Examiner.com

Tennessee Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey has become something of an international celebrity of sorts in the last few days because comments that he made regarding the proposed mosque and Islamic Center in Murphreesboro eventually segued into his ideas about Islam as a religion, and Ramsey said that Islam was “almost like a cult.” Personal opinions about the nature of Islam notwithstanding (and yes, this writer has plenty of them), it should be remembered that the ancient Romans saw early Christianity as a “strange cult” and its members as “followers of a dead Jew.”

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) responded with their typical anger at anyone who dares question Islam or the motives of increasing numbers of Muslims in a country where we are perfectly allowed to question religions, whether our own or someone else’s. CAIR’s response to any critic has become so routine that they are almost laughable, so it isn’t CAIR that should catch Tennesseans’ attention about Lieutenant Governor Ramsey’s remarks, but the fact that Ron Ramsey’s statement has caused enough of a stir that it made the London Daily Telegraph for two straight days, first in a Tuesday writeup by Andrew Hough, then in a post on “cult-like Islam” by Telegraph Blogs Editor and religion writer Damian Thompson:

Let’s get one thing straight. Ramsey was wrong to imply that mainstream Islam isn’t a primarily a religion. It is. As such, it should enjoy the same constitutional protection as other religions, including new religious movements that we label “cults”. If Muslims, Methodists or Scientologists break the law, they should be prosecuted like anyone else.

Damian Thompson is right, of course, but for our purposes his quote is incidental to the larger reality that a Tennessee public figure has made the Telegraph two days in a row with less-than-flattering press. The Telegraph practices something akin to real journalism, which is absent in most of our newspapers in this country. In addition, their website has one of the best collections of bloggers on the internet, from the Mayor of London Boris Johnson, to Thompson quoted above, to former British Conservative Party Chairman Norman (now Lord) Tebitt, as well as the now-famous controversial Tory MEP Daniel Hannan. Telegraph economics bloggers are so influential that there are members of the Tennessee General Assembly who regularly check the newspaper's website.

The question for Ron Ramsey at this point is whether this kind of trans-Atlantic attention may help him going into Primary Day, as it might with a certain segment of voters, or whether it will backfire as having sullied Tennessee's international image. Did Ramsey harm that image, or is he simply guilty of telling us how he (and probably many voters in this State) really feels about the unease of a small but growing Muslim population when our country is at war with terrorists who happen to be radical Muslims.