Speaking on NBC’s “Meet The Press” on Sunday, Dr. Ben Carson was asked if a president’s religious beliefs mattered. He said they did, and, when pressed on the issue, said no Muslim should be President of the United States (insert Obama joke here) and that in fact Islam is in conflict with the U.S. Constitution:

Chuck Todd: Should a president’s faith matter? Should your faith matter to voters?

Ben Carson: Well I guess it depends on what that faith is. If it is inconsistent with the values and principles of America then of course it should matter. But, if it fits within the realm of America and consistent with the Constitution then no problem

Todd: So do you believe that Islam is consistent with the Constitution?

Carson: No I do not, I do not. I would not advocate that we would put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.

Ben Carson is right. So says Syrian Islamic scholar Abd Al-Karim Bakkar who said in 2009 that democracy and Islam are like matter and anti-matter in physics:

Democracy runs counter to Islam on several issues….

In democracy, legislation is the prerogative of the people. It is the people who draw up the constitution, and they have the authority to amend it as well. On this issue we differ.

This is self-evident in the fact that Islamic theocracy rules throughout the Islamic world, crushing human rights such as those delineated in our Bill of Rights. In some “secular” states like Turkey and Egypt, democracy is tolerated for Western acceptance, but trying telling a Coptic Christian in Egypt, for example, about the freedom of religion or try imposing aa government dictate contrary to Islam, the way ObamaCare imposes on pro-life Christians, on Muslims. Under Islam and Shari Law, there is no freedom of religion or speech and equal rights are forbidden to women and non-Muslims. If you should convert to Christianity, you have signed your death warrant.

As Islamic expert Robert Spencer notes in FrontPage Magazine:

In January 2013, the Saudi Islamic scholar Sheikh Abdul Rahman bin Nassir Al Barrak declared: “Electing a president or another form of leadership or council members is prohibited in Islam as it has been introduced by the enemies of Moslems.” The idea of popular elections, he said, “has been brought by the anti-Islam parties who have occupied Moslem land.”…

Tunisian author Salem Ben Ammar wrote last month: “‘To hell with democracy! Long live Islam!’ One hundred percent of Muslims agree with that. To say anything else is apostasy from Islam. These two competing political systems are antithetical to each other. You can’t be democratic and be a Muslim or a Muslim and be a democrat. A Jew can’t be a Nazi and a Nazi can’t be a Judeophile.”

Ben Carson is merely recognizing what Islamic scholars and political leaders publicly declare. Islam and democracy are incompatible and Sharia Law is particularly toxic to our way of life and human rights and freedom, as Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, noted:

Gaffney believes that Obama’s policies should be the “subject of very concerted debate.” He is hoping that what Dr. Ben Carson did on Sunday with his comments brings to light the fact that a president cannot “uphold, defend and support the Constitution of the United States” and adhere to Sharia Law. “It cannot be done. Because Sharia says, ‘No it’s not the Constitution of the United States that must govern. It is God’s law. It is Sharia. It is this repressive totalitarian, misogynistic program that must govern.’”

An October 2010 report from the Center for Security Policy documented the threat posed by Islam and Sharia Law to our democracy, our government, our Constitution, and our way of life:

The report, whose authors included former defense, law enforcement and intelligence officials such as Clinton administration CIA Director R. James Woolsey and Andrew C. McCarthy, former assistant U.S. attorney in New York, a career counterterrorism prosecutor during the Clinton administration, was released Wednesday at a Capitol Hill press conference.

The report concludes the Shariah system is "totalitarian" and incompatible with the U.S. Constitution, our system of democratic lawmaking and the constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience, individual liberty and freedom of expression, including the right to criticize Shariah law itself….

The report cites the 1991 document from the Muslim Brotherhood in North America describing a covert process of Islamic "settlement" in the United States. The plan is to carry out a "grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated," the document stated.

These documents and statements by Muslim clerics and radical Islamists are warning of their intentions that we would be foolish to ignore. We ignored the announced goals and intentions of Adolf Hitler in his book, Mein Kampf, which came to pass in a horrific war and the Holocaust. As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized:

Shariah is used around the world to condone barbarities such as the stoning and subjugation of women and the execution of homosexuals. It does not support freedom of speech, conscience or religion or even equal treatment under the law

Ben Carson is right. To paraphrase President Barack Hussein Obama, the future should not belong to those who threaten the U.S. Constitution.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.