Eugene Robinson takes a stand against bigot Herman Munster Cain.

Stand up to Herman Cain’s bigotry

by Eugene Robinson (Washington Post)

It is time to stop giving Herman Cain’s unapologetic bigotry a free pass. The man and his poison need to be seen clearly and taken seriously.

Imagine the reaction if a major-party presidential candidate — one who, like Cain, shows actual support in the polls — said he “wouldn’t be comfortable” appointing a Jew to a Cabinet position. Imagine the outrage if this same candidate loudly supported a community’s efforts to block Mormons from building a house of worship.

But Cain’s prejudice isn’t against Mormons or Jews, it’s against Muslims. Open religious prejudice is usually enough to disqualify a candidate for national office — but not, apparently, when the religion in question is Islam.

On Sunday, Cain took the position that any community in the nation has the right to prohibit Muslims from building a mosque. The sound you hear is the collective hum of the Founding Fathers whirring like turbines in their graves.

Freedom of religion is, of course, guaranteed by the Constitution. There’s no asterisk or footnote exempting Muslims from this protection. Cain says he knows this. Obviously, he doesn’t care.

Cain’s remarks came as “Fox News Sunday”host Chris Wallace was grilling him about his obsession with the attempt by some citizens of Murfreesboro, Tenn., to halt construction of a mosque. Wallace noted that the mosque has operated at a nearby site for more than 20 years, and asked, sensibly, what the big deal is.

Cain launched into an elaborate conspiratorial fantasy about how the proposed place of worship is “not just a mosque for religious purposes” and how there are “other things going on.”

This imagined nefarious activity, it turns out, is a campaign to subject the nation and the world to Islamic religious law. Anti-mosque activists in Murfreesboro are “objecting to the fact that Islam is both a religion and a set of laws, sharia law,” Cain said. “That’s the difference between any one of our other traditional religions where it’s just about religious purposes.”

Let’s return to the real world for a moment and see how bogus this argument is. Presumably, Cain would include Roman Catholicism among the “traditional religions” that deserve constitutional protection. It happens that our legal system recognizes divorce, but the Catholic Church does not. This, by Cain’s logic, must constitute an attempt to impose “Vatican law” on an unsuspecting nation.

Similarly, Jewish congregations that observe kosher dietary laws must be part of a sinister plot to deprive America of its God-given bacon.

Wallace was admirably persistent in pressing Cain to either own up to his prejudice or take it back. “But couldn’t any community then say we don’t want a mosque in our community?” Wallace asked.

“They could say that,” Cain replied.

“So you’re saying any community, if they want to ban a mosque. . .,” Wallace began.

“Yes, they have the right to do that,” Cain said.

For the record, they don’t. For the record, there is no attempt to impose sharia law; Cain is taking arms against a threat that exists only in his own imagination. It makes as much sense to worry that the Amish will force us all to commute by horse and buggy.

This demonization of Muslims is not without precedent. In the early years of the 20th century, throughout the South, white racists used a similar “threat” — the notion of black men as sexual predators who threatened white women — to justify an elaborate legal framework of segregation and repression that endured for decades.

As Wallace pointed out, Cain is an African American who is old enough to remember Jim Crow segregation. “As someone who, I’m sure, faced prejudice growing up in the ’50s and the ’60s, how do you respond to those who say you are doing the same thing?”

Cain’s response was predictable: “I tell them that’s absolutely not true, because it is absolutely, totally different. . . . We had some laws that were restricting people because of their color and because of their color only.”

Wallace asked, “But aren’t you willing to restrict people because of their religion?”

Said Cain: “I’m willing to take a harder look at people that might be terrorists.”

Generations of bigots made the same argument about black people. They’re irredeemably different. Many of them may be all right, but some are a threat. Therefore, it’s necessary to keep all of them under scrutiny and control.

Bull Connor and Lester Maddox would be proud.

Eugene Robinson will be online to chat with readers at 1 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday. Submit your questions before or during the discussion.

Eugene Robinson picks apart the right-wing’s new scare tactic.

Sharia as the new red menace?

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Boy, I really hate it when American judges try to impose harsh Islamic sharia law. You know, with all those grisly lashings, stonings and beheadings. What’s that you say? No such thing is happening, and you wonder where I got such a crazy idea? Why, Newt Gingrich told me.

On Saturday, speaking at the conservative Values Voter Summit, Gingrich issued a thunderous call for action against an imminent threat that exists only in his fevered imagination — or, perhaps, in his political machinations.

“We should have a federal law that says sharia law cannot be recognized by any court in the United States,” Gingrich declared, to a standing ovation.

Okay, but would this include Judge Judy? Because I’ve always suspected that when she gets really mad, and she snaps the heads off both the plaintiff and the defendant, she might be slipping a little sharia into the American subconscious — you know, preparing an unsuspecting nation for the real deal. Maybe we need another law that covers fake judges on daytime television, with punishments that begin with flogging.

But seriously, folks, Newt says we have to halt the insidious encroachment of sharia law, and we have to halt it here and now. In July, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, he went on at great length about the supposed sharia menace, which he sees as part of a “stealth” campaign to impose Islam on all of us.

“Stealth jihadis use political, cultural, societal, religious, intellectual tools; violent jihadis use violence,” Gingrich said at AEI. “But in fact they’re both engaged in jihad, and they’re both seeking to impose the same end state, which is to replace Western civilization with a radical imposition of sharia.”

He threw in a perfunctory disclaimer — that there is “a sharp distinction between those Muslims who live in the modern world and those Muslims who would radically change the modern world” — and then proceeded with a speech that essentially paints Islam as the new Red Menace. The “stealth jihadis,” I suppose, must be like the “known communists” on the list in Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s hand.

Along the way, in the July speech, Gingrich painted liberals as a bunch of fellow travelers. “How we don’t have some kind of movement in this country on the left that understands that sharia is a direct mortal threat to virtually every value that the left has is really one of the most interesting historical questions,” he said.

Where to begin? First, I guess, by stating the obvious: There is no left-of-center movement dedicated to fighting the steady, stealthy insinuation of sharia into America’s legal system because no such thing is happening. Gingrich invents an enemy and then demands to know why others haven’t sallied forth to slay it.

Gingrich and the Islamophobes have found one solitary case to bolster their “sharia is here” theory. In June 2009, a family court judge in Hudson County, N.J., denied a restraining order to a woman who testified that her husband, a Muslim, had forced her to have non-consensual sex. Judge Joseph Charles Jr. said he did not believe the man “had a criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault” his wife because he was acting in a way that was “consistent with his practices.”

The judge was clearly in error, as a state appeals court two months ago reversed his decision. The man’s religious beliefs, the court ruled, do not exempt him from state laws. Thus ended the one and only instance of stealth sharia that anyone has been able to find.

Andrew Silow-Carroll, the editor in chief of the New Jersey Jewish News, cited that case in a column last month blasting Gingrich’s “sharia-phobia.” Silow-Carroll pointed out two things: First, the system worked — the judge made a boneheaded call, and he was overturned. Second, our system already allows some civil matters — but not crimes — to be settled through other means of arbitration. “Among those alternative mechanisms is the beit din, or rabbinic law court,” Silow-Carroll wrote. “Every day, Jews go before batei din to arbitrate real estate deals, nasty divorces and business disputes.”

If Newt were aware of this, would he blow a gasket? Somehow, I doubt it. His objection seems to be faith-specific.

And his purpose seems to be political. If Muslim-bashing draws a rise — and apparently it does — then he’s not going to be outdone. Watch out, Judge Judy. He may be coming for you next.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com