Churchill (?) on Islam

[Denis Franklin, MD]

“When Muslims are in the minority they are very concerned about minority rights, when they are in the majority there are no minority rights.” — Winston Churchill

However, I find [this quote] on the web only as a Pinterest image and cannot confirm via Snopes whether it is a real or fake quote from Churchill.  [Thus] I think my appreciation of it comes from what might be an example of bias confirmation on my part.

[But] another pass at Google reveals that Churchill was extremely concerned about Islam as a highly dangerous factor in the world and wrote about his fears in several books, including one called, “The River War”.  So the quote is not unlikely to have been his.

As I understand the Constitutional concept of “separation of church and state”, vis-a-vis our recent discussion of halal and Eid al-Adhar, the dogma of no religion can supervene over the secular laws of the country.  However, religious dogma and principles can influence the thoughts and behavior of the legislators who shape the laws.   No religions may be “established” as the official religion of the state (country), as was the case with Catholicism in Europe at the time of the founding of our nation.

Recently the SCOTUS has eroded the principle of “separation” by allowing people to not comply with employment, commercial and anti-discrimination laws when those laws contravened their religious beliefs.  For instance, even though employers are required to provide health insurance to their employees that meets certain standards of comprehensiveness, the Catholic church, when it was acting as an employer, was excused from providing contraceptive and abortion services.  This was supported by anti-abortionists of every religious stripe.

The folly of this decision, encroaching as it does on the principle of separation of church and the laws of the state, is more evident when one considers such questions as “honor killings” of daughters who violate parental beliefs about proper sexual behavior.  If a catholic doesn’t have to obey employment law, why can’t a father murder his daughter when his religion demands it? 

If there were laws in the US prescribing certain methods of killing food and game animals, why should tradition and ancient beliefs be allowed to contravene those laws?  But are there such laws?

If there are laws against the purely sacrificial killing of animals to honor various gods, (e.g. camels not used for food, and chickens killed in Santaria rituals),  SCOTUS says they are Constitutional as long as they have general application and do not have the sole effect of preventing a religious practice.

For the pros and cons, see:  https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/12/us/supreme-court-animal-sacrifice-court-citing-religious-freedom-voids-ban-animal.html

The larger question is one of immigration causing a clash of cultural values and the case of Eid al-Adhar eloquently illustrates why, if there is value in preserving a national character, as I believe there is, immigrations needs to be managed in a way to allow time for assimilation of immigrants in to the host culture.

Churchill’s quote, if it was he who said those words, points out that expression of these same concerns would not be allowed in an Islamic theocracy.

Denis

[Lynda Zeise]

Denis, my friend! I am answering your last post, "If a Catholic doesn’t have to obey employment law, why can’t a father murder his daughter when his religion demands it? " The answer is BECAUSE THE DAUGHTER IS DEAD!

[Lynda Zeise]

Moral Equivalence ?  Is stealing a candy bar different than stealing a loaf of bread different from stealing a person's retirement savings different from stealing a child's penicillin in 1943?

[jim.e...@gmail.com]

This is why context is important.

[Denis Franklin, MD]

To clarify my meaning I should better have said, “If a catholic doesn’t have to obey employments laws that required acts that contravene the tenets of his religion, why can't an immigrant muslim father murder his daughter when she has dishonored the family by engaging in forbidden socio-sexual behavior— and when his religion and the social customs of his country of origin demand it?

I still don’t get how the daughter in my original sentence got dead, but it certainly was a murky sentence. ;-)

Denis

On Aug 26, 2018, at 11:40 AM, jimer...@gmail.com <jim.e...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is why context is important.

On Saturday, August 25, 2018, 6:02:31 PM MST, Lynda Zeise <biote...@gmail.com> wrote:

Denis, my friend! I am answering your last post " If a catholic doesn’t have to obey employment law, why can’t a father murder his daughter when his religion demands it? " The answer is BECAUSE THE DAUGHTER IS DEAD!

On Sat, Aug 25, 2018 at 11:35 AM Denis Franklin, MD <denisf...@uchicago.edu> wrote:

In my  with previous post there was a black square that was supposed to have text on it, but the text did not transmit.

It said:  

“When Muslims are in the minority they are very concerned about minority rights, when they are in the majority there are no minority rights.” — Winston Churchill

As I said in that previous post:

"However, I find it on the web only as a Pinterest image and cannot confirm via Snopes whether it is a real or fake quote from Churchill.

I think my appreciation of it comes from what might be an example of bias confirmation on my part."

However, another pass at Google reveals that Churchill was extremely concerned about Islam as a highly dangerous factor in the world and wrote about his fears in several books, including one called, “The River War”.  So the quote is not unlikely to have been his.

Denis

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Idea Exchange of Phoenix" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to phxidex+u...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Idea Exchange of Phoenix" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to phxidex+u...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Lynda Zeise]

If you don't see that there is no moral equivalence in your example, then maybe we just disagree. I see a HUGE difference. (The daughter probably got dead because her brother invited a friend over to rape her (his sister) and he (her brother) told his father that the sister was ruined and the family would be socially embarrassed; or maybe the daughter just told her father she wanted to date a Christian.)

[Denis Franklin, MD]

Hi Lynda,

I guess I wasn’t making my point very clearly.  

The examples are quite different from one another in magnitude, but they illustrate the same Constitutional and legal principle.  Sometimes it is easier to see the principle more clearly in cases that are extreme.

That which distinguishes a form of government in which there is a separation of church and state — no established “official” church as there had in nearly all European countries — is that while people of any religion are free to practice their religions, no one can be forced to follow the rules of any religion.  Conversely, since there is no cozy relationship between church leadership an the monarch, church rules do not become rules of general behavior unless they are also enacted into civil and criminal law by legislators.  

Therefore when they are identical it is a coincidence, and when they are in conflict, while churches may disapprove of behavior or expel a member, civil law wins in the courts.

The HobbyLobby case was decided on very narrow grounds,   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burwell_v._Hobby_Lobby_Stores,_Inc.  

   saying that while it was in the public interest for employers to provide comprehensive (rather than spotty) health insurance, if the requirement of the ACA for that coverage to include contraceptive medical care to which the employer objected on religious grounds AND IF THAT COVERAGE COULD BE PROVIDED BY A LESS RESTRICTIVE MEANS, a closely held , for-profit corporation (or by extension a private business owner) coujld be exempted from the requirement of the ACA.

The Constitutional question of whether the ACA would have infringed upon the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment, was not decided.

I’m saying that the issue would more clearly be seen in the case of a religion like Islam that requires an honor killing in circumstances other than those the law would consider justification for homicide.  The SCOTUS would be obligated to draw a clear line between religious law and secular law.  Lower courts have already found fathers guilty of murder in these circumstances.

Personally, I think that SCOTUS applied faulty logic, in suggesting that the government could provide contraceptive coverage for individuals denied it by their employer on religious grounds.  Which is NOT equivalent.  I think the employer should provide additional salary to the employee for the purchase of contraceptive services so that the burden falls upon the employer where it belongs rather than the taxpayer.

“Moral equivalence” is not the issue.  The equivalence lies in the Constitutional “disestablishment” principle involved.  The “less restrictive means” idea was, I believe, misapplied, because the  “less restrictive means” they recommended involved someone else paying for the coverage.

Denis