Hillary Clinton stated on behalf of the United States that "Islam is one of the great religions" and of the USA's admiration and respect for it.
What the hell is that?!
Does she and the US government also declare that Scientology and Pentacostal are "great religions?" Has she ratified that atheism is one of the "Great ideologies" according to the United States government?
Why doesn't she just shout "Praise Allah! There is only one God and Mohammed is his prophet" and put on a burka in submissiveness to the Mulahs on behalf of our government?
Her statement is totally out of line. Do you think Islam is "one of the great religions?" I am fairly confident that many Americans don't believe there is such a thing as a "great religion" and among those who think there is one, it isn't Islam.
Before I get crazy on this I look to what our forefathers have said about and how they conducted themselves around this issue.
John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and a few other guys, not only recognized Islam, they embraced and respected it. In fact Thomas Jefferson had a Iftar at the White House in 1805 (see below).
"Readers may be surprised to learn that there may have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Muslims in the United States in 1776—imported as slaves from areas of Africa where Islam flourished. Although there is no evidence that the Founders were aware of the religious convictions of their bondsmen, it is clear that the Founding Fathers thought about the relationship of Islam to the new nation and were prepared to make a place for it in the republic.
In his seminal Letter on Toleration (1689), John Locke insisted that Muslims and all others who believed in God be tolerated in England. Campaigning for religious freedom in Virginia, Jefferson followed Locke, his idol, in demanding recognition of the religious rights of the "Mahamdan," the Jew and the "pagan." Supporting Jefferson was his old ally, Richard Henry Lee, who had made a motion in Congress on June 7, 1776, that the American colonies declare independence. "True freedom," Lee asserted, "embraces the Mahomitan and the Gentoo (Hindu) as well as the Christian religion."
In his autobiography, Jefferson recounted with satisfaction that in the struggle to pass his landmark Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), the Virginia legislature "rejected by a great majority" an effort to limit the bill's scope "in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan."
George Washington suggested a way for Muslims to "obtain proper relief" from a proposed Virginia bill, laying taxes to support Christian worship. On another occasion, the first president declared that he would welcome "Mohometans" to Mount Vernon if they were "good workmen" . Officials in Massachusetts were equally insistent that their influential Constitution of 1780 afforded "the most ample liberty of conscience … to Deists, Mahometans, Jews and Christians," a point that Chief Justice Theophilus Parsons resoundingly affirmed in 1810."
The Founding Fathers and Islam (May 2002) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin
The Jefferson White House dinner.
"The dinner...took place on December 9, 1805, and Jefferson’s guest was Sidi Soliman Mellimelli, an envoy from the bey (chieftain) of Tunis who spent six months in Washington. The context of Mellimelli’s visit to the United States was a tense dispute over piracy on American merchant vessels by the Barbary states and the capture of Tunisian vessels trying to run an American blockade of Tripoli.
Mellimelli arrived during Ramadan, and Jefferson, when he invited the envoy to the president’s house, changed the meal time from the usual hour of 3:30 p.m. to “precisely at sunset” in deference to the man’s religious obligation.
Jefferson’s knowledge of Islam likely came from his legal studies of natural law.
In 1765, Jefferson purchased a two-volume English translation of the Quran for his personal library, a collection that became, in 1815, the basis of the modern Library of Congress."
Thomas Jefferson's Iftar