The Hawaiian Senate on Wednesday passed a well-meaning but Constitutionally daft bill by which that state officially recognizes a particular religion – Islam, in this case – as holding certain positive philosophical and spiritual attributes, even going so far as to call on the citizenry to respect and emulate these particular attributes. This development should be of concern to all Americans of every creed or none.

HCR 100 proclaims September 24th to be “Islam Day,” citing this as the date when “the Prophet Mohammad” arrived on the outskirts of Madinah, “thereby marking the birth of Islam.” Not content with having thereby given itself the authority to proclaim particular historical figures to be religious prophets, the Hawaiian Senate went on to make further theological judgment calls by citing the “common teachings” Islam shares with Christianity and Judaism as further evidence of the religion’s overall grandeur. Thus it is that this bill violates both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution by implicitly stating that a particular religion is worthy of praise simply by virtue of its similarity to two other religions that happen to be popular among a great number of people. Hawaii’s newly-encoded preference for a set of particular religious creeds is further made plain a bit later in the bill’s text when it is asserted that “Islam, along with its monotheistic counterparts, holds that peace is a divine quality and necessary for collective human happiness.” The State of Hawaii has thereby gotten into the messy and blatantly unconstitutional business of characterizing the philosophical nature of particular religions – and by doing so, it has inevitably insulted all of the others by omission.

In defense of Hawaii, its senate is not the first such body in the U.S. to step on the toes of the Constitution in an effort to recognize Islam’s contributions to the world; as HCR 100 notes, the U.S. Congress passed a similar measure in 1979, which is to say there is precedent for such nonsense. And, of course, there is yet another national bid in the works to codify respect for religion in general and the Judeo-Christianity in particular by way of H. Res. 397, which would establish “American Spiritual Heritage Week” in service to historical revisionism of the sort that seeks to remake our secular government as a Christian institution. Hawaii is simply falling prey to a misguided trend that we have seen before in many other states and on the national level as well.

Of course, HRC 100 and H. Res. 397 are driven by very different motivations. The latter is yet another attempt by Christian legislators to elevate religion in general and Christianity in particular to a status that they simply do not merit within the context of American jurisprudence, which explicitly forbids the government to elevate anything of the sort to any level at all; the former is merely intended to assure American Muslims that they are included within the American family, which is to say that it is an attempt to elevate Islam to the same level as Christianity and Judaism in the eyes of the state. But this, too, is misguided; in matters of religion, the state should be blind.

If Hawaiians or anyone else feel the need to reassure Muslims at home or abroad that they are not automatically enemies of the United States, there is a better way to go about this, and one that has the added bonus of promoting knowledge of our national history and secular origins – they can pass a bill in commemoration of the Treaty of Tripoli, which was passed unanimously by Congress in 1797 and signed into law by President John Adams in the same year, and which plainly states not only that our nation “has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Mussulmen [Muslims],” but also that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Incidentally, the sponsors of the pro-Christian “American Spiritual Heritage Week” might want to read over the Treaty of Tripoli as well.

The PEW Research Center survey asked: “Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?”

The answer for 62% of Evangelicals was sure. 55% of unaffiliated stated no way on the torture debate. Don’t you think it is interesting when people are asked whether it is justified or not to violate the law? Ask ex-Sheriff James Parker of San Jacinto County, TX. He and three deputies were sentenced to ten years for waterboarding a suspect.

1. Murder Conviction Overturned on Appeal (1922):
After being convicted of murder in the state of Mississippi and sentenced to death, defendant Gerrard White appealed his murder conviction based upon arguments that his original confession was coerced through the use of the “water cure.” White won his appeal.

Judge Holden wrote the following description of how the “water cure” was administered in the Supreme Court of Mississippi appeals court ruling: “[T]he hands of appellant were tied behind him, he was laid upon the floor upon his back, and while some of the men stood upon his feet…upon appellant’s breast and…upon his neck. While in that position what is described as the ‘water cure’ was administered to him in an effort to extort a confession…

Gerrard White had his murder conviction overturned because his confession was coerced through the use of the water cure. (White V. State)

The ‘water cure’ appears to have consisted of pouring water from a dipper into the nose of appellant, so as to strangle him, thus causing pain and horror, for the purpose of forcing a confession.”

Sources:
- Apr. 7, 2008 e-mail to ProCon.org from Peter Miller, research assistant to Darius Rejali, author of Torture and Democracy.
- White v. State, 129 Miss. 182; 91 So. 903 (1922)

2. Murder Conviction Overturned on Appeal (1926):
In 1926, John Fisher, a man convicted of murder in Clarksdale Mississippi, had his murder conviction overturned on appeal due to the fact that his original confession had been coerced through the use of the “water cure.”

In the appellate court ruling, the Sheriff is referenced as testifying “that he was sent for one night to come and receive a confession of the appellant in the jail; that he went there for that purpose; that when he reached the jail he found a number of parties in the jail; that they had the appellant down upon the floor, tied, and were administering the water cure, a species of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country…Several persons were introduced by the appellant who testified as to the presence of the parties in the jail and the administering of the water cure to Fisher and others jointly charged with the offense with him.”

John Fisher had his murder conviction overturned because his confession was coerced through the use of the water cure. (Fisher v. State)

Sources:
- Rejali, Darius. Torture and Democracy, Princeton University Press, 2007.
- Fisher v. State, 145 Miss. 116; 110 So. 361 (1926).

More recently, Texas Sheriff Convicted of Torture (1983):
In 1983, James Parker (Texas Sheriff for San Jacinto County) and three of his deputies were charged by the Department of Justice with committing torture because of their use of water torture on prisoners. The four were convicted of “water torture,” which was upheld on appeal. They were sentenced to 10 years each. The case name was United States v. Parker et al.

Sheriff Parker & three deputies were convicted of “water torture.” The conviction was upheld on appeal (United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Carl Lee, Defendant-Appellant).

In the indictment the officers were charged with subjecting prisoners to “a suffocating ‘water torture’ ordeal in order to coerce confessions. This generally included placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate that he was suffocating and/or drowning.”

Sources:
- “Around The Nation; Texas Sheriff Is Guilty of Torturing Prisoners,” The New York Times, Mar. 20, 1983.
- Wallach, Evan. “Drop By Drop: Forgetting The History of Water Torture In U.S. Courts,” The Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, 2007.
- Wallach, Evan. “Waterboarding used to be a Crime,” Washington Post, Nov. 4, 2007.

And of course, all of these cases took place in South. So this only adds credence to the poll taken by the PEW Research Center.

Once again, religious organizations and their anti-science policies are working overtime to the extreme detriment of every citizen in the US. This time they are holding up the nomination of Gov. Sebelius to the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services and right at the time when Europe is telling its citizens not to travel to the Swine flu capital of the world, North America. The markets are falling because of the potential impact the pandemic flu could have on the world’s economic recovery.  Why? Because of the pro-woman political stance of the nominee who is in favor of a woman having control over her own body instead of religious wingnuts.

In addition, the anti-science religious bigots also succeeded in stopping funding for pandemic flu preparation in the recently passed stimulus funding. Just as they criticized volcano monitoring right before Anchorage’s volcano exploded, they also killed funding for the HHS to prepare for a pandemic flu right when a new pandemic strain of flu afflicts the North American continent.

Yea, it is real important for everyone reading this to go to our website and contribute to our efforts to ensure that the anti-science religious bigotted wingnuts are never elected in charge of our country ever again. They have to be stopped some how and this is the best way we can figure to elect secular and non-religious candidates to office.

Contribute today.

The Sunday Times reports that British scientists have found a cure for the most common cause of blindness due to a new therapy found with the use of embryonic stem cells. The US with its Christian majority has lost out on making discoveries like this due to all the years of backward religious policy. How many other discoveries will be found in the future that we could have discovered earlier if only we lived in a nation that appreciated science and the advancements that come from it? How many people with die or suffer needlessly due to religious organizations control over the past several decades instead of rational leaders?

Does politics matter? Does your contribution to a political action committee dedicated to promoting secular rational leadership over the backward policies put in place like denial of embryonic stem cell research by the religious wrong? Only if your blind now. Who knows in the future.