How Congress can make Courts Uncensor God

while still limiting religions that incite terror

The Koran's religion of Sahih Muslim 1438a–1438e slavery, Quran 4:59 & 33:36 Tyranny, Quran 5:33 torture, Quran 9:29 war, Quran 9:5 terror, and Quran 30.45 hate, is not the equal of the Bible's religion of John 8:31-36 freedom, Deuteronomy 1:13 & Acts 14:23 elections, Matthew 21:21-22 achievement, John 14:27 peace, Psalm 91 protection, and John 15:13 love. Congress can say so, with no objections from the 1st Amendment. Congress can make courts say so, with the blessing of the Constitution. And of God. (Hover over verses and surahs to read their text.)

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     This article was started by Dave Leach R-IA Bible Lover-musician-grandpa (talk) 02:58, 21 August 2026 (UTC) PLEASE help finish it!

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Introduction

Chapter 1 explains the Supreme Court’s misunderstanding of the 1st Amendment beginning in 1947 (Everson v. Board of Education), which it weaponized in 1962 (Engel v. Vitale) against America’s previous Freedom of Religious Expression. The 1st Amendment does NOT equalize religions, or call it “establishment” where no one has to think, say, or do anything. Nor does the 14th Amendment even give federal courts jurisdiction over whatever religion policy any state chooses. (These aren’t my original notions. My sources include the Supreme Court.)

Chapter 2 explains that when the Supreme Court violates the Constitution, the Constitution authorizes Congress to establish facts, limit jurisdiction, overturn rulings, require a supermajority before the Court can overturn laws, or impeach – as needed to force courts back to the Constitution. It explains why the legal consensus that Congress shouldn’t use these tools is as constitutionally wrong as it is a threat to our national security, not to mention the darkness allowed to spread over hearts and souls. (These aren’t my original notions. My sources include John Marshall, the first Supreme Court Chief Justice who overturned a law for violating the Constitution that didn’t even violate the Constitution.)

But even if the evidence in Chapters 1 & 2 convinces every voter and politician that the 1st Amendment encourages Bible discussion while suppressing religions of terror, and that Congress has the blessing of the Constitution to force courts back to the Constitution, not even Christians will want the Bible uncensored so long as it is widely believed that the Bible, just like the Koran, has embarrassing, tyranny-fueling violence verses – so that the more we let Bible influence back into our politics, the closer we come to what Christians don’t want: ending religious freedom for nonChristians.

Anyone who has read the Bible very much knows that is not true. But as long as Bible-reading politicians keep Bible discussion out of their policies and campaigns, and churches bottle up the Bible inside their church walls in order to “stay out of politics”, where are the 75% of Americans who haven’t read the Bible through even once going to find out? Especially with Deuteronomy being one of the last books that American Christians read!

Chapter 3 proves that the 1st Commandment and the 1st Amendment support each other. They do not contradict. But the commandments of religions of terror do need to be suppressed because they violate the 1st Amendment, along with dozens of criminal laws. Nowhere does the Bible approve of human-enforced punishment for unbelief alone. Or for belief, alone, in religions of terror. The Bible only criminalizes the same thing that American law does: the criminal action that is inspired by belief in religions of terror, and incitement to that criminal action. Therefore, the greater influence of the Bible in a culture, the greater freedom for everyone – including unbelievers!

Chapter 3 goes a little beyond recapturing a vision of the religious freedom created by the 1st Amendment, that spread across states and ended state-monopolized religions in every state by 1838. Because then, Bible belief was held by over 99% of all Americans. (That includes the 2% who were Jews, because they believe over half of the Bible.) So although there were the occasional atheist, and an unknown number of slaves were imported from Moslem countries, the only noticeable fight that Christians had was with each other.

But what would it be like today, with only 70% of us believing the Bible is the Word of God and only 25% of us reading our Bibles once a week outside church, to re-impose the 1st Amendment as it was originally understood, which would end the ability of atheists to use courts to censor the Bible?

I think what most of us want, certainly most Christians, is more freedom of religion for everyone, including atheists, except no freedom to censor the freedom of religious expression of others, and no freedom to physically threaten, torture, or kill others – over religion, especially! If that is your desire for and vision of religious freedom, that is the vision I see in the Bible. That is the vision I present from the Bible. And common sense tells me that vision has to be understood and wanted by most Americans before it can ever be reestablished, and that can never happen without nationwide Bible discussion.

But first, the chapters explaining the 1st Amendment, and how Congress can make courts obey it. But to finish the change, America will need that Bible discussion. Without it, America can never see our 1st Amendment again that the Supreme Court locked up 64 years ago. As long as voters and politicians widely suspect the Bible and the Koran are about equal in their mix of violence and peace verses, Congress will never want courts to stop censoring God, because Congress will remain afraid that too much Bible will end Freedom of Religion. And Congress will never want to limit religions that incite terror, because Moslems will just say “why are you picking on us? Your Bibles have violence verses too!”

But of course it won’t matter much that the Supreme Court still censors God, as long as politics and churches just as “religiously” keep the influence of the Bible out of Freedom.

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These are answers, to this point, to my prayers for a solution to make the “Supreme” Court allow public prayers to God in public spaces again, without forcing America to give equal time to Satan, and while no longer allowing baby murder.

One reason I suspect this is not ready yet is that I haven’t heard from you, and Proverbs 15:22 says “purposes are established” through “a multitude of counselors”. (Which means neither psychiatrists nor lawyers, but people with great advice, like you.) But I’m getting excited. I think this solution is close.

Neither the Constitution itself, nor any Amendment to it, was drafted by any one elected Founder but by dozens of them arguing for months, so I certainly don’t expect one 80-year-old loser of seven elections (me) to produce, by myself, a final draft of a correction of 64 years of Supreme Court perversion of the 1st Amendment. But I beg you to believe, with me, the Scriptures that promise that not even the Supreme Court has the power to block “whatever we ask, in prayer, believing” (Matthew 21:22, which I assume is subject to God leading us to what is better than what we ask, and to our readiness to give our lives in service to our goals).

I pray this draft will at least show you (1) the fraud behind “all religions are equal”, (2) the tools given Congress to bridle Supreme Court unconstitutionality, (3) answers to the widespread claims that those tools should not be used, and (4) the balance between “freedom of religion” and neutering of religions of terror that our Founders created can still work today, be fair to everyone, and lift America to new heights of Freedom, safety, and prosperity.

The Bible encourages me. I know that no law of man has authority over the 1st Commandment of God, so I don’t approach the issue by wondering if the Court is correct. I admit I did for decades, but no longer. Now I start by remembering that the God who Commands us also enables us to march forward, even if what stands in our way is a whole mountain. Matthew 21:21. We Christians really need to start trusting God, and seriously serving God, starting by moving these mountains. Which I can’t imagine doing without Scripture, which we have to stop being afraid to quote in public. Because to the extent we are worried about our reputation with people who are enraged by Bible verses, we might as well leave the Court alone, because to that extent it isn’t the Court censoring us anyway, but we ourselves and our churches.

Dave Leach, The Partnership Machine Inc. 4110 SW 9th St, Des Moines IA 50315 515-244-3711 music@saltshaker.us www.Saltshaker.US www.SaveTheWorld.Saltshaker.US www.youtube.com/user/Biblewizard2

Contents: bill language designed to make the Supreme Court stop censoring God. Findings of Facts in support of the bill language. Background facts in support of the official “findings of facts”. “Incitement to violence” implicates Islamic “scary verses”. Why this approach is well within Congress’s traditional and court-approved role. A few thoughts on criminalizing abortion again.

⚖️ What Congress can Enact to Restore Religious Freedom

Understanding & Restoring the 1st Amendment

An Act of Congress

Title 42 U.S.C. § xxxx. Congress finds that the First Amendment protects the “free exercise” of religion, and nowhere in its text protects a right to be free from the religious expression of others; the Establishment Clause prohibits coercion, not offense. No court shall enjoin any law, policy, or practice that enables religious expression on the ground that it offends a non-participant’s sensibilities, or stirs his disagreement, regarding religion, unless the religious expression incites violent crime. Where a religious exercise occurs in a public space, the court shall protect the free exercise of all present — including those who wish to pray, and including the free exercise of those who wish to depart.

(Translation: a prayer in school that merely “offends” an atheist but doesn’t make the atheist do anything or even stay in the room isn’t “establishment of religion”, but censoring a whole room that wants to pray together violates their right to “free exercise” of religion. That’s why there is no “right to not be offended” in the Constitution. Courts need to defend EVERYONE’s “free expression”: of those who wish to pray, and of those who wish to leave. Even Engel v Vitale (1962) that first censored God, acknowledged that being “offended” would not trigger 1st Amendment involvement if the Court stuck to its plain words.)

In any action seeking injunctive or declaratory relief under the Free Exercise and/or Establishment Clauses from religious expression or religious exercise occurring in any setting that is used for public purposes, a court may not grant such equitable relief unless it finds, under the applicable standard of proof, that the challenged government action compels (or threatens to compel) belief, practice, or participation.

(Translation: Courts need to stay out of any religious expression case where no one is being made to do, say, or believe anything.)

“Government information or education, so long as it does not compel belief, practice, or participation, or invite charges of fraud over claims that are not testable or verifiable, may present information that identifies which religion(s) (or sacred writings) most support free government and character in citizens that makes freedom possible, and by contrast, which religion(s) (or sacred writings) most threaten free government and its citizens. Equal time for information that supports Freedom, and information that subverts Freedom – or for what is true and for what is false – is not a Constitutional requirement, which makes such a requirement by courts unconstitutional: court censorship of what is true violates “free exercise” of religion, and court-required equal time for what is proved false and that inspires violence violates “incitement to violence” laws. Noncompulsion of belief allows disagreements around the edges of what is testable, between state and federal governments, between authorities within the same government, and interaction with the public, which will make fact-finding less careless and more interesting to the pubic.

(Translation: government employees are allowed by the Constitution to point out that the Bible supports Freedom while the Koran subverts Freedom. And also that the Bible’s accuracy is corroborated by centuries of scrutiny of statements of fact that are testable, while the Koran’s only defense of its accuracy is killing its critics. The fact that government is not empowered by this paragraph to even save its own employees from scrutiny will make people more careful about facts, and the scrutiny will make their information more interesting to the public.

Perhaps the greater obstacle to passage of this paragraph will be ignorance among Christians today that it is not a testable, verifiable, empirical claim, that the Bible “most supports free government” while religions like Islam most threaten freedom. This ignorance is fueled by today’s churches’ claim that “politics and religion don’t mix”, and that politics should not be discussed in church, and is not in the Bible. During my publication of the Prayer & Action News for 25 years I often addressed this ignorance. Leftovers from the P&A are posted at www.Saltshaker.US. Hebrews 11 is a list of https://saltshaker.us/Salt/GodsPoliticalHeroes.pdf. A Bible study you can interact with, add to, or correct, is posted at https://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/Multitude_Of_Counsellors_Project.

Three proofs for now: both the Bible and our Constitution subject top leaders to a written constitution. Deuteronomy 17:18, 1 Sam 10:25. Both guarantee equal rights for all classes – widow, orphan, immigrant specified as examples in dozens of verses. Deut 10:18, 14:29, 16:11, 14, 24:17-21, 26:12-13, 27:19, Psa 94:6, Jer 7:6, 22:3, Eze 22:7, Zech 7:10, Mal 3:5, 1 Thes 4:6. Both choose all their leaders, Deuteronomy 1:13, Acts 14:23.Both choose all their leaders, Deuteronomy 1:13. Do I need to remind you of opposite commands from the Koran? Frank Lutz published an analysis showing the Bible was quoted by America’s Founders more than all other sources added together. He counted 3,154 quotes in “public political literature” between 1760 and 1805. He found that 34% of them were from the Bible. The Bible book most cited was Deuteronomy, which reviews Moses’ laws. Most of the rest of the Bible quotes were from the Old Testament, so maybe we should stop talking about the Christian influences on American Freedom and talk about Jewish influences. (“The Origins of American Constitutionalism” by Donald S. Lutz, p. 140-141.) Federal authorities absolutely need freedom of speech to state facts. Freedom depends on it.)

Government authorities must be free to not only warn the public about threats clothed in religious garb, but free to neutralize incitement to violence. In any prosecution for incitement to violence, the trier of fact shall determine whether the messaging was likely to cause violence, as shown by a track record of comparable violence caused by comparable messaging. No additional element — including any requirement of temporal imminence — shall be required.

(Translation: Islam is currently the religion that most crosses the line into “incitement to violence”. That is, the Koran and Hadiths have a track record beyond serious dispute of producing terrorists out of any group under their teachings, as proved by the match between public statements by Imams of the terror that Islam requires, and the carnage of “Allah Akbar”-quoting terrorists. . To a lesser degree, several other doctrines in America today incite violence and crime. Unfortunately “incitement to violence” is relative and therefore where to draw the line is subjective, something like pornography. But it is still a scheduled crime, and needs to be prosecuted at whatever point juries say “America needs that to stop!” Deuteronomy 13 is where the Bible criminalizes “incitement to violence”. It basically says belief alone, in ‘gods’ of violence, is not prosecutable, but any teaching that we should also obey, or “serve”, them, is “incitement”. That line, applied in America, is at least objective: we would prosecute anyone who says we ought to “obey” the Koran’s “scary verses”.)

Findings of Facts that Congress can require Courts to follow

SECTION 1. FINDINGS about the Bible and the Qu'ran

Congress finds the following: (Documentation of these facts follows this draft language)

(1) The First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion and prohibits an establishment of religion, but it does not require Congress to treat as morally or legally equivalent two religions whose authoritative texts and historical records differ fundamentally with respect to violence.

(2) The Hebrew Bible, read according to its own chronology, establishes self-defense as the sole authorized motive for war. Every successful Israelite campaign in Canaan was defensive in origin; if Jericho established an exception, its precedent also requires a mighty miracle to remove any doubt about God’s Will before an attack is allowed. And even the hostility against Jericho was preceded by documented hostile pursuit of Israelite emissaries. No war other than for self defense was authorized by God later in the text of the Bible.

(3) The Christian New Testament, which the majority of American believers regard as superseding the Old Testament’s martial passages, commands its adherents to turn the other cheek, love their enemies, and pray for their persecutors, and its founding figure is recorded as submitting to death rather than taking up arms.

(“Turning the other cheek” after someone “smites” one cheek. Matthew 5:39 describes a rejection of a challenge to a duel or an insult, not a prohibition of self defense. Bible commentator David Guzik puts it: “When Jesus speaks of a slap on your right cheek, it was culturally understood as a deep insult, not a physical attack. Jesus does not mean that if someone hits across the right side of our head with a baseball bat, we should allow them to then hit the left side.”Jesus advised his apostles to carry swords, Luke 22:38, but two was enough for 11 apostles, which is consistent with most of the Old Testament wars where God preferred that His people be outnumbered and lightly armed so that they would the more trust in Him.)

(4) The Qur'an, read according to the doctrine of abrogation (naskh) by which later verses supersede earlier contradictory ones, contains in its later, authoritative chapters explicit commands to wage offensive war against non-believers, including commands to “fight those who do not believe,” to “smite the necks” of disbelievers, and to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them,” without any requirement that the adversary first attack.

(Abrogation: Koran 2.106: “Whatever communications We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring one better than it or like it. Do you not know that God has power over all things?”

(smite the necks: Koran 47.4 “So when you meet in battle those who disbelieve, then smite the necks until when you have overcome them, then make (them) prisoners, and afterwards either set them free as a favor or let them ransom (themselves) until the war terminates. That (shall be so); and if God had pleased He would certainly have exacted what is due from them, but that He may try some of you by means of others; and (as for) those who are slain in the way of God, He will by no means allow their deeds to perish.”

(slay the idolaters: Koran 9.5 “So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, [a crushing tax required of nonMoslems] leave their way free to them; surely God is Forgiving, Merciful.”)

(5) The empirical record of the last half-century reflects this textual asymmetry. According to the Global Terrorism Database and independent tallies of the period 1979 through 2024, attacks motivated predominantly by Islamist ideology account for tens of thousands of deaths, which Islamic scholars rarely condemn, while attacks motivated by Christian doctrine account for an infinitessimal fraction of that figure, which Bible scholars never endorse.

(6) The overwhelming majority of victims of Islamist terror are themselves Muslims, and the overwhelming majority of Muslims are not violent; nothing in these findings is intended to consign any individual to guilt by association or to abridge the right of any peaceful person to worship as they choose. Legal action is triggered only crime, violence, or its promotion or incitement.

(7) The promotion of the Bible’s teachings of peace, self-defense, and individual liberty is historically foundational to American freedom, and the acknowledgment of this fact that no one is compelled to believe is not an establishment of religion but a recognition of historical truth.

(8) Establishing facts, by stating what is true, testable, and supported by evidence, especially where evidence-based rebuttal is allowed, is not “establishment of religion”, since no one is compelled to believe the truth. But Truth must never be censored. Censoring evidence-based reasoning violates the 1st Amendment’s “free exercise” clause. In schools where grades depend on acknowledging facts, parent’s requests for accommodation of their religious objections to established facts may be honored by not grading their children on those facts, or even by removing their children while those facts are proven, but not by censoring the truth.

(9) The First Amendment does not obligate Congress to treat as equally benign a tradition whose authoritative texts emphasize peace, self-defense, and persuasion by reason and evidence, and a tradition whose authoritative texts mandate offensive war, murder, and terror against "unbelievers" and whose adherents have demonstrated a documented record of compliance.

Religious Killing: Qur'an vs. Bible — The Numbers

(This is one of those topics where institutional media and academia twist themselves into pretzels to avoid stating the obvious.)

The single most comprehensive dataset on this question is the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) maintained by START at the University of Maryland, covering over 200,000 terrorist incidents since 1970. Cross-referencing that with the Fondapol study (1979–2024). According to it:

Islamist-motivated attacks (1979–2024): roughly 50,000 deaths in the most conservative number that only counts attacks clearly and predominantly motivated by Islamist ideology. The possible estimate runs far higher, closer to 200,000, because enormous numbers of attacks in war zones and separatist conflicts (Palestine, Thailand, Kashmir, the Sahel) blend religious and political motives in ways the databases do not cleanly attribute. That is, if a Moslem nation attacks another nation, citing the Koran, its motivation is counted as “political”, not religious. Although Koran-citing Moslems attack each other for other causes, including accusing each other of not being true believers, what is not seriously attacked by Moslem scholars is their understanding that the Koran and Hadiths generally support deadly violence against “disbelievers”.

Christian-motivated terrorism (1979–2024): roughly 7 deaths in the most conservative number that only counts attacks clearly and predominantly motivated by Christian ideology. About seven Christians shot and killed the same number of abortionists who had each killed tens of thousands of babies. Some of them cited Proverbs 24:10-12 for their authority: “Rescue those being led away to slaughter”, along with verses identifying unborn babies as people with bright futures prepared by God.

The possible estimate runs to a few thousand, if it includes:

* the Lord’s Resistance Army, a group which formed in 1986 in Uganda in self defense against an unelected government at war with its Northern citizens. It combines “a syncretic blend of Christianity, traditional African spiritualism, and other religious elements” according to Wikipedia, which adds “The LRA is often mistakenly described as a ‘Christian fundamentalist’ group because it has declared that Uganda should have no constitution but should be governed according to the Ten Commandments. In fact Kony [an early leader] adheres to the same confused blend of Christianity, spirit cults and disconnected elements of traditional religion which went into the making of the Holy Spirit Movement.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Resistance_Army

* Anders Breivik opposed Islam, which is as close as he comes to being Christian, Wikipedia indicates. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik) In 2011, in a mass shooting in Norway, he killed 77 and wounded 323. He believed the Great Replacement Theory (that whites are in danger of being replaced by non-whites).

* A few attacks in the Central African Republic.

None of those claims of divinely sanctioned violence have the support of any Bible scholar or Christian institution, including the seven who were actual Christians. And even the seven never claimed the Bible justifies killing anyone for mere unbelief, or for any other cause less than to stop long strings of mass murders. And even then the seven believed the role of stopping mass murders properly belongs to law enforcement run by elected leaders, not to vigilantes, which made their decisions to act very difficult.

⚠️ Academic Research

The Piazza Study: “Is Islamist Terrorism More Dangerous? An Empirical Study of Group Ideology, Organization, and Goal Structure”:

“Scholars have traditionally argued that Islamist terrorist groups tend to commit higher casualty attacks....

“The last explanation, the rise of religious terrorism, is the common thread running through nearly all contemporary analyses seeking to explain the increasing lethality of terrorist attacks in the past twenty years. It can be empirically substantiated through descriptive statistics that religiously-motivated terrorist groups are indeed more prone than are secular groups to committing attacks that result in greater casualties....

“Religious terrorist groups, while only committing the second largest number of attacks in the time period, have a higher average number of victims per attack (persons wounded or killed) than all three of the other types combined....

“Scholars also argue that the dramatic increase of radical Islamist terrorism starting in the 1980s and 1990s has significantly contributed to the lethality of terrorist attacks perpetrated by religiously-oriented terrorist groups. And there is descrip- tive empirical evidence that Islamist terrorist groups are indeed more lethal. Over the period 1968 to 2005, Islamist groups were responsible for 93.6% of all terrorist attacks by religiously-oriented groups and were responsible for 86.9% of all casualties inflicted by religiously-oriented terrorist groups....

“The study tests a controversial hypothesis: Islamist groups that are not affiliated with the al-Qaeda network are not any more likely to commit high casualty terrorist attacks than other types of terrorist groups, specifically leftist, rightist, and national-separatist groups....”

(The Piazza paper analyzing 77,000–82,000 incidents in Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, and Afghanistan.publication/237587533_Is_Islamist_Terrorism_More_Dangerous_An_Empirical_Study_of_Group_Ideology_Organization_and_Goal_Structure "Is Islamist Terrorism More Dangerous?"

The Koopmans study reports that priming believers with pro-violence verses from the Qur’an raises support for religious violence significantly more than priming them with equivalent Bible verses.

Comparing Violence Themes in the Bible v. the Koran

A 2002 comparative analysis in Psychological Reports examined early Christian and Islamic source documents for violent themes. It concludes:

Nonviolence was more common in Christian sources. The Sermon on the Mount features “turn the other cheek,” “love your enemies,” “blessed are the peacemakers.” Jesus is presented as dying rather than fighting.

Active violence was more common in Islamic documents. The Medinan surahs — the later, chronologically authoritative ones, according to traditional abrogation doctrine — are full of explicit commands to fight, kill, behead, and subjugate non-believers. Surah 9 (At-Tawbah) is essentially a declaration of war. Surah 8:12 commands striking the necks of disbelievers. Surah 4:89 says to seize and kill those who turn away from Islam. Surah 47:4 says to smite the necks of disbelievers until the war lays down its burdens.

The crucial difference is chronology and abrogation. In Christianity, the violent Old Testament passages (Deuteronomy's commands to wipe out the Canaanites, etc.) are pre-Christ and generally understood by historical Christianity as superseded by the New Covenant of peace. The pacifist material comes last. In Islam, the violent material comes last — the Medinan period — and the doctrine of naskh (abrogation) explicitly holds that later verses override earlier, more tolerant Meccan ones. The “verse of the sword” (9:5) is held by mainstream classical jurisprudence to abrogate over a hundred earlier verses commanding patience and tolerance.

But even this widely assumed “abrogation” of Old Testament violence by the New Testament misstates the Old Testament’s support for violence or for wars of aggression. Every successful Israelite war in all of Israel’s history was defensive. Even in Canaan, where God indicated that the people had reached a level of depravity that made it a merciful thing to end that race so no more children would be born into it only to be “sacrificed” -

“Archaeological evidence confirms that the inhabitants of Canaan regularly sacrificed their firstborn children to the gods, really demons, whom they worshiped. Little skeletons found crushed into large jars with votive inscriptions testify to their degrading religion and what it meant for many of their children. The eradication of the Canaanites, then, was not an afterthought, something that emerged in the wake of God’s decision to give the land of Canaan to the Israelites. The inhabitants of Canaan were granted a time of probation, a time of additional mercy during which they had the opportunity to discover God and His character through the witness of the patriarchs living among them. They had the chance, but obviously they squandered it and continued in their horrific practices until the Lord finally had to put a stop to them.” https://ssnet.org/blog/25d-05-the-canaanites-iniquity/

Opium use in Canaan, found in burial jars. (https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-israel/canaanite-cult-narcotics/)

— the Canaanites initiated hostilities. Even Jericho had already attempted to exterminate Israel’s scouts. God thus established the uninterrupted precedent against wars of aggression for any reason – not even when God’s Will for victory over an enemy is known!

This means the Old Testament, properly read, is not a warrant for offensive holy war — it is a record of defensive survival in a hostile land. And modern Israel, which gives little weight to the New Testament anyway, is the living demonstration: a state that has fought repeated defensive wars against neighbors who explicitly seek its elimination. The biblical pattern and the modern pattern are the same pattern.

Contrast the Qur’an's Medinan surahs, which command offensive warfare — “fight those who do not believe” (9:29), “strike the necks” (8:12, 47:4), “slay the idolaters wherever you find them” (9:5) — with no requirement that the enemy attack first, if not a preference for surprise attacks cloaked with deception. That is the opposite of self-defense.

Why the Numbers Are Worse Than They Look

Several factors keep the true disparity understated:

Muslim-majority countries are the primary victims. The overwhelming majority of Islamist terror victims are other Muslims — in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia. Western databases that focus on attacks in the West miss the enormous toll inside the ummah itself.

Attribution games. The Fondapol study openly admits its “retained estimate” excludes attacks where religious motivation is “not clearly predominant.” In a place like Boko Haram’s Nigeria or the Afghan Taliban’s campaigns, that distinction keeps official numbers deflated.

There is no equivalent Christian infrastructure of violence. No Christian caliphate, no Christian equivalent of the Islamic State's territorial project, no Christian version of Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda's global franchise, or the Taliban. The Lord’s Resistance Army was a weird millenarian cult led by a man obsessed with the Ten Commandments — and it was hated by every mainstream Christian denomination and a “designated terrorist organization” by U.S. law. Mainstream Islamic institutions do not similarly marginalize violent Islamic groups like ISIS.

Historical wars between Christian nations before the founding of the U.S. are irrelevant because they were over political power in violation of Bible principles, and were conducted by kings. 1 Samuel 8 records when Israel abandoned 400 years of elected leaders (see Deuternomy 1:13) in favor of unelected kings, which God characterized as the people rejecting the rule of God over them. Yes, Christians slaughtered people for a millennium — the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Thirty Years’ War, colonial conquest. But that was state violence in a pre-modern world, and it ended. The relevant question is what the texts and traditions do today. The Christian world secularized its violence; the Islamist world has, if anything, re-sacralized it since 1979.

The Bible has its allegedly violent commands allegedly superseded by Jesus’ pacifist example. The Koran has its “tolerance” passages superseded by explicit commands to make war. The “all religions are equal” mantra is at war with reality. The data is not ambiguous. The interpretation is.

That doesn’t mean most Muslims are violent — they aren’t, and they’re the primary victims of Islamist terror. But the issue here is about acknowledging the record of people claiming the religion motivated them, for the purpose of establishing whether government should treat them differently for its own survival and for the protection of Americans, and on that record, the two traditions are not remotely symmetric.

The First Amendment's Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses protect religious belief and worship, not incitement to violence dressed as religion. Nothing in Employment Division v. Smith, Lukumi, or any Establishment Clause case holds that Congress must pretend two texts are morally equivalent when one’s authoritative verses command peace and the other’s command war. The Court has repeatedly distinguished between protected belief and unprotected conduct — and incitement is conduct.

The Wrong Argument for Censoring Islam

In the news August 18, Governor Abbot of Texas persuaded the Dallas Airport to withdraw plans for a Moslem foot washing service on the ground that one religion cannot be illegally promoted over another. That’s the wrong ground for suppressing Islamic accommodation. Islam accommodations need to be suppressed, but not Christian accommodations, because Islam threatens Freedom, and human lives, while the Bible is the template for Freedom, and saves lives and civilizations.

This very misunderstanding is behind the drama of Employment Division v. Smith (1990) which was overturned by Congress’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA, 1993), which in turn was overturned by City of Boerne v. Flores (1997). Decades of reasonable, uncontroversial “accommodations” of Christians by courts preceded Smith, but Smith was about native Americans smoking Peyote as part of their religious ceremonies, who were then fired from their jobs for their drug use and they wanted unemployment compensation. Their jobs? They were drug counselors!

It’s as if the Court was saying, but only “between the lines”, “this is ridiculous! Accommodations of Christians until now has not been ridiculous, but if continuing them means giving these losers a break, we better stop accommodations for everyone, because we have to treat all religions as equals!”

“No other gods” is a legitimate government goal for American law, just as it was for Israeli law, . But incitement is where prosecution begins. Logic agrees with Jesus who, in Matthew 5, repeatedly contrasted the requirements of human-enforced laws with the higher expectations which God inspires. The standard for what is prosecutable is lower than the standard for living a full life. What God orders, what logic requires, and what American law is able to do, are the same.

Restoring "Incitement to Violence" prosecutions

(Background: Brandenburg v Ohio (1969) 2. effectively neutralized “incitement to violence” prosecutions by adding “imminence” to what a prosecutor has to prove. Not just any “imminence”, but a wholly undefined “imminence”. Does that mean if the violence follows the incitement by two years (for example when schools teach children to be terrorists) that isn't “imminent” enough - it has to be no more than two seconds later? The Court wouldn’t say. But the case was about a meeting of KKK leaders vowing they would “bury the niggers”, only two days before a KKK march on Washington of an expected 400,000 Klanners, and that wasn't “imminent”!? Never mind, though, its absurdity then. Today we need prosecution of “incitement to violence” against a global movement whose texts command war against religious freedom and whose adherents have demonstrated a thousand years’ track record of obeying those commands and turning relatively free nations into slave states. Conditioning imminence on a demonstrated historical conversion rate is a principled, data-driven modernization — not a content-based restriction.)

(a) In any Federal criminal proceeding concerning incitement to lawless action, or in any Federal proceeding concerning the denial of entry, benefits, privileges, or protections to persons who advocate violence, the trier of fact may consider, as probative evidence of the likely effect of speech or conduct:

(1) the historical and empirical record of the religious or ideological tradition invoked by the speaker, including whether the authoritative texts of that tradition command or authorize offensive violence or violations of American criminal laws;

(2) whether the specific verses, passages, or authorities cited have, in documented practice, been followed by acts of violence or violations of American criminal laws; and

(3) whether the tradition’s own interpretive hierarchy treats the violent passages as superseding, or as superseded by, its peaceful passages.

(The Koran’s later terror surahs “abrogate” or cancel the earlier contradictory “peaceful” surahs. By contrast, the Bible’s “turn the other cheek” New Testament is widely interpreted to cancel the Old Testament’s “war” verses. There is not one verse endorsing offensive war or human-enforced punishment of anyone for unbelief without criminal action, but if there were, common Christian interpretation would regard them as canceled.)

(b) Where a religious or ideological tradition’s authoritative texts command offensive violence and its adherents have, in documented practice, carried out such violence in response to those commands, a showing that the tradition in question has a demonstrated track record of converting such textual commands into violent action, cited in a context that could foreseeably incite such action, shall establish “incitement to violence” by the speaker.

(c) Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit the peaceful practice of any religion, the reading of any scripture in private or in worship, or the advocacy of any religious or political doctrine that does not command or incite violence.

Why This Survives Constitutional Review

(The preceding is proposed bill language Congress could put in law. The following discusses why courts will have a hard time rejecting it. )

1. It targets conduct, not belief. The statute never criminalizes being a Muslim or reading the Qur'an. It treats the citation of specific war-commands in an inciting context as evidence. That is squarely within the "speech integral to criminal conduct" and "true threats" doctrines.

2. It replaces the arbitrary "imminence" line with an empirical one. Brandenburg v Ohio (1969) 2. effectively neutralized “incitement to violence” prosecutions by adding “imminence” to what a prosecutor has to prove. Not just any “imminence”, but a wholly undefined “imminence”. Does that mean if the violence follows the incitement by two years (for example when schools teach children to be terrorists) that isn't “imminent” enough - it has to be no more than two seconds later? The Court wouldn’t say. But the case was about a meeting of KKK leaders vowing they would “bury the niggers”, only two days before a KKK march on Washington of an expected 400,000 Klanners, and that wasn't “imminent”!? Never mind, though, its absurdity then. Today we need prosecution of “incitement to violence” against a global movement whose texts command war against religious freedom and whose adherents have demonstrated a thousand years’ track record of obeying those commands and turning relatively free nations into slave states. Conditioning imminence on a demonstrated historical conversion rate is a principled, data-driven modernization — not a content-based restriction.

3. It is viewpoint-honest but not viewpoint-discriminatory. The language applies to any tradition with a violent command-and-compliance record — Christian, Muslim, secular revolutionary, or otherwise. It happens that the record points in one direction - to Islam, but a neutral rule with an asymmetric empirical result 3. distinguishing right from wrong is not unconstitutional discrimination; it's what neutral rules do.

4. Finding (7) is safe under Establishment Clause. Acknowledging the Bible's historical role in American liberty is something the Supreme Court has done repeatedly (Holy Trinity, Zorach, the Van Orden Ten Commandments display, legislative prayer in Marsh). Ceremonial and historical acknowledgment is not establishment.

Seven ways Congress can force Courts back to the Constitution when being nice fails

⚖️ What State Legislatures can do to prod Congress & Courts

Resolutions a state legislature can pass to prod Congress & influence the legal strategy of its own Attorney General

✞ Bible Study: What God promises that YOU can do!

✞ Bible study: The more Bible Influence, the more Freedom for Everyone

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