Zaid Jilani makes what one would think is an obvious point to those trying to argue that Muslims aren't protected by the First Amendment because "Islam is an ideology."
It should be noted that even if the patrons of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro weren't worshippers of a faith but rather political activists — and it goes without saying that they are not — they would still have the constitutional right to do that. The first amendment prevents the government from passing any law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Thanks to those rights, all manner of odious speech is constitutionally protected, just like the offensive language being used by the mosque's opponents.
In cases involving the construction of mosques, however, opponents could argue that if Islam isn't a religion, it isn't subject to the protections of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. That said, this argument reveals a pretty poor understanding of the First Amendment. Take Franklin Graham, who said this yesterday:
Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, called Islam “wicked” and “evil” on Sunday during a televised town hall-style discussion about American’s feelings about the religion.
“They want to build as many mosques and cultural centers as they possibly can so they can convert as many Americans as they can to Islam,” Graham said on ABC's “This Week.”
You know what that's called? It's called constitutionally protected behavior. The even uglier underbelly of this whole "stealth jihad" nonsense is that conservatives aren't actually attacking Muslims for doing things that are actually illegal; they're attacking them for participation in American society. The notion that some Muslims want to convert as many people as they can to their religion and then exert influence over the political process is ... the reason the Christian right exists as a political entity.
What's happened with this Sharia stuff is that the conspiracy-minded Islamophobic right is making a national security argument, which the religious right is now appropriating because they just don't like having competition. Financing terrorism is a crime, but religiously based political advocacy is constitutionally protected, no matter what the religion of the activist. Conservatives deliberately try to blur the distinction in order to justify their treatment of Islam and American Muslims.
