The New Republic’s Sharia Whitewash
Analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht, in a recent New Republic essay, condemned those who “demonized” Sharia — Islamic law — despite conceding that the application of what he refers to deferentially as Islam’s “Holy Law”:
… can be ugly, not least for women. Westerners, especially Europeans, are quite right to be outraged by the importation of Sharia practices to their shores. And Westerners should cast a very dim eye on any financial institution that sets up Sharia-compliant offices that could, if left unchecked, discreetly normalize anti-Semitic practices in big global institutions. … [E]ven some Muslim theologians have seen the strain of despotism in Islamic history as being related to the static and authoritarian nature of Islamic legal practice.
Notwithstanding these concessions, Gerecht ridiculed former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s contention during a widely publicized July 2010 American Enterprise Institute speech that the imposition of Islamic law poses an existential threat to freedoms uniquely conceived and practiced in the West. With a glib utterance (“This is hardly the place for a disquisition on Sharia, or how it’s evolved over the centuries”), Gerecht sidestepped his own manifestly inadequate understanding of Sharia and the living consequences of its historical application across space and time. He then lambasted Gingrich — whom Gerecht claimed to have “long admired” — as representing the misguided conservatives whose “blanket demonization of the Holy Law” might:
… lead one to view Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most revered Shiite thinker in the world, and one who tried desperately and selflessly to keep his country from descending into internecine savagery, as a bigot and a terrorist engine. The same would be true for the late Grand Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, the spiritual father of Iran’s Green Movement.
Gerecht’s romantic, unqualified assertions regarding the Shiite Ayatollahs Sistani and Montazeri illustrate a phenomenon described appositely 25 years ago by renowned Dutch Islamologist Johannes J.G. Jansen. Professor Jansen’s seminal analysis of the Egyptian Islamic milieu before and after Anwar Sadat’s October 1981 assassination — which included a carefully annotated translation of the jihadist manifesto The Neglected Duty — opens with this observation germane to Reuel Gerecht, and his ilk:
Western journalists or scholars picture Islam as a system that is open-minded, liberal, vague, and humanist as their own Western systems … Western writers who give accounts of Islam to a Western public often do not stress those elements in Islam that would be offensive or nonsense in the eyes of their Western readers. They rather see it as their duty to present Islam in as acceptable a light as possible to the West … In general, they take on the role of counsel for the defense.
The apologetic mindset Professor Jansen described is epitomized by Gerecht’s bowdlerized lionization of the two irredentist Ayatollahs. Via deliberate omission, or unacceptable ignorance, Gerecht negates the living legacy of Shi’ite Islamic doctrine and its authentic, oppressive application in the Shiite communities of Iran and Iraq, particularly since the advent of the Safavid theocratic state at the very beginning of the 16th century.
The great Orientalist Ignaz Goldziher (d. 1921) — a renowned Islamophile — believed that Shi’ism manifested greater doctrinal intolerance toward non-Muslims, compared to Sunni Islam. Goldziher observed:
On examining the legal documents, we find that the Shi’i legal position toward other faiths is much harsher and stiffer than that taken by Sunni Muslims. Their law reveals a heightened intolerance to people of other beliefs … Of the severe rule in the Qur’an (9:28) that “unbelievers are unclean”, Sunni Islam has accepted an interpretation that is as good as a repeal. Shi’i law, on the other hand, has maintained the literal sense of the rule; it declares the bodily substance of the unbeliever to be ritually unclean, and lists the touching of an unbeliever among the ten things that produce najasa [najis], ritual impurity.
Iran’s Safavid rulers, at the outset of the 16th century, formally established Shi’a Islam as the state religion, while permitting a clerical hierarchy nearly unlimited control and influence over all aspects of public life. The profound influence of the Shi’ite clerical elite continued for almost four centuries (although interrupted between 1722-1795 during a period of Afghan invasion and internecine struggle) through the later Qajar period (1795-1925), as characterized by the Persianophilic scholar E.G. Browne:
The Mujtahids and Mulla are a great force in Persia and concern themselves with every department of human activity from the minutest detail of personal purification to the largest issues of politics.
These Shi’ite clerics emphasized the notion of the ritual uncleanliness (najis) of Jews in particular, but also Christians, Zoroastrians, and others as the cornerstone of inter-confessional relationships toward non-Muslims.
The writings and career of Mohammad Baqer Majlisi elucidate the imposition of Shiite dhimmitude in Iran. Majlisi (d. 1699), the highest institutionalized clerical officer under both Shah Sulayman (1666-1694) and Shah Husayn (1694-1722), was perhaps the most influential cleric of the Safavid Shiite theocracy in Persia. Indeed, for a decade at the end of the 17th century al-Majlisi functioned as the de facto ruler of Iran — the Ayatollah Khomeini of his era. By design, he wrote many works in Persian to disseminate key aspects of the Shi’a ethos among ordinary persons. His Persian treatise Lightning Bolts Against the Jews, despite its title, was actually an overall guideline to anti-dhimmi regulations for all non-Muslims within the Shi’ite theocracy. Al-Majlisi, in this treatise, describes the standard humiliating requisites for non-Muslims living under the Shari’a — first and foremost, the blood ransom jizya, or poll-tax, based on Koran 9:29. He then enumerates six other restrictions relating to worship, housing, dress, transportation, and weapons (specifically, i.e., to render the dhimmis defenseless), before outlining the unique Shi’ite impurity or “najis” regulations. According to Al-Majlisi:
And, that they should not enter the pool while a Muslim is bathing at the public baths … It is also incumbent upon Muslims that they should not accept from them victuals with which they had come into contact, such as distillates, which cannot be purified. If something can be purified, such as clothes, if they are dry, they can be accepted, they are clean. But if they [the dhimmis] had come into contact with those cloths in moisture they should be rinsed with water after being obtained. As for hide, or that which has been made of hide such as shoes and boots, and meat, whose religious cleanliness and lawfulness are conditional on the animal’s being slaughtered [according to the Shari’a], these may not be taken from them. Similarly, liquids that have been preserved in skins, such as oils, grape syrup, [fruit] juices … and the like, if they have been put in skin containers or water skins, these should [also] not be accepted from them … It would also be better if the ruler of the Muslims would establish that all infidels could not move out of their homes on days when it rains or snows because they would make Muslims impure.
The dehumanizing character of these popularized “impurity” regulations fomented recurring Muslim violence against Iran’s non-Muslims — including pogroms, forced conversions, and expropriations — throughout the 17th, 18th,19th, and early 20th centuries.
The so-called “Khomeini revolution,” which deposed Mohammad Reza Shah, was in reality a mere return to oppressive Shiite theocratic rule, the predominant form of Iranian governance since 1502. Conditions for all non-Muslim religious minorities, particularly Bahais and Jews, rapidly deteriorated. Writings and speeches of the most influential religious ideologues of this restored Shi’ite theocracy — including Khomeini himself — make apparent their seamless connection to the oppressive doctrines of their forbears in the Safavid dynasty. Most notably, the conception of najis, or ritual uncleanliness, of the non-Muslim has been reaffirmed. Ayatollah Khomeini stated explicitly: “Non-Muslims of any religion or creed are najis.” Khomeini elaborated his views on najis and non-Muslims as follows:
Eleven things are unclean: urine, excrement, sperm, blood, a dog, a pig, bones, a non-Muslim man and woman, wine, beer, perspiration of a camel that eats filth … The whole body of a non-Muslim is unclean, even his hair, his nails, and all the secretions of his body … A child below the age of puberty is unclean if his parents and grandparents are not Muslims; but if he has a Muslim for a forebear, then he is clean … The body, saliva, nasal secretions, and perspiration of a non-Muslim man or woman who converts to Islam automatically become pure. As for the garments, if they were in contact with the sweat of the body before conversion, they will remain unclean.
The same late Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri championed by Gerecht was Khomeini’s close ally. Montazeri further indicated that a non-Muslim (kafir’s) impurity was “a political order from Islam and must be adhered to by the followers of Islam, and the goal [was] to promote general hatred toward those who are outside Muslim circles.” This “hatred” was to assure that Muslims would not succumb to corrupt, i.e., non-Islamic, thoughts. Montazeri’s Shiite Islamic Weltanschauung was articulated in his four volume treatise on the “Vilayat al-Faqih” (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists), a key rationale for the post-1979 Iranian Shiite theocracy. These views — openly antithetical to Western conceptions of individual liberty, religious freedom, and democracy — were aptly summarized by Montazeri’s student, Iranian Sociology Professor Mahmood Davari, in 2005:
According to Montazeri, Islamic rule differs from Western democracy in two matters. While the people in a democratic system are supposedly free to elect any person as their ruler, in a Shi’i society Muslims may not choose any other ruler except a just faqih. In a democratic society, people are free to legislate any law according to their collective wishes, whereas in an Islamic regime the legislation must be in accord with Islamic laws and ordinances. Therefore, according to Montazeri, Islamic rule is essentially different from democracy in the West.
The practical consequences of Montazari’s bigoted Shiite Islamic authoritarianism — which Gerecht ignores — have been highlighted by Iranian Studies Professor Jamsheed Choksy. In an NRO essay (“Religious Cleansing in Iran”) co-written with Nina Shea, Choksy noted:
Iran’s constitution requires that laws and regulations be based on Islamic criteria, which mandate inferior status for three non-Muslim faiths, while withholding all rights and protections from all other faiths. Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian (specifically, Assyrian and Armenian) live in a modern version of dhimmi status — the … subjugated condition of “people of the Book” dating back to medieval times. While these three groups are allotted seats in the legislative assembly (a total of five out of 290 seats), they are barred from seeking high public office in any of the three branches of government. … Non-Muslim communities collectively have diminished to no more than 2 percent of Iran’s 71 million people. Forty years ago, under the Shah, a visitor would have seen a relatively tolerant society. Iran now appears to be in the final stages of religious cleansing. Pervasive discrimination, intimidation, and harassment have prompted non-Muslims to flee in disproportionately high numbers.
Choksy concluded his July 2009 essay with a reminder especially apposite for those who share Reuel Gerecht’s views:
Iran’s political dissidents are defended by the West. Its diverse non-Muslim minorities ask why they’ve been forgotten.
Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Sistani, pace his unwarranted lionization by Gerecht, remains an irredentist Shi’ite cleric who also believes in najis, and its ugly, dehumanizing restrictions on non-Muslim “infidels” due to their supposed physical and spiritual “impurity.” As I first noted in 2004, Sistani, at his personal website, expresses the traditional, if obscurantist Shiite views re-iterated by Khomeini that non-Muslims should be considered in the same category as: “Urine, feces, semen, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs, alcoholic liquors, and “the sweat of an animal who persistently eats [unclean things].”
Sistani further “wishes” for Sharia (Islamic law) to be implemented in Iraq. As a result, Sistani-supporting women in the Iraqi parliament are promoting his repressive agenda. From the Times of London report “Iraq’s women of power who tolerate wife-beating and promote polygamy”:
As a devout Shia Muslim and one of eighty-nine women sitting in the new parliament, she knows what her first priority there is: to implement Islamic law. When Dr. Ubaedey took her seat at last week’s assembly opening, she found herself among an increasingly powerful group of religious women politicians who are seeking to repeal old laws giving women some of the same rights as men and replace them with Sharia, Islam’s divine law.
And when Sistani posted this fatwa about gays on his website, he precipitated a surge in homophobic killings by state security services and Shi’ite religious militias:
Q: What is the judgment on sodomy and lesbianism?
A: Forbidden. Those involved in the act should be punished. In fact, sodomites should be killed in the worst manner possible.
Moreover, by insisting that Sistani is engaged in “selfless sacrifice” for “his country,” Gerecht is either oblivious to, or disingenuous about, Sistani’s continued Iranian, not Iraqi citizenship. According to John Agresto, former senior advisor to the Provisional Authority Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Sistani remains an Iranian citizen (see Agresto’s Mugged by Reality, p.xxi): “Iranian by birth, Iranian by religious training –he still retains his Iranian citizenship, in preference to accepting Iraqi citizenship.”
Agresto’s first hand account of Sistani explodes Gerecht’s uninformed, romanticized portrayal, confirming that the Iraqi ayatollah is a bigoted obscurantist bent upon asserting Islamic law in all its Shiite, najis-inspired ugliness. The following comments pooled from Agresto’s eyewitness narrative are self-explanatory:
I do not believe that parties that demand that all public legislation be based on Islamic law as interpreted by Shia imams as liberal. I do not believe that a religious leader who refused even once to meet with Ambassador Bremer or any American, but would gladly meet with every anti-American antagonist and criminal, from Muqtada al-Sadr to Ahmed Chalabi is a “moderate.”
I do not believe that the same Sistani who condemned the Interim Iraqi Constitution because it protected the rights of the Kurds and secured property rights to Jews should be be thought of as being terribly tolerant. Indeed, the very first time I heard, in all my months there, an anti-Semitic diatribe was from the Grand Ayatollah. One word from Sistani might prevent the killing of journalists and Western civilians in Basra, stop the frightened exodus of Christians from all of Southern Iraq, and restrain the imposition of sectarian dogmatism now rolling over Iraqi’s schools and universities. There is no such word.
We insisted that the Ayatollah Sistani was surely a “moderate” and a friend to civil and religious liberty despite all the hard evidence to the contrary. Let me repeat my previous observations and predictions: the Ayatollah Sistani is an Islamist bent on establishing a theocracy not far removed from that found in Iran. He is an open anti-Semite and not too subtle anti-Christian. He threw his support behind democratic elections because they were the handy vehicles for imposing religious authority over all Iraqi. Nor is he the only one, or even the worst, only the most prominent.
Reuel Gerecht’s misguided analysis reflects his willfully deficient understanding of Islamic doctrine and history. Gerecht fails to comprehend — or acknowledge — irrefragable truths articulated by Professor Jansen regarding Islam’s doubly totalitarian Sharia. Jansen refers candidly to Islam’s Sharia-inspired institution of jihad as repellent to Westerners — “[t]he offensiveness of the utopian and revolutionary aspects of Islam” — an observation confirmed by the violent, ongoing historical manifestations of open-ended, aggressive jihadism, whose “political aspiration,” the imposition of Islamic law, is still celebrated by the Muslim masses:
Two characteristics of Islam are particularly offensive to the general Western reader: its totalitarian claim to universal validity and its theocratic demands … The smallest details of daily life are subject to the provisions of Islamic law, not excluding personal hygiene and metabolism. Muslims, it is well known, identify all prescripts of Islamic Law totally and vehemently with the Command of God.
To many, moreover, it is not immediately obvious that the rule of Islamic Law of the land implies the use of force in order to implement a religion, namely Islam, since no state can exist if it rejects the use of force to compel the observance of its laws. Once this is clear, questions about the status of lax Muslims, of non-Muslims, and of ex-Muslims who live in Muslim territory inevitably arise.
Since Muslims themselves are not at all embarrassed by the political aspirations of their religion they fail to see why others should be.
Professor Jansen’s assessment reiterates exactly what Reuel Gerecht’s Princeton University mentor Bernard Lewis affirmed. Gerecht characterized Professor Lewis as “the last and greatest of the orientalists” during a 90th birthday celebration tribute to his mentor in 2006. Lewis, albeit surely unknown by Gerecht, had earlier described Islam as a quintessential totalitarian system, with striking, disturbing similarities to Communism, in a 1954 essay entitled “Communism and Islam”:
I turn now from the accidental to the essential factors, to those deriving from the very nature of Islamic society, tradition, and thought. The first of these is the authoritarianism, perhaps we may even say the totalitarianism, of the Islamic political tradition … There are no parliaments or representative assemblies of any kind, no councils or communes, no chambers of nobility or estates, no municipalities in the history of Islam; nothing but the sovereign power, to which the subject owed complete and unwavering obedience as a religious duty imposed by the Holy Law … For the last thousand years, the political thinking of Islam has been dominated by such maxims as “tyranny is better than anarchy,” and “whose power is established, obedience to him is incumbent.”
[Islamic Religious and Communist Party leaders] profess a totalitarian doctrine, with complete and final answers to all questions on heaven and Earth … [in]contrast [to] the eternal questioning of Western man. … [T]he aggressive fanaticism of the believer is the same. The humorist who summed up the Communist creed as “There is no God and Karl Marx is his Prophet” was laying his finger on a real affinity … [t]he call to a Communist Jihad, a Holy War for the faith — a new faith, but against the self-same Western Christian enemy.
The pious, Islamically-correct dilettantism of Reuel Gerecht and those who share his views must be marginalized. Their unacceptable hectoring of brave conservative public intellectuals like Newt Gingrich, who enunciate sober, historically valid warnings, obfuscates the profound threat posed by Sharia-inspired Islamic totalitarianism.
they can try to spin sharia law all they want at the end of the day it is against our constitution and that is the end of the argument
leciat, you are precisely on target.While Sharia is fundamentally underpinned by the most violent jihadi ideology, it really is beside the point.The point IS that it is contrary to the Constitution.Therefore, in relation to the US, that should be that.
Period.
Does anybody actually READ the New Republic? I’m sure there must also be some publication around called “Socialists Today,” but I doubt many people read it. I think the few people left who actually READ the New Republic must be leftovers from the 1960s and the far-left in Washington, DC. As for the rest of the REAL America, I don’t think anything the New Republic says anymore matters much.
But what I find really interesting is that, none of the westerners who defend Sharia Law ever seem to want to actually LIVE in a country under Sharia law. Funny how that always works out. As long as they can go back to their warm and cozy cocktail parties in Washington, New York, or Los Angeles, these far-left liberals will justify anything under “multiculturalism.” I wonder if these same jerks ever saw a real stoning before? After all, that’s one of the high points of Sharia law, right? I really do hate the far-left.
You left one group of people out who still read New Republic, college students who are forced to by their teachers!
Are you saying Muslims hated the infidel before 1776!!!!!!!
You might try asking the Byzantines (if you can find any left in Constantinople – excuse me, Istanbul).
I’m not sure about Gerecht, but most of the liberal[?] mob fears Christianity and Christians more then islam & sharia. Part of what happens when you are born nuts, or are driven nuts by your politics & the company you keep.
Islam & sharia seem to be a touchy subject now in Europe, but why learn from experience?
There will never be an acceptance of Sharia law here in the United States. It is not only unconstitutional….it is inhuman, violent, oppressive, and symptoms of the disease of religious fanaticism.
There is NO LAW other than OUR LAW~! I strongly suggest that any Muslim who has a problem with that (CAIR bears) get the absolute hell out of this country and go live where that crap is practiced.
NOT here. NOT ever.
sharia law is already here…take a look at dearborn michigan
link
http://www.cafemom.com/group/99198/forums/read/11667842/Oklahoma_voters_may_ban_the_use_of_Shariah_Law_on_November_ballot?next=1#replies
“Michigan courts along with Michigan’s citizens are very tolerant and understanding of the Muslim population as we make up a huge percentage of it and this nothing new but it has been that way for decades.
Many asspects of Shariah are accepted in a court of law.
My marriage along with all other marriages are conducted strictly under Shariah Law in which our performing imams file the papers with the Michigan courts and have them validated and registered.
The metro Detroit area of Michigan has many Shariah compliant banks to choose from that not only conduct everyday ordinary banking but it is done according to Shariah and even used to go through for purchases of homes, businesses, ect.
A Shariah will holds up in a court of law where burial, inheritance, and all other stipulations are legally upheld.
Buying and selling property, houses, cars, businesses, ect that are handled according to Shariah are also legal and binding.”
“Michigan courts along with Michigan’s citizens are very tolerant and understanding of the Muslim population as we make up a huge percentage of it and this nothing new but it has been that way for decades.
Many asspects of Shariah are accepted in a court of law.
My marriage along with all other marriages are conducted strictly under Shariah Law in which our performing imams file the papers with the Michigan courts and have them validated and registered.
The metro Detroit area of Michigan has many Shariah compliant banks to choose from that not only conduct everyday ordinary banking but it is done according to Shariah and even used to go through for purchases of homes, businesses, ect.
A Shariah will holds up in a court of law where burial, inheritance, and all other stipulations are legally upheld.
Buying and selling property, houses, cars, businesses, ect that are handled according to Shariah are also legal and binding.”
sorry for double post
if they want sharia law, let them show AMERICA how it really works, can we use michelle obama as a ”show & tell?
That Gerecht is Gewrong is no revelation. But Gerecht isn’t the problem. The problem is that his blinkered opinions are prevalent in the State Department, the Administration and even among the General Staff.
There is an amusing irony in the Muslim obsession with purity to the nth degree and the everyday filth in which most Muslims live. Even Muslims here in the United States evidence complete indifference to basic sanitation and hygiene.
Meanwhile, the Jews whom the Muslims hold unclean have been practicing ritual ablution–washing hands before eating and regular whole body immersion in clean water–for millennia. Synagogues in Europe were sited on rivers for the purpose.
But then, everything in Islam’s relations to Judaism is an irony. Islam is, after all overwhelmingly derivative and slavishly imitative of Judaism and Mohamed’s conquests were financed by wealth looted from the Jews of Medina. Judaism put the illiterate prophet’s show on the road.
No one slanders like a thief.
Islam is, after all overwhelmingly derivative and slavishly imitative of Judaism…
It is rumored that Mohammed paid some of the Jews of Medina for ideas, hence conceptual similarities in passages of the Koran and the Old Testament.
Anyone who considers the rational aspects of Islamic law (or thinks Imam Rauf’s Shari’a Index Project at the Ground Zero Mosque would be enlightening) should spend some time reading in…
<a href="http://prophetofdoom.net/The_Little_Green_Book.Islam"<Khomeini's Little Green Book
Working link…
Khomeini’s Little Green Book
That “intellectuals” should even be debating the merits of Shari’a goes to show what deficiencies have invaded the brains of the self-anointed academic élite.
A couple of not-irrational Ayatollahs does not make Shari’a palatable. For the record, there are even other yatollahs in Iran that dissent from Khameini’s and his predecessor Khoumeini’s extreme interpretations of Shari’a.
Read some of al-Sistani’s religious rulings/fatwas. Following all the tiny niggling rules of Islam set out by ayatollahs relative to everyday life would render any normal human being bugsh!t or paranoid. (Reportedly, Khameini recently issued a fatwa that intentionally masturbating during Ramadan is a no-no: “If he do not intend masturbation and discharging semen and nothing is discharged, his fasting is correct even though he has done a ḥarām (forbidden) act. But, if he intends masturbation or he knows that he usually discharges semen by this process and semen really comes out, it is a ḥaram intentional breaking fasting,” the Iranian leader said, posting the reply on his website.
I recently read that retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens thinks those who oppose the Ground Zero mosque are prejudiced morons or something.
Thank God his 90 year old brain is “retired”.
I’m with Mark Twain. He wrote this well over 100 years ago…
“When I…examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane, not in all things, but in religious matters. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic — for that is a part of his insanity and the evidence of it.”
While we may think of Sharia in extreme terms – cutting off of hands for stealing and stoning for adultery – be sure that Muslims in this country want to introduce concepts that can’t possibly be thought of as problematic.
They will fight for their “religious rights” to institute such laudable laws such as funeral rites and decisions on divorce and child custody to start. And #1 leciat is right; it’s not part of our constitution to mix outside laws with our civil laws. And while that should be the end of the discussion, be sure they won’t give up that easily.
There are examples in the “moderate” Muslim country of Malaysia of how this mixing of Civil courts and Sharia Courts has fared, even though the Sharia courts only handle issues involving funeral rites, marriage, child custody, and apostasy, where a Muslim is involved. Malaysia has a significant minority of Chinese and Indians that practice anything from Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, or nothing. The Sharia Courts don’t (yet) issue verdicts to stone people; but they do send them to “rehabilitation” facilities. The big problems come in when non-Muslims either marry a Muslim, their spouse converts to Islam, or parents convert to Islam. Once that happens, children are considered Muslims and are under the jurisdiction of Sharia courts whether they consider themselves to be Muslims or not.
So, America, be forewarned!! A little Sharia WILL hurt us. We will go the way of France and England who are greatly struggling with their Muslim populations insisting on instituting Sharia law.
I say if you want to subject yourselves to the teachings of your religion, that’s fine. But don’t bring your disputes to the court, expecting them to decide based on your religion-based laws. Settle your disputes in your faith community if your laws are different from the civil laws. You may petition your state lawmakers to incorporate your faith principles in the civil laws, but you may NOT have a separate court system with legal standing.
You have a good comment, I like it. but I don’t agree with your conclusion.
“A little Sharia WILL hurt us” or “usA” …. I do not see how!!! since it is not aimed at all citizens but at small segments of the society who choose to have these laws.
You obviously haven’t been paying attention. Islam is all about conquest. Sure, Shariah applied only to Muslims – at first, then they extend it to the infidels around them. E.g. the taxi drivers in Michigan who refused to pick up passengers with service dogs or carrying alcohol. That is the first step: refusing to take otherwise legal (and even expected) actions because they violate Shariah, then demanding that infidel neighbors comply with (essentially) dhimmi regulations in order to “get along”, then taking control of the local government and imposing Shariah via our own legal system. (“Lawfare”, see what is going on in Israel now re Rachel’s Tomb.)
If you believe that Islam is essentially harmless, then you have no concept of their history and you truly do not udnerstand what Islam is and represents. Islam IS the enemy of Western civilization. Read Andrew Bostom’s work to get a sense of the Islamic mindset and what its ascendancy might mean for the rest of us:
The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims (Andrew Bostom)
Read Lee Harris’ outstanding work to get a sense of why and how the West’s days may be numbered. We are our own worst enemy unless we face up to the hard choices ncessary to remain free and prosperous.
The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West (Lee Harris)
Speaking to the ‘religion of peace,” assertion that we hear from Msulims and ignorant (yes, ignorant) Westerners, when Muslims assert that Islam is a “religion of peace” they are not engaging in al taqqiya, they are making an assertion in good faith.
The problem lies in the fact that Islam has a defective concept of peace. In semitic languages like Arabic, the consonants are the “root” of the word: islam = submission, and salam = peace have the same root, slm.
The only concept of peace in Islamic jurisprudence is the peace between the conqueror and the conquered, between master and slave. There is no concept of a negotiated peace between nations in Islamic law (and note that law is the defining property of Islam—their clerics are jurists, schools of Qu’ranic interpretation are called fiqh, a legalistic term)—Muslims may negotiate a “hudna” or armistice of limited duration with non-Muslim, but not a definitive enduring peace.
Finally, Islam is a serial murderer of entire cultures and peoples. This is what Islam has done throughout its entire 1400 year history. This is what it has done whenever it has finally gotten the upper hand in whatever culture is has opposed. Those whom Islam does not destroy, it enslaves, diminishes and impoverishes. Islam strives for the conversion, enslavement or death of all who do not conform to its sadistic and cruel vision of Mankind. Islam cannot be ‘reformed’ in the light of human dignity and freedom. Were that so, it would no longer be Islam. For its psychopathic and cruel misogyny alone, Islam is an abomination and worthy only of extinction – to the last believer.
Finally, here’s a wakeup call that will chill you to the core. And if you’re still defending Islam after this, then you deserve your dhimmitude.
Because it will expand. Don’t mistake the thin edge of the wedge for anything benign.
So Shariah is not just integral to Islamism but Islam itself. Which means that Islam is Islamism.
You have “moderate” “mainstream” Muslim authorities opposing the law to prohibit Shariah. They arent moderate afterall, but rather Islamists. Islamists that may not practice (or even condone) violent Jihad itself (at least in this place and time) but never the less are Muslim supremacists, Islamists, and a danger to others rights and liberty within a democracy.
The wheels are coming of the false narrative fellows. The truth has a way of making itself known.
Western journalists in their role as ‘counsel for the defense’ are not fooling anyone, except maybe themselves. They are the proscution for all that is in the western culture.
They are not only not qalified in their ‘role’ as legal supporters, but they have no business in uplifting anything that promotes injustice as legal.
Which make me wonder, just how they are qualified to be journalists?
Wonder what the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens thinks about this?
You think the comic formerly known as Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz would dare ask?
There should be no question about using Sharia law in the United States. As far as I’m concerned, the Muslims who want Sharia law should move to a country where it is the law of the land. You bet I am Islamophobic……it’s also called self-preservation. When thousands of Americans are killed by the Danes, I’ll be Danophobic too.
It is not correct to demonize sharia law. Because, it is from a fallen Angel named Lucifer not one of the evil spirits of the Niphilim.
Thank you,
“That Gerecht is Gewrong is no revelation. But Gerecht isn’t the problem. The problem is that his blinkered opinions are prevalent in the State Department, the Administration and even among the General Staff.”
This is not just the Obama administration. Allthough I dare say he has amped up the problem. The Bush administration had the same advisors putting forth the same blinkered opinions. Couple these advisors with a number of financial and business advisors who are pushing Islam because that’s where a large bucket of money is.
An example of Obama’s outreach to Islam:
“The U.S. Embassy in Dublin has sponsored a seminar on Muslim entrepreneurs and business in Ireland. A main point of the conference was the need for Sharia law compliant financial products to be used.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/politics/NASA_s-new-mission_-Building-ties-to-Muslim-world-97817909.html#ixzz124V8WD00
As long as we let the Middle Eastern petrodollars corrupt the political, economic and cultural systems of the West; if we let islam’s demographic bomb destroy the West’s age pyramid, then there won’t be a “West” in about one generation.
They know it; we know it. They know what it will take to put an end to this (that’s why oil-rich Iran is building the “bomb,” while Pakistan already has it). We know what it will take to put a stop to this, but we don’t have the guts to do it. We know this, they know this. The West, through its liberalism and greed, is self destructing.
KWL,
I know where my guts are. So do many, many millions of others. Do not mistake softness for a weakness. The left have had their day and shown the world where their policies actually lead to. They have notely pointed out to all, that they are unwilling to accept the truth of these failed policies, which is under their nose and staring them straight in the face.
But taking this stance they are becoming more rigid and stiff. This in and of itself will break them internally. They have not the ability to acknowledge and seek other paths or to initiate flexibility.
The people are now prepared to take these other paths. They will move heaven and earth to make that happen. I expect victory. So should you.
Refreshing words of encouragement, assuming they were adressed to me. Softness was always the Achilles heel of the West. It can be as easily misconstrued by the East, as their patience and deviance by us. But how do you deal with a problem like liberalism within? By the time their eyes open up, we may have run out of time.
KWL,
Yes, the east has assumed for centuries that the Achilles heel of the west was softness. But consider this ‘judgement’ comes from a people of little or no ability except for destruction. Their words are not wise nor insightful. I have noticed that most everything they do or promote is done in backward ignorance. It is for them to make the attempt to seek wisdom.
The is a fresh wind blowing all across the lands. It is calling to people everywhere and people are responding. Daily the people wake up and it is persecutation that that is the driving force behind it. We will not be too late. We will be victorious.
“Eleven things are unclean: urine, excrement, sperm, blood, a dog, a pig, bones, a non-Muslim man and woman, wine, beer, perspiration of a camel that eats filth …”–Khomeini
That’s actually 12 things, but you have to make allowances for muslims.
There’s a couple of things they’ve never really mastered:
1. Counting to numbers higher than ten.
2. The use of toilet paper.
“Goldziher… believed that Shi’ism manifested greater doctrinal intolerance toward non-Muslims, compared to Sunni Islam.”
That may have been true a hundred years, when he was working. Today Sunni Islam has been heavily “Arabized”.
Because of the immense oil bonanza in Saudi Arabia, the extremist Wahhabi strain of Sunni Islam has most of the disposable money available to Sunni Moslems and Moslems generally. Saudi-funded missionaries preach Wahhabist doctrine in the Moslem communities of Asia and Africa. Saudi money funds pays for mosques and madrissas, for radio stations, for colleges, for books and pamphlets.
In western countries, Saudi money supports Islamic organizational activities, and Saudi-funded groups such CAIR become the designated representatives of Islam. Often this gives them authority over Islamic religious activity. For instance a Saudi-funded Wahhabist group was designated to select Moslem chaplains for the U.S. armed forces and for many prisons.
The result of this is that Sunni Moslems have become much more intolerant and hostile toward non-Moslems.