Last Thursday, the mayor of the nation’s largest city pulled off an impressive trifecta. New York’s Bill de Blasio furthered the establishment of Islamic norms in the U.S. He made Donald Trump look good. And he very possibly violated the U.S. Constitution.

How did Hizzoner pull all this off?

Meals-on-Wheels — But Only for Muslims?

De Blasio “announced that the city will provide free halal meals to Muslims in need during the celebration of Ramadan.” That might be as many as 500,000 meals. Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting from dawn to dusk, began April 23. That’s the same day the Mayor announced his Muhammadan meals-on-wheels policy. Halal food is that acceptable to Islamic law and dietary preferences.

New York City’s 8.3 million inhabitants are 57% Christian, 7% Jewish and only 3% Muslim. (The U.S. as a whole, by the way, is 76% Christian, 1.5% Jewish and 0.9% Muslim.) Why is the Mayor picking out one of those religious groups and granting them special treatment? He didn’t offer to use state taxpayer’s money to feed the five boroughs’ many Jews during Passover, although there are twice as many of them as Muslims there. Nor did he hold a press conference to trumpet gratis Gotham grub for followers of Christ during Lent. And note there are almost 5 million Christians in the city, as opposed to only 250,000 Muslims. 

What gives? Why would an agnostic chief executive so blatantly throw his city’s support behind a small minority of Muslims?

Reasons for Liberal Islamophilia

There are several major reason for this, as I explained in a long radio interview last week. There’s a strong anti-Christian intellectual strand on the Left, going back to the Enlightenment and coming up through Marx and the post-modernists. In this worldview the only oppressive religious structure in history has been the Church. Mainly the Catholic variety, but at times Protestant ones. In the Left’s worldview this long ago was linked to European imperialism. It’s now an article of faith among “woke” “progressives” that Christianity is a white religion, Islam a brown or black one. This despite the millions of black African (and American) Christians, or pale-skinned Iranian and Turkish Muslims. Thus Muslims are deemed always and forever oppressed, automatically good and worthy of support.

Democrats Islamophilia has further intensified this millennium, for two major reasons. The irreligious have taken over the Democrat Party. And they detest conservative leaders like George W. Bush and Donald Trump, as well as outlets like Fox News, for daring to buck this trend and speak up for the Christian majority. Barack Obama’s 8-year interregnum only highlighted the differences for the Left. Obama not only turned almost every foreign trip into one of apologetic atonement for America and the West. He also favored, indeed promoted, massive Muslim immigration into this country.

So de Blasio’s debasement must be seen in this context. The Democrat Party, especially in large urban areas, has become the de facto anti-Christian, pro-Islam party. Minneapolis’ Democrat Mayor approved the Muslim call to prayer being broadcast five times a day, in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. The Democrat Mayor and City Council of Paterson, N.J., did likewise.

Muslims Do Have Right to Worship — but Not to Special Treatment

Don’t get me wrong. Unlike some on the Right, I disagree with the view that “Islam is not a religion.” It most certainly is. The world’s most political, and too-often violent, one. But nonetheless a religion. And as such, Muslims have every right under the U.S. Constitution to practice their faith.

What they do not have, however, is a right to favoritism. That is, unfortunately, what many of them expect. Most Muslims — certainly those not raised in the West — are taught that being ruled by non-Muslims is at best a temporary situation. One that should be changed as soon as possible. The idea that Islam can exist as a minority, long-term, is not entertained. (Hence the problems in France and the U.K. with Muslim enclaves.)

So when the head of this country’s largest city brags publicly that he will use public funds to feed Muslims during their holy period, he’s strengthening this intolerant viewpoint. It’s not simply “whataboutism” to ask why Jews and Christians didn’t receive the same consideration. De Blasio is indeed reinforcing Islamic expectation of special treatment. And demands for such in the future.

You know who predicted this? President Trump. The week before the Big Apple’s big cheese decided to play Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi — declaring to Jews and Christians “no free food for you!” — the President had asked whether Muslims would get special treatment from some leaders during the pandemic. And lo and behold — de Blasio delivered on cue. This should come as no surprise, considering how many other things Trump has been right about.

Are de Blasio’s Actions Unconstitutional?

Finally: Hizzoner’s obsequiousness toward Islam might very well be unconstitutional. I’m a doctor (of philosophy), not a lawyer. But Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing TP (1947) said that taxes cannot be used to support religious activities. And Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh ACLU (1989) ruled that a government-funded Christmas Nativity scene was forbidden, as it endorsed Christianity. (You can find both cases, and others, here.)

Under those precedents, don’t de Blasio’s tax-funded Ramadan meals likewise violate the U.S. Constitution?

In the final analysis, New York City’s Mayor is acting as a dhimmi, a second-class citizen under Islamic law expected to bend the knee to his social, political and religious betters. If Dhimblasio wants to live his personal life as such, more power to him. But he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with making America’s largest city in toto subservient to Islamic law. Non-Muslims do still have rights — at least for now.

Timothy Furnish holds a Ph.D. in Islamic, World and African history. He is a former U.S. Army Arabic linguist and, later, civilian consultant to U.S. Special Operations Command. He’s the author of books on the Middle East and Middle-earth; a history professor; and sometime media opiner (as, for example, on Fox News Channel’s War Stories: Fighting ISIS).