million Muslims residing in the United States as citizens or with permanent legal status, and more than 250,000 new Muslim residents enter the U.S. per year as refugees, on work visas and student-based visas, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

A poll commissioned in May 2015 by the Center for Security Policy showed that 51 percent of American Muslims preferred that they should have their own Shariah courts outside of the legal system ruled by the U.S. Constitution. And nearly a quarter believed the use of violent jihad was justified in establishing Shariah.

"That would translate into roughly 300,000 Muslims living in the United States who believe that Shariah is 'The Muslim God Allah's law that Muslims must follow and impose worldwide by Jihad,'" writes Frank Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy

Hate to think I would have to pick up arms ever again. But these extremist Muslims are the reason I carry where ever I go these days.... I'm not worried about a store hold up or being robbed or car jacked. But I don't want to need a gun when it might be needed...And any more you just never know, when or where one of them will decide it's his day to meet Allah. And Yes I would take up arms again to fight Sharia Law.

Absolutely. Shariah law is not acceptable to the non-Muslim Americans that understand the tenets of Shariah Law. I do not think it would replace our Constitution, but I do not want Shariah Law used in our country.

Yes, we should be worried. They are one of the fastest growing populations Iin the world an have no interest in staying in their own lands but instead, want to spread worldwide and destroy all those who oppose them. Take time out to read the Qu'ran to get the truth. Dint ask your neighbor because they will lie until their numbers are too big to fight against.

1SG (Join to see) -
Let me start by saying I am an atheist who has studied the culture and the religion in depth while learning Arabic for operational purposes at the Defense Language Institute, and through further study on my own. I tend to gravitate toward the cultural studies and religious studies moreso than the language itself, which unfortunately doesn't help my foreign language proficiency pay, but I make up for it by understanding the target better.

I agree with your overall premise in the same way I would view evangelical Christians (especially one who takes Leviticus literally) who can't separate church and state, it would be completely incompatible with the constitution. I like shellfish, poly-wool blends, and pork, and I would hate the idea of killing witches. We've grown past that as a society.

The first part I wanted to mention was just a single letter.
...called "figh,"...
It's more closely pronounced "Fiqih" (with a Q, not a G...it's like a k sound pronounced at the back of the throat instead of the mid-back of the tongue) with the accent on the first syllable and the second "i" almost nonexistent, but more necessary for a native English speaker to not just ignore the "h" altogether when trying to pronounce it. The h is almost silent, but still barely audible. The word means "jurisprudence," which is basically, as you said, an interpretation of Shari'a law. There is no g sound unless you're talking to an Iraqi, who often (but not always) can pronounce the letter Qaf as a Gaf. As in English, everything in Arabic has an exception in one place or another, since the dialects are so vastly different.

I disagree with some of your points for a few main reasons.
A fatwa is a religious "decree." It's not something everyone will pay attention to. If you go to church and your pastor says, "everyone should get a leather bible case with a zipper, since leather is a good material to protect the word of God," that is a suggestion which people at other churches won't heed. Likewise, a radical Muslim cleric issuing a "fatwa" to destroy Americans, for example, will be largely ignored by the population of Muslims who do not subscribe to his ideology (and likewise don't attend his mosque).
Women driving cars is one such fatwa, but it grabbed the ear of the Saudi Royal Family many years back, so it was decreed in Saudi Arabia that women driving cars was "haram," or forbidden. Last I heard, they are taking steps to overturn that ruling.

• Girls' clitoris should be cut (per Muhammad's words in Book 41, Kitab Al-Adab, Hadith 5251).
A hadith is basically something someone who isn't Muhammad, saying "this is what Muhammad said." There are a ton of hadith that are largely ignored because they are not believable or accurate. In fact, when it comes down to it, many Muslims ignore hadith altogether and only focus on the writings in the Qur'an itself. The truth of the matter is, female circumcision is a gruesome practice that is carried out in a small part the Arab world, primarily in Egypt and Sudan. It has been outlawed in Egypt, but the practice continues under the table.

It isn't religious, it's cultural. Female circumcision has nothing to do with the Qur'an or Islam. It's (obviously different and way worse, but in a way) similar to the practice of piercing a baby girl's ears in the South. The South is part of the bible belt. Piercing girl's ears when they're too young to consent happens in the South. Ergo, piercing baby girls' ears must just be a Christian practice.

• Muslims should engage in Taqiyya and lie to non-Muslims to advance Islam.
This is a tenet in Shi'a Islam. It does not refer to denying being a Muslim to try to throw anyone off (which was brought up in another conversation I had about al-Taqiyya on RP). This would be violating a religious rule very similar to the Christian theology of "If you deny me before man, I will deny you before the Father." Aside from that, yes, many Shi'a do in fact practice al-Taqiyya in other contexts. Shi'a are supposedly on "our side" in Iraq, since ISIS claims to be Sunni (and has a lot of high ranking members from the old Ba'ath party from Saddam's era), but then the whole of Iran is Shi'a, so no one group is entirely our friends.

• Criticizing or denying Allah, the moon god of Islam is punishable by death.
Moon God? Really? "Allah," the God of Islam, first revealed himself to Abraham, according to the Islamic faith. There are some differences in the stories. In the bible, Abraham was supposed to sacrifice Isaac, the legitimate son of Abraham and Sarah. In the Qur'an, Abraham was supposed to sacrifice Ishmael, the true firstborn. Isaac's descendants are the Israelites, Jews and later Christians. Ishmael's descendants eventually became Muslims. Statements like the "moon God" myth tend to be misrepresentations set about by people devout to other Abrahamic faiths, I suppose because there's 'no way they have the same God I do.'

I don't have time to pull up primary sources for you, but there's a quick once-over on the fallacy, courtesy of Wikipedia, at the bottom.

• Theft is punishable by amputation of the right hand (above).
True. Very true. In Saudi Arabia, and now in ISIS-controlled areas. Saudi Arabia doesn't get a pass on this, but at least there it makes sense culturally (despite being incompatible with our society). During the Hajj, there are thousands of vendors with millions of dollars' worth of gold and precious gems for pilgrims to purchase to take home as mementos. 5 times a day, there's a call to prayer. Everyone leaves and goes to pray. Nobody steals.

I don't want to refute all of your points, obviously. On some I agreed, and added more information. I can't speak to some of them. Some are absolutely true. Some aren't worth the effort. The point is just to look at each one individually. It applies sometimes, depending on what group you are talking about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allah_as_Moon-god

1SG (Join to see) MSG, there aren't any religions that I know of that are compatible with the Constitution. A radical president that tried to impose his/her own religious law on the country would run smack into the face of the 2nd Amendment, and would not be in power for very long. So. I have no probably with a president of any religion, as long as they're not trying to enforce their views as secular law.

yay Ben.... stick it to em...

To answer this question one must understand the different between a Muslim and an Islamist. By understanding that, the answer will appear by itself.

That's a bit harsh.