EWTN Promoting the Religious Liberty Heresy
For religious freedom advocates, a 'Muslim registry' is anathema
The Social Kingship of Christ or heretical Religious liberty?
The incoming Trump administration’s immigration policy must avoid a
religious registry or any “stigmatizing” of religious groups, religious
freedom advocates insist.
“It is morally wrong, strategically
unwise and, frankly, un-American to attempt to identify potentially
dangerous immigrants based solely on their religion,” Dr. Tom Farr,
president of the Religious Freedom Institute, stated to EWTN News.
However,
he added, “a vigorous vetting can and should be done by applying
sensible criteria, such as a history of violence, expressions of violent
intent, or intentional association with terrorists.”
It is still not certain what Trump’s exact policy would be on immigration and travel from certain countries.
Last
year, he called for a halt on any Muslims trying to enter the United
States, in the wake of November terror attacks in Paris and a shooting
in San Bernardino, Calif. by a Muslim couple who had become radicalized.
This summer, Trump proposed a ban on travel from countries
“compromised” by terrorism. His running mate Mike Pence later said that
ban would include Christian and Jewish refugees from those states.
One
of Trump’s advisors on immigration, Kansas Secretary of State Kris
Kobach, said recently that several immigration proposals were being sent
to Trump for consideration, including one that would reinstate a
controversial program started after the 9/11 attacks and suspended in
2011.
That program was the National Security Entry-Exit
Registration System, started in the wake of the September 11, 2001
terror attacks. It instituted tougher security checks on non-citizen
males ages 16 and over from certain countries deemed high-risk for
terror.
Among other requirements, the men had to register with
the U.S. government, agree to background checks and fingerprinting, and
were monitored by authorities even after they arrived in the U.S.
Of
the 25 countries on this list, 24 were Muslim-majority countries, one
reason why critics like the ACLU charged that the program discriminated
against Muslims. Because of strict penalties for failure to comply with
the program, many men were deported for violating the requirements
whether they were aware of them or not, the ACLU said. The Obama
administration suspended the program in 2011.
No matter what
program the Trump administration decides to implement, it must never
register people simply based on their religion, religious freedom
advocates maintain.
“If we believe in religious freedom and basic
civil liberty we must reject any proposal for government to register
people based on religion,” Robert George, former chair of the U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom, tweeted last week.
The
Trump transition team has insisted that any registry will not be based
on religion, saying in a statement to CNN last week that
“President-elect Trump has never advocated for any registry or system
that tracks individuals based on their religion, and to imply otherwise
is completely false.”
Yet, as the Washington Post documented,
Trump either gave his assent to the idea of a Muslim registry or did not
dismiss the idea on multiple occasions during the campaign.
When
asked about the matter on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Reince
Priebus, Trump’s incoming White House chief of staff, denied the
administration would “have a registry based on a religion,” but added
that there might be bans on immigration from some countries deemed
high-risk for terror.
“Trump's position, is consistent with bills
in the House and the Senate that say the following: If you want to come
from a place or an area around the world that harbors and trains
terrorists, we have to temporarily suspend that operation until a better
vetting system is put in place,” Priebus explained.
Last year,
after it was alleged that one of the perpetrators of the Paris terror
attacks gained entry to the European Union by posing as a refugee, many,
including members of Congress, Trump, and Pence, advocated that refugee
resettlement from Syria be halted until the resettlement program was
deemed secure.
Bills in the House and Senate were proposed that
temporarily halted the Syrian resettlement program. Refugee resettlement
experts, however, insisted that the system was secure and that the U.S.
needed to continue and even increase its refugee intake given the
record number of refugees around the globe.
Priebus acknowledged
on Sunday that “Trump’s opinion is that there are some people within
that particular religion [Islam] that we do fear.”
“But he has
also made it very clear that we don’t believe in religious tests, and
that we are not blanketly judging an entire religion, but in fact we
will try to pinpoint the problems and temporarily suspend those areas
from coming into the United States until a better vetting system is in
place,” he continued.
Any policy cannot stigmatize Muslims, Farr
said, noting that “stigmatizing an entire religion, and all its
adherents, sends the wrong message to loyal American Muslims, as well
as to Muslims abroad whose cooperation will be vital in winning the
ideological war against violent Islamist extremism.”
Other
comments about Muslims from Trump’s transition team have invited
controversy, like past tweets from his new national security adviser,
Ret. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
“In next 24 hours, I dare Arab
& Persian world 'leaders' to step up to the plate and declare their
Islamic ideology sick and must B healed,” Flynn tweeted after a terror
attack in Nice, France killed 86 people.
“Fear of Muslims is
RATIONAL: please forward this to others: the truth fears no questions,”
he tweeted of a video about Islam in February.
When asked by
NBC’s Chuck Todd if Trump shared Flynn’s position that “fear of Muslims
is rational,” Priebus said that “he [Flynn] believes that no faith in
and of itself should be judged as a whole…but there are some that need
to be prevented from coming into this country.”
