Cain Says Communities Have the Right to Ban Mosques

FoxNews.com (with contributions by Judson Berger):

“They have the right to do that. That’s not discriminating … against that particular religion. That is an aspect of them building that mosque that doesn’t get talked about,” [Cain] said. 

Cain again argued that residents were objecting to “the fact that Islam is both a religion and a set of laws, Shariah law. That’s the difference between any one of our other traditional religions.” 

My first reaction to the headline is that Cain is proposing something that infringes on one of our founding principals, the freedom to practice one’s religion. Having said that, he makes a great point. If you are familiar at all with Shariah law, you’re aware that it goes well beyond a set of religous rules, even requiring death for critics of Muhammad and the Quran and Sharia itself.

I do not think it is OK to ban the building of a Mosque based on the fact that it is a Mosque. However if one can provide some evidence that a Mosque is intended to be used as a tool to implement Shariah law, it would seem reasonable to me to not allow that Mosque to be built.

Think of it this way: if someone wants to start a religion that is based on a single principal—say anti-homosexuality—they have a right to do that. They have a right to build a building to observe that religion. However if they are attempting to implement laws that would require homosexuals be put to death, they do not have a right to do that¹. This is one of the defining differences between a democracy and a republic.

UPDATE: To take it a step further, you wouldn’t support the right of a Nazi to build a gas chamber in your town for the purpose of killing Jews, would you? That analogy doesn’t quite fit here, and I’m not saying that a Mosque is equivalent to a Nazi gas chamber, it’s not. I’m just pointing out that Shariah law is that radical.