MPR: New Islamic mortgages now available in Minnesota.
This should bother every American! The state of Minnesota is running a mortgage program in order to accomodate Sharia law and the Islamic prohibition against charging interest. Sure, they create a loan package with higher principal and fees in order to hide the interest within the loan so the final loan cost ends being about the same as a conventional loan.
But when the state modifies business practices simply to accomodate religious proscriptions this seems to violate the concept of the separation of church and state. If the state were to make lending rules and loan decisions based on the tenets of Christianity or Mormonism you can be sure that the ACLU and some hypersensitive athiests would not hesitate to challenge such practices.
The news story emphasizes the suffering of the Muslim borrower having to move from apartment to apartment and now finally gets to experience the joy of home ownership. (Some violin music would be appropriate at this point.) But living in America means that in immigrant learns to follow our way of life and not expect us to change our systems to be in strict accordance with their belief system.
And of course the ACLU will not touch this one, they only prosecute christians. SAD
What?!?! Is this for real? I don’t care if individual banks want to make exceptions, but they shouldn’t be forced by the state. Isn’t that what got us into this depression in the first place? (Clinton forcing banks to make bad loans). Why are they moving from apartment to apartment? Why don’t they stay in one place & save up some money to buy a home with cash? They reject our banking system & interest but they want a loan? That makes a lot of sense.
I’m sure that the ACLU won’t be complaining about this any time soon. They do seem to favor coming down on Christians. On the other hand, it is doubtful our Founding Fathers would have had much of a problem with this, assuming they were OK with state government providing such funding in general (which they likely would not have been!).
In earlier days, many building were erected in Washington, D.C. that paid homage to religion/faith. If those were being built today I have no doubt the ACLU would bring suit. But is it logical to think that people looking back 220 years to the First Amendment understand it better than people who were around within much earlier times?
Consider:
>> The cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol Building was laid by George Washington. In it is a box containing a number of documents, including a paper created by Daniel Webster, Secretary of State. It concludes with these words: “And all here assembled, whether belonging to public life or to private life, with hearts devotedly thankful to almighty God for the preservation of the liberty and happiness of this country, unite in sincere and fervent prayers, that this deposit in the walls and arches, the domes and towers, in columns and in tabletures now to be erected over it may endure forever. God save the United States of America.”
>> On the walls of the Library of Congress are many religious quotes, including: “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humble with thy God,” and “One God, one element, and one far-off divine event, to which the whole creation moves.”
>> Consider the Washington Monument. It is the tallest structure in D.C. because it is mandated to be so. On the very top of the monument is the Latin phrase Laus Deo, which means “praise be to God.”
This was all paid for by government money. Many more examples can be found here:
Evidence Carved in Stone