Gord's Notebook : Rifqa Bary( Esther) ,Dalia Mogahed Atlas Shrugs Uberconservatives & The Religious Right Muslim Bashing

Update: 2;30 PM & 3:33 PM Oct 9, 2009

According to dominionists, the Bible has supremacy over the U.S. Constitution. In a 2002 address to the Society of Catholic Social Scientists in Ann Arbor, Mich., federal judge James Leon Holmes, appointed in July, 2004, affirmed the supremacy of the Bible:
Christianity transcends the political order and cannot be subordinated to the political order.

Above Quote From: The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party at theocracy Watch

...A pervasive secularism has infected our society and its corrosive effects are evident throughout the life of our nation.
.Jesus Christ as the only Savior and salvation is in His name alone. Baptists ...reject inclusivism and pluralism in salvation...Salvation comes only to those who come to personal faith in Jesus Christ as Savior..
The Scriptures. We have made the total truthfulness and trustworthiness of the Bible even more explicit, and we point to Jesus Christ as the focus of divine revelation. . We must not claim a knowledge of Christ that is independent of Scripture or in any way in opposition to Scripture. Likewise, Scripture cannot be set against Scripture.

* SBC: the Bible is the literal inerrant word of God without error or contradiction
The Bible because it is in fact the Divine words of God cannot be in error or contradict itself.

*Gender is a gift from God.

* Women are to obey their husbands

*marriage is a gift from God meant for one man and one woman til death- so no divorce or only in exceptional circumstances -so everyone who has been divorced is a sinner and an apostate and cannot enter the gates of Heaven
Of course this is also a reference to homosexuals getting married or polygamy

*the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.
Women cannot become Pastors or Religious leaders

* "addressing the issues of abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia,and all manner of deviant and pagan sexuality."

Above quote From the Chairman of the Committee on the Baptist Faith and Message- Southern Baptist Convention
& Baptist Faith & Message motion grabs SBC attention at Florida Baptist Witness

Published June 21, 2007

One of the strangest things about the Religious Right(Republicans) & their enablers the Neoconservatives and the Ayn Rand worshipers (who spread the bizarre "Objectivist" pseudo philosophy) is how they have the audacity to accuse Non-Christian religions as being backward in their thinking while at the same time embracing a Conservative Christian Reconstructionist/Dominionist Literalist Inerrant Biblical world view.(as we have seen in a number of my previous posts over the last two years or so)

John Hagee supports Israel -Christian Zionism-Part 4
Cowboys & Christian Zionists - they Can't wait for the end-Times when the Jews of Israel will accept Jesus as their savior or be burned alive
God says convert or Die
Pastor Rick Scarborough- holds church rallies to encourage Christians to vote only for candidates who share Evangelical Fundamentalist viewpoint

Religious Right wants to return America to what it considers to be its traditional values which include an adherece to Biblical law.Christian Warriors (part 5 of 10)
Taking over local school boards
Rick Scarborough 1st part
Accuses the activist judges on the Supreme court
Impeach judges

Rick Scarborough believes the notion of Separation of Church and State is UnAmerican
Johnson of Ohio blames Evolution for most of the social problems in American Society
he is against gay marriage
John Green
Ron Luce & Battlecry intro only.

So recently we have seen the case of Fatimah Rifqa who has been turned into a folk hero cum would be Christian Martyr by the Religious Right and US conservatives including the Ayn Rand website Atlas Shrugs which has become hysterical in their propaganda war to defend Rifqa at any cost and to use Rifqa to advance their anti-Islam agenda and as a way to bash all Muslims . Now Atlas Shrugs is going after Obama 's first female Muslim adviser Dalia Mogahed- of course if the woman were liberal or Gay or pro-environment or belied in Global Warming or supported abortiono women having control over their own bodies & reproductive Rights or believed in wage parity for women or believed women be allowed to go into combat alongside men or never spoke out against pre-marital sex or any of these other issues Atlas Shrugs and other anti-Obama anti-Muslim Uberconservatives would reject Dalia Moahed on those grounds so any one in Obama's administration can't win with these self-righteous anti-Democracy Republicans & Religious Zealots.

Obama First Female Veiled Islamist Appointee, Dalia Mogahed, Promotes Sharia, Says it's "Misunderstood" at Atlas Shrugs Oct. 8,2009

Earlier this year, in April, I ran this post: Obama's Three Degrees of Anti-Semitic Separation, warning Americans of Obama's first female 'Islamist' appointee, Egyptian born Dalia Mogahed. She had conducted her first interview with Sheik Yusuf Al-Qaradawi's extremist Islamic website, Islam Online. I posted the whole thing here. The taqiyya interview is irony-rife with claims of victimhood and subjugation.

This latest taqiyya (lies to advance Islam) whitewashes the horror, the cruelty, the barbarism, the misogyny, the gender apartheid of shariah (Islamic) law. Is anyone still wondering where all this is going?

and:

Obama's Embarrassing Nobel Prize

Because nothing means anything anymore. Because good is evil and evil is good. Because we live in a morally bankrupt world.

Obama won what? This is embarrassing. Who's next Bill Ayers?

Obama has sided with evil, abandoned the Jews, the Iranians, the Hondurans, the Eastern Europeans, capitalism, individual rights, American soverighnity - in under a year.
The world is careening to catastrophe. And they give him a prize.

Tundra's take: THE OBAMA'S FAILED TO GET THE OLYMPIC GOLD SO THE NOBEL ACADEMY GIVE THEIR'S INSTEAD......
"I'm going to propose him for next years Nobel Prize in chemistry. Why? because of his massive contribution to hot air. "Yes we can". That's it. Another states: They should rename the prize. "Appeasement Prize", that's more appropriate.

Rifqa is a 17 year old girl who ran away or was abducted from her Muslim family claiming her father would kill her because she had converted to Christianity . The people who helped her to leave her parents are Evangelical Fundamentalist extremist who are using Rifqa in their propaganda war against Islam.

The Religious Right and Republicans and ultraconservatives including those in the Ayn Rand camp believe that all Muslims are inherently immoral unethical and anti-Christian and they would prefer that no Muslims be permitted to immigrate to the United States. Anyway listening to Rifqa on video & audio tapes she appears to rather hysterical and she claims to a Prophet or reincarnation of Esther so she maybe sincere or just in the grip of an adolescent temporary religious mania -ie she maybe just going through a phase or stage & is enjoying all the attention she is getting and the drama.

The views of the Religious Right who are led mainly by Evangelical Fundamentalist Christians are similar in a number of way to conservative fundamentalist Muslims . The Religious Right and UberConservatives vies on religion and society and government are anti-Modernity and are rooted in pre-Enlightenment thinking. Most of the intellectual elite including artist writers, philosophers, scientists they believe humanist in their world view and anti-Christian and anti-God and therefore led Western Civilization in the wrong direction that is towards a man centered philosophy and away from a God centered philosophy and world view.

For instance the Religious Right and their conservative "Fellow Travelers" reject Islam because they claim all Muslims don't believe in gender equality or Equal Rights for Women. At their various websites (many of which I have listed in the left sidebar )they argue in favor of a belief in an inerrant literal Biblical world view which entails an adherence to most if not all laws presented in the Bible.

The laws found especially in the Old Testament would include the doctrines and laws governing all human beings which begins with the view that men and women are not just different but that men are inherently superior to women. The main purpose of any woman is to be an help-mate to her husband and to have as many children as possible and so fulfill her role as a mother -she is to look after the children and the household while the man of the house is to provide for his wife & children as the sole provider.

So it is rather disingenuous of those on the right to claim that they want to defend the rights of women since they themselves would restrict the rights and roles of women in society.The Religious Right has never really changed their tune for the last forty years or so by insisting that women must take second place after men. They believe in a patriarchal hierarchy. Men are the ones qualified to be the political leaders and for instance certain roles or professions should be restricted to men only such as the military, police officers, firefighters etc.

So here's a short list of some of the beliefs of the Religious Right & the Uberconservatives who control the Republican party:

They would prefer that men be the sole providers for their families though if necessary some wives might out of necessity have to work especially since women in this new Christianized nation would have to have as many children as possible. Their role according the Religious Right and conservatives is that of a baby-making machine.

The Religious Right and Fellow Travelers are against the notion of women having a say over their own bodies and reproductive rights-

They want to ban all forms of abortion including cases of rape and incest because all fertilized eggs are sacred and have the same rights as any other American citizen and believe the unborn fetus from the moment of conception has more rights than does the woman who is carrying the Zygot /fetus.

They would prefer laws so that women and those who assist them in having abortion should be imprisoned for murder

They are against any form of birth control the -Birth Control Bill because it is seen as a pre-emptive abortion

They are against sex education because they believe American women or men shouldn't be having pre-marital sex

They would prefer to have laws which would imprison those who have premarital sex or who commit adultery

They are anti-Gay & would insist on denying equal rights to Gays, Lesbians and Transgender individuals and eventually start imprisoning people for what they consider to be immoral anti-Biblical behaviors which undermine America's Judeo-Christian values

They are also against having women serving in the military and taking part in combat

They are anti-science in their refusal to accept the scientific community 's acceptance of Global Warming as a scientific fact.

They believe God made the world for man and to take advantage of its resources without any modern environmental concerns which they see as sentimental nonsense since God has promised to always provide for men's sustenance - and if resources actually run out it is a sign for the coming apocalypse.

They are also anti-science in their crusade to ban if possible the teaching of evolution in schools or universities as an acceptable scientific fact

They would prefer to teach Intelligent Design which is just Scientifi Creationism in a new package-rebranding or just teach the Bible as containing all the facts or truths one needs from the laws of the land to science ,medicine, ethics, nutrition-

They would prefer to have laws restricting the Religious Freedom of those outside the Judeo-Christian tradition

They would ban all books, films, tv programs newspapers, magazines ,music, and anything on the internet which didn't adhere to their strict Judeo-Christian values that is according to Evangelical Fundamentalism and Orthodox Judaism

They would ban labor unions and any form of collective bargaining

Their idea of education is to abolish the Department of education and shut down all public schools to be replaced with private religious charter schools and homeschooling

They would also prefer to take the War on Terror to the next level as a Holy Crusade against Islam and possibly against all other non-Judeo-Christian religions

They have argued that the United States is a Divinely Chosen Nation and a light unto the world which even many non-religious Americans also believe & justify by some sort of special pleading for America's unique role in the world.

They therefore believe the US military should use whatever means necessary including Atomic & Hydrogen Bombs to win its wars and to subjugate the peoples who rebel or resist American authority and hegemony
They would dissolve most of the U.S.Federal govt except for the Dept. of defense
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Muslim & Obama bashing continues unabated at Atlas Shrugs.Whenever these conservatives talk about Muslims they quite often if obliquely draq a line connecting Obama to Islam suggesting he is in fact a secret Muslim and therefore a supporter of Islamic extremists and terrorists.

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End Notes & Suggested Reading

From: The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party at theocracy Watch

Biblical Law

Biblical Law
"You and I can bring the rule and reign
of the cross to America."
Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of the 2,000-member Hope Christian Church in Bowie, Maryland
Justice Sunday II , August 14, 2005.

Dominionists seek to re-interpret the U.S. Constitution so that it conforms to their Biblical Worldview. Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel declares it's time to get Jesus into the judicial mix.

"Now we're working to establish Liberty University School of Law, which will open its doors in August 2004. We are going to teach lawyers to think in a biblical, Christian world view."

According to dominionists, the Bible has supremacy over the U.S. Constitution. In a 2002 address to the Society of Catholic Social Scientists in Ann Arbor, Mich., federal judge James Leon Holmes, appointed in July, 2004, affirmed the supremacy of the Bible:

Christianity transcends the political order and cannot be subordinated to the political order.

The principle of separation of church and state has no place in his vision for the future:

The final reunion of Church and state will take place at the end of time, when Christ will claim definitive political power of all creation, inaugurating an entirely new society based on the supernatural.

Dominionist Dream: Repeal the 1st Amendment, Talk To Action, December 16, 2005

Come the Theocracy, Whose Bible Will Rule?, Talk To Action, December 30, 2005
Legal Strategies

Looking for the Religious Right? Follow the yellow legal pad, Talk To Action, November 25, 2005. Explains with great clarity the workings of the ACLJ, the Law School founded by Pat Robertson, and its legal strategies.

God and Ceasar in America, Gary Hart, Talk To Action, November 29, 2005:

The New American Theocracy requires judges who will go along and who will continue going along for the remainder of their lives. The ultimate goal is a Supreme Court philosophically attuned to the principles and purposes of those seeking a state that incorporates and promotes their religious beliefs. Only then will the presidential decrees and compliant congressional actions sought by the right be safe from assault by a judiciary dedicated to the proposition that the law is established within the framework of the United States Constitution, not the Bible.

Court-Stripping

Since the Supreme Court decision Marbury v. Madison in 1803, it has been clearly established that the courts have the ultimate power to interpret the Constitution. But right-wing ideologues, unhappy with some of the courts' rulings, have begun to question this principle as part of a broader war on the federal judiciary. The amendment that passed this week reflected an effort to use Congress's power to stop the courts from standing up for the First Amendment and other constitutional principles. (New York Times, June 18, 2005: Congress Assaults the Courts, Again)

The United States Constitution calls for three branches of government. In order to impose their agenda on the country, Religious Right legislators have been attempting to undermine one of the branches of government -- an independent judiciary.

Christian Coalition activists "absolutely despise the federal courts," according to author and journalist Rob Boston who attended the Coalition's most recent Road to Victory gathering.

And they want their fundamentalist religious viewpoint to be the law of the land for everyone.

Rob Boston reports in Church and State, November, 2004:

Despite the Christian Coalition's best efforts, those pesky federal courts keep upholding the Bill of Rights and the separation of church and state. But not to worry, the group has a plan to fix that: take away the right of the courts to hear those cases in the first place. This bold gambit, called "court stripping," is all the rage among the Religious Right these days.

Katherine Yurica has transcripts of Pat Robertson's television show, the 700 Club from 1985 where he explained his strategy to strip the federal judiciary of its constitutional powers:

Roberston wanted to reduce or eliminate the power of the judiciary. He denied that the Constitution provides a system of checks and balances between three separate and equal branches of government...

In fact, Robertson went further: he denied that the judiciary is a co-equal branch of the government. Instead, he saw the judiciary as a department of the legislative branch, which he believed was the dominant center of power in the nation. His reasoning went like this: Since Congress has complete authority to establish the lower federal courts and to establish "the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court," the court system is necessarily subordinate to the legislative. Robertson's idea was that congress could control the court by using its power to intimidate. For example, he said, "Congress could say 'There's a whole class of cases you can't hear' and there's nobody can do anything about it!"

Representative John Hostetler, R-IN, said at the recent Christian Coalition gathering:

"When the courts make unconstitutional decisions, we should not enforce them," he told attendees. "Federal courts have no army or navy.. The court can opine, decide, talk about, sing, whatever it wants to do. We're not saying they can't do that. At the end of the day, we're saying the court can't enforce its opinions."

The Hostettler Amendment and Marriage Protection Act

Hostettler authored two court-stripping bills that passed the House. On July 23, 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives approved by a vote of 260-161 an amendment to an appropriations bill that bars the use of federal funds to enforce the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that ordered the removal of a two-ton Ten Commandments monument from the Judicial Building in Montgomery, Alabama.

One year later, almost to the day, he drafted the Marriage Protection Act. On July 23, 2004, with strong backing from the Bush administration, the Marriage Protection Act was adopted in the U.S. House of Representatives 233 to 194. The bill would strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over legal challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law passed in 1996 that purports to leave the recognition of same-sex marriage entirely to each state.

To read comments on the Marriage Protection Act, Click here.

More Court Stripping Bills

On Septemeber 23, 2004, the U.S. House voted 247-173 to approve the "Pledge Protection Act," The measure, H.R. 2028, bans all federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, from considering constitutional challenges to the Pledge. "The federal courts should be open to all Americans seeking protection of their constitutional rights," said Barry Lynn of Americans United.

Church and State, May, 2004 reviews a series of court-stripping measures: "Just Keep Your Shirts On."

Some ideas put forth by the Religious Right and its allies in Congress are so breathtakingly wrong-headed that it is difficult to know where to begin criticizing them.

From The New York Times, May 10, 2005:

Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Monday that the committee was considering the creation of an "office of inspector general for the federal judiciary" to watch over the courts.