Minn:Breaks 1st Amendment for Islamic Banking

Recently we have seen sharia banking being implemented by a Michigan bank. That was bad enough, but now the state of Minnesota has taken it one step further. The state is willingly breaking our seperation of Church and state in order to bring sharia banking to the Muslim community. Keep in mind that the UK has also tried these programs to appease the Muslim community. It is never enough as their list of demands is never ending.

Hat tip to The Denialator

Mortgage Madness
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Politics: Minnesota is offering a program to Muslims who want to buy a home but don't want to break their religion's laws about interest. Where are the civil libertarians who want to keep church and state separated?

The Minnesota program, the first in the nation, will be administered by the state's housing agency, which will buy homes, with taxpayers' dollars, and resell them at higher prices to Muslim buyers.

To circumvent Islamic Shariah law, which, we're told, forbids Muslims from buying or selling loans that charge interest, the transaction will have higher up-front costs, including the amount of interest that would have been charged over the life of the loan.

This is a clear mixing of religion and state, which runs afoul of the Constitution and should incite the American Civil Liberties Union to launch a complaint and file a lawsuit. Yet we've seen no word from the group that recently filed a lawsuit against a Muslim, mosque-based charter school that takes public funds.

Is the organization acting cautiously, afraid to anger a group whose more enraged members have gained a reputation for taking advantage of our politically correct culture and bullying officials to get their way? Have ACLU leaders lost their nerve, fearful activists will target them? They've already seen Minnesota officials, who, when pushed by activists demanding preferential treatment for Muslims, agreed to provide foot-washing facilities on the campuses of several universities.

Surely if the Minnesota home-buying program — called Murabaha financing — were reserved for only Christians or Jews, the ACLU would have roared by now.

But it hasn't. If this lack of interest goes on, someone else needs to take up the cause. It's not within the legitimate duties of government to ensure that members of certain religions can buy homes.

The private sector, however, is under no such restrictions. It's free to offer Shariah-compliant loans and will do so if there's a demand.

So far, though, only a few U.S. lenders make the loans. That's not evidence of market failure nor a compelling reason for government to meddle in the market or ruin a good business opportunity. It's simply evidence of a weak, or possibly burgeoning, market.

The economy is troubled because policymakers have subsidized a politically favored group of homebuyers and skewed the housing market.

While financing homes for a few thousand Minnesota Muslims won't kill the economy, the program isn't likely to be limited to only that state for long. Political correctness and lawmakers' eagerness to appear "tolerant" drive much public policy, while the hard-earned lessons of the past and present go unheeded.

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