Be afraid, be very afraid. Muslims are infiltrating everywhere in America. Even our mops are turning Muslim:
Building managers and legislative staffers have sought to reassure some concerned Tennessee lawmakers that recent renovations at the state Capitol did not install special facilities for Muslims to wash their feet before praying.
“I confirmed with the facility administrator for the State Capitol Complex that the floor-level sink installed in the men’s restroom outside the House Chamber is for housekeeping use,” Legislative Administration Director Connie Ridley wrote in an email. “It is, in layman’s terms, a mop sink.”
Who were the patriotic Americans who alerted us to this new threat? It seems that we can thank Republican legislators Bill Ketron and Judd Matheny, although the latter can't actually remember it. ("It's not ringing a bell.")
Apparently, he's been a Republican so long that there's nothing left in his head but a vast, empty, echo chamber of right-wing slogans.
But this isn't the first time they've taken a principled stand against freedom of religion:
Matheny and Ketron were the main sponsors of a 2011 bill that sought to make it a felony to follow some versions of the Islamic code known as Shariah law.
Hundreds of Muslims came to the Legislature to express fears the measure would outlaw central tenets of Islam, such as praying five times a day toward Mecca, abstaining from alcohol or fasting for Ramadan.
Aren't we lucky to have such brave political leaders who are willing to fight against the Constitution of the United States like that? Not since the Confederacy have we seen such patriotism!
But now that our janitorial supplies have been infiltrated by the Muslim menace, good, God-fearing Republicans are not even safe in their closets. Oh, Jebus, help us!
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4 comments:
Not that it makes it any better, but my first thought was there aren't even any Muslims in Tennessee. But I got curious and quickly found that Nashville Tennessee is currently home of the largest Kurdish community in US. Nashville has seen a large influx of immigrants since the 1990s. So this sort of thing is a reaction to racist Tennessee residents suddenly being a part of the American melting pot when previously that was something that other states had to deal with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville#Demographics
That might be true, John, but at less than 2% of the population of Nashville - and only 1% of the population of Tennessee - they hardly seem poised to take over the state.
And although Tennessee is overwhelmingly white and Christian, that's still just 82% Christian and 78% white (according to Wikipedia). Muslims seem to be just a drop in the bucket compared to the diversity they've always had, pretty much.
Either way you look at it, the anti-Muslim hysteria seems ridiculous, don't you think? (That was a rhetorical question, since I know you agree.)
Just think about if suddenly Lincoln had 30,000 more Muslims and they were building mosques and had a couples blocks of stores in town and their store signs weren't even in English! People would freak out, right?
We wouldn't freak out. But below average people would.
I grew up and the next town over was Flushing, which is known as the second Chinatown now, and I always found the coolest stuff for sale there. I grew up watching anime and trading anime cards instead of baseball cards.
Oh and a couple years after I left for college they built a completely new library in the middle of Flushing. It's got to be the biggest and most state of the art library in all of Queens. I'm just a little bitter they built it after I moved. :)
But people from my parent's generation didn't like Flushing at all and they'd say things like "If they wanted me to shop there they would have made the signs in English."
I'm sure you're right, John - although, in Lincoln, the equivalent would be more like 5,000 Muslims. We're also quite a bit whiter than Tennessee to start with (and a lot whiter than Nashville).
Although,... we went from 89% white to 86% white in ten years (from 2000 to 2010), which is a pretty significant change, I'd think. And we've had a lot of Vietnamese moving here in recent decades.
Of course, my friends wouldn't have a problem with that, but my friends aren't racists, either. So I really don't know what the Vietnamese experience has been like. (And Vietnamese aren't feared like Muslims often are, anyway.)
At any rate, my criticism would be just as emphatic if it were Lincoln. It's hard to imagine how a 1-2% Muslim population could establish Sharia law in a democracy, even if they wanted to - especially when the separation of church and state is fundamental to the freedom of religion enshrined in our Constitution.
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