Oklahoma Judge Stands Up for the First Amendment

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Qur'an

Oklahoma’s efforts to turn the state’s Muslim population into Untermensch (or “sub-humans”) in some sort of quasi-National Socialist racial hierarchy, with White Anglo-Saxon Protestants occupying the top rung as Herrenvolk (or “master race”) of the Volksgemeinschaft (or “national community”) have hit a snag.

A federal judge did what a federal judge is supposed to do when the people are threatened by excesses of democracy at the local level and issued a temporary restraining order on November 8, which keeps state election officials from certifying the vote.

Oklahoma voters passed the referendum by a 7-3 ratio. The people want it, certainly, but that doesn’t make it constitutional, since the Constitution is supposed to protect all citizens, not just the majority.

Judge LaGrange

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange ruled that the temporary restraining order will stay in place while she makes a decision as to whether injunction should be issued until the case is resolved. She says the final decision will be forthcoming no later than November 29 of this year.

Judge LaGrange is the Chief U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Oklahoma. You can read into her decision what you want, but she was the first black woman to serve as U.S. attorney for the Western District of the state. She also happens to be the first black woman to be elected to the Oklahoma State Senate. She is a native of Oklahoma City and no, she is not a Muslim. According to Uncrowned Queens: African American Community Builders,

Vicki Miles-LaGrange is an active member of the St. John Missionary Baptist Church since 1959. At the church she continues her community service by serving on Deaconess Board, Usher Board and Social Department and is an active member of the St. John Lawyers’ Corps.

Muslims of course, are not happy with the referendum; nor should they be. One religion should not have the ability to delegitimize another in this country. That was the whole idea behind the First Amendment. If the State is able to rule that what one religion says of another religion, then we have violated that First Amendment and created state-sponsored religion – namely, Christianity.

CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has challenged the referendum on First Amendment grounds, saying that it disfavors and condemns the Muslim community” as being a threat to Oklahoma.” Which it does, and which is absurd. It would also have the effect of invaliding wills, and other private documents written in compliance with Muslim law.

As of 2009 there were only about 2.4 million Muslims in the United States – hardly a threat to the country at less than 1 percent of the population.

In any event, there is little or no difference between Sharia Law and Mosaic Law. They are both at heart Bronze Age law codes, they both call on the same god by different names, and neither has any real place in a modern liberal democracy because of their exclusive nature. Regardless of such objections, however, the state has no authority and no right to favor one religion over another. The referendum, like Proposition 8 in California, is unconstitutional.

The only just thing to do is to rule against ALL religious law, whatever its source and govern according to secular law. Religious law must always yield before the Constitution, and unfortunately, religious fundamentalists favor their Bible or their Qur’an over the Constitution. We can only hope that this wave of xenophobia does not persist as did anti-Semitism, and that fundamentalist Christians do not succeed in using the intolerant and violent actions of a few fundamentalist Muslims to dehumanize an entire religion.

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

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