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From: BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: [OT] Did you know that blacks built Stonehenge?
Date: Mon, 26 May 2025 19:55:33 -0000 (UTC)
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On May 26, 2025 at 12:42:07 PM PDT, ""Adam H. Kerman"" <ahk@chinet.com>
wrote:

> BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
> 
>> . . . 
> 
>> Several years ago, the San Francisco schools were caught bringing imams into
>> the classroom and having the kids recite the Muslim prayer of conversion to
>> Islam. Yet the two words "under god" in the pledge of allegiance are
>> supposedly unconstitutional because "we all know they refer to the Christian
>> god".
> 
> There have been parents suing school boards for the forced recitation of
> the pledge with "under God" in it making exactly that claim.
> 
> Why was that wrong?
> 
> The last I read about such a lawsuit, it was filed in a district court
> in the Ninth Circuit in which the merits of the argument could not be
> considered in court, requiring an en banc decision of the entire circuit
> to reverse precedent. It's widely assumed that if the merits were ever
> considered, the plaintiff would prevail.
> 
> Seems to me that forcing students to pray or to recite "under God" in
> the Pledge of Allegiance is an obvious infringement upon free exercise.
> A student, not being a wise ass, could consider how he prays to be a
> private matter, or that he's religious but it's not applicable to his
> perception of God, or that religious or not, school must remain a
> secular activity, or that he's an atheist.
> 
> Too bad the Ninth has refused to take such a case about reciting the
> Pledge for it would have made the Muslim prayer unconstitutional without
> the need for another appellate court ruling.
> 
> It's not a good analogy given that "under God" was added to the Pledge as
> a loyalty test during anti-Commie hysteria forcing children to profess
> some sort of religious sentiment to demonstrate that they aren't being
> raised as ghodless Commies. That's why the argument has been made that
> it refers to a Christian God, as it was generally Christians claiming to
> be the main fighters against Communism for the right to worship freely.
> 
> It's actually the perfect example of why Jefferson's desire for there to
> be a "wall of separation between church and state" was correct, what a
> bureaucrat might think is an innocuous form of a state-sponsored
> religious acknowledgement that is likely to offend both religious and
> non-religious people.
> 
>> Of course, if they'd brought in a Catholic priest to say the Liturgy, 
>> forcing
>> the children to participate no less, the ACLU would have shit itself and
>> wouldn't have been able to file lawsuits fast enough.
> 
> If Islam is favored at the expense of other religions, then that's an
> unconstitutional Establishment of religion. If it were being done as a
> comparison of religions without favoritism, then it wouldn't have been
> unconstitutional.

Comparing religions in the classroom does not require bringing in a holy man
(from only one of the religions being discussed, mind you) and having the
students recite prayers. There's absolutely no legal defense for any of that.

> Do you know for a fact that ACLU of California was asked, but refused,
> to seek an injunction on Islam being favored in public schools? I've
> never heard of this type of thing.

The public outcry was enough to have SF schools back off.

It's also interesting to note that under Islam, merely saying the words to the
Shahada, the Muslim prayer of conversion, automatically makes one a Muslim, so
as far as the Muslim community is concerned, all the school kids who recited
that prayer at the behest of their teachers are now Muslims and if they
subsequently rejected Islam by continuing to practice Christianity or Judaism
or any other religion (or no religion at all), they are considered apostates
and can be legally killed under Sharia law. Given the number of radical
Islamists out there that our government has happily imported into America over
the last half-decade, that's no inconsequential concern for the parents of
those children.