Dear Editor: President Obama said religious tests have no place in America. Of course, they do. If a Muslim candidate for office intends to impose Sharia Law in his/her community, if elected, that person is ineligible to run for public office in America. Sharia Law is contrary to the U.S. Constitution, which the candidate must swear to uphold.
I agree with Trump that people from Muslim countries should be temporarily restricted until there is a system in place to properly vet them. Jimmy Carter restricted Iranians in 1979 under the McCarran-Walter Act, passed in 1952. He required Iranian students to register. So, this is not a new anti-religious campaign by Trump. This is about Islamic terrorists that want to kill us.
TOM HACKERT
Whitestone
It does not take a Constitutional scholar to know that when President Obama was stating there there is no place for religious tests in America he was referencing the “no religious test” clause in Article IV of the U.S. Constitution. You could even add the First Amendment.
As Sen. John F. Kennedy said when he was running for the nation’s highest office, “neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection. For if they disagree with that safeguard, they should be openly working to repeal it.”
President Carter’s actions were directed a Iranian nationals and not an entire religion.
If you’re interested in reading about the U.S. Constitution in history, a good place to start might just be “The Law of the Land: A Grand Tour of Our Constitutional Republic” by Yale Law’s Akhil Amar.