Between Christians and Muslims, which group poses the greater threat to religious liberty in America? To Amanda Marcotte, there’s an obvious answer: Christians. In a Wednesday Salon column, the lefty pundit claimed that “the big difference between conservative Muslims and Christians in this country is that only the latter have a massive, organized movement that is backed by an entire political party to force their theocratic views on the non-believers.”
Marcotte’s peg was Sean Hannity’s recent statement on his radio show that we ought to find out whether would-be Muslim immigrants to the U.S. favor sharia. Marcotte deemed Hannity’s remark “breathtaking in its hypocrisy,” given that Hannity, “like nearly all conservatives these days, is a strong believer in the Christian version of ‘sharia law,’ i.e. forcing conservative religious beliefs on the non-believers by law.”
From Marcotte’s post (bolding added):
On “The Sean Hannity Show” Tuesday, Hannity advanced a Trump-supportive argument that was breathtaking in its hypocrisy…
…If somebody from a country that practices sharia, wants to come to America, do we have a right to know and to vet whether or not they are bringing values that are contradictory to our constitutional republic?...[I]s asking that question really so over the top?...Why is there such a denial about how sharia law contradicts everything that we believe in our constitutional republic?
…[But] Hannity, like nearly all conservatives these days, is a strong believer in the Christian version of “sharia law,” i.e. forcing conservative religious beliefs on the non-believers by law…
No doubt Hannity’s argument is that his support for forced childbirth, mistreatment of LGBT children, and public harassment of transgender people is OK, because it isn’t as bad as fundamentalist Muslim views on these issue[s]…
…[Hannity] opposes beating women to death for having unauthorized sex. How very generous of him. Sure, he wants to make contraception harder for you to get and force you to give birth if you get pregnant, all while he sneeringly implies you’re a slut on the radio, but hey, he’ll allow you to live…
The “sharia law” hysteria on the right that Hannity is fueling here is a classic example of right-wing projection. Liberals (outside of a [few] idiots who have a simplistic view of multiculturalism) don’t think conservative hostility to women and LGBT people is only wrong if it comes from Christians but somehow ennobling if it comes from Muslims…
The big difference between conservative Muslims and Christians in this country is that only the latter have a massive, organized movement that is backed by an entire political party to force their theocratic views on the non-believers…
…Hannity would force someone like me to have a baby against my will, all because his God says so…
Most kids can expect to go to their biology classroom without having Muslim-penned religious materials being passed off on them as if they were “science,” but in huge swaths of America today, public school science classes are being used to pass off Christian theology under the guise of “teaching the controversy”…
Liberals understand that the price you pay for religious freedom is some people adopt views that you disagree with…The problems really begin when you try to impose those views on others by force, and in that department, Muslims have a long way to go in the U.S. before they can even begin to catch up to Christians.
