{"id":1392,"date":"2015-09-21T22:59:28","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T02:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1392"},"modified":"2015-09-21T22:59:28","modified_gmt":"2015-09-22T02:59:28","slug":"ben-carson-islam-and-progressive-bigotry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2015\/09\/ben-carson-islam-and-progressive-bigotry.html","title":{"rendered":"Ben Carson, Islam, and “Progressive” Bigotry"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t think that there is any activity that more powerfully reveals the human being\u2019s intellectual and moral defects than that of politics.<\/p>\n

This is especially the case when it comes to the one time\u2014 presidential elections\u2014when otherwise politically disengaged and, thus, ill-informed, Americans suddenly presume to be experts regarding a field of which they know next to nothing.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take the latest fake \u201ccontroversy\u201d surrounding GOP presidential contestant, Dr. Ben Carson.<\/p>\n

Carson has elicited some hand-wringing from the usual suspects for remarks he made during an interview on Meet the Press <\/em>on September 20. \u201cI would not advocate<\/a> that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation,\u201d Carson said. \u201cI absolutely would not agree with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem, as Carson seems to see it, is that the Islamic faith is \u201cinconsistent with the values and principles of America<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

For this, people who wouldn\u2019t ever <\/em>so much as think <\/em>to vote for Carson\u2014or any Republican\u2014<\/em>are insisting that the man has \u201cdisqualified\u201d himself from holding the office of the Presidency.<\/p>\n

This is rich.<\/p>\n

While Dr. Carson\u2019s critics (outside of the Islamic activist bullies at CAIR and some other religious\/ethnic chauvinists from the standard propagandist outlets) style themselves \u201cprogressives,\u201d their thinking on this matter is actually every bit as provincial, every bit as bigoted, as that of the colonialists and imperialists of yesteryear.<\/p>\n

Within the West, largely courtesy of the Christianity that has informed and that continues to inform its collective imagination, it has been centuries that its inhabitants have long insisted upon a separation of a kind between \u201cChurch and State,\u201d the Cities of God and Man, the eternal and the temporal orders. Jesus Himself is read as having articulated some such distinction when He memorably commanded His disciples to pay their debts to both God and <\/em>Caesar.<\/p>\n

This separation between the political and religious spheres has been particularly acute in America.<\/p>\n

The Islamic tradition, however, is an entirely different matter in this regard. The notion that there must be a separation of \u201cMosque and State\u201d is utterly alien to the Islamic mind. From the perspective of the latter, the will of Allah and that of the State are, or at least should be, one and the same.<\/p>\n

In a word, both in theory and practice, both scripturally and historically, Islam has demanded theocracy. <\/em> For governments constituted any other way, the devout, practicing Muslim\u2014the Muslim believer who is true to an accurate understanding of his own faith tradition\u2014must have contempt.<\/p>\n

Islam is an especially robust version of religious universalism. It doesn\u2019t just prefer<\/em> that the whole world observe its Sharia law; it insists upon it: The pious Muslim has a duty to Allah to see to it that Sharia law becomes the law of planet Earth.<\/p>\n

Thus, when Dr. Carson made the remarks that he made, this, doubtless, is what he had in mind. Far from suggesting that there should <\/em>be a religious litmus test for the office of the American presidency, Carson\u2019s point in alluding to the Constitution is that it makes no allowances for such tests.<\/p>\n

Yet this is why it is incompatible with Islam. <\/em><\/p>\n

The hard truth is that it is Dr. Carson, not his \u201cprogressive\u201d leftist opponents, who are the agents of \u201cintolerance\u201d here. Generally speaking, leftists can always be counted upon to regard religion\u2014any religion\u2014with a good supply of disdain. This disdainfulness is inseparable from their theological illiteracy, an astonishing ignorance of religion that leads them to marginalize or altogether dismiss the religious voice (the voices<\/em>, in other words, of the vast majority of human beings that have ever lived).<\/p>\n

Thus, Carson\u2019s detractors are guilty of the worse sort of bigotry, for in suggesting that Islam and the American Constitutional tradition are <\/em>compatible, in suggesting that there is no difference between being a good Muslim and being a good American, they have chosen to either ignore<\/em> or deny<\/em> what Muslims have been saying for 1400 years.<\/p>\n

Carson, in stark contrast, has listened to Muslims in their own voice. He has resisted the imperialistic impulse to impose his own Eurocentric, Christocentric categories upon them.<\/p>\n

When asked about Muslims, the Constitution, and the American Presidency, Carson had in mind a practicing Muslim who, as such, believes and must believe in Sharia law and, hence, theocracy. He was not thinking of, say, someone with an Islamic-sounding name and who, from the Islamic perspective<\/em>, is a Muslim by virtue of his father\u2019s having been a Muslim.<\/p>\n

But, of course, I\u2019m sure that Dr. Carson would agree that Barack Hussein Obama should not be, and never should have been, President of the United States either.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t think that there is any activity that more powerfully reveals the human being\u2019s intellectual and moral defects than that of politics. This is especially the case when it comes to the one time\u2014 presidential elections\u2014when otherwise politically disengaged and, thus, ill-informed, Americans suddenly presume to be experts regarding a field of which they…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nBen Carson, Islam, and "Progressive" Bigotry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2015\/09\/ben-carson-islam-and-progressive-bigotry.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ben Carson, Islam, and "Progressive" Bigotry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I don\u2019t think that there is any activity that more powerfully reveals the human being\u2019s intellectual and moral defects than that of politics. 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