Transcript of Speech by Dr. Charles Haynes, Founding Director of the First Amendment Center at ING's 2009 Annual Supporters Dinner held on October 3, 2009 at the Santa Clara Hyatt Regency Hotel.

Finding Common Ground: Promoting Religious Literacy and Mutual Respect

As-Salam Alaikum

Thank you Islamic Networks Group for inviting me to be here tonight… but more importantly, thank you for what you are doing to promote understanding, mutual respect, and religious freedom.

Allow me to express a special word of gratitude to Maha Elgenaidi, a great leader and one of my personal heroes.

And thank you to all gathered here to encourage the work of ING. What a great cause you have chosen to support.

This work is vitally important for a simple, but profound reason:

If we are going to live with our deepest differences in what is now the most religiously diverse nation on Earth, then we must understand one another - and treat one another with fairness and respect.

Ignorance is a root cause of intolerance and division - and contributes to religious hate crimes in the United States, including those acts of hate and violence fueled by the dangerous growth of what can only be described as Islamophobia.

Education works.

I am sure that most of you are familiar with the poll released last month by the Pew Research Center. As you may recall, almost half of Americans (45%) say they personally know someone who is Muslim. Also, slim majorities of the public are able to correctly answer questions about the name Muslims use to refer to God (53%) and the name of Islam's sacred text (52%), with four-in-ten (41%) correctly answering both "Allah" and "the Qur'an."

But the finding I thought most significant for the work of ING was the following:

Those people who know a Muslim personally are less likely to see Islam as encouraging of violence; similarly, those who are most familiar with Islam and Muslims are most likely to express favorable views of Muslims and to see similarities between Islam and their own religion.

The work of ING accomplishes the two things this poll tells us are most needed to build understanding and respect:

ING educates people about Islam - and brings people into personal contact with a Muslim. That's why what ING is doing is so vitally important. A climate of understanding and mutual respect is absolutely essential for upholding religious freedom. Yes, we can go to court to fight discrimination and hate in the workplace or in schools… and yes, we can call the police when places of worship are attacked or our personal safety is at risk… But what kind of life is that?

A society is not just and free unless it is safe and welcoming to people of all faiths and none. No one should live in fear or face discrimination because of their religious commitment. That is why if we care about religious freedom, we must do more than call the lawyers - though good lawyers are sometimes needed - we must change minds and hearts.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column about a fifth-grader who showed up on the first day of school in Gainesville, Florida wearing a t-shirt with "Islam is of the Devil" inscribed on the back.

Administrators sent the 10-year-old home to change clothes. But the next day several other students at two high schools and a middle school arrived wearing the same message. All were told to cover it up or go home.

The local church responsible for the t-shirt, Dove World Outreach Center, is unapologetic about the school campaign. Church members had already erected a sign this summer on church property proclaiming "Islam is of the Devil" to passersby. According to the pastor, the church has a Christian duty to expose Islam as a "violent and oppressive religion."

Missing no opportunity to drive the message home, Dove World marked the 8th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks with a rally to whip up outrage not at what some extremists did in the name of Islam, but at Islam itself.

Unfortunately, Dove World's anti-Islam initiative is not unique. Our public square is increasingly poisoned by hatred and division. Post 9/11, a growing number of churches inspired by some evangelical leaders such as Ron Paisley and Pat Robertson have condemned Islam in harsh terms. As Robertson puts it, terrorists don't distort Islam - they are "carrying out Islam."

Apart from the fact that these ugly generalizations about Islam are distortions of Islamic teachings and history and wildly misrepresent the views of the vast majority of the world's one billion Muslims, Islam-bashing on this scale threatens the religious freedom of American Muslims and undermines constitutional principles that protect us all.

I am convinced that this anti-Islam rhetoric has a direct impact on those who take it to the next level and commit acts of violence. Attacks targeting Muslim Americans are a growing problem across the country.

This summer, for example, a Philadelphia business owned by Muslim Palestinian-Americans was ransacked and covered with angry graffiti telling the owners to "go home." And in Smithtown, N.Y. a man was arrested for threatening to kill a Muslim mother and her daughter and trying to run them down with his car in a gas station parking lot. Both incidents are being investigated as hate crimes.

As bad as this is, at least most Americans recognize that we have a problem. According to the Pew study I mentioned earlier, nearly six-in-ten adults say that Muslims in the U.S. are subject to more discrimination than any other major religious group.

Meanwhile back in Gainesville, some local residents living near the Dove World church are countering the anti-Islam message by speaking up for their Muslim neighbors and fellow citizens. Soon after the first sign went up in July, an interfaith group of Christians, Jews and others gathered in front of the church to protest intolerance and call for mutual respect.

On a national level, many religious leaders of various faiths - including some leading evangelical ministers - have reached out to Muslims by calling for peaceful co-existence and mutual understanding.

In fact, as I am sure you are aware, California megachurch Pastor Rick Warren delivered a message of reconciliation between Christians and Muslims to the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America in July, at about the same time Dove World was erecting its hateful sign.

Pastor Warren told an audience of some 8,000 Muslim Americans: "You know as an evangelical pastor, my deepest faith is in Jesus Christ. But you also need to know that I am committed not just to what I call the good news, but I am committed to the common good."

And then Warren defined what Americans share across our religious differences: "America is a country not built on race, not built on a creed, but built on an idea - liberty and justice for all."

Warren is exactly right. Being a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim does not make me more or less "American." An American is not defined by bloodlines or kinship, but on principles and ideals found in the Constitution with its Bill of Rights. I am an American not because of where I worship, or because of the color of my skin, or because of where I came from…

I am an American because I agree to uphold our shared commitment to full religious freedom for people of all faiths and none.

Unfortunately, far too many Americans have forgotten what makes them citizens of this nation. Too many Americans still believe that their version of the Christian faith should be privileged by government - that somehow we are founded to be a "Christian nation."

Last year, in a survey conducted by the First Amendment Center, we asked Americans the following question: Agree or disagree: The United States Constitution establishes a Christian nation. Note that we did not ask if the U.S. was majority Christian… or if our founders wanted a nation that reflected Christian values… We asked if the Constitution itself establishes a Christian nation.

A stunning 55% of respondents agreed that the Constitution does, indeed, establish a Christian nation. This despite the fact that the Constitution nowhere mentions God or Christianity. The only mention of religion in the Constitution, before the First Amendment is added, comes in Article VI which prohibits a religious test for public office, thus ensuring for all time that the U.S. cannot be established as a Christian nation.

Many Americans simply don't know their history - and are thus susceptible to distorted views of who we are as a nation perpetuated by those with a religious and political agenda.

But many others do know their history - and willfully propagate a false view of what kind of nation America was founded to be…

Not surprisingly, some of the very same religious and political leaders who attack Islam are the same people who promote this historically inaccurate and ideologically-charged vision of America as a "Christian nation."

Fortunately, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution stands as a formidable barrier against all those who would use government to privilege their religion over other religions… or to deny others full freedom to practice their faith openly and freely.

It is stunningly brief, only 16 words:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…"

Two principles - "no establishment" and "free exercise" - for one freedom: Religious freedom or liberty of conscience not just for Christians - but for people of all faiths and none.

Is this what the founders of the United States intended? Of course it is. Consider the life and work of James Madison, the primary author of the First Amendment.

In 1774, when Madison was only twenty-three years old, he witnessed Baptist preachers near his home in Virginia thrown into jail for doing nothing more than preaching the Gospel. Deeply angered by what he called "that diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution," he worked throughout the remainder of his life on behalf of full religious freedom as an inalienable right for every person.

In the fateful year of 1776, it was Madison who successfully changed "toleration" to "free exercise" in the Virginia Declaration of Rights. And in 1786, it was Madison who successfully led the fight to disestablish the church in Virginia by enacting Thomas Jefferson's Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom. And it was Madison once again who drafted the First Amendment and then successfully pushed it through Congress to ratification in 1791. No American, before or since, has done more to stand up for religious freedom - not for some, not for the favored, not for the popular, but for all.

The passage of the First Amendment, of course, did not bring religious freedom to America overnight. We did not live up to the promise of the First Amendment then - and we still have some distance to go.

When a Mississippi town just can not find a place to allow an Islamic center to be built - even though you can't walk a block there without bumping into a church…When a Texas judge orders a Sikh to remove his turban before entering the courtroom… Or, most dangerously, when a Mosque in New York is attacked or a California synagogue is desecrated… We know we have much work to do.

Unfortunately, in all too many of these cases, most people remain silent - or, worse yet, support government officials who discriminate against minority faiths.

In the 17th century that meant Quakers, among others. In the 18th century, that meant Baptists, among others. In the 19th century that meant Roman Catholics and Mormons, among others. And today, it often means Muslims or members of other religions that are feared or misunderstood by some in the majority faith.

More than lawyers and judges - as important as they are - we need to educate people bout the true meaning of religious freedom - and to educate people about the religious diversity of our nation. All of the lawyers and judges put together can't guarantee religious freedom for all unless we, the American people, are committed to religious freedom in our hearts.

That was the message of Judge Learned Hand, given on May 21, 1944 - at another critical moment when our nation's character was sorely tested. He was speaking in Central Park, NY to a gathering of mostly new American citizens… people who had come from around the world - many from nations with laws and constitutions but no freedom. Like so many before and since, they came here seeking freedom and opportunity and hope.

This is part of what he said:

"I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it."

Thank you ING. Thank you for what you are doing to create understanding - and, by so doing, help keep alive the spirit of religious freedom in the hearts of the American people.