Dr. Ben Carson doesn’t think that Islam is “consistent with the Constitution” and “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.”
Dr. Carson did not explain what parts of Islam were inconsistent with the Constitution. It is unknown whether Carson knows anything about Islam at all as he has never spoken of it.
Carson’s comments drew scorn from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, another presidential candidate though one who garnered under 1 percent support in the CNN/ORC poll.
“I think Dr. Carson needs to apologize,” Graham said, saying the comments were particularly offensive to U.S. soldiers who are Muslim.
But other Republicans tread more softly around the issue, highlighting its salience among some voters. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who had 4 percent support in the CNN/ORC poll, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that a president’s religion shouldn’t matter but he understood the rise of anti-Islamic sentiment because “we were attacked by people who were all Muslim.”
A Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll conducted in January in Iowa, the first state to vote in the nominating contest, showed 39 percent of Republicans see Islam as inherently violent. Thirteen percent of Democrats held that view. buswk.co/1NFcUwB
Ohio Governor John Kasich, another laggard in the polls for Republican nominees, told NBC he didn’t know if a president’s religion mattered.
Speaking to NBC on Sunday, Trump was asked whether he’d accept a Muslim president, and replied: “Some people have said it already happened.”
I suppose some nutcase will come forward now and tell us that a Catholic should never be president because everyone knows a Catholic’s first allegiance is to the pope, not the Constitution. Or a Jew should never be president because Jews are only looking out for Jews.
I suppose someone will come forward and show us chapter and verse in the Koran why Islam is “inconsistent with the Constitution.” They tried something similar in 1924 when Catholic Al Smith ran for president. Protestant preachers published twisted interpretations of Catholic doctrine (or outright lies) to “prove” that Smith would be the pope’s servant. It was wrong back then and Carson is wrong today. One’s religion is separate from one’s fealty to the Constitution. Kennedy proved that, and I’m sure the first Muslim president will prove it too.
The only thing inherently violent I see is Carson’s disservice to the truth. Just because 39% of Republicans are knuckleheads and believe a religion practiced by more than a billion people worldwide is “inherently violent” doesn’t mean our candidates have to be knuckleheads too. When you define a religion by the 1 or 2 percent of adherents who have a warped, and darkly twisted interpretation of its teachings, you are demonstrating a shocking ignorance.
Should we define Christianity by the bloodthirstiness of its past? All sorts of wars were justified by a warped interpretation of scripture. But the tiny minority of Islamists who similarly twist the meaning found in their holy texts should represent Islam in its entirety? That’s idiotic on its face.
Ignorant bigotry should disqualify Carson as a candidate for president.
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