Herman Cain : Separation of Church and State is Awesome

………..but only if it applies to Muslims.

Herman Cain has been banging the anti-Muslim drum for quite some time, and has made headlines recently for trying to walk back some of his earlier, inflammatory statements, while making new statements that are just as awkward. He did it again this past Sunday on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.

When asked by  Wallace about the Murfreesboro ,Tennessee mosque that is being held up in court due to local residents fear of Sharia Law, Cain said that in spite of the ideals of personal and religious freedom freedom laid out  by the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, Islam is not a religion like other religions, and Americans have the right to keep it out of their communities if they wish.

Via FoxNews.com  (comments begin @ 5:13) 

Cain : “Let’s go back to the fundamental issue. Islam is both a religion and a set of laws — Sharia laws. That’s the difference between any one of our traditional religions where it’s just about religious purposes.”

Wallace : “So, you’re saying that any community, if they want to ban a mosque…”

Cain : “Yes, they have the right to do that. That’s not discriminating based upon their particular religion. There is an aspect of them building that mosque that doesn’t get talked about. And the people in the community know what it is and they’re talking about it.”

Muslim extremists are out there, and they would love to see America on her knees, bloody and broken. There are terrorists out there plotting as we speak. To deny that is foolishness.
But it is also foolishness to brand all Muslims as extremists and their houses of worship as hotbeds of insurgency, just as it would be foolish to brand all Christians as extremists and their churches as terrorist cells because a few crazy skinheads and KKK members like to reference the bible while burning crosses, passing out hate literature, and training for the Race Wars , or because a few government-hating “Christians” do things like blow up Federal buildings and gun down abortion doctors. In church.

Herman Cain is bound and determined to justify his constant persecution of all things Muslim in any way he can, in any nonsensical fashion he can come up with. He says Islam is exempt from the religious protections of the constitution offered to “traditional” religions because those faiths are “just about religious purposes”, not laws, all while advocating for America to tear down the walls between church and state and adopt a more bible-based, theocratic interpretation of the law. He says that he knows “that there’s a peaceful group of Muslims in this country. God bless them and they’re free to worship. If you look at my career I have never discriminated against anybody, because of their religion, sex or origin or anything like that. “,  but in the next breath says  “I’m simply saying I owe it to the American people to be cautious because terrorists are trying to kill us,” Cain continued, “so yes I’m going to err on the side of caution rather than on the side of carelessness.”

In other words, there are peaceful Muslims all over this country that are free to worship as they please – unless scared, non-informed Gomers who see jihad around every corner say they can’t, and then they are free to worship in the privacy of their own head because any group of Muslims who can’t have a mosque in GomerTown and instead meet at a private home to worship will surely arouse suspicion as a terrorist cell and will be raided tout  de suite.

Cain is opening up a dangerous can of worms with his rhetoric, and if the Murfreesboro case is successful, what religion will be next? Mormons have been getting a lot of scrutiny lately……..should they be soiling their magic underwear? How about Scientologists? Should Pastafarians be concerned that their right to wear their religious headgear in driver’s license photos will soon be banned? Ok, so that last one was actually Australia, but hey – religious freedom is religious freedom, no? First, they came for the Aussies, and I said nothing………….

There’s a fine line between vigilance and paranoia…………….Herman Cain, and the people he appeals to, like to stray deep into the paranoid side of the line, and sadly do not seem to have any desire to find their way back.