Good News: A Decade After 9/11, CNN Finally Speaks Out Against Sharia

Well, sort of. Somebody named Dean Obeidallah, whom CNN’s Website describes as the “executive producer of the annual New York Arab-American Comedy Festival and the Amman Stand Up Comedy Festival” pens a laugh-an-hour piece for the network titled, “Santorum wants to impose ‘Judeo-Christian Sharia.'” *

That’s good, right? Especially considering that CNN has never met a radical chic Islamofascist terrorist it didn’t want to either embrace or explain away (or bury its head in the sand over). Besides, it was only last year that CNN’s Soledad O’Brien (she of the Rev. Wright “home run”) was encouraging her guests to discuss the benefits of the real thing:

O’BRIEN (on-camera): When the opposition talks about Sharia law, they talk about it coming here to America-

LEMA SBENATY: Yes.

O’BRIEN: Oppressing women, torture, beating- do they have it wrong?

SBENATY: Yes, they do. A lot of things that are culture have been mistaken for religion. The Koran that I have read has never said torture was okay for anyone or beating women, you know, it was okay. None of this is okay.

O’Brien reenforced this understanding of Sharia law in her following two sound bites, one coming from Mr. Sbenaty himself, and the other from Noah Feldman of Harvard University:

SALEH SBENATY: What Sharia is, is a way of life. You know, I am mandated, as a Muslim, to pray five times, I am mandated to fast during the month of Ramadan, and I’m mandated, if I am able to, to go and to pilgrimage. That’s Sharia law for me.

NOAH FELDMAN, HARVARD INTERNATIONAL LAW (on-camera): Sharia, according to Muslims, is God’s word on how you’re supposed to live your life-

O’BRIEN (voice-over): Noah Feldman is a professor of International Law at Harvard. He’s written several books on Islam and Sharia law.

FELDMAN: If you look across the Muslim world, you can see a lot of difference in how customs and practices operate among people, all of whom believe that they are following the Sharia.

FELDMAN (voice-over) As a general matter, the Sharia is what you make of it, and there are plenty of Muslims who interpret the Sharia in a progressive way, so that it’s equal towards women and progressive towards women.