Is Newt Gingrich Wrong to Talk About Sharia?
In a recent article appearing in Tablet, Lee Smith takes Newt Gingrich to task for the latter’s focus on sharia (i.e., Islamic law). The thrust of Smith’s argument is that sharia is a “hopelessly abstract concept” and “a highly idealized version of reality that has little basis in fact”; that sharia is “a catchall phrase for legal principles that have rarely, if ever, existed in actual Muslim societies”; and that “the notion that something called ‘sharia’ was widely imposed throughout the lands of Islam is an Orientalist fantasy.”
My first observation is — even if all these charges were perfectly true — so? It hardly matters what sharia really is; all that matters is what today’s Muslims believe it is. And a great many believe sharia is tangible and codified, and that it can, and should, be implemented in society. More to the point, telling the apostate or adulteress — who are regularly executed “according to sharia”— that they are really being murdered by “principles that have rarely, if ever, existed in actual Muslim societies” is hardly reassuring.
Smith does acknowledge Islam’s famous draconian punishments; he just prefers to call them hudud, and limits them to “Islamist outfits like the Taliban.” Similarly, Smith offers a blitz tour on Islamic jurisprudence — including the Hanbali, Hanafi, Maliki, and Shafi‘i madhahib, the differences between usuli and akhbari, fiqh, ijma, ‘aql, qiyas, and ahkam sultaniyya — even as the reader wonders how these concepts are relevant to the discussion at hand: Islam in America, from a national security context.
Should Newt Gingrich be required to earn a doctorate in fiqh from Al Azhar before he can utter the word sharia? Or should we understand that he is simply referring to what Muslims themselves, especially Islamists, constantly refer to as sharia? Indeed, if Muslims use the word sharia as a “catch all phrase” (as Smith correctly asserts) should we not, too — if only to ensure that we are all talking about the same things?
In short, Smith’s position is purely academic and, far from clarifying things to the layman, pedantically convolutes matters. That said, it does offer one advantage: it helps differentiate “Muslims” from “Islamists.” Consider: Islamists are precisely those Muslims who insist that sharia is knowable, and that they are obligated to uphold its every minutia, whereas so-called “moderate Muslims” acknowledge, at best, the most general demands of Islam, namely, the Five Pillars. This division also explains the lure of Islamism: surely the idealistic or zealous devotee will be attracted to the tangible, the implementable, the clear-cut, whereas the indifferent and possibly secularized Muslim will be quite content to conclude that anything beyond the basics is “an Orientalist fantasy” to be devoutly ignored.
Sharia law is already being imposed widely throughout Europe but it is also widely under reported here in the USA. Just as the total crap socialized medical system in Europe and it’s horrific care is widely under reported here. Most of the evil things happening here in the USA in fact are happening elsewhere however the liberal elites and the media never mention it. It is thus not difficult to accept the fact that a stealth takeover of the west has been going on for centuries. The model is working and some good examples include the Netherlands,, the UK, France and Sweden (yes I said Sweden). Large unassimilated muslim populations, living in enclaves that are no go zones for law enforcement and christians, and radical well funded imams and big mosques. Gosh looks like America’s future doesn’t it?
A comment I left at Lee Smith’s site:
This idea of imposing Sharia on Non Muslim lands is a great way to separate out those Muslims who are a risk to the civil society , and those whom are not.
Especially if you consider violent jihad as a subset of sharia adherence (even when adhered to illegitimately as in the case of Al Qaeda launching wars in the absence of a Caliph)
So those Muslims who seek Sharia outside of their Islamic domain are the problem… and those oppose who it are the solution.
Earth to Lee Smith [squawk] I repeat, Earth to Lee Smith. Has Mr. Smith been asleep? Aren’t quote-unquote Muslims attempting to use western court systems multi-cultural bias against us by suing that they are allowed to say, beat their wives as part of their religion, and according to Sharia law. Didn’t the Bishop of Canterbury once say that England may well have to accept some portions of Sharia law? I agree with this post’s author. To trivialize Sharia simply because it wasn’t employed historically is to be ignorant of the huge push by the current practitioners. France, England, Canada, and the United States are all dealing with court challenges of Sharia law. It’s not an Orientalized fantasy, it’s the Modus Operandi of the current sect of Islam.
I dare anyone to go to a place like London and say that there isn’t a creeping sharia infecting that city, let alone Britain as a whole. And with the multicultural jerks who are in charge today in both England and the United States, they are only too willing to allow Muslims to do just about anything they want, including holding up Sharia law as being above local secular law in the western countries they live in. This, must, stop. The problem is a lot, and I mean a lot, worse in Europe, but with projects like the Ground Zero mosque, Islamists are making inroads in America, too. Islamists use the laws of western democracies to promote their own agenda, which is usually the overthrow of the very western nations they are living in. When you have Islamists in England openly calling for Sharia courts in Britain and stating that the people there should be allowed to live under Sharia law, you know something has gone very wrong.
Islam, unfortunately, is turning out to be the new totalitarianism of the 21st century. Islamists are using a religion to take over the world. Will it work? Of course not, just like the Nazis or the other fascist dictators were not able to take over the world just before and during World War II. But that doesn’t mean that millions of people will NOT die in their crazed attempt to take over the world. Tell me, if Iran does indeed get a nuclear weapon and then uses it in the name of Allah, killing millions of Israelis (and, by extension, Palestinians since they live right near and among the Israelis) in the process, what is the difference between that and the Nazis’ desire to take over the world?
To the Islamists, Islam is about subjugation and conquoring all people to live under Sharia law in an Islamic world. It is up to the democracies of the world to stand up to this new religious form of totalitarianism because, if they don’t, they will be consumed by it just like they were during World War II. The time to draw a line in the sand is now, not later when all of the laws in England come from a mosque and NOT from parliament.
I believe that you are making a fundamental mistake in your assumption that Islam will attack the western world like Hitler did in 1939. They won’t. They will do what they are doing in Europe now and that is have three to four times the birth rate of the locals and never assimilate. Eventually they become a political force and through political power gain the control that they could never gain through battle. It is going on all over Europe and now Australia is having the same issues. Canada has a huge Muslim population and is slowly winning public acceptance on creeping Sharia. This “Ground Zero” mosque is a good example. If they had been allowed to build it without any fuss they would have been surprised. But the real aim is to NOW have a basket full of promises of help and much good will from everyone who opposed it so that they can go forth with many other projects without any interference. It is even part of their evil philosophy to lie and work with the local laws to gain a foothold.
First we take Tel-Aviv and then we take the rest of the world
The Muslims have already declared war; First on Israel and having succeeded there, with the help of the liberal press to portray them as victims and the good-guys, why not go for the whole world. They are using acts of terror, infiltration, the traitors of western values in the local press, the exploitation of tolerance and freedom of speech in the target countries and even threaten large scale assaults (Iran). If this is not war- what is it? The plan is simple and two pronged: radicalise Muslims in Muslim countries and manipulate non Muslim countries into accepting Muslims as a parallel society (and give up on integration) and then radicalise them also.
They have already significantly changed our way of life and inflicted stupendous financial costs on our society. Example: Homeland Security Agency, increased border patrol, increased intelligence gathering, the considerable inconveniences in air-traveling, changes in school-curiculums to accommodate Muslim sensitivities and their endless grievances….. I could go on forever. Most of these changes, if not all, are irreversible.
We have to stop being unresponsive bystanders.
That’s pretty much it in a big, threatening nutshell. Thanks, Mr. Capio.
Muslims hate every thing American. My Name is Christian and I love Jesus, I am not afraid of the Muslim takeover of America because it will never happen. “God is in control”
I forget precisely who, but (I believe it was a socialist) commented that they wouldn’t have to invade the U.S. or the Western democracies because they can simply infiltrate and vote themselves into power. All it would take is a resolution saying that non-Muslims in some state are bound by Shariah principles in their dealings with Muslims (for the sake of tolerance) and a compliant judge who would go along for the sake of cultural diversity.
Good grief! Why are we tippy-toeing around around all things Muslim? I think Newt can say what he said and we won’t immediately have world war III. What the heck is wrong with all the lefties in our country? Is it: a) free speech for me but not for thee, b) soft bigotry of low expectations for Muslims to defend their ideas, or c) whatever Newt says we must attack.
A discussion of Sharia is not abstract. Anyone who thinks that is not paying attention to reality. It is not even whether Sharia is openly practiced in a Moslem nation. It is the mindset that accepts and thinks that Sharia law is the absolute highest form of human rights and human dignity that should be an issue of concern to those that love true democratic values. It is the mindset of those who adhere to Sharia that they have a right to undermine our system of government and laws in order to bring about by any means what they believe to be God’s law. It is not, as stated above, whether there is a battalion on the beachhead ready to invade, invasion also takes many forms, but it is the accetance of a mindset that will cause the abrogation of our way of life, all in the name ironically of democratic values. If it wasn’t such a frightening possibility, you could actually laugh at the irony.
You make many good points about Sharia. One of the things that really bother me is that Imam Rauf is waging a world wide tour of the Muslim nations to tell them how much our Constitution is like Sharia law! Can you imagine anything further from reality? Freedom of speech? Freedom to worship? Freedom of assembly? Freedom to vote? Freedom to protest your government? Feedom from religion? Freedom for women? Good God! How can this idiot say such things?
We should all be pleased that someone with the following that Gingrich commands has seen fit to comment on sharia. For too long the alarms have been sounded by what the press are content to refer to as “the lunatic fringe”. That group would include this writer. Anyone who has studied the Quran or the hadith in the most cursory manner realizes that the absolute commandment to all Muslims is to bring the entire world (that would include the US, for those who are geographically-challenged) under the sway of Islam, with its attendant sharia, or Quranically-based governance component. Religion and government are intertwined under Islam. For this reason one sees the mullahs in Iran being the ultimate rulers. Secular rulers are always subordinate to the religious leaders under Islam.
Everyone in the US should read up on and become a student of Islam. The more one understands about this mind-control cult the more dangerous it appears–and it is as it appears to be. Under Islam, the freedoms our fathers died to preserve would instantly cease to exist–and those who most argue for tolerance of Islam would be among the first put to the blade.
Ironically, the GZM debate is educating more and more Americans about the reality of Islam. Rule of law (made by man, as opposed to divinely) is blasphemy to the convinced Muslim. Our system based on individual rights and liberty is absolutely incompatible with Sharia. Good for Gingrich and down with political correctness on this issue.
Well said, sir. The jist of it. One cannot come to a decision wallowing in details. The basic ethos of the thing: dominion of the Islamic male over women, dogs and kafirs.
Verse from the Koran:
VIII/12: When thy Lord inspired the angels (saying:) I am with you. So make those who believe stand firm. I will throw fear into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Then smite the necks and smite of them each finger.
Here one can clearly see that the Quran is openly saying to the muslims to give a torturous death to those who are non-believers of the Islamic faith.
I totally agree!!! I do not believe Americans in general understand muslims and their desire to control everyone and everything.
The more we understand this “religion”..and sharia…the better we will control and reject it. Otherwise we look at all of this and put it under “freedom of religion”. It belongs in the gutter not in our country and courts!!! People need to understand this better!!
Freedom of religion has nothing to do with muslims and their laws.
To assume ALL Muslims want sharia law implemented is like saying all Christians want biblical law instituted. I certainly don’t want Deuteronomy to be the template for U.S. Law.
Your analogy is somewhat flawed by the influence of the “Enlightenment” on Christianity. There is no similar secular re-evaluation in Islam.
Succinctly expressed and devastating to David’s attempt at tu quoque.
sure. and moderate Muslims have a great track record in holding the radicals in check.
Excellent point Ruebacca. Muslims (including moderates) have been given a pass for far too long and should be called out to defend their religion. We can all thank the GZM issue for bringing about a positive change in that regard. Mr. David Walters, and those who would agree with him, are a problem. By apologizing for Muslims and chastising any who would question, or even condemn, another’s religion, he seeks to marginalize those who would sound the alarm against a theocratic movement that would end freedom as we know it. There are no, and should not be any, sacred cows in America. Unfortunately for Islam, theirs is the only religion that combines sufficient numbers with theocratic designs which are antithetical to our American way of life. I welcome Mr. Walters into this debate. It is an important one… much more important than those on the left (or the right) might imagine. However, he should not expect our side to go easy on such a repugnant religious movement as Islam, Muslims or Sharia. Some days it appears that Gingrich is the only politician on the horizon (right or left) who get’s it when it comes to Islam.
Christianity itself mitigated many of law codes covered in Deuteronomy.
8. David W. Walters
To assume ALL Muslims want sharia law implemented is like saying all Christians want biblical law instituted. I certainly don’t want Deuteronomy to be the template for U.S. Law.
Thanks for outing yourself as anti-American and anti-Constitution you dumb SOB. The US constitution is based more on Deuteronomy than any other thing. Take your seat there next to your messiah Barak.
Sharia is not the actual danger, i really don’t see America giving up playboy, Beer, Whiskey, fashion, food and drink during daytime in Ramadan, the banking system would certainly not agree to Zero interest rates, all pork products, gambling, and all the rest.
I would argue the danger is in overreacting and handing government the power to restrict our rights and liberties to diminish sharia in some manner. That is the true danger.
Hi Alex, Did you miss the one about the highschool football team practicing in the middle of the night during Ramadan? I am not making this up. It really happened. Your accommodation to their demands starts out slow. You are not supposed to notice. Little by little you are supposed to give in to demands in the name of tolerance, political correctness, inclusiveness. Gradually it becomes normal to do things that are actually quite abnormal. When you finally get to the point where you really want to protest against what is going on, it is hard to do because the precedent is already set, people are used to doing it that way, whatever. The point is, it is a lot easier to stand up and say, “No, sorry, this is not the way we do it in our country” in the early stages. This requires courage.
Wow, swing and a miss hear. England has done everything you say we wont do.
Then one looks at Europe, and comes back to on the ground reality.
I have seen Sharia law up close. It is for real. They mean it.
The trope about ” only a tiny minority” believes in extreme Sharia misses the point. How many Bolsheviks were there when Lenin took over Russia? It’s the will to power that counts. And these boys have got it in spades.
It is necessarily premised on the idea of a United States that has lost all faith and confidence in its own values and an intellectual and political elite too stupid to tell the difference between our founding principles and Islamic obscurantism.
Given that we are still experiencing the political elite’s wholesale and unquestioning support for Barack Obama – someone they know next to nothing about- and the idiocy of the multiculturalists, this is hardly a remote possibility. Establishment support for a Victory Mosque on the ashes of the 9/11 victims is a case in point. As is the indifference over the Crescent of Embrace at Shanksville Pa to celebrate the Islamic downing of Flight 93.
I am coming across more and more people who have taken up the scales of justice and elected themselves for the painful task of determining that one side is weighted exactly as the other, everything neutral even words have become “so-called” as if it puts into doubt their very definitions.
I was able to get through about one-third of Smiths missive before discovering he too is one of the “Neutrals”. Anyone like Gingrich who brings up subjects such as Sharia for the citizens to ponder and think about it’s role in Islamic Immigration is immediately challenged. The “Neutrals” quickly weight the scales to appear as if it is all really relative, fluid, changing, depending upon what the meaning of “is” is, and those who question are upsetting the balance and must be silenced so that the “Neutrals” can again turn the world into relativity, and again we are silenced.
Sometimes I feel the blanket of silence descending on the United States where even discourse is frowned upon, self determination a fleeting hope. As we sit, puzzled, shaking our heads thinking that something is not right something is wrong, the Neutrals will explain in voices hypnotic in their monotone that right and wrong is as fluid as the definition of words.
Thank you for understanding the underlying issues here.
Who controls the power of defining the symbols of society? Furthermore, are all their definitions useless or even ultimately destructive because they are based on an ever-shifting subjective scale couched in pseudo-intellectual rationalisations? How did they get such power, and how are they allowed to keep it?
Progressives answered these questions to their own advantage decades ago when they declared cultural civil war upon traditionalist America. Conservatives are still wrestling with their own formulations, let alone actually answering and acting upon the conclusions.
Until & unless Conservatives find a backbone, the society they profess to love will be inevitably destroyed, and they will have nobody but themselves to blame.
Meanwhile, Islamists makes themselves clear… not by what they say, but by what they do….. cruelly stoning women to death (Middle East), issuing fatwa’s against writers (UK), engaging in massive acts of vandalism (France), amputating limbs (Middle East), beheading Jews (Iraq), honor killing their daughters (America), enslaving their wives (Everywhere), killing apostates (Everywhere), attacking cartoonists (Denmark), stabbing film makers to death (Denmark), attacking great works of art(The Vatican), committing mass murder all over the world, building repulsive “in your face” monuments to themselves near the sites of their greatest transgressions….. and instead of publicly flogging the mean faced Mullahs, Imoms and Ayatollah’s who encourage, sanction and order such heinous acts, with nary a word of criticism they allow them to watch their disgusting whiskers grow.
“Sharia is a “hopelessly abstract concept” and “a highly idealized version of reality that has little basis in fact”? Really? Tell that to American victims of honor killings. Yes, young women are being murdered by male relatives in islamic communities in America. Tell that to the young woman on the cover of Time magazine, whose ears and nose were cut off by her male relatives when she was 15. Tell that to the 13-year-old rape victim who was stoned to death by a screaming male mob. Apparently it’s very easy for Mr. Smith to ignore islam’s vicious hatred of women. Since he’s a male, of course all these atrocities are “abstract” to him. What a tool.
Amen! Ask the woman who has gone through genital mutilation if she thinks sharia is an abstract concept! Why would Muslims be pushing for sharia laws if they were simply abstract concepts? Calling sharia abstract is ignorance trying to sound elitist.
Beware, America, to think you can allow just a little sharia and have it just stay in the Muslim communities. They will always be pushing for more and more sharia, because Islam is not a part of their lives, they consider their lives to be within the sphere of Islam – and they want YOUR life to be within the sphere of Islam, too.
Our Constitution gives us equal protection under the law (14th amendment). You cannot have this AND sharia. “Give me liberty or give me death” has a whole new meaning now….
All it takes for a society to die is for a single generation of young people to decide that that society is not worth preserving. Yes, postmodernism and multiculturalism are helping in this regard. It’s why I think the postmodernists should really be called the “pre-Islamists.”
Lee Smith is engaging in yet another Moslem tactic of confusing the enemy (which would be us) with obscure words and concepts, saying one thing while meaning another. Frankly, he can take all of his foreign references that solely concern his foreign “religion” with him when he leaves our fair country. I’m quite tired of hearing these bleatings, as is most of the nation. We are just now awakening from our self-imposed slumber concerning islam and finding out that all societies and beliefs are hardly equal to Americanism.
You only need be aware of one thing when it comes to islam: our American values and way of life are anathema to them, and they will do anything in their power to eliminate us. American concepts of freedom and individuality do not fit in with the islamic way of life and must be removed from the Earth. When they say they seek global domination under sharia law, they are deadly serious. They will use any means to achieve their sick goal, including lying and cheating to get their way. We infidels are considered beneath contempt, no more than bugs to be crushed underneath their sandals, regardless of centuries of evidence to the contrary.
They do not know how to build, they only know how to destroy. And they are actively trying to destroy America. They have been at war with us more than a generation, and we can’t seem to fight back lest we be called bigots,racists, and intolerant. We should be intolerant of a belief system that is the polar opposite of America.
The key to Lee Smith’s thinking is all wrapped up in the phrase ‘intellectual and political elite’. I’m so glad these elite folks are protecting our constitution. Otherwise, I might worry about the government eventually owning everything and not just almost everything. It’s too bad I don’t have a hat to doff or a forelock to tug when I pass my betters.
It’s a real travesty that we can’t come up with better figureheads then Palin and Gingrich to field the grand cause.
You are the one we’ve been waiting for. Oh snarky one.
Heh, Heh, Heh.
Yeah. He’s a legend in his own mind.
Islamists are commonly accused of trying to take us back to the twelfth century. Fact is, thin veneer of modernity aside, most Muslims are psychologically, socially morally, and often technologically Twelfth Century folk.
Lee Smith imagines a modern Muslim equivalent of himself making rational choices among reasonable options. That just ain’t how it is. For those who live in the dream palace that is Islam, abstraction is tangible.
Derivative of two moral and humane faiths, Islam is hopelessly primitive and inhuman.
Because progressives have completely prevented any useful dialogue about Islam, Western society is now in a position of being absolutely unable to make clear, rational distinctions about any differences (assuming they really exist) between radical Islam versus any other kind. This includes the continuing lack of useful, widely agreed-upon defintions, and more importantly, a complete lack of codified laws based on such definitions. At best, we simply have some type of vague acknowledgement that there are “moderate Muslims” out there somewhere, but no legally accepted means by which to prove it one way or the other.
Those moderates have also been remiss, whether out of fear of their own religious leaders (a telling indicator all by itself), a naive lack of intellectual curiosity, or some unacknowledged arrogance about the true underlying nature of their religion upon which they base a subjective fantasy of their own undefined practices.
Conservatives are now in the absurd position of hoping that arguments based on “insensitivity”, or “reciprocity”, or being “uncaring” or “offensive” will carry the day. This is naive and ultimately feckless, since the only default legailty leads us directly to the First Amendment which will trump you every time. We are thus left in the dark about the relationship of our Constitution to a real but amorphously defined enemy. This is what progressivises do best… refuse to make useful distinctions, and then violently squelch any attempt by others to do so in their stead.
“The Constitution is not a suicide pact.” However, the lack of any codified, logical, rational analysis is allowing us to blanket our enemies with Constitutional protections to which they were never originally entitled. We see the rise and success of demopaths throughout our society. It is they whom we have allowed to control the debate, control the laws, and ultimately undercut the foundations of our society.
What’s the word for an infidel who sells the infidels out the the muslim overlords?
A good dhimmi.
Ahh… Jimmy Carter?
Quisling
I don’t know about you but I’d be very comforted to know that I’d been killed by “an orientalist fantasy”. I’m sure those victims of Sharia-seeking lunatics will be too. Should they be concerned, however, that they’ve been made hopelessly dead by a “hopelessly abstract concept”?
Smith’s response is pretty much a re-tread of the old argument that whites cannot understand “black-ness” and therefore will never be qualified to speak about discrimination, etc. Plenty of other groups have used this same tactic–certainly teenagers routinely do to discredit their parents!
In other words, it is just a gussied-up ad hominen attack.
Post-script: Recall the dilemma created by this strategy in endorsing Clinton. No problem: just declare him “black”. Note who retains the power of defining worthiness.
Nothing preposterous here. Leftists have successfully shifted this society to a radical socialism through a “stealth” process of taking over its institutions such as schools and courts. The same strategy will work for them.
I studied Arabic for a year at the Defense Language Institute in the mid-60′s and we were taught something of Islam and Muslim culture as part of that study. Believe me when I tell you that Sharia is REAL and part and parcel of any practicing, orthodox Muslim’s psyche. Absolute subjugation of women as their father’s or husband’s “property,” meting out some of the most horrific punishments for what, to us, would be minor infractions of religious dogma, blaming the victim for rape, practicing clitorectomies are ALL part and parcel of the generic term “sharia.” We CANNOT allow it to take root here in the name of “multiculturism” which MAY be the worst idea to come down the pike in our 234-year history.
The Constitution gives nothing, it does not grant, confer, bestow or any other action that would designate the Constitution as the origin of your rights. It merely enumerates inalienable rights and Liberties that all humanity is born with. Your rights are yours because you exist, regardless of the Constitution.
What the constitution does is restrict Government, and should never be used to restrict the Individual. That is why flag burning amendment is such a bad idea, the constitution should never be used to restrict the actions of the citizenry, always only government.
Sharia Law is based in religious writings, which is very dangerous. Religion does not compromise, negotiate or settle, It is all or nothing. Luckily our Constitution is based on Natural law and without religious fervor.
It would be very difficult to see Hollywood or Wall street accepting Sharia based business ( Sharia laws apply to business contracts and banking as well, and the entertainment industry would be wiped out overnight) practices…its just not possible in the USA. the Liquor industry would collapse, multiple industries would spiral down…it is just not reasonable to assume Sharia would somehow embed itself in the USA to any appreciable extent.
What is could do is wrongly inspire people to pass improper legislation somehow restricting Sharia. Using legislative approach to restrict would be the real tragedy.
Sir, you refuse to understand history, you refuse to see the reality all around you. At least read some of the real-world examples posted here.
However, I don’t expect much, since it is the self-acknowledged basis of progressivism that people are incabable of grasping evidence first-hand or being objective about its interpretation. The results of accepting such intellectual nonsense are the pallid rationalizations which you peddle. You are either a progressive, or more likely a right-wing liberal and therefore one of the lefts’ “useful idiots”.
The Saudis have already influenced many of the leading banks to implement sharia compliant loans. They did so by promising an influx of Saudi oil money.
“…improper legislation somehow restricting Sharia….”
What on Earth do you mean by that?
A provision of sharia is either Constitutionally conformant or it isn’t. How could a law “restrict sharia” unless that law were Constitutionally compliant while the provision of sharia it contradicts is not?
If you’re concerned about laws that might restrict advocacy for sharia, you should say so clearly. Otherwise, you make no sense.
Alex, your basic premise is incorrect. Unlike Christianity, which we in the West are used to, Islam makes no separation between religion and state; it is an all-encompassing philosophy that tells a follower how to act towards Allah, his fellow believer, and his non-believing neighbor in any and all circumstances. Furthermore, the government is assumed to be Islamic and following the basic principles of Islam, in the same way that ancient Israel was assumed by all Israelites to be following the Law as laid down by Moses. Look at the Arab lands where Islam originated: they all incorporate Shariah law into their legal system. Look at the problems that Turkey is having, trying to remain a secular state with a majority Muslim population.
“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society … then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. … We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”
(Austro-British philosopher Karl Popper)
So much bad stuff is in islam that they refuse to talk about.They will not like to debate on their religion ,sharia and so on while they take full liberty to critise any one they like. This is like Hitlor.
Its time real islam and its followers ways should be exposed by media so a common man will know what is real islam.Its time govt funding trips of muslism to Islamic world should be stopped and have open debate broadcast them in middle east to opnen their minds and souls.
Religion means pray to god not on the name of god to please him kill others. This is murder and should be punished inthis world.
” It is necessarily premised on the idea of a United States that has lost all faith and confidence in its own values and an intellectual and political elite too stupid to tell the difference between our founding principles and Islamic obscurantism.”
IMO, the above quote defines the Democrats and the so called intellectual elites in America today. I don’t believe they can produce a single one of them that have faith and confidence in our values as defined by our founding principles.
Every single thing they do is against our values and founding principles.
Ah yes, Orientalism, created at Columbia University by Edward Said, ruination of Middle East and S. Asian studies and wonderfully inventive inoculation against any criticism of Islam. Prepare to be a dhimmi.
Anyone interested in learning about Islam and all of it’s wonderful attributes can sign up for classes at a California(imagine that)college set to open up very soon. It will be the first school devoted to the study of Islam. Hurry up,lines are forming fast.
College infers intelligence. Islam does not require nor expect intelligence. Maybe they can have on-line courses accessible to prisoners.
Perhaps Mr. Smith’s goal is to obscure the issue and provide cover for the left as they ignore the issue.
Well said Kipling…why else would Mr. Smith be espousing such stuff?
Jonah Goldberg in his book ‘Liberal Fascism’ describes progressivism as a “totalitarian political religion”. Does that sound familiar? I don’t hesitate to point out there is an unholy alliance between progressives and Islamists. Want to check that out? Just make note of who is pro-mosque building in the current GZ Mosque debate. Simple. Moral falsehoods and arbitrary moral imperatives (such as “it’s a religeous freedom issue”) are the norm for progressives. No logical analysis, no observable evidence is the progressive way. Did I say revisionist histories?
This Rauf guy, was an industrial filter salesman and an opportunist. Though I liken him (and Obama) to Chauncey Gardner in the movie ‘Being There’ (Peter Sellers). These people are 100% deluded and removed from reality. One has to be in order to deny hundreds of years of Islamic atrocity. Guys like Smith? They make me want to throw-up!! Time to squash these mental midgets.
Far more astute authorities than Lee Smith have looked at the ongoing Islamization of Western Europe, such as the preeminent historian and scholar of Islam Bat Ye’or, and have concluded in her fabulous book Eurabia that it probably isn’t reversible. Indeed, who is Lee Smith anyway? A leftwing hack, and let’s not forget that the Left is fully in bed with our Islamic enemies.
Communism & Islamism
The godless & the ungodly.
Yes, Newt Gingrich exploring and talking—and hopefully doing so honestly, fearlessly and openly–about just what Islam really is, and about its Shari’a law, and about its methods and ultimate goals is a necessary, essential, absolutely critical thing for him to be doing at this time—nothing could be more important at this moment of peril for our nation; the foremost, the most powerful “unbeliever” nation in the “House of War,” which is under constant and growing attack by Islam and Muslims—attacks both open, violent, and covert, as on 9/11, and stealthy and/or apparently “peaceful,” as exemplified by the “Cordoba Mosque” Muslims want to build next to our “hallowed” 9/11 Ground Zero in New York City.
I hope and pray that many more prominent figures enter into a fearless, informed, honest, and probing examination of Islam and its “religion” i.e. its totalitarian, xenophobic, supremacist, and predatory ideology, and a critical examination, too, of Islam’s many “works,” both within the body of Islamic believers, the “Umma,” and without; things like its subversion, war and terrorism, forced genital mutilation, honor killings, arranged and child marriages, routine wife beating, and the subjugation of women, stonings, amputations and be-headings, the treatment of minority “unbelievers,” within the Umma, and the general illiteracy, poverty, ill health, and backwardness that an adherence to Islam has meant for the Muslim world.
For perilously too long—and I pray that it is not too late–Muslims, their partisans, and their allies and helpers on the Left–in Academia, and in the MSM, in our Government, in our Foreign Affairs establishment, and even in some places in our Military–have been allowed to lecture us from on high that “Islam is the religion of “Peace” when, in fact, “Islam is the religion of “Submission,” been allowed to stifle, and to steer, and to detour all attempts at frank discussions and examinations of Islam and its Shari’a law, and the effects of Shari’a, and of Islam’s subversion, terrorism and warfare, their methods and goals, to detour and steer them down deliberately wrong paths, or to stifle them under a blanket of political correctness, moral equivalence, and multiculturalism, or to stop them altogether by shouting “Islamaphobia!,” or “racism” or, that such an examination would “stir up unnecessary conflict” or “create hard feelings” or now, “hatred” when anyone advocates or tries to start the critical examination of Islam that has already been ruthlessly applied to both the theology and the history and the methods and arguments of Christianity and Judaism; Muslims and their allies and supporters who use the Muslim’s religiously sanctioned, deceptive techniques of Takiyya (dissimulation i.e. lying) and of Kitman (withholding, or partial truth) on all us uninformed, fearful, and gullible “unbelievers,” and to our great detriment (http://www.carlisle.army.mil/DIME/documents/20080107_Coughlin_ExtremistJihad.pdf) and peril.
Muslim backers and the proponents of the “Cordoba Mosque” at Ground Zero are trying to sell what they hope is a clueless, naïve, politically correct, intimidated and fearful American public the totally fictitious and meretricious idea that the 800 year period when Spain was occupied and ruled by Muslims was a time of peace and harmony for all—for Muslim rulers and for the Jews and Christians who were their slaves or second class citizens—dhimmis—who lived (when they weren’t killed) under almost consistently harsh, violent, extractive and predatory Muslim rule, with “Cordoba” held up as the most shining example of what one “Wall Street Journal” editorial writer once nauseatingly termed “pan-confessional harmony.”
In the same way, some commenters here are attempting to peddle the idea that Shari’a law is merely a dusty “academic construct,” and of no real interest or application. In fact, though, Shari’a governs Saudi Arabia and the entire “Holy” Saudi Arabian Peninsula—in which, in obedience to Muhammad’s commands, there is no Christian or Jewish or any other “unbeliever” house of worship, the Bible and the Torah are banned, and proselytizing by unbelievers is forbidden and severely pushed, and no unbeliever is allowed to set foot in “Holy” Mecca. Shari’a also rules–more or less– in fanatical Iran, too, and, to a greater or lesser extent, throughout the 57 nations of the Umma. Moreover, Islam and Shari’a have now established footholds in Muslim’s new colonies and outposts here in the “House of War”—in places like France, Germany, and Sweden, and in England, and, now, it is gaining a foothold, too, here in the U.S., and Muslims and their proponents want Islam and its Shari’a to triumph—by hook or crook, fat or slow, by violence and intimidation, or by stealth and subversion–over all the remained of the “unbeliever” world.
That is what the Muslim view of the world as being divided into two “Houses” is all about. Muslims are taught that the world is divided into two eternally irreconcilable, hostile and opposing “camps,” eternally at war, and only one can finally remain standing. There is the “Umma,” the “House of Islam,” all those countries, 57 in all today—many formerly Christian, and in the case of Iran, Zoroastrian, and all forcibly conquered and converted to Islam by the sword wielded by Muslim warriors–Jihadis–where to one extent or the other, Islam today reigns supreme, and, then, there is the as yet unconquered rest of the world, the West, our world, the world of us “unbelievers,” called by Muslims the “House of War”—in essence, a “free fire zone” where anything is permissible for Muslims to do—even pretending not to be a Muslim, as long as it leads to the eventual conquest of the “ignorant” and “unclean” House of War of us unbelievers—“unbelievers” that the Qura’n tells Muslims are the “spawn of pigs of apes”–and to our “unbeliver’s” House of War being devoured by the Muslim’s House of Islam, at which point all conflict will cease, and there will be what Muslim ideologues define as “Peace”–thus the deceptive claims by Muslims and their agents and supporters that “Islam is a religion of Peace.”
The Ground Zero Mosque controversy seems to have broken the dam and blown this controversy wide open, and, in the process, to have–as ex-President Bush might have said, “smoked Obama out”–and shown us all just were Obama stands, and where Obama’s true allegiances, priorities, interests and concerns are.
If we in what the Muslims term the “House of War” are to survive the onslaught by the Muslim’s “House of Islam” against us—unceasing assaults both open and violent and covert and stealthy–we absolutely need to have this fearless and truthful and wide-ranging conversation about and examination of Islam, Shari’a law, and about Islam and Muslim’s tactics and their end goal, for, otherwise, we will go ignominiously down to defeat, duped, outfoxed and out maneuvered, head still covered by the burlap sack that Muslims, the Left and Postmodernism has stuck over our heads, and bewildered, disoriented, and puzzled, wondering just what happened, what hit us.
Superb. I particularly enjoyed or appreciated the description of Dar al Harb as:
“a free-fire zone.”
That is encapsulated beautifully.
I propose to allow just as much Islam in the U.S. as Christianity is accepted in Saudi Arabia.
Islam is used by the Saud family to control the ignorant and impoverished. Their DisneyHajj is going on now for the lemmings. Islam is popular because all you have to do is turn off your mind and submit, something easy for the small minded to join.
That would be an injustice to the Christians we’d be sending there. I would settle for allowing Christians and all other religions, except Islam (and Warren Jeff’s Yearning for Zion Church) into the US. They are both seditious, anti American, Misogynistic religions that should not be tolerated due to their own extreme degree of intolerance.
PERFECT.
Well said, Mr. Ibrahim.
“The stealth scenario is slightly less preposterous”
Tell that to the British and the French, Mr. Smith.
I am THRILLED that Newt has the cajones to speak OUT LOUD about IMMORAL SHARIA, muslims and mosques. I have become so angry at what Hussein has done to MY COUNTRY that I MUST stay down in my little basement blogging cuz I have ABSOLUTELY NO POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GOING FOR ME AT THIS TIME.
I hope Newt stays this mad and makes a bigger deal of it.
THIS AMERICAN DOES NOT WANT ANYMORE MOSQUES BUILT IN AMERICA AND “ALL” BORDERS SHUT DOWN TO “ALL” ILLEGALS, INCLUDING MUSLIMS. MUSLIMS WILL “NEVER” BE AMERICA. NEVER.
The pattern of attacks in the middle east, both by country and by position to Israel, have consistently indicated attacks on Sunni Muslims. Sunnis dominate the middle east significantly (85%:15%) and are historically more peaceful and more tolerant of Israel. This is such a deal for the shiites. Never before have they had the chance to overtake the muslim world, let alone the ENTIRE world !
OBL, a Sunni, was a threat to the shiite world. Obama used our grievance to take him out and become a hero. He couldn’t care less about 911.
Taqiyya is the motto of this administration. It is well known that muslims are allowed to deceive for Allah.
He is taking the U.S. out slowly so as to go unnoticed while we are caught up in discussions of the distractions.
And, of course he a good shiite partner to Amedinajhad, the barbaric leader of Iran and is placing increasing numbers of muslim brotherhood members, shiite terrorists, in the U.S.White House.
Our media only speaks of terrorism using the Taliban and Al-Queda. We know these groups are offshoots of the muslim brotherhood.
Janna Lee
Sharia, Part Two: Imam Rauf’s Jihad Against America
I’m about as sick of writing about mosques, Muslims, Sharia, Islam, Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, and Muhammad as readers are sick of reading and hearing about them.
Yet to suspend attention to them at what might be the most critical juncture in America’s history is to surrender to those forces dedicated to the defeat and dismantling of America as we know it.
Symbolized by the Ground Zero Monster Mosque, Muslims and Islam, with Rauf acting as their commander, are intent on capitalizing on their victory of September 11th, 2001, defeating America in our decades-long war on terror, and subjugating Americans to the brutal strictures of Sharia law.
As I concluded Part One of this series, “Think it can’t happen here? September 11th, 2001 couldn’t happen here, but it did.” And it could be repeated.
As per usual, the Democrat Party has taken an almost united stance of support on the issue of Imam Rauf’s obsession with building his 15 story, $100,000,000 mosque-cultural center-gymnasium-restaurant-fun place massage parlor near the hallowed site of Ground Zero.
Unlike Christians’ lack of rights to erect a cathedral, a church, even a chapel in Mecca and Medina, Rauf has every constitutional right to build his mosque and no American has disputed that right. Having a right and doing what’s right are vastly different, however.
Joining with the Islamic Raufians, the formerly-reputable Democrat Party has ironically discovered deep within its bowels a renewed, long-lost concern for religiosity and religious freedom and the First Amendment.
Democrats have condemned those who oppose Rauf’s project as bigoted, racist, un-Americans for seeking to deny Rauf’s grand scheme to trumpet Islam’s triumph of nine years ago by building a garish monument to Islam’s greatest victory over the infidel Christians since Saladin captured Jerusalem in A.D. 1187. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1861)
Berlet-Im sure all demoncraps know all about bigots. They do see themselves in themirror every morning after all(except for Piglosi, Jordan, Mikulski or Watters-the mirror breaks when these fugly women stare into it)
The Cross of St George or the Crescent Moon one must fall.
Nature abhors a vacuum, especially a religious vacuum. Christians defended Europe against the Moors and the Ottoman Turks. They fended them off successfully from the 8th to the 17th Centuries because they did not tolerate Mohammedanism, but hated it and all its followers. The sign of final defeat was after WW II, the European powers did not have enough faith in their own religion to impose it on the peoples of the Ottoman Empire, who after all were only Mohammedans through conquest. Tolerance is a euphemism for surrender, or, as they have it, good-men-doing-nothing-while-evil-men-take-over. Where are all those Lefties who claimed that every German who did not rise up in arms against the National Socialists was an accomplice? They were only practicing tolerance — just like all the moderate Mohammedans who cheer the terrorists but do not pick up a suicide belt and head to the pizzeria.
Exactly Jacobite. I call most moslems not terrorists, but terrorist enablers. One of the problems Mr Smith did not address in his article was this simple one-why no moslems ever question whats written in the Koran in the first place. To most moslems Ive met, the Koran is ALWAYS right. Even the worse aspects of it, like honor killings and killing infidels and kafirs never gets questioned. You know that in Christianity you had a Martin Luther to successfully challange some of the more doctrinaire interpretations of the Bible, or a John Calvin. Youve never really had that in Islam. Consuquently, you now have the Saudi GOVT financing what? WAHABBI ISLAM-its estimated that 80% of US mosques are Wahabbist. Thats the problem , not the US. Islam has had problems long before American culture was ever established. Col Alan West does an excellent narrative on it.
Mr. Ibrahim is absolutely right. Smith is a pretentious fool. I read his article. He makes it sound like there is no such thing as sharia!
Go Newt!
There is a difference between being abstract, and being esoteric. Would that those who confuse the two learn the distinction. For they are wasting their time, and the time of those who pay attention to them.
I had it a long time ago with any media talking head saying a subject is too abstract for the public. When NASA could not launch the Challenger in cold weather Dan Rather getting petulant about because he did not get his show killed the astronauts as certain as if he had put a gun to their heads.
Implementing Sharia is the point.
If not, why all the emphasis by followers of Islam in western countries (see esp. Britain and Canada, recently Australia in the news as experiencing the boot of creeping Shari’a) to infuse Shari’a law into pre-existing legal processes and ideas ?
Interweaving Shari’a into western law in areas of domestic matters is where they begin, in the movement in Canada, the argument was…”Oh, courts are so busy, if we Canadian Muslims could just be granted permission to apply Shari’a within our own community, it would ever so much lighten the burden of Canadian courts…”
(some Canadian Muslim women themselves realized the intent of that push & that they would no longer be protected by Canadian law & guarantees when it came to matters of marriage and the family. They violently opposed the initiative)
It (creeping Shari’a) is necessarily premised on the idea of a United States that has lost all faith and confidence in its own values and an intellectual and political elite too stupid to tell the difference between our founding principles and Islamic obscurantism.
In case Mr. Smith hasn’t noticed, that’s happening as we speak. The current administration is filled with individuals (“an intellectual and political élite”) who have far more positive things to say about Islam (and/or Mao and Marx) than they do about US founding principles, principles they seem to regard as antiquated and unenlightened.
There is an Imam Rauf currently traveling about the world at US taxpayer expense who says that the US is already “Shari’a compliant”, that the principles in the Declaration of Independence and Shari’a (you know, respect for the individual etc.) are compatible.
Those utterances should make any sane person gag….however…we do have many very susceptible to The Big Lie, individuals whose education consisted of being stuffed with “multicultural” blather who have never learned to think beyond the crapola with which their brains have been infused…
…repeat The Big Lie often enough, eventually a people that has lost confidence in its own values (and/or has been mis-educated to not even know what those values are) will come on board.
Strength is everything in the Muslim cosmology, and the Strong Horse is definitely riding roughshod over the Weak Horse these days.
Allah be praised !
Thank you, Mr. Smith. By pointing out that Gingrich shouldn’t be talking about Sharia, you are pointing us all to the topic that really needs to be explored, and all information about it should be disseminated far and wide. More people need to know about Sharia law, and how it could affect them, were it to be widely implemented in the U.S.
Does this sound like a “hopelessly abstract concept” to you, Mr. Smith?
Only Cowards Stone People to Death: An Islamic Religious Ritual
August 19, 2010 – by Phyllis Chesler
Yesterday, I appeared on Fox News’ The Strategy Room to discuss a recent stoning in Afghanistan and the issue of stoning in general. Kimberly Guilfoyle interviewed me both skillfully and graciously. The subject is a very distressing and somewhat mysterious one for most westerners.
What does it mean when a mob of men, numbering anywhere from 50 to 200, stone a female child to death — as happened in October of 2008 in Somalia? That poor soul was not only a 13-year-old child, she had also just been raped. Indeed, that was her sole “crime” and the reason for her torture-execution. She was forced into a hole and buried nearly up to her neck. She took a long time to die and kept crying out for her life. In addition to the 50 active stoners, 1000 more men cheered them on.
What does this tell us?
First, that barbarians are mainly cowards who do not view themselves as responsible for their actions. Everyone is the murderer and therefore, no one is the murderer. The group both absorbs and atones for any possible guilt or hesitation that even one individual might have felt. However, as we shall see, there is also another way of looking at this.
For a culture presumably so concerned with “honor,” so consumed with concepts of responsibility towards the family, clan, or “ummah” (Muslim people), those who stone a living being to death utterly shrink from any individual responsibility for carrying out their bloody deeds. Entire families become conspirators in an honor killing; village and religious councils collaborate to issue a death sentence; Muslim men sexually harass women in the streets (of Egypt) — and in large mosque-inflamed mobs (in Algeria).
In terms of stoning, which is primarily a contemporary Muslim-only custom, not only do cowardly men hide behind each other, clearly they lack the ability to act as individuals. That power is reserved for one man, one leader, one ruling cabal only. In Afghanistan, the Taliban hooligans threw the first stones.
This tells us something else that is important. The need for a mob is, in a sense, proof that the individuals who compose it are all being held hostage to the will of the psychopathic criminals who rule them. Oppose them, and you yourself might be stoned to death. Hostage-mobs also share the “guilt,” or rather, their leaders’ point of view. The leaders cannot be held accountable for their actions either — everyone did it.
In addition, sharing a so-called Muslim sinner’s blood, especially female blood, is yet another way to forge a blood-brotherhood that is based on male supremacism.
Stoning is practiced in contemporary Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria. In 2006, a poll conducted in “moderate” Indonesia found that 50% of Muslims there supported stoning in cases of adultery, however it is defined. Adultery might include: a married woman who is raped by a stranger, or a woman promised in marriage to one man but who chooses another. This is precisely what happened in the recent case in Afghanistan.
The Grand Torturer Khomeini brought stoning back to Iran. Uneducated mullahs in the provinces rather liked it. They also liked drugs, drug trafficking, forcing girls into prostitution and then jailing or hanging them for it; temporary “marriages”; forced veiling, etc. Although stoning is now under legal review in Iran, to date, eight men and three women await stoning execution.
In Iran, one woman, accused of adultery, was sentenced to be lashed 99 times — and then sentenced to be stoned to death. Due to an international campaign and due to the hard work of Iranian dissidents, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani’s sentence was delayed. But she was lashed 99 times and her teenage son was forced to witness her helplessness, humiliation, and torture — and, in a sense, forced to both share these emotions, second-hand with his mother. Her son’s presence before her nakedness was meant to shame them both and challenged him to become a very hard man as a way of avoiding an eventual nervous breakdown.
I am not sure whether there is any connection, but think about this. When Muslims go on pilgrimage to Mecca, part of their three day ritual includes stoning “The Devil.” Large groups literally throw stones at giant concrete pillars. This suggests that stoning is a Muslim religious ritual, not a tribal custom. Therefore, stoning a living human being is not only an act of human sacrifice — it is a classic religious ritual meant to glorify the stoners’ God.
A little like jihad if you ask me.
Does mr Smith consider honor killings to be “limited to the Taliban and other Islamists?”. Does Mr Smith consider Malik Nidal hassan to be “Islamasist”(Id think so, but by his own argument makes me wonder). Mr Smith, I personally KNEW those 2 moslem girls MURDERED by there OWN FATHER because they “werent moslem enough”. There father was not the kind of man on the surface who would be considered “a terrorist”. Yet, he killed his own 2 daughters in the name of ISLAM. His own DAUGHTERS. That, sir is one SICK puppy. And anyone TEACHING that such an “idea” is acceptable in the name of a RELIGION is even sicker. My upbringing told me murder was WRONG. Islam seems to say murder is acceptable(even of your own CHILDREN) when they arent considered moslem enough? BTW-Newt Gingrich has every right to talk about Islam. After all, what are the Islamasists teaching in there mosques-How to hit a soccer ball?
Abstract? I don’t think so.
Creeping Sharia in the United States
In some ways, it speaks of the goodness of America that we have had such difficulty coming to grips with the challenge of radical Islamists. It is our very commitment to religious liberty that makes us uncomfortable with defining our enemies in a way that appears linked with religious belief.
However, America’s commitment to religious liberty has given radical Islamists a potent rhetorical weapon in their pursuit of sharia supremacy. In a deliberately dishonest campaign exploiting our belief in religious liberty, radical Islamists are actively engaged in a public relations campaign to try and browbeat and guilt Americans (and other Western countries) to accept the imposition of sharia in certain communities, no matter how deeply sharia law is in conflict with the protections afforded by the civil law and the democratic values undergirding our constitutional system.
The problem of creeping sharia is most visibly on display in France and in the United Kingdom, where there are Muslim enclaves in which the police have surrendered authority and sharia reigns. However, worrisome cases are starting to emerge in the United States that show sharia is coming here. Andy McCarthy’s writings, including his new book The Grand Jihad, have been invaluable in tracking instances in which the American government and major public institutions have been unwilling to assert the protections of American law and American values over sharia’s religious code. Some examples include:
In June 2009, a New Jersey state judge rejected an allegation that a Muslim man who punished his wife with pain for hours and then raped her repeatedly was guilty of criminal sexual assault, citing his religious beliefs as proof that he did not believe he was acting in a criminal matter. “This court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited.” Thankfully, this ruling was reversed in an appellate court.
In May 2008, a disabled student at a public college being assisted by a dog was threatened by Muslim members of the student body, who were reluctant to touch the animal by the prescription of sharia. The school, St. Cloud State, chose not to engage the Muslim community, but simply gave the student credit without actually fulfilling the class hours so as to avoid conflict.
In a similar instance in November 2009, a high school senior in Owatonna, Minn., was suspended in order to protect him from the threat of violence by radical Islamists when he wrote an essay about the special privileges afforded his Somali Muslim counterparts in the school environment.
In order to accommodate sharia’s prohibition of interest payments in financial transactions, the state of Minnesota buys homes from realtors and re-sells them to Muslims at an up-front price. It is simply not the function of government to use tax money to create financial transactions that correspond to a religious code. Moreover, it is a strategy to create a precedent for legal recognition of sharia within U.S. law.
Amazingly, there are strong allegations that the United States now owns the largest provider of sharia financing in the world: AIG.
Last month, police in Dearborn, Mich., which has a large Muslim population, arrested Christian missionaries for handing out copies of the Gospel of St. John on charges of “disturbing the peace.” They were doing so on a public street outside an Arab festival in a way that is completely permissible by law, but, of course, forbidden by sharia’s rules on proselytizing. This is a clear case of freedom of speech and the exercise of religious freedom being sacrificed in deference to sharia’s intolerance against the preaching of religions other than Islam.
Shockingly, sharia honor killings-in which Muslim women are murdered by their husbands, brothers or other male family members for dishonoring their family-are also on the rise in America but do not receive national attention because they are considered “domestic disturbances.” (A recent article in Marie Claire Magazine highlights recent cases and the efforts to bring national attention to this horrifying trend.)
Cases like this will become all the more common as radical Islamists grow more and more aggressive in the United States
Smith’s tactic is just a continuation of that tired invention of the late unlamented Edward Said. Dismiss anyone on the other side as unqualified to comment, throw in some words such as “Orientalist” to tar him as a cultural imperialist, and deny what is obvious.
It’s not only sloppy and dishonest, it’s totalitarian in that it presumes to establish who may and may not comment, and the limits of what one may express.
What astounds me is that Smith believes he can stuff Sharia back into the bottle by pretending it doesn’t exist. I suppose were he writing in the late 1930′s he be solemnly assuring us all that “Nazism” is a myth invented by Germanophobes. Most of us here are not academic, I venture to say, so our capacity to accept blatantly stupid ideas is limited.
I am so tired of listening to these Islamists twist us around in the breeze with their word games. Doesn’t make a difference what it is called, sharia or diarrhea, it is still not favorable for women. That is all I need to know. Talking around and around with these folks is getting so old and they are slowing creeping into our society, make more demands for us to change our culture. How about adapting to our system or else stay in your home country. I now review financial institutions to see if they offer sharia financing and if they do, I not do business with them as well as letting them know why. I’m tired of adapting to every whiny click that develops in the US anymore.
Wow, Lee Smith, I don’t think I could have summed up the situation regarding US (and Western) vulnerability regarding stealth jihad better, myself:
“It is necessarily premised on the idea of a United States that has lost all faith and confidence in its own values and an intellectual and political elite too stupid to tell the difference between our founding principles and Islamic obscurantism.”
I would probably not credit the ‘intellectual and political elite’ with the innocence of stupidity, though.
However, worrisome cases are starting to emerge in the United States that show sharia is coming here. Andy McCarthy’s writings, including his new book The Grand Jihad… (call me Roy #48)
Andrew McCarthy: Inventing Moderate Islam
This Qaradawi guy (whom Imam Rauf admires as the most brilliant living Islamic scholar) is an especially odious piece of work.
For those who don’t know, Andrew McCarthy was lead prosecutor in the first WTC bombings, 1993, when Islamists went from the ground up instead of the top down.
Who cares? This is just more disscussion of distractions.
Who is the muslim brotherhood and what are they doing in our white house?