Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: G M on September 30, 2008, 09:01:55 AM
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Let's discuss sharia and it's impact on humanity as it spreads globally.
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Sharia Law: Coming to a Western Nation Near You?
By Cinnamon Stillwell
FrontPageMagazine.com | 9/30/2008
Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) will be hosting a conference on October 23 that asks the loaded question: “Is There a Role for Shari'ah in Modern States?”
The Saudi-funded ACMCU and its founding director, John Esposito, one of the foremost apologists for radical Islam in the academic field of Middle East studies, have certainly been doing their bit to make the idea more palatable.
The Saudi prince for whom ACMCU was named has been pumping millions of dollars into Middle East studies at Georgetown, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and beyond, and as the case of Esposito demonstrates, it magnifies the voices of scholars with a decidedly uncritical bent. As a result, ACMCU analysis regarding Sharia (or Islamic) law tends to focus not on its injustices (amputation, stoning, hanging, honor killing, punishment for blasphemy, execution of apostates, persecution of non-Muslims, sanctioned wife-beating, female genital mutilation, and so on), but rather on repackaging it in ways that will appeal to Western sensibilities. The concept of a more “moderate” version of Sharia law that is compatible with democracy is at the forefront of this effort.
While it’s difficult to predict exactly what will take place at the upcoming ACMCU conference, the fact that Esposito will present the opening remarks provides considerable insight into the politics of the event.
Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, a book co-authored by Esposito and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies Dalia Mogahed, has been widely criticized for its blatant inaccuracies and attempts to whitewash anti-Western and extremist sentiment in the Muslim world. Accordingly, Sharia law is framed in a non-threatening fashion. As Robert Satloff put it in the Weekly Standard:
…Amazing as it sounds, according to Esposito and Mogahed, the proper term for a Muslim who hates America, wants to impose Sharia law, supports suicide bombing, and opposes equal rights for women but does not “completely” justify 9/11 is . . . “moderate.”
At the Newsweek/Washington Post “On Faith” blog earlier this year, Esposito referenced his book as a means of downplaying concerns over support for Sharia law in the Muslim world:
…for many any mention of Shariah is often equated facilely with Taliban-like laws. In fact, as the Gallup World Poll shows, majorities of mainstream Muslims (women as well as men) want some form of Shariah, religious values, as a source of law. This sentiment is not all that different from a majority of Americans who want to see the Bible as a source of legislation. (See Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think)
But comparing Sharia law under a dictatorial or clerical regime to biblical inspiration in a secular, democratic nation is like comparing apples and oranges. Yet this is precisely the kind of moral equivalency one expects from Esposito at the ACMCU conference.
Providing further cause for concern, keynote speaker and Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman is a notorious champion of Sharia law. In a March, 2008 New York Times Magazine article on the subject, Feldman claimed:
In fact, for most of its history, Islamic law offered the most liberal and humane legal principles available anywhere in the world. Today, when we invoke the harsh punishments prescribed by Shariah for a handful of offenses, we rarely acknowledge the high standards of proof necessary for their implementation.
…At its core, Shariah represents the idea that all human beings — and all human governments — are subject to justice under the law.
Reviewing Feldman’s latest book, The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Jonathan Schanzer elaborates on this disturbing thesis:
Feldman’s central premise is that the scholars of early and medieval Islam were guardians of justice. These independent scholars, he argues, kept the all-powerful caliph in line by judiciously ensuring that his decrees were in accordance with Shari'a law. The proper application of Shari'a ensured fair governance. Thus, Feldman claims, resurrecting the scholarly class is needed today.
Yet Feldman’s book, Schanzer concludes, “fails to convince the informed reader that Islamic law and democracy are destined for marriage.”
In an aptly titled piece on Feldman’s scholarship, “Shilling for Sharia at Harvard,” Hillel Stavis warns that “it can only be a matter of time before the professor, having asserted that Sharia law is desirable, will assure us that its introduction in the United States is inevitable.”
Considering recent developments in Britain, the inevitability of Sharia law may not just be an abstraction. As reported last week by The Times Online:
Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.
The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.
Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.
Melanie Phillips, writing for National Review Online, notes the role of Saudi funding and Middle East studies in furthering this process:
Even thought itself is being Islamized, with academic objectivity in the teaching of Islam and Middle East studies set aside in favour of indoctrination and propaganda. An as-yet-unpublished report by Prof. Anthony Glees says that extremist ideas are being spread by Islamic study centers linked to British universities and backed by multi-million-pound donations from Saudi Arabia and Muslim organizations. Professor Glees says, ‘Britain’s universities will have to generate two national cultures: one non-Muslim and largely secular, the other Muslim. We will have two identities, two sets of allegiance and two legal and political systems.
Britain can serve as a cautionary tale for the West. Scholars who downplay the threats to democratic societies posed by the encroachments of Sharia law, and push a sanitized, idealized version thereof, may one day help usher in our worst nightmare.
Now there’s a subject that would make for a truly groundbreaking Middle East studies conference.
Cinnamon Stillwell is the Northern California Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.
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From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/5475
Resisting Islamic Law
by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
February 21, 2008
Westerners opposed to the application of the Islamic law (the Shari‘a) watch with dismay as it goes from strength to strength in their countries – harems increasingly accepted, a church leader endorsing Islamic law, a judge referring to the Koran, clandestine Muslim courts meting out justice. What can be done to stop the progress of this medieval legal system so deeply at odds with modern life, one that oppresses women and turns non-Muslims into second-class citizens?
A first step is for Westerners to mount a united front against the Shari‘a. Facing near-unanimous hostility, Islamists back down. For one example, note the retreat last week by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in a dispute concerning guide dogs used by the blind.
Muslims traditionally consider dogs impure animals to be avoided, creating an aversion that becomes problematic when Muslim store-owners or taxi drivers deny service to blind Westerners relying on service dogs. I have collected fifteen such cases on my weblog, at "Muslim Taxi Drivers vs. Seeing-Eye Dogs": five from the United States (New Orleans, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Brooksville, Fl.; Everett, Wash.); four from Canada (Vancouver, twice in Edmonton, Fort McMurray, Alberta); three from the United Kingdom (Cambridge, twice in London); two from Australia (Melbourne, Sydney); and one from Norway (Oslo).
News accounts quote Muslim cabbies rudely rejecting blind would-be passengers, yelling at them, "No dog, No dog, Get out, get out"; "Get that dog out of here"; and "No dogs, no dogs." The blind find themselves rejected, humiliated, abandoned, insulted, or even injured, left in the rain, dropped in the middle of nowhere, made late for an appointment, or caused to miss a flight.
Australian Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes and his guide dog. Innes is often denied service by taxi drivers.
Islamist organizations initially responded to this problem by supporting anti-canine cabbies. The Muslim Association of Canada pointed out how Muslims generally regard dog saliva as unclean. CAIR on one occasion echoed this assertion, claiming that "the saliva of dogs invalidates the ritual purity needed for prayer." On another, the head of CAIR, Nihad Awad, declared that "People from the Middle East especially … have been indoctrinated with a kind of fear of dogs" and justified a driver rejecting a guide dog on the grounds that he "has a genuine fear and he acted in good faith. He acted in accordance with his religious beliefs."
However, when the police and the courts are called in, the legal rights of the blind to their basic needs and their dignity almost always trump the Muslim dislike for dogs. The Muslim proprietor or driver invariably finds himself admonished, fined, re-educated, warned, or even jailed. The judge who found a cabby's behavior to be "a total disgrace" spoke for many.
CAIR, realizing that its approach had failed in the courts of both law and of public opinion, suddenly and nimbly switched sides. In a cynical maneuver, for example, it organized 300 cabbies in Minneapolis to provide free rides for participants at a National Federation of the Blind conference. (Unconvinced by this obvious ploy, a federation official responded: "We really are uncomfortable … with the offer of getting free rides. We don't think that solves anything. We believe the cabdrivers need to realize that the law says they will not turn down a blind person.") And, finally, last week, the Canadian office of CAIR issued a statement urging Muslims to accommodate blind taxi passengers, quoting a board member that "Islam allows for dogs to be used by the visually impaired."
CAIR's capitulation contains an important lesson: When Westerners broadly agree on rejecting a specific Islamic law or tradition and unite against it, Western Islamists must adjust to the majority's will. Guide dogs for the blind represent just one of many such consensus issues; others tend to involve women, such as husbands beating wives, the burqa head coverings, female genital mutilation, and "honor" killings. Western unity can also compel Islamists to denounce their preferred positions in areas such as slavery and Shar‘i-compliant finances.
Other Islam-derived practices do not (yet) exist in the West but do prevail in the Muslim world. These include punishing a woman for being raped, exploiting children as suicide bombers, and executing offenders for such crimes as converting out of Islam, adultery, having a child out of wedlock, or witchcraft. Western solidarity can win concessions in these areas too.
If Westerners stick together, the Shari‘a is doomed. If we do not, we are doomed.
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Feb. 21, 2008 update: A nasty attack by an Australian blogger named Irfan Yusuf has appeared; his long analysis accuses me of a mistake in the caption to the picture that accompanies this column. The caption, seen above, reads: "Australian Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes and his guide dog. Innes is often denied service by taxi drivers."
Yusuf jumps on me, saying that "It is unclear how Mr Pipes reached this conclusion about Commissioner Innes," concluding that I "misrepresented" Innes.
Misrepresented him? Hardly. Innes has repreatedly spoken about being denied taxi service on account of his seeing-eye dog. For starters, read here, here, and here. Further, Innes indicates that the drivers sometimes cite a religious reason for refusing his guide dog, a clear allusion to the Shari‘a, the only religious law with strictures about contact with dogs.
My innocuous caption is factually correct. Yusuf's insulting blog is factually incorrect. I bother to point this out because Yusuf's screed is so typical. And to point out how sensible debate cannot proceed when the other side is hysterical and inaccurate.
Mar. 28, 2008 update: For an interesting response to this article, see Omar Amine, "Lettre d'un musulman modéré aux occidentaux « modérés »."
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From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/5475
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http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/008.smt.html
IT IS PERMISSIBLE FOR THE FATHER TO GIVE THE HAND OF HIS DAUGHTER IN MARRIAGE EVEN WHEN SHE IS NOT FULLY GROWN UP
Book 008, Number 3309:
'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported: Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) married me when I was six years old, and I was admitted to his house at the age of nine. She further said: We went to Medina and I had an attack of fever for a month, and my hair had come down to the earlobes. Umm Ruman (my mother) came to me and I was at that time on a swing along with my playmates. She called me loudly and I went to her and I did not know what she had wanted of me. She took hold of my hand and took me to the door, and I was saying: Ha, ha (as if I was gasping), until the agitation of my heart was over. She took me to a house, where had gathered the women of the Ansar. They all blessed me and wished me good luck and said: May you have share in good. She (my mother) entrusted me to them. They washed my head and embellished me and nothing frightened me. Allah's Messenger (, may peace be upon him) came there in the morning, and I was entrusted to him.
Book 008, Number 3310:
'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported: Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) married me when I was six years old, and I was admitted to his house when I was nine years old.
Book 008, Number 3311:
'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) married her when she was seven years old, and he was taken to his house as a bride when she was nine, and her dolls were with her; and when he (the Holy Prophet) died she was eighteen years old.
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Chapter 29: IT IS PERMISSIBLE TO HAVE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH A CAPTIVE WOMAN AFTER SHE IS PURIFIED (OF MENSES OR DELIVERY) IN CASE SHE HAS A HUSBAND, HER MARRIAGE IS ABROGATED AFTER SHE BECOMES CAPTIVE
Book 008, Number 3432:
Abu Sa'id al-Khudri (Allah her pleased with him) reported that at the Battle of Hanain Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) sent an army to Autas and encountered the enemy and fought with them. Having overcome them and taken them captives, the Companions of Allah's Messenger (may peace te upon him) seemed to refrain from having intercourse with captive women because of their husbands being polytheists. Then Allah, Most High, sent down regarding that:" And women already married, except those whom your right hands possess (iv. 24)" (i. e. they were lawful for them when their 'Idda period came to an end).
Book 008, Number 3433:
Abu Sa'id al-Khudri (Allah be pleased with him) reported that Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) sent a small army. The rest of the hadith is the same except this that he said: Except what your right hands possessout of them are lawful for you; and he did not mention" when their 'idda period comes to an end". This hadith has been reported on the authority of AbuSa'id (al-Khudri) (Allah be pleased with him) through another chain of transmitters and the words are: They took captives (women) on the day of Autas who had their husbands. They were afraid (to have sexual intercourse with them) when this verse was revealed:" And women already married except those whom you right hands posses" (iv. 24)
Book 008, Number 3434:
Qatada reported a hadith like this with the same chain of transmitters.
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http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2008/108492.htm
Saudi Arabia
International Religious Freedom Report 2008
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
There is no legal recognition of, or protection under the law for, freedom of religion, and it is severely restricted in practice. The country is a monarchy and the King is both head of state and government. The legal system is based on the government's official interpretation of Shari'a (Islamic law). Sunni Islam is the official religion.
The Government confirmed that, as a matter of public policy, it guarantees and protects the right to private worship for all, including non-Muslims who gather in homes for religious services. However, this right was not always respected in practice and is not defined in law. Moreover, the public practice of non-Muslim religions is prohibited, and mutawwa'in (religious police) continued to conduct raids of private non-Muslim religious gatherings. Although the Government also confirmed its policy to protect the right to possess and use personal religious materials, it did not provide for this right in law, and the mutawwa'in sometimes confiscated the personal religious material of non-Muslims.
While overall government policies continued to place severe restrictions on religious freedom, there were incremental improvements in specific areas during the period covered by this report, such as better protection of the right to possess and use personal religious materials; sporadic efforts to curb and investigate harassment by the mutawwa'in; increased media reporting on, and criticism of, the mutawwa'in; somewhat greater authority and capacity for official human rights entities to operate; and limited education reform. In addition, there were larger public and private celebrations of Shi'a holidays in the Qatif oasis of the Eastern Province.
There were also several positive developments in government policy that, if fully implemented, could lead to important improvements in the future. The Government reiterated its policy to halt the dissemination of intolerance and combat extremism, both within Islam and toward non-Muslim religious groups, in the country and abroad. For example, officials advised that they were monitoring sermons at government-supported mosques and would dismiss or retrain imams whose preaching promoted religious extremism. The Government continued to state its goal of "balanced development," by promising greater infrastructure development in predominantly Shi'a and Isma'ili areas of the Eastern and Najran Provinces. Most significantly, this year saw the beginning of an interfaith dialogue process, led by King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud. The King, along with the support of the Muslim World League, sponsored an intrafaith dialogue in Mecca between June 4-6, 2008, bringing Sunnis and Shi'a together, and at the end of the reporting period, was planning to hold a similar conference in Madrid, Spain, in July, bringing together Christians, Jews, Muslims, and adherents of other faiths.
The King's official title is "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques." As such, upholding Islam within the country is regarded as one of his and his government's paramount functions. In addition, the conservative religious establishmentexerts significant pressure on the state and society to adhere to the official interpretation of Islam and conservative societal norms. Moreover, there is intense pressure within the society to conform accordingly. However, while the majority of citizens support a government and society based on Shari'a, there are varying views among the citizenry on how it should be interpreted and implemented.
Despite this diversity of views, the Government continued to enforce its official interpretation of Sunni Islam. Non-Muslims and Muslims who do not adhere to this interpretation faced significant political, economic, legal, social, and religious discrimination, including limited employment and educational opportunities, underrepresentation in official institutions, and restrictions on the practice of their faith and on the building of places of worship and community centers. There were also charges of harassment, abuse, and killings at the hands of the mutawwa'in, or religious police, who work for the Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice (CPVPV). These incidents caused many non-Muslims to worship in fear of, and in such a manner as to avoid discovery by, the police and mutawwa'in. There were also concerns about Saudi textbooks that continued to contain overtly intolerant statements against Jews and Christians and subtly intolerant statements against Shi'a, Isma'ilis, and other religious groups, notwithstanding government claims that it was reviewing educational materials to remove or revise such statements. Furthermore, while government officials stated prospective and current teachers who espoused extremist religious views would be screened out or dismissed, and some screenings reportedly did take place, there were multiple incidents where teachers, in defiance of Saudi government policy, promoted intolerant views in the classroom without being disciplined. Discriminatory and intolerant statements were also made by public officials and government-paid imams.
Senior U.S. officials discussed a number of key policies concerning religious practice and tolerance with the Government, as well as specific cases involving the infringement of the right of religious freedom. In November 2006, the U.S. Secretary of State re-designated Saudi Arabia as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for violations of religious freedom, and the Government was issued a waiver of sanctions "to further the purposes of the Act."
Section I. Religious Demography
The country has an area of 1,225,000 square miles and a population of more than 28.5 million, including an estimated foreign population of more than 8 million. The foreign population reportedly includes 1.6 million Indians, 1.5 million Bangladeshis, 1.2 million Filipinos, 1 million Pakistanis, 1 million Egyptians, 600,000 Indonesians, 400,000 Sri Lankans, 350,000 Nepalese, 250,000 Palestinians, 150,000 Lebanese, 100,000 Eritreans, and 30,000 Americans.
While accurate religious demographics are difficult to obtain, approximately 90 percent of citizens are Sunni Muslims, who predominantly subscribe to the Government-sanctioned interpretation of Islam. In the western Hejaz region, there are sizeable communities following other Sunni interpretations.
Ten percent of citizens are Shi'a Muslims. The reportedly 1.5 to 2 million Shi'a are primarily located in the Eastern Province, southern Najran Province, and western Medina area. An estimated 150,000 Shi'a also reside in the Medina area of the western Hejaz region, including the Ashraf (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad) and approximately 50,000 Nakhawala. In addition, there are reportedly 250,000 – 450,000 Sulaimaniya Isma'ili Shi'a in the southern Najran Province and the Eastern Province. The majority of the country's Shi'a are "Twelvers" (i.e., they are followers of Muhammad ibn Hasan, whom they recognize as the Twelfth Imam) and are primarily located in the Eastern Province and the Medina area of the western Hejaz region. The Sulaimaniya Isma'ili, are known as "Seveners" (i.e., they are followers of Isma'il ibn Jafar, whom they recognize as the Seventh Imam).
Comprehensive statistics for the religious denominations of foreigners are not available; however, they include Muslims from the various branches and schools of Islam, Christians (including Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, and over one million Roman Catholics), Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and others. In addition to European and North American Christians, there are Christian East Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians, and large numbers of other South Asians residing in the country. Ninety percent of the Filipino community is Christian. Private Christian religious gatherings reportedly take place throughout the country.
The Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowment, Call, and Guidance (MOIA) is responsible for 72,000 Sunni mosques and over 50,000 Sunni imams. The Grand Muftis of the two holiest mosques in Mecca and Medina report directly to the King.
In December 2007 the country hosted almost three million Muslim pilgrims from around the world and all branches of Islam for the annual Hajj to Mecca.
Section II. Status of Religious Freedom
Legal/Policy Framework
According to the Basic Law, the Qur'an and the Sunna (traditions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) constitute the constitution, and Islam is the official religion. It is the Government's policy that non-Muslims are permitted to privately practice their religion freely within their homes without interference. However, under the Government's interpretation of Islam, there is no legal recognition or protection of religious freedom, which is severely restricted in practice.
The Government considers its legitimacy to rest in part on its interpretation and enforcement of Islam, which are derived from the writings and teachings of 18th-century Sunni religious scholar Muhammad ibn Abd Al-Wahhab. The Basic Law establishes the system of government, rights of citizens and residents, and powers and duties of the Government. Neither the Government, nor society in general, accepts the concept of separation of religion and state in terms of governance.
Although no law specifically requires citizens to be Muslim, Article 12.4 of the Naturalization Law requires that applicants attest to their religious affiliation, and Article 14.1 requires applicants to get a certificate endorsed by their local imam. Most non-Muslims and Muslims whose beliefs do not adhere to the Government-approved interpretation of Islam must practice their religion in private and are vulnerable to discrimination, harassment, detention, and if a noncitizen, deportation. Blasphemy carries the death penalty. Conversion by Muslims to another religion (apostasy) and proselytizing by non-Muslims are both punishable by death, but there have been no confirmed reports of executions for either crime in recent years.
The judicial system is based on Shari'a, the traditional system of interpreting laws derived from the Qur'an, the Sunna, and other religious sources. The Government recognizes all four Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence and the Shi'a Ja'afari school of jurisprudence. However, while government universities provide training on the other Sunni schools, they focus on the Hanbali school. Consequently, most judges adhere to the Hanbali school.
The Majlis al-Shura (Consultative Council) is responsible for approving laws and regulations that are compatible with Shari'a. The 150 male members are supported by 6 female advisors. There are three Shi'a members.
The Council of Senior Ulema (religious scholars) is an advisory body of reportedly 20 Sunni religious jurists, including the Minister of Justice, who reports to the King. Established in 1971, the Council is headed by the Grand Mufti of Mecca. Itmeets periodically to interpret Shari'a and establish the legal principles that guide lower court judges. Three Ulema members belong to non-Hanbali schools of Shari'a, but none of them are Shi'a.
The Government permits Shi'a judges presiding over courts in the Eastern Province to use the Ja'afari school of jurisprudence to adjudicate cases limited to family law, inheritance, and endowment management. There are only seven Shi'a judges, all of whom were located in the Eastern Province cities of Qatif and al-Ahsa, where the majority of the country's Shi'a live. Shi'a living in other parts of the Eastern Province, Najran Province, and the western Hejaz region, among other places, have no access to local, regional, or national Shi'a courts. Two of the Shi'a judges serve on the Qatif Court and two of the Shi'a judges serve on the al-Ahsa Court. The remaining three judges serve on the Qatif-based Court of Appeals, which oversees the Qatif and al-Ahsa Courts.
In accordance with the country's official interpretation of Islam, it is considered acceptable to discriminate against religions held to be polytheistic. Christians and Jews, who are classified as "People of the Book," are also discriminated against, but to a lesser extent. This discrimination is manifested, for example, in calculating accidental death or injury compensation. In the event a court renders a judgment in favor of a plaintiff who is a Jewish or Christian male, the plaintiff is only entitled to receive 50 percent of the compensation a Muslim male would receive, and all others (including Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs) are only entitled to receive 1/16 the amount a male Muslim would receive. Furthermore, judges may discount the testimony of non-practicing Muslims or individuals who do not adhere to the official interpretation of Islam. For example, testimony by Shi'a can be deemed to carry less weight than testimony by Sunnis or be ignored in courts of law altogether, despite official Government statements that judges do not discriminate based on religion when hearing testimonies. Moreover, a woman's testimony is worth only half that of a man's, and a non-Muslim's testimony is worth less than that of a Muslim's. Legally, children inherit their mother's religious affiliation unless the father is a citizen, in which case the law deems such children to be Muslims.
In addition to the secular National Day on September 23, the Islamic religious feasts of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha are the only recognized national holidays.
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The Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice (CPVPV) is a semiautonomous agency with the authority to monitor social behavior and enforce morality consistent with the Government's interpretation of Islam, primarily, but not exclusively, within the public realm. Founded by King Abdul Aziz in 1926, the CPVPV reports to the King through the Council of Ministers. The Ministry of Interior (MOI) coordinates with, but does not have authority over the CPVPV, and its full-time or volunteer field officers are known as mutawwa'in. The mutawwa'in do not wear uniforms, but they are now required to wear identification badges and can only act in their official capacity when accompanied by a regular policeman. The 1980 law that formally established the CPVPV defines the body's mission as "guiding and advising people to observe the religious duties prescribed by Islamic Shari'a, and . . . to preclude committing [acts] proscribed and prohibited [by Shari'a], or adopting bad habits and traditions or taboo [sic] heresies."
While the 1980 law does not clearly define the CPVPV's jurisdiction, that law's Executive Regulations state that the mutawwa'in are authorized to monitor various practices including: mixing of the two sexes; men's advances toward women; practicing or displaying non-Muslim faiths or disrespecting Islam; displaying or selling media contrary to Islam, including pornography; producing, distributing, or consuming alcohol; venerating places or celebrating events inconsistent with Islamic practices; practicing magic for profit; and committing or facilitating of lewdness, including adultery, homosexuality, and gambling.
In 2006 the Government declared that religious police could no longer detain or interrogate suspects or violate the sanctity of private homes. However, on July 1, 2007, Interior Minister Prince Nayif bin Abulaziz Al Saud rolled back the previous year's prohibition on entering private homes but reaffirmed the need for mutawwa'in to hand over any suspects to the regular police for detention. Additionally, the mutawwa'in can only act in their official capacity when accompanied by a police officer, and they are not allowed to administer any kind of punishment. Nevertheless, the Government conducted investigations into several incidents that occurred during the reporting period where the mutawwa'in were accused of violating these restrictions. In addition, the government-controlled press frequently criticized mutawwa'in activity.
The Government's stated policy is to permit private worship for all, including non-Muslims who gather in homes for religious practice, and to address violations of this policy by government officials. However, the mutawwa'in sometimes did not respect this policy. Individuals whose ability to worship privately had been infringed could address their grievances through the MOI, the official government Human Rights Commission (HRC), the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR-- a quasi-autonomous nongovernmental organization (NGO)), and when appropriate, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The HRC and NSHR reported that they received and acted on complaints against the mutawwa'in. No information was made available on the number of complaints filed during the reporting period or the Government's response to these complaints.
The Government-stated policy is that religious materials for private personal use are allowed in the country, and customs officials and the mutawwa'in do not have the authority to confiscate personal religious materials. However, the mutawwa'in did not always respect this policy. It is also the Government's stated policy to inform foreign workers at its missions abroad that they have the right to worship privately and possess personal religious materials, and to provide the name of the appropriate offices where grievances can be filed. However, during the reporting period there was no evidence the Government carried out this policy, either orally or in writing, and there were no reports of any grievances filed by such workers.
In a February 16, 2008, interview with the English language daily Saudi Gazette, the CPVPV President stated that the CPVPV had 5,000 staff members, including 3,227 mutawwa'in spread throughout all 13 provinces. He added that all new staff members had a one-year probationary period before they were allowed to work in the field. A study reported in the November 3, 2007, Saudi Gazette stated that 44 percent of CPVPV members were college graduates and 79 percent were high school graduates. Reportedly 4 percent had traveled abroad, 15 percent were unable to speak any language but Arabic, and 23 percent were considering a career change. The pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat reported on April 9, 2008, on a CPVPV-commissioned independent study that showed that the CPVPV conducted 406,000 arrests in 2007. According to the study, during this period, CPVPV members committed 37 violations and 25 members were victims of assault. There were reports that the mutawwa'in claimed they referred very few arrests to the "relevant authorities," supposedly to protect the privacy of those involved and reduce the caseload of the overstretched police force.
The Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Call, Guidance, and Endowments (MOIA) was established in 1993 as a bridge between the Government and religious leadership. The MOIA supervises and finances the construction and maintenance of most Sunni mosques; however, approximately 30 percent of Sunni mosques were built and endowed by private persons, either as acts of charity or at private residences. Shi'a mosques do not receive MOIA support and instead rely on private contributions, which can vary widely, depending on the number and generosity of the congregants they serve. The process for obtaining a Government-required license for a Shi'a mosque is reportedly unclear and arbitrary.
The MOIA employs approximately 78,000 persons, including 50,000 Sunni imams, who are chosen by their communities and approved by the Government. Based on the size of their communities, the imams receive monthly MOIA stipends ranging between $500 and $800 (1875 and 3000 riyals), which is considered low, compared to other full-time civil servant salaries. Preachers who deliver the Friday prayers receive an additional monthly stipend of $425. The majority of Sunni imams are full-time MOIA employees, with some private mosques employing non-Saudi imams. However, the government salaries paid to imams is supplemental, rather than their primary source of personal income, as most imams have separate businesses. As with Shi'a mosques, Shi'a imams are not funded by the MOIA and instead rely on community contributions, which can vary widely, depending on the number of congregants they serve.
An MOIA committee defines the qualifications of Sunni imams, and the MOI is responsible for investigating complaints against imams for promoting intolerance, violence, or hatred. While not always followed, the Government's policy is to counsel imams who issue intolerant fatwas or who make religious statements that promote intolerance, violence, or hatred, especially of non-Sunnis, though this policy is not always followed. In 2003 the MOIA created a program to monitor imams. Provincial committees of senior religious scholars supervise mutawwa'in who monitor all mosques and imams within their respective provinces. Based on the mutawwa'in reports, the committees summon the imams accused of preaching intolerance to meet with them. If they are not able to dissuade the imams of their thinking, then the committees refer the imams to a central committee in Riyadh. The first phase of this program ran from 2003 to 2006. MOIA officials claim that 1,300 imams were dismissed during this first phase. The second 3-year phase will end in 2009.
The official government HRC was created to address human rights abuses and promote human rights within the country. The 24-member HRC board, which does not include women, was established in December 2006. Two HRC board members appointed in 2007 are Shi'a and Sulaimaniya Isma'ili Shi'a, respectively. The HRC reported that it received a variety of human rights complaints, including infractions by mutawwa'in. The HRC was also given the mandate to improve human rights awareness in the country, including the promotion of tolerance. In this endeavor, the HRC worked with the Ministry of Education and provided materials and training to the police, security forces, and mutawwa'in on protecting human rights. The King also issued a decree that ministries had 3 weeks to respond to complaints filed by the HRC.
The Ministry of Education (MOE) is responsible for primary and secondary public education, while the Ministry of Higher Education is responsible for tertiary public education. Both ministries also monitor private education. In 2006 the Government formed the High Commission for Education (HCE) to oversee the ongoing reform of the primary and secondary educational system. The HCE reports to the King and is chaired by the Crown Prince. Its members include the Ministers of Justice, Islamic Affairs, Education, Higher Education, and Labor; two members of the Shura Council; the Secretary General of the Islamic League; and a representative of the Council of Senior Ulema. The HCE's mandate is to oversee the effort to improve textbooks (including the removal of intolerant language), educational curricula (including the promotion of human rights), and teacher training. The Minister of Education is in charge of the joint MOE-MOIA anti-extremism campaign.
Restrictions on Religious Freedom
Public religious practice is generally limited to that which conforms to the officially approved version of Islam. Practices contrary to this interpretation, such as the celebration of Maulid al-Nabi (birthday of the Prophet Muhammad) and visits to the tombs of renowned Muslims are forbidden, although in some places enforcement was more relaxed than in others. Similarly, the Government also prohibits the public propagation of Islamic teachings that differ from the officially accepted interpretation of Islam.
Although there was an increasing degree of public discussion questioning the official interpretation of religious traditions and criticism of their enforcement during the reporting period, including in the media, discussion of many sensitive religious issues, including sectarian differences, remained limited, and criticism of Islam was forbidden. Individuals who publicly criticized the official interpretation of Islam risked harassment, intimidation, detention, and if a foreigner, deportation. Journalists and activists who wrote critically about the religious leadership or who questioned theological dogma risked detention, travel bans, and government shutdowns of their publications.
The Government restricted the establishment of places of worship and public training of non-Sunni clergy. The Government officially did not permit non-Sunni clergy to enter the country to conduct religious services, although some did so under other auspices, and the Government generally allowed them to perform discreet religious functions. Such restrictions made it difficult for most non-Muslims to maintain contact with clergy, particularly Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians, whose faiths require a priest on a regular basis to receive sacraments. However, many non-Muslims continued to gather for private worship.
The Government required noncitizens to carry a legal resident identity card, which contained a religious designation for "Muslim" or "non-Muslim." There were unconfirmed reports that some mutawwa'in pressured sponsors and employers not to renew the residency card of non-Muslims they had sponsored for employment if it was discovered or suspected that those individuals had led, sponsored, or participated in private non-Muslim worship services. Similarly, there were reports that mutawwa'in pressured employers and sponsors to reach verbal agreements with non-Muslim employees that they would not participate in private non-Muslim worship services.
During the reporting period Shi'a continued to face systemic discrimination and intolerance tied to a variety of factors, including historical perceptions and ongoing suspicions of foreign influences on their actions. Nevertheless, most Shi'a are loyal to the Government and actively try to contribute to Saudi society. While they coexist with their Sunni neighbors in relative peace, most Shi'a share general concerns of discrimination in education, employment, political representation, the judiciary, religious practice, and media.
In higher education, the Government discriminated against Shi'a in the selection process for students, professors, and administrators at public universities. For example, it was estimated that Shi'a constituted 2 percent of professors at a leading university in al-Ahsa, an area that is at least 50 percent Shi'a. At the primary and secondary levels of education in al-Ahsa, there continued to be severe underrepresentation of Shi'a among principals, with approximately 1 percent of area principals being Shi'a. There were no Shi'a principals in female schools. Shi'a were also underrepresented among principals in Qatif, where they comprise approximately 90 percent of the population. In addition, Shi'a teachers were not permitted to teach certain courses, including religious studies at the intermediate and secondary levels, even in predominantly Shi'a areas.
There were reports that some Shi'a students experienced discrimination within the primary and secondary school systems. Some religious education teachers told their students that Shi'a practices were un-Islamic and that Shi'a students must follow Sunni traditions to be true Muslims. Some teachers told their students that Shi'a were not Muslims, but rather kufaar (unbelievers), rafidah (rejectionists), infidels, or polytheists. In January 2008 a Qatif student was reportedly accused of witchcraft, when a turbah (small piece of soil or clay used for Shi'a prayer) was found among her personal belongings. That same month, the story of a former Qatif-area school teacher who was recorded making harsh anti-Shi'a comments to a private gathering and claiming to have converted nine students to Sunni Islam during a trip to Mecca was widely reported. Despite stated government policy to the contrary, these teachers went without reprimand, although in some cases they were transferred to other schools. In addition, there were reports that many public schools routinely punished Shi'a students academically for their absence during holidays unrecognized by the Government and there continued to be reports of prejudicial questions on exams.
Regardless of their personal religious traditions, public school students at all levels receive mandatory religious instruction based on the Government's interpretation of Sunni Islam. Non-Muslim students in private international schools, which citizens can attend only with special permission, were not required to study Islam. Private religious schools not based on the official interpretation of Islam were not permitted. Despite governmental claims that elementary and secondary education textbooks had been revised, they still retained language that was intolerant of other religious traditions, especially Jewish, Christian, and Shi'a beliefs.
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Saudi Arabia=Not poor, not in AFRICA
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Saudi Arabia=Not poor, not in AFRICA
Glad we FINALLY cleared that up! :roll:
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Harems Accepted in the West
by Daniel Pipes
Fri, 24 Dec 2004
updated Sun, 17 Aug 2008
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2004/12/harems-accepted-in-the-west.html
As the definition of marriage loosens from its once-strict notion of a man and a woman, all sorts of novel arrangements are turning up – notably homosexual "marriages" and polygamy. This development has come at just the right moment for the growing, demanding Muslim populations in the West, which are asserting their right to one husband and multiple wives. This weblog entry looks, in reverse chronological order, at some of the more interesting signs of polygamy's advance in the West.
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Moroccan immigrant fights polygamy in Italy: Souad Sbai, 47, a Moroccan immigrant living in Italy since 1981, is fighting an uphill battle against harems in Italy, Tracy Wilkinson reports for the Los Angeles Times. She estimates the existence of 14,000 polygamous families in Italy and argues that polygamist husbands practice a particularly abusive household: feeling threatened by Western culture, they often imprison their wives, leaving the wives "in a kind of ghetto," according to Sbai. She created a hotline for Muslim immigrant women and heard from about 1,000 of them in the first three months. She realized she had found a hitherto hidden community, many isolated in polygamous households, most of them Moroccan and illiterate. (July 15, 2008)
Keysar Trad and his wife Hanifeh pictured at their Sydney, Australia, home.
Australia recognizes polygamous marriages contracted elsewhere: Natalie O'Brien, a senior writer with the Australian, tells the story of Keysar Trad, 44, drops and in the course of it, drops a bombshell. She reports that "In Australia it is illegal to enter into a polygamous marriage. But the federal government, like Britain, recognises relationships that have been legally recognised overseas, including polygamous marriages. This allows second wives and children to claim welfare and benefits."
O'Brien presents Trad's polygamous urges with great sympathy, telling how his wife Hanifeh returned with their six children to the couple's native Lebanon for several months, leaving him lonely in Sydney's western suburbs. Taking a second wife "seemed the natural thing to do for Trad," writes O'Brien, for he
had already lived through the experience of being the son of his father's second wife, who became part of the family after the first wife became too ill to look after their children. A childhood spent living with a mother and a stepmother was completely normal. "There was nothing out of the ordinary," Trad tells The Australian. "My mother and my stepmother were always best friends. They never argued. She looked at my mum like she was her sister."
Their extended family took shape in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli in the 1960s. "That society was very open-minded," Trad recalls. "Even though it was not the norm. I was not aware of any other family with that sort of relationship. But generally, I found people didn't care as long as the relationship was a peaceful one." But Trad's mother warned him not to talk about the family arrangements, saying people really were not that open-minded.
Back to Sydney in 2008, however:
Whether a second wife would work in the Trad household remains another issue. The Trads say they have discussed the idea only in principle. Trad's wife, Hanifeh, is not against the idea of having another woman in her husband's life. She says she has enough confidence in herself not to let it affect her ego. However, she's concerned of the effect it might have on her children and how they would be affected by the stigma. "We don't know whether it would work for us. We have only intellectualised, we have never practised it," Trad says.
Although Trad in the end did not marry a second wife, he supports Khalil Chami's call (see below) for Australia to recognize polygamous marriages on the grounds that doing so helps protect the rights of women in such relationships. Now, Trad says women are left in a vulnerable financial position if the man dies.
O'Brien also quotes Silma Ihram, described as an Anglo-Australian convert to Islam and a pioneer of Muslim education in Australia, urging a public discussion of polygamy, and not just for Muslims. "Take away the Islamic tag because that is irrelevant. There are many people whose marriages are not registered and there are a large number of people having affairs. … Where are we going with the family structure? Where are we going on relationships? We need to ask the questions: How important is it to have a one-on-one relationship and is it acceptable to have more than partner?" (June 26, 2008)
More privileges to polygamous marriages in Belgium: The Belgium Constitutional Court annulled a stipulation in the alien law of 2006 that denied the right of family reunification to children born of a polygamous marriage and who were descended of an alien established in Belgium or from an alien who was already permitted or authorized to an unlimited stay and from one of the spouses not living in Belgium. (June 26, 2008) July 15, 2008 update: In another ruling, the Belgian Constitutional Court has forbidden discrimination against the children of polygamous marriages, for example in the handling of visa applications to enter the country. The ruling does not clearly apply to spouses in polygamous marriages, though Freddy Rosemont, head of the Alien Affairs Department (DVZ), says that the court also annulled the article of the law that bans spouses in polygamous marriages.
Australian sheikh calls for polygamy to be legalized: Khalil Chami of the Islamic Welfare Centre in Sydney has called for polygamous marriages, which already exist in the country, to be recognized and regularized in Australia. Chami told a radio program that he is asked almost weekly to conduct polygamous ceremonies; although he declines, other sheikhs accede. "There are a lot of sheikhs here without any qualifications, without any place. They'll conduct that marriage no problem at all."
To this, Keysar Trad, president of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia added his agreement (for the rights of women to be protected, of course), revealing that he
once proposed to another woman with the consent of his wife, Hanefa, but the second marriage did not proceed. "I certainly would not have entertained the thought of having a relationship without a religious marriage and I thought the relationship with that person was developing to the stage where we had become too friendly with each other," he told the program. "Rather than entertain any thoughts of an affair I thought the only decent thing to do was to consider a proper commitment to that person. This idea of plural sexual relationships, it is not so much frowned upon by society as long as these people don't say we want a polygamous relationship."
Trad also told about his own mother being the third wife in a polygamous relationship and praised the family setup in which the women admired, respected, and supported each other.
In a sense, it's a compliment to the original partner that if he didn't find marriage to be so good why would he go into it again," he said. "In a sense, he's saying that his first wife has made life like heaven for him so he's willing to provide the same service, love and support to a second woman." He said women were choosing to enter into such marriages.
Trad's mother also got on the radio and praised polygamy. Then, asked if it is about men wanting sex with several women, she replied: "Yeah it can be, but having it in the right way instead of having it in like go to prostitute or just date."
To this talk, Attorney-General Robert McClelland responded severely: "Everyone should be on notice that the law in Australia is that marriage is between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others. That's based on a long tradition. It's based on the culture of our community and polygamous relationships are entirely inconsistent with that culture and indeed with the law. Polygamous relationships are and will remain unlawful." (June 25, 2008) June 26, 2008 update: This exchange appears to have inspired Ismail Yusanto, the head of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Indonesia (and husband to two wives), to advise Australia to legalize polygamy immediately. "Do you allow prostitution [in Australia]?" he asked. "Why? Even though it enables women to become chattels, to be traded, and given a price?" Polygamy, he argues "should be accepted. If you believe in what you call human rights and freedom of expression, then it must be allowed. If someone wants to marry and take responsibility for a woman, why wouldn't you let them?"
More pro-polygamy propaganda from National Public Radio: Barbara Bradley Hagerty focuses on Philadelphia's African-American Muslims and recounts the story of Zaki and Mecca, who are in their late 20s, have been married to each other for nearly 12 years, live in the Philadelphia suburbs, work in the real estate business, have a 5-year-old son – and also a second wife. How this jolly development came to pass:
Two years ago, Mecca told her husband she wanted to study Arabic in the Middle East, which would mean a lot of time away from home. (NPR is not using any full names in this story because some of those we interviewed could be prosecuted for bigamy.) "We were talking about it," Mecca recalls, "and the first thing that came to my mind was, ‘I'm going to have to find you another wife!'"
Zaki was game. After all, he had been raised in a polygamous home in Philadelphia. Like many black Muslims, his father subscribed to an orthodox view of Islam that allows a man to marry several women. Zaki says he loved having seven siblings and four mothers, especially at dinnertime. "I would find out who's making what that particular night. I know that this mom makes barbequed chicken better than my other mom makes fried chicken, so I'm going with the barbequed chicken tonight. Things of that nature," he says with a laugh. …
When it came to finding a second wife, Zaki said he had no one in mind, and he asked Mecca to conduct the search. "You know, he gave me the baton, and I took it and ran with it," Mecca says. Mecca launched a nationwide search. She found candidates by word of mouth. She scoured the Internet. Eventually, she interviewed about a dozen women. "I had to make sure that she'd be the right fit — not just for my husband, but for our whole family," Mecca says.
But the ultimate match was right under their noses: 20-year-old Aminah, who was a friend of Zaki's younger sister. Aminah knew Mecca was looking for a second wife but thought she was too young. That is, until one night after a dinner party when Mecca pulled her aside. Mecca asked Aminah if she would consider marrying Zaki. "And I said, ‘That's funny, because I was thinking the same thing,'" Aminah says.
Zaki was the last to know the identity of the final candidate to be his bride. He could have vetoed the choice, of course, but he was delighted. In October 2007, he and Aminah married in a religious, not civil, ceremony. Many polygamous marriages are conducted in secret and are not legally binding because state laws prohibit them.
Aminah recalls that Mecca helped prepare the wedding feast. Aminah, who's finishing college, lives in an apartment a few miles away from Mecca's house. Zaki moves between homes on alternating nights. But every week after Friday prayers, they get together as a family. "It can be a variety of things," Zaki says. "Going to a nice restaurant, catching a movie, going bowling, maybe seeing a concert. All kind of things." "I always call it family date night, because it's one big date," Mecca says. "We just chill. I always look forward to it. We always have a ball, laughing, goofing around."
(May 28, 2008)
50,000-100,000 American Muslims live polygamously: So reports National Public Radio in the first of a two-part series. It quotes Daisy Khan, head of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, to the effect that polygamy is more common among Muslim immigrants from Africa and Asia and rarer among those from the Middle East. Being NPR, it stresses the cheery aspects of polygamy, as in this story about Mona, a Palestinian woman with six children from her first marriage, who is happy to have had the chance to become a second wife.
When Mona got divorced in 1990, she became a pariah in her conservative Muslim community in Patterson, N.J. "When ladies divorce," she says, "the people look down on her — looking to her like [she's] second class." Then 14 years ago, a man approached her to be his second wife. She resisted at first but then grew to admire him and agreed to become his wife. She says her problems evaporated.
"When I married the second husband, everybody's OK," she says, smiling. "If I go anywhere, I'm free, nobody talks, because I have a husband." He provides for both of his families, and he divides time between the two homes. Mona says the first wife was initially angry, but she got used to it. "What is the problem? If he is not happy with the first marriage, why he stay all the life like this? You know, my religion is good because it gives man and woman another chance to be happy."
(May 27, 2008)
Toronto imam officiated at over 30 polygamous marriages: Noor Javed of the Toronto Star tells the story of Aly Hindy and his polygynous marriage-making:
Safa Rigby holds the youngest of her five children.
There were no pleasantries, there was no small talk. Safa Rigby had expected to hear her husband's voice when the phone rang one morning. Instead, the caller didn't even bother to say hello. "You think you know your husband. You don't know him at all," said the man, a friend of her husband's. "His car is parked outside my house right now. He is with my ex-wife. They just got married last week," the man said.
It took a minute for the news to sink in. Then she called her husband of 14 years, demanding to know if what she had just been told was true – that while she spent a year in Egypt raising their four children in a more Islamic environment, he had used it as an opportunity to marry not just one, but two other women in Toronto.
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"Yes, I'm married," he said, quashing all her dreams of their future together. He told her he was married in a small ceremony 20 days earlier, officiated by Aly Hindy, a well-known Toronto imam, at his Scarborough mosque.
"I cried for six days straight. Lost my appetite, ignored the kids, even had to start taking antidepressants," said Rigby, 35. "What I couldn't understand was how such a thing could happen in Toronto, my hometown, where polygamy is supposed to be illegal."
It was easy. He simply found an imam willing to break a Canadian law, in exchange for upholding an Islamic one. "Polygamy is happening in Toronto; it's not common, but it's happening," said Hindy, imam at Salahuddin Islamic Centre.
Aly Hindy, a pro-polygamy imam at the Salaheddin Islamic Centre in Scarborough, Canada.
Hindy says he has "blessed" more than 30 polygynous marriages, most recently just two months ago. "This is in our religion and nobody can force us to do anything against our religion. If the laws of the country conflict with Islamic law, if one goes against the other, then I am going to follow Islamic law, simple as that."
The laws of the country do indeed conflict with the Shari‘a when it comes to polygamy, outlawed in Canada in 1892, punishable with up to five years in prison. That said, the last time the Canadian authorities prosecuted polygamy was over 60 years ago.
Despite this record, Hindy is not an enthusiast for the practice. "I don't encourage people to do it, unless they have reason for it. Life ends up being very complicated. You have to jump from one house to another all the time." (May 24, 2008) June 1, 2008 update: Publication of the above story in the Toronto Star inspired Fouad Boutaya, the man who made that telephone call to Safa Rigby, to go public with his side of the story. Particularly dramatic was how he found out about his wife suddenly being married to Rigby's husband, Hossny Ismail.
Boutaya remembers every detail of the moment of revelation he has relived in his mind many times since. The former civil servant came home early from a job-hunting trip to Ottawa to surprise his wife and two children, picking up a cake on his way. When he arrived, he found Ismail sitting at the dinner table, eating comfortably, as if he was in his own home.
"I asked him, ‘What are you doing here, my friend? You should not be here alone with my wife when I am not here,'" said Boutaya. "What's the problem?" Boutaya said Ismail replied. "She is my wife."
In shock, Boutaya stormed out with his two children – a daughter, 7, and son, 11 – and drove to the local police station in Hamilton. "It was my first reaction. I just needed someone to listen to me and protect me," said Boutaya. Instead, he was told that he didn't have much of a case.
So Boutaya sought proof. He spent the next month talking to imams while taking care of his children and trying to adjust to life at the Good Shepherd Centre, a local shelter, where they lived for four months. His wife continued to live in their home. "It's been so hard for my kids. They were in shock for weeks afterwards," said Boutaya, who now lives in subsidized housing.
Dutch will not prosecute polygamy: Dutch justice minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin told parliament that polygamous Muslim marriages should be dealt with via dialogue, not the legal system. Hirsch Ballin gave this response in answer to questions from two Labor Party members, Khadija Arib and Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who suggested the government should actively persecute polygamists. They noted some of the problems of such marriages, for example that children produced from them cannot be registered and thus are not eligible for official papers. To this, the minister replied that if the father recognizes the child, there should be no problem. (April 21, 2008)
Mohammed Anwar, restaurant owner, polygamist, speed driver.
Scottish court accepts polygyny as reason for speeding while driving: Mohammed Anwar, owner of "Sanam," a restaurant in Falkirk, Stirlingshire, was caught driving at 64 mph in a 30 mph zone in Glasgow, Scotland, on August 21, 2007, driving so much above the speed limit that he ordinarily would have automatically lost his driving license. Except that he offered an excuse that tugged on the heart strings of Sheriff John C. Morris in Airdrie Sheriff Court who allowed Anwar to keep his license in the course of a five-minute court appearance. The excuse? Let Anwar's lawyer, Paul Nicolson, explain the argument he made in court:
He realises his licence is at risk, but this is an unusual case and is very anxious to keep his driving licence. He has one wife in Motherwell and another in Glasgow and sleeps with one night and stays with the other the next on an alternate basis. Without his driving licence he would be unable to do this on a regular basis. He is also a restaurant owner and has a restaurant in Falkirk, which he has had for the past 30 years. He has had a clean driving licence until now, and on this particular evening was on his way home after a busy evening at his restaurant.
When caught speeding, by the way, Anwar was on his way from the restaurant to the Glasgow wife. Given these special circumstances, Morris merely fined him £200 and gave him six penalty points.
Commenting afterwards, Anwar told Alex Dowdalls of the Daily Mail: "It is true I have two wives. Muslim men are allowed up to four. But I am not a religious leader and it is not my place to comment. As a matter of respect to my wives I would not comment on my home life. The sheriff did not ban me because I need my licence to run my business, although my wives were also part of the decision." (April 5, 2008)
Italian harems "on the rise": Muslim scholars estimates the number of polygynous marriages in Italy at 15,000-20,000, La Repubblica reports, with the phenomenon increasing along with Muslim immigration as well as conversions. Unlike Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, and Ontario, however, the Italian state does not offer welfare benefits to more than one wife per husband. The paper tells the story of Baba Kar, who reached Italy wifeless in 1999 from Senegal. He began by bringing Fadu, along with their three-year-old son. On getting a work permit, Kar brought Nkeir. The four of them lived in a two-room apartment in Brescia. "The Koran says I can have up to four wives. I observe my religion, and I have never had any problems with the Italian state," Kar reflected.
Indeed, the Italian state, while only recognizing Fadu as Kar's wife, has indicated that polygamous marriages legally contracted abroad are acceptable. Recently a court in Bologna allowed a Muslim immigrant to bring the mothers of his two children to Italy on the grounds that the dual marriages had been legally contracted. (April 2, 2008)
Polygamous Canadian wives recognized and eligible for benefits: The Ontario Family Law Act accepts polygamy. It defines "Polygamous marriage" as "a marriage that is actually or potentially polygamous, if it was celebrated in a jurisdiction whose system of law recognizes it as valid." In other words, the act recognizes polygamous marriages legally contracted in other countries.
Mumtaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims.
According to Mumtaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims, "several hundred" Muslim men in the Greater Toronto Area engage in polygamous marriages, for "Polygamy is a regular part of life for many Muslims." They do this by the man and one wife and children first entering Canada as landed immigrants, then they sponsor the other spouses and children, or these arrive as visitors.
Ali also says some of them receive welfare and social benefits for their additional wives. "There are many people in the community who are taking advantage of this," Ali said. "This is a law and there's nothing wrong with it." He is proud of Canada's record: "Canada is a very liberal-minded country. Canada is way ahead of Britain in this respect." That said, the families receiving benefits keep their identities hidden, fearing too many questions and a cut off of benefits, Ali added.
In contrast, city and provincial officials say that welfare applicants can claim only a single spouse; other adults living in the same household must apply on their own for welfare. According to Brenda Nesbitt, Toronto's director of social services, "There may be polygamous cases we are not aware off. They can apply as single people and we won't know." Erike Botond, spokesman for the Ontario Community and Social Services, notes that social assistance may only include a single spouse. "Other adults residing in the same dwelling place as a recipient and their spouse may apply as individuals."
The immigration authority seems not to realize that the rules have changed. "I can assure you," says its spokesman, Karen Shadd-Evelyn, "that polygamy is not recognized under immigration legislation. A conjugal relationship, whether involving marriage or a common-law partnership, must be exclusive." (February 8, 2008)
Polygamous UK wives recognized and eligible for benefits: British law recognizes only a single spouse and bigamy is punished by up to seven years in jail. But if a husband should arrive in Britain from a country that permits polygamy is legal, then the law recognizes multiple wives. More than recognizes; the UK benefits system formally accepts multiple wives as dependents and pays for them. The Department of Work and Pensions guidelines on housing and council tax benefits read:
If you were legally married to more than one partner under the laws of a country that permits this, then your relationship is called a polygamous marriage. In this case your household consists of you and any partners who live with you and to whom you are married.
The DWP pays couples up to £92.80 a week (in jobseeker's allowance, housing and council tax benefits) and each "additional spouse" receives another £33.65. Now that this policy has become public, however, and raised a small furor, the DWP is reviewing its policy. (April 18, 2007) Feb. 3, 2008 update: A year-long government review has confirmed this policy, The Sunday Telegraph reveals today in "Multiple wives will mean multiple benefits" by Jonathan Wynne-Jones. In addition to the DWP, three other departments were involved in the review: Treasury, HM Revenue and Customs, and the Home Office. They reached their conclusions in December 2007 but did not publicize the results. Despite the fact that bigamy is punishable in Britain by up to seven years in prison, the departments concluded that recognizing multiple marriages entered into in foreign countries was "the best possible" option. Wynne-Jones explains the implications:
Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognised formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal. The outcome will chiefly benefit Muslim men with more than one wife, as is permitted under Islamic law. Ministers estimate that up to a thousand polygamous partnerships exist in Britain, although they admit there is no exact record. …
New guidelines on income support from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) state: "Where there is a valid polygamous marriage the claimant and one spouse will be paid the couple rate ... The amount payable for each additional spouse is presently £33.65." Income support for all of the wives may be paid directly into the husband's bank account, if the family so choose. Under the deal agreed by ministers, a husband with multiple wives may also be eligible for additional housing benefit and council tax benefit to reflect the larger property needed for his family.
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New York City establishment accepts polygamy: A space heater set off a fire that climbed quickly through a three-story Bronx row house, killing ten immigrants from Mali, including nine children of two fathers and three wives. As the city's deadliest fire in nearly 20 years, the tragedy attracted enormous attention, with the mayor and many dignitaries attending the funeral and consoling the two men, Mamadou Soumare and Moussa Magassa. New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner volunteered to pay for the funerals. No one said a word about the polygamy. An Associated Press report refers casually to this fact:
The woman who leaped out the window, Assia Magassa - Moussa's 23-year-old second wife – was at Lincoln Medical Center on Saturday with broken legs. … According to Mali's Muslim traditions, a man may have more than one wife.
(March 10, 2007) Mar. 23, 2007 update: The New York Times directly takes on polygamy in its home city. Nina Bernstein writes in "In Secret, Polygamy Follows Africans to N.Y." that
Polygamy in America, outlawed in every state but rarely prosecuted, has long been associated with Mormon splinter groups out West, not immigrants in New York. But a fatal fire in a row house in the Bronx on March 7 revealed its presence here, in a world very different from the suburban Utah setting of "Big Love," the HBO series about polygamists next door.
The city's mourning for the dead a woman and nine children in two families from Mali has been followed by a hushed double take at the domestic arrangements described by relatives: Moussa Magassa, the Mali-born American citizen who owned the house and was the father of five children who perished, had two wives in the home, on different floors. Both survived.
No one knows how prevalent polygamy is in New York. Those who practice it have cause to keep it secret: under immigration law, polygamy is grounds for exclusion from the United States. Under state law, bigamy can be punished by up to four years in prison. No agency is known to collect data on polygamous unions, which typically take shape over time and under the radar, often with religious ceremonies overseas and a visitor's visa for the wife, arranged by other relatives. Some men have one wife in the United States and others abroad.
But the Magassas clearly are not an isolated case. Immigration to New York and other American cities has soared from places where polygamy is lawful and widespread, especially from West African countries like Mali, where demographic surveys show that 43 percent of women are in polygamous marriages.
And the picture that emerges from dozens of interviews with African immigrants, officials and scholars of polygamy is of a clandestine practice that probably involves thousands of New Yorkers. …
Don't-ask-don't-know policies prevail in many agencies that deal with immigrant families in New York, perhaps because there is no framework for addressing polygamy in a city that prides itself on tolerance of religious, cultural and sexual differences and on support for human rights and equality.
… stories of polygamy, New York style, are typically shared by women only in whispered conversations in laundries and at hair-braiding salons. With no legal immigration status and no right to asylum from polygamy, many are afraid to expose their husbands to arrest or deportation, which could dishonor and impoverish their families here and in Africa.
In sum, this report suggests, polygamy is in New York by the thousands, it causes much suffering, but no one has the will to take it on. Mar. 7, 2008 update: In a one-year update on the surviving family members, the New York Times again blithely accepts polygamy, reporting that Moussa Magassa, 46, the father of five children who died in the fire, said in an interview that "his family has grown since the fire: Two wives recently gave birth, one to twins." The reporter, Timothy Williams, notes delicately only that Magassa "is from Mali, where polygamy is legal and widespread." The New York Post causally provides the eye-popping information (in the caption to a picture) that Magassa has taken a third wife: "Moussa Magassa now has nine children with his wives, Aisse, Manthia and Niekale."
Comment: I wonder if Magassa trekked back to Mali to marry Niekale or whether he "married" her in the United States. If the latter, he is as liable to charges of polygamy as any Mormon fundamentalist, but something tells me, much less likely to have the law after him.
Taxpayer subsidies for UK harems: According to a sensationalist story by Nigel Nelson in The People, "Have a Harem: Geta Handout," it's not just Inland Revenue but other government agencies that recognize polygamous marriages. He finds that the British taxpayer spends £5m a year on polygamous immigrants who bring harems into the country for such benefits as jobseekers' allowances, housing benefits, and council tax relief. Their children can claim child benefits and family tax credits. For example, as Nelson colorfully puts it, "The exhausted husband also gets a Jobseeker's Allowance of £90.10 a week for himself and his first wife. Extra wives get £32.65 each." The Welfare Minister, Philip Hunt, is quoted acknowledging that "British law recognises those marriages. Income-related benefits can be paid for more than one wife." (November 12, 2006) May 28, 2007 update: The Times (London) follows up with more information: The Department for Work and Pensions estimates there are "fewer than 1,000 valid polygamous marriages in the UK, few of whom are claiming a state benefit." Here's how it works:
Britain does recognise polygamous marriages that have taken place in countries where the custom is legal, such as Pakistan, Nigeria and India. The Home Office said that multiple wives in polygamous marriages may be allowed into the country as students or tourists. Officials are advised to let extra wives into Britain even if they suspect that a husband is trying to cheat the system by getting bogus divorces. "Entry clearance may not be withheld from a second wife where the husband has divorced his previous wife and the divorce is thought to be one of convenience," an immigration rulebook advises. "This is so, even if the husband is still living with the previous wife and to issue the entry clearance would lead to the formation of a polygamous household." …
A husband may claim housing benefit for each wife even if she is abroad, for up to 52 weeks, as long as the absence is temporary and for pressing reasons. In a draft Commons reply released under the Freedom of Information Act, officials explained another way in which the system made it easy to receive handouts. "A polygamous marriage is the only circumstance in which an adult dependency increase is payable in income-related benefits," it stated. "In any other circumstances an adult ‘dependent' would have to make a separate claim."
To calculate the amount of income support that is payable to an extra wife, officials subtract the rate paid to an individual from that paid to a couple. This produces the amount that a cohabiting spouse is deemed to need in social security benefits. If a man lives with two valid wives, his household is paid the rate for a couple, plus an amount for the extra spouse, the documents show.
Tax credits for UK harems: The paymaster general of the Treasury, Dawn Primarolo, gave this reply at a parliamentary inquiry:
Where a man and a woman are married under a law which permits polygamy, and either of them has an additional spouse, the Tax Credits (Polygamous Marriages) Regulations 2003 allow them to claim tax credits as a polygamous unit. It is only those in legal polygamous unions who are covered by these regulations and there is no provision for those in less formal arrangements to claim as a polygamous unit.
Azouz Begag, French minister for promoting the equalty of opportunity.
(December 2, 2005)
Accepting polygamy in France: Azouz Begag, French minister for promoting the equalty of opportunity (yes, such a position exists) laconically addressed the issue of polygamy by saying that the country "could find a way to live with it." (September 9, 2005)
Polygamous UK wives inherit tax-free from husbands: Nicholas Hellen, "Muslim second wives may get a tax break" provides rich details, which I feel compelled to quote at length so as not to lose their texture:
The Inland Revenue is considering recognising polygamy for some religious groups for tax purposes. Officials have agreed to examine "family friendly" representations from Muslims who take up to four wives under sharia, the laws derived from the Koran. Existing rules allow only one wife for inheritance tax purposes. The Revenue has been asked to relax this so that a husband's estate can be divided tax-free between several wives.
The move is bound to create controversy if it leads to a change in the rules. It is seen as a breakthrough by Muslim leaders who have been campaigning to incorporate sharia into British domestic law. Ahmad Thomson, of the Association of Muslim Lawyers, said: "Wives and immediate children should be exempt from inheritance tax. If the government is family friendly they should change a tax which is unfairly hitting minority religious values."
Any concession by the Revenue could open a wider debate about the legality of plural marriages. At present a person married to more than one people can be charged with bigamy. Muslim marriages to second, third and fourth wives are not valid in civil law, with the women effectively regarded as mistresses with no legal or tax rights.
However, some official bodies have already pointed out that tax laws are unfavourable to religious groups that recognise more than one spouse. The National Audit Office (NAO) recently concluded that the tax system inadvertently penalised devout Muslims. An NAO inquiry into inheritance laws found that devout Muslims were not able to take full advantage of British tax law, which allows spouses to inherit an entire estate from their husband or wife tax free. …
Sadiq Khan, a leading Muslim politician, said: "I am pleased to see the Inland Revenue applying common sense to the application of Islamic law on uncontroversial matters such as inheritance. There are some other uncontroversial areas of Islam law which could easily be applied to the legal system we have in the UK." …
Gordon Brown, the chancellor, has already made one significant concession to adapt to the dictates of sharia. In the 2003 Finance Act he spared Muslims from paying stamp duty twice on their properties when they took out "Islamic mortgages" that complied with the sharia ban on paying interest. The Islamic mortgages involve the lender buying the house — ownership is transferred to the purchaser only at the end of the repayment period.
In a totally startling development, perhaps what most stands out is the idea that polygamy is already deemed "uncontroversial." (December 26, 2004)
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It is true; time's are changing. On my street in one house there is single gay man, in another house live two gay men together and in another, two lesbians live together; still, most of my neighbors are married traditional (man/wife) and a few are single either by choice or divorce. Mind you, most of the single ones are successful single women making the big bucks. And one poor single mom struggling a bit. My father's generation is still a bit shocked. However, everyone seems to get along just fine. The laws are changing; gay people are getting married. Yet only a few years ago in America, many of these actions were a crime and you could/would be sent to jail not to mention being ostracized. Why not polygamy? Don't get me wrong, I'm not a proponent. Me, I'm too old and tired :-) but if adults voluntarily agree, well, why not? Why is it criminal? And while Islam is being criticized, look in the Bible; Abraham, David, Solomon, et all all had multiple wives. It didn't seem to a problem for our Christian God or any of the participants except for the normal jealousies. And do I care if my neighbor is gay, lesbian, straight, or polygamist? Or Christian, Jew, or Muslim? No, I really don't if they are all good neighbors.
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It is true; time's are changing. On my street in one house there is single gay man, in another house live two gay men together and in another, two lesbians live together; still, most of my neighbors are married traditional (man/wife) and a few are single either by choice or divorce. Mind you, most of the single ones are successful single women making the big bucks. And one poor single mom struggling a bit. My father's generation is still a bit shocked. However, everyone seems to get along just fine. The laws are changing; gay people are getting married. Yet only a few years ago in America, many of these actions were a crime and you could/would be sent to jail not to mention being ostracized. Why not polygamy? Don't get me wrong, I'm not a proponent. Me, I'm too old and tired :-) but if adults voluntarily agree, well, why not? Why is it criminal?
**Why not incest then? It's just another lifestyle choice, right?**
And while Islam is being criticized, look in the Bible; Abraham, David, Solomon, et all all had multiple wives. It didn't seem to a problem for our Christian God or any of the participants except for the normal jealousies.
**Western civilization developed monogamy, which worked quite well, back when it was taken seriously.**
And do I care if my neighbor is gay, lesbian, straight, or polygamist? Or Christian, Jew, or Muslim? No, I really don't if they are all good neighbors.
**The problem being, that gay or straight neighbors are probably not directly or indirectly supporting or funding terrorist groups. By practicing polygamy, this creates a long term demographic wave that eventually allows for islam to gain the dominance it craves. Watch what is happening in europe now.**
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http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=28823
War On Terror Hits New Front -- The First Amendment
by Robert Spencer (more by this author)
Posted 10/02/2008 ET
British authorities arrested three Muslims in London on Saturday after fires broke out in the offices of the publishing house Gibson Square and at the home of the publisher, Martin Rynja. Gibson Square had been planning to publish The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones, a trashy novel sensationalizing the marriage of the Islamic prophet Muhammad to the child Aisha (Muhammad was in his fifties, and Aisha was nine, when the happy union was consummated).
Then on Monday the book’s American publisher, Beaufort Books, closed its offices, explaining that it had received no specific threats but was nevertheless taking a “precautionary action” -- and that it still planned to publish the book.
Meanwhile, over at Random House, they must be drawing a sigh of relief. That venerable house was originally planning to publish the novel but dropped it at the last minute after determining that it might offend Muslims -- even though its portrayal of Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha is favorable, never straying into territory that might violate the strict tenets of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ media guide. Nevertheless, it looks as if those who thought Muslims would find the book offensive were right -- at least as far as the three Muslims arrested in London are concerned.
But when he picked up the British rights to the book last month, Rynja said some things that Random House -- and the rest of us -- would do well to keep in mind. In “an open society,” he declared, “there has to be open access to literary works, regardless of fear. As an independent publishing company, we feel strongly that we should not be afraid of the consequences of debate.”
Now those consequences have come, however, and Rynja is wavering. According to Alan Jessop of Compass, Gibson Square’s sales representative, Rynja “is in good spirits, but has put publication in suspended animation while he reflects and takes advice on what the best foot forward is.”
I can tell you that right now, Mr. Rynja. The best foot forward is to stand up for the principles of free discussion and inquiry on which free society depends and not to show that violent intimidation works. Of course, neither Rynja nor the employees of Gibson Square probably ever thought that by publishing books they would be taking their lives in their hands, but these are perilous times for everyone. Some will no doubt say these fires could have been prevented; if Muslims have found the novel offensive, for whatever reason, it shouldn’t be published as a gesture of multicultural solidarity.
The fires themselves show that much more is at stake. Although The Jewel of Medina is a silly, stupid book, the prospect of its being deep-sixed by bullying Muslims and cowering infidels doesn’t bode well for the future of freedom in the West. The legal protections on free speech were developed precisely in order to protect speech that some groups may find offensive so as to prevent the creation of a privileged class that is beyond criticism. But that is just what the three men who firebombed Martin Rynja’s home and the Global Square offices were trying to create by frightening non-Muslims into conforming to Islamic sensibilities -- or else.
London author Kenan Malik recently observed, “In the 20 years between the publication of The Satanic Verses and the withdrawal of The Jewel of Medina, the fatwa [against Rushdie]…has become internalized. Not only do publishers drop books deemed offensive but theaters savage plays, opera houses cut productions, art galleries censor shows, all in the name of cultural sensitivity.” But if they continue down this road, how long will we continue to be able to speak openly about the jihad threat -- and indeed, how long will we continue to be able to dissent from the Islamic perspective on the world in general?
Beyond the issue of this novel, if the people in America, Britain, and elsewhere who are threatened by the global jihad and Islamic supremacism are not willing to stand up and fight for the ability to hold in conscience to views that differ from those that Muslims wish us to hold, then all is lost.
The jihadists are willing to go all the way -- to give up their very lives -- in their quest to control ours. For them, no price is too high.
What price is too high for us?
Mr. Spencer is director of Jihad Watch and author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)", "The Truth About Muhammad" and the forthcoming"Stealth Jihad" (all from Regnery -- a HUMAN EVENTS sister company).
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Afghan on trial for Christianity
An Afghan man is being tried in a court in the capital, Kabul, for converting from Islam to Christianity.
Abdul Rahman is charged with rejecting Islam and could face the death sentence under Sharia law unless he recants.
He converted 16 years ago as an aid worker helping refugees in Pakistan. His estranged family denounced him in a custody dispute over his two children.
It is thought to be Afghanistan's first such trial, reflecting tensions between conservative clerics and reformists.
Conservatives still dominate the Afghan judiciary four years after the Taleban were overthrown.
The BBC's Mike Donkin in Kabul says reformists, like the government under President Hamid Karzai, want a more liberal, secular legal system but under the present constitution it is hard for them to intervene.
'Tolerance'
Afghanistan's post-Taleban constitution is based on Sharia law, and prosecutors in the case says this means Abdul Rahman, whose trial began last Thursday, should be put to death.
We will ask him if he has changed his mind. If so we will forgive him
Trial judge Ansarullah Mawlazezadah
When he was arrested last month he was found to be carrying a bible and charged with rejecting Islam which is punishable by death in Afghanistan.
Trial judge Ansarullah Mawlazezadah told the BBC that Mr Rahman, 41, would be asked to reconsider his conversion, which he made while working for a Christian aid group in Pakistan.
"We will invite him again because the religion of Islam is one of tolerance. We will ask him if he has changed his mind. If so we will forgive him," the judge told the BBC on Monday.
But if he refused to reconvert, then his mental state would be considered first before he was dealt with under Sharia law, the judge added.
He said he expected the case to take about two months to be heard.
Precedent
The Afghan Human Rights Commission has called for a better balance in the judiciary, with fewer judges advocating Sharia law and more judges with a wider legal background.
Several journalists have been prosecuted under blasphemy laws in post-Taleban Afghanistan.
The editor of a women's rights magazine was convicted of insulting Islam and sentenced to death last year - but was later released after an apology and heavy international pressure.
Mr Karzai's office says the president will not intervene in the case.
Observers say executing a converted Christian would be a significant precedent as a conservative interpretation of Sharia law in Afghanistan.
But it would also outrage Western nations which put Mr Karzai in power and are pouring billions of dollars into supporting the country.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/4823874.stm
Published: 2006/03/20 13:15:27 GMT
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It is true; time's are changing. On my street in one house there is single gay man, in another house live two gay men together and in another, two lesbians live together; still, most of my neighbors are married traditional (man/wife) and a few are single either by choice or divorce. Mind you, most of the single ones are successful single women making the big bucks. And one poor single mom struggling a bit. My father's generation is still a bit shocked. However, everyone seems to get along just fine. The laws are changing; gay people are getting married. Yet only a few years ago in America, many of these actions were a crime and you could/would be sent to jail not to mention being ostracized. Why not polygamy? Don't get me wrong, I'm not a proponent. Me, I'm too old and tired :-) but if adults voluntarily agree, well, why not? Why is it criminal?
**Why not incest then? It's just another lifestyle choice, right?**
And while Islam is being criticized, look in the Bible; Abraham, David, Solomon, et all all had multiple wives. It didn't seem to a problem for our Christian God or any of the participants except for the normal jealousies.
**Western civilization developed monogamy, which worked quite well, back when it was taken seriously.**
And do I care if my neighbor is gay, lesbian, straight, or polygamist? Or Christian, Jew, or Muslim? No, I really don't if they are all good neighbors.
**The problem being, that gay or straight neighbors are probably not directly or indirectly supporting or funding terrorist groups. By practicing polygamy, this creates a long term demographic wave that eventually allows for islam to gain the dominance it craves. Watch what is happening in europe now.**
Actually, I think incest is different.
And while I agree that my gay or straight neighbors are probably not directly or indirectly supporting terrorism, it is also true that if they did practice polygamy,
they wouldn't necessarily be be supporting terrorism either. And don't most Muslims live in a monogamous relationship?
Given today's economics, I can't imagine supporting 3-4+ wives! :-)
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Why is incest different? It's illegal as a reflection of our society's values (The few we haven't yet done away with in our post-modern, post-moral age). Not all cultures forbid it, some actually prefer it. In the arab world, the wedding of first cousins is seen as optimal.
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Howabout "age of consent" laws and marriage of children? Under sharia, in it's various interpretations globally, it's just fine for an adult male to marry a young girl, citing Mohammed's marrying Aisha when she was six. Why should we forbid what allah has allowed?
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Why is incest different? It's illegal as a reflection of our society's values (The few we haven't yet done away with in our post-modern, post-moral age). Not all cultures forbid it, some actually prefer it. In the arab world, the wedding of first cousins is seen as optimal.
I think most medical doctors/scientists suggest against it for both DNA and mental health issues. If I remember my history classes this caused a few problems among royalty in Europe.
But yes, you are right, not all cultures forbid it. Actually, like Islam, many if not most states here in America permit a wedding of first cousins and the Bible is full of stories of incest
without any negative comment. Yet going back to science, inbreeding being illegal is not just a reflection of our society's values rather ... I think it's different. But I suppose you
are right; if you want...
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It's nothing I want or support, but again, if we want to live in the "post-modern, post-moral" age the left advocates, then why any limits on anything? Just call it a lifestyle choice and be done with it.
BTW, incest laws say nothing about reproduction. It's just as illegal for an elderly brother/sister to marry as those capable of bearing children.
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Howabout "age of consent" laws and marriage of children? Under sharia, in it's various interpretations globally, it's just fine for an adult male to marry a young girl, citing Mohammed's marrying Aisha when she was six. Why should we forbid what allah has allowed?
Actually, it is rather interesting. Again, the Bible has numerous examples of child marriages; again no problem. And, here in America many states differ on what is "legal". Some states say 18 years old is the minimum, others 16, others 15, others 14 and other states even permit marriages among even younger children with the signature of the parent and the court. It all seems
rather strange to me, but that's the law.
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It's nothing I want or support, but again, if we want to live in the "post-modern, post-moral" age the left advocates, then why any limits on anything? Just call it a lifestyle choice and be done with it.
BTW, incest laws say nothing about reproduction. It's just as illegal for an elderly brother/sister to marry as those capable of bearing children.
Never meant to imply that is was what you wanted or supported.
And while you seem strongly against the "post-modern, post-moral" (me, I can't make up my mind, but you do have some points) so is Sharia Law very much against many of
these so called modern lifestyle choices isn't it? Interesting dichotomy.
And yes, I know incest laws say nothing about reproduction, but ... it happens...
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States do differ, but very few 14 year olds do get married in 2008. Why? Because our society recognizes that a 14 year old male or female isn't capable of giving an informed consent due to maturational/developmental issues. Again, thankfully we don't use either the bible or the koran or the life of Mohammed as the standard on which we develop our laws. What might have been acceptable in 1908 isn't necessarily so in 2008. Whereas in an islamic society, what Mohammed did in 628 is just as valid in 2008, or 2128.
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It's nothing I want or support, but again, if we want to live in the "post-modern, post-moral" age the left advocates, then why any limits on anything? Just call it a lifestyle choice and be done with it.
BTW, incest laws say nothing about reproduction. It's just as illegal for an elderly brother/sister to marry as those capable of bearing children.
Never meant to imply that is was what you wanted or supported.
And while you seem strongly against the "post-modern, post-moral" (me, I can't make up my mind, but you do have some points) so is Sharia Law very much against many of
these so called modern lifestyle choices isn't it? Interesting dichotomy.
**The key division here is the role of government in matters of personal morality. I personally find male homosexual acts repulsive. However, I have no interest in seeing any governmental force being used against those that engage in such activities. Consenting adults, in the privacy of their own homes can do as they wish. If god has an issue with that, it's between them and god. People have a right to their views on the topic, including the condemnation of such activities, but do not have the right to interfere with those that choose to engage, again as long as it's between consenting adults in their own homes.**
And yes, I know incest laws say nothing about reproduction, but ... it happens...
**Sure, lots of deviant, sick things happen. There are adult women that have consenting sexual relationships with their fathers, having been sexually assaulted as children and taught that it's normative behavior. Stomach turning, but sadly, very true.**
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http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterrorism_blog/2006/03/afghan_clerics_.html
Afghan Clerics Call for Abdul Rahman's Death
In my previous blog entry about Abdul Rahman, the 41-year-old Afghan man who may face the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity, I noted that while a number of Islamic states outlaw apostasy, "the greater threat comes from vigilantes." I made a similar observation in a February 2004 article that I wrote for Commentary:
The greatest threat to apostates in the Muslim world derives not from the state, however, but from private individuals who take punishment into their own hands. In Bangladesh, for example, a native-born Muslim-turned-Christian evangelist was stabbed to death in the spring of 2003 while returning home from a film version of the Gospel of Luke. As another Bangladeshi apostate told the U.S. Newswire, "If a Muslim converts to Christianity, now he cannot live in this country. It is not safe. The fundamentalism is increasing more and more."
The Abdul Rahman situation bears this out. Even if the state doesn't put Abdul Rahman to death, Afghan clerics have announced that they will incite others to kill him. The Associated Press reports today (with emphases added):
"Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," said cleric Abdul Raoulf, who is considered a moderate and was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before the hard-line regime was ousted in 2001. . . . Diplomats have said the Afghan government is searching for a way to drop the case. On Wednesday, authorities said Rahman is suspected of being mentally ill and would undergo psychological examinations to see whether he is fit to stand trial. But three Sunni preachers and a Shiite one interviewed by The Associated Press in four of Kabul's most popular mosques said they do not believe Rahman is insane. "He is not crazy. He went in front of the media and confessed to being a Christian," said Hamidullah, chief cleric at Haji Yacob Mosque. "The government is scared of the international community. But the people will kill him if he is freed." Raoulf, who is a member of the country's main Islamic organization, the Afghan Ulama Council, concurred. "The government is playing games. The people will not be fooled."
"Cut off his head!" he exclaimed, sitting in a courtyard outside Herati Mosque. "We will call on the people to pull him into pieces so there's nothing left." He said the only way for Rahman to survive would be for him to go into exile. But Said Mirhossain Nasri, the top cleric at Hossainia Mosque, one of the largest Shiite places of worship in Kabul, said Rahman must not be allowed to leave the country. "If he is allowed to live in the West, then others will claim to be Christian so they can, too," he said. "We must set an example. . . . He must be hanged."
These clerics add their voices to a growing chorus of Aghan citizens calling for Abdul Rahman's death, including his own father: "He is my son. But if a son does not care about the dignity of his family, the dignity of his father, God can take him away. You cannot make anything out of such a son. He is useless."
This case makes clear that the threat to converts out of Islam does not just come from the state, but from private citizens as well. And it makes clear that the belief that apostates deserve death is not an aberration, but is more widespread that many would like to acknowledge. The resolution of this case may well be a barometer of Afghanistan's future, and the future of democracy in the Middle East.
Posted by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross at 09:47 AM
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http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=IA20805
Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 208
February 18, 2005 No. 208
Accusing Muslim Intellectuals of Apostasy
By: Aluma Dankowitz. *
Introduction
Marking the 16th anniversary of the Fatwa calling for author Salman Rushdie's death issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards announced: "The day will finally come when the apostate Salman Rushdie will receive his due punishment for his disgraceful and slanderous move against the Qur'an and the Prophet [Muhammad]." Iran's Leader Ali Khamenei stressed that the death sentence following the publication of Rushdie's ' The Satanic Verses ' "is irrevocable." [1]
The accusation against Muslims - particularly intellectuals, artists, and writers - of "unbelief" (an accusation known as " takfir " ) recurs in the Muslim world. The traditional punishment for an apostate ( murtadd ) set in early Islam was capital punishment. This punishment was implemented on a large scale in the period following the death of the Prophet Muhammad, when Muhammad's successor Abu Bakr fought the ridda wars against the tribes that abandoned Islam. In modern Muslim history too, there are several cases of charges of apostasy against intellectuals who deviated from the dictates of Islamist circles.
Section 228 of Iran's Islamic Penal Code states that a "criminal" should be exonerated "if it is proven to the court that the blood of the victim was permitted." An example of the implementation of this law is the cash prize of over $2 million set for the murder of Salman Rushdie, who was accused of apostasy. Other prominent examples include the 1985 execution of Sudanese Sufi philosopherMuhammad Mahmoud Taha on charges of ridda and the 1992 assassination by Islamists, following similar accusations, of secular Egyptian intellectual Faraj Foda.When Muslim Brotherhood leader Sheikh Muhammad Al-Ghazaliwas asked for his view on this assassination, he simply said that "the sentence for ridda that the [country's] ruler refrained from carrying out has now been implemented." In 1994, Islamists made an attempt on the life of Egyptian Nobel Prize laureate Nagib Mahfouz. [2]
In other cases, conservative Muslim activists exploited the Hisbah law enabling anyone to file suit in a court of law against anyone else in the name of society. Thus, the charge of ridda was filed against several intellectuals; if found guilty, the court could force them to divorce their spouses [ tafriq ], because if one party to an Islamic marriage became an apostate, the marriage was nullified. Thus, in 1995 an Egyptian court forced Dr. Nasser Hamed Abu Zayd, an intellectual who had published critical research on the Koran, to separate from his wife. In 2001, a similar suit was filed against feminist Egyptian author Nawal Al-Sa'dawi;however, the prosecutor-general, who, according to a 1996 amendment, was the only one who could decide whether such a suit was warranted, rejected the claims against her.
Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi Advocates Implementing the Ridda Death Penalty
In an interview with the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram Al-Arabi, Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, one of the most prominent clerics in Sunni Islam and among Islamist circles and a spiritual leader for the Muslim Brotherhood movement, discussed the view of modern religious law on carrying out the punishment for ridda, and permitted the murder of free Muslim intellectuals whose views differ from those of Islamist clerics.
Asked, "In Muslim society, has an individual the right to change his religion as he wishes?" Al-Qaradhawi drew a distinction between two types of ridda: "One of the freedoms that Islam does not accept is the freedom of ridda that expands [from the realm of the individual to that of the group] and threatens the social fabric and its foundations. [On the one hand,] there is limited ridda, and [on the other,] there is ridda that expands [from the individual to the group].
"Limited ridda is the ridda of the individual who switches religion and is not interested in others. According to Islam, the punishment for this individual is [Hell] in the world to come…
"But [the other] ridda,which expands [from the individual to the group], is a ridda in which the individual who abandons Islam calls [upon others] to do likewise, [thus creating] a group whose path is not the path of society and whose goal is not the goal of the [Muslim] nation, and whose allegiance is not to the Islamic nation. Such [individuals] endanger the social fabric, and they are like the murtaddoon [apostates],who were fought by [the first Caliph] Abu Bakr together with the Companions of the Prophet [the Sahaba]. Those murtaddoon falsely claimed that they were prophets with the same inspiration as was given to the Prophet Muhammad…"
Asked what the view of the modern Muslim sage should be about the danger of ridda, Al-Qaradhawi replied: "The gravest danger facing the Muslim is the one that threatens his spiritual existence – i.e., that threatens his belief. Therefore, apostasy, or unbelief after having been Muslim, is the gravest danger to society…
"In our generation, Muslim society has been subject to violent invasions and severe attacks aimed at uprooting it, and these were manifested by the invasion of Christian missionaries that began with Western colonialism and is continuing in the Islamic world and among the Islamic communities and minorities [outside the Muslim world] … [and by] the Communist invasion that destroyed entire Muslim countries in Asia and Europe and made every effort to eliminate Islam and remove it ultimately from people's lives … and by the third and worst invasion, the secular invasion that is continuing to this day in the heart of the Islamic world, sometimes openly and sometimes covertly, and which persecutes the true Islam…
"For Muslim society to preserve its existence, it must struggle against ridda from every source and in all forms, and it must not let it spread like wildfire in a field of thorns. This is what Abu Bakr and the companions did when they fought the people of ridda who followed the false prophets… There is no escape from struggling against and restricting the individual ridda so that it will not worsen and its sparks scatter, becoming group ridda… Thus, the Muslim sages agreed that the punishment for the murtadd [who commits ridda ] … is execution…" [3]
In his book ' Islam and Secularism,' Al-Qaradhawi explains: "The Muslim sages agreed unanimously that anyone who denies something that is known in the religion … is an apostate who abandons his religion. The Imam must demand of him to repent, and recant his deviation from the righteous path, or the laws regarding the murtadd will apply to him."
The progressive Egyptian intellectual Sayyed Al-Qimni, who cited the above quote in an article in the Egyptian weekly Roz Al-Yousef, explained what it meant: "According to Al-Qaradhawi, [the ridda ] punishment does not apply only to someone who decides freely to leave Islam for what satisfies his heart and his conscience – whether this be another religion or nothing at all. It applies in principle [also] to the Muslim who clings to the laws of his religion … but disagrees with those who have appointed themselves the priests of Islam and who call themselves religious sages … especially when the disputes concern the understanding of a particular matter in Islam … because [the priests of the religion] have determined that their understanding of the holy scriptures is the only [permitted] understanding and the absolute truth, and anything else is absolute falsehood… Any attempt at new thinking in reading the scriptures is thrust away [on the pretext] of [accusations of] abandoning the religion … and the punishment for new thought or expressing a different opinion is death." [4]
The issues of ridda, takfir, and tafriq are a constant concern in the Muslim world. The following are several recent cases.
Recent Egyptian Lawsuit: Forcing a Divorce upon an Intellectual
The latest affair to take Egypt by storm concerns statements by Egyptian author and TV writer Usama Anwar Ukasha, who slandered one of the Prophet's Companions, 'Amr ibn Al-'Aas, who commanded the forces that brought Islam to Egypt. Ukasha called him "the most contemptible figure in Islam" for causing divisiveness and internal conflict in Islam. Attorney Nabih Al-Wahsh, who in the past filed a suit against Egyptian author Nawal Al-Sa'dawi, filed a similar suit to separate Ukasha from his wife, claiming that by attacking ibn Al-'Aas, Ukasha had become a murtadd who had left the fold of Islam.
Egypt's shapers of public opinion are divided on the affair. For example, Dr. Abd Al-Sabour Shahin, lecturer on Islamic law at the University of Cairo, stated that Amr ibn Al-'Aas has an important place in Islam and therefore "we will not permit any secularist to deride him." He expressed support for legal measures against Ukasha in order to put an end to the harming of the Prophet's Companions and as a deterring measure against the distortion of the image of Islam heroes.
In contrast, Islamic intellectual Gamal Al-Bana,the brother of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood movement Hassan Al-Bana, firmly rejected all demands to ostracize any individual or to make charges of apostasy, arguing that criticizing the Companions of the Prophet was legitimate. He said: "The lawsuits we are seeing today to ostracize and prevent [different] ideas recall previous eras. We must understand that Islam has given man freedom of thought. Islam's history proves that no one is immune to error except the Prophet. The Companions of the Prophet made errors, and therefore it is not right for them to be exempt from criticism. This doesn't give us the right to curse any of the Companions of the Prophet or anyone else, or harm their belief, but it does permit us to describe their deeds in political terms. It is known that 'Amr ibn Al-'Aas has a controversial political history; therefore, there is nothing to prevent us from opposing him from the historical point of view." [5]
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Islamist Circles: Sunna Deniers Who Oppose the Sunna as a Source of Religious Rulings Are Apostates
Gamal Al-Banna himself recently made headlines when the Islamic Research Institute of Al-Azhar University in Cairo banned his book, ' The Responsibility for the Failure of the Islamic State '. [6] His name also appeared in a detailed study against " Sunna deniers" that was posted on the Muslim website www.mojahid.net, the motto of which is "Life in the Way of the Prophet Is Harder than Death for His Sake" and which encourages Muslims to devote themselves to Allah in accordance with the Koran and the Sunna.
The study reviewed the history of Sunna denial that began in the second century of Islam (the eighth century CE), which sees the Koran as the only source of Islamic legislation and rejects the Sunna as an additional source for religious rulings. The study presents the various groups that rejected the Sunna, in part or in whole: the Shi'a, the Khawarij, [7] the Mu'tazila, [8] and the Orientalists. It goes on to review the development of Sunna denial in different countries, and discusses the important centers of Sunna denial in India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and Egypt.
The study also focuses on the main figures who advocated and still advocate this approach, including the prominent reformists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Egyptian scholar Muhammad Abdu (d. 1905) and his disciple, Syrian scholar Muhammad Rashid Rida (d. 1935); Egyptian writers Taha Hussein (d. 1973), Ahmad Amin (d. 1954); Tawfiq Al-Hakim (d. 1987); Libyan ruler Mu'ammar Qaddafi; former Al-Azhar University lecturer, fired for his anti- Sunna views, Ahmad Subhi Mansour; and liberal Syrian intellectual Muhammad Shahrour.
Following its comprehensive review of Sunna denial, the study determines that the doubts raised by opponents of the Sunna, past and present, should be studied and that it must be clarified that they are all disproved, and that their writings must all be subjected to a thorough examination; further, they must all be decreed apostates ( irtidad ) and Allah's laws must be applied, with the knowledge of the judicial system. The punishment for introducing forbidden innovations into Islam must be applied to those who oppose the proper Islamic traditions, and they must atone or be condemned. In addition, a world association for those wishing to defend the Sunna must be created. [9]
A similar view was expressed by Al-Azhar University member Sheikh Mahmoud 'Ashour, who stated in an interview with the Egyptian paper Al-Masri Al-Yawm: "Anyone who calls to rely on the Koran alone and ignore the Sunna of the Prophet is an apostate and has left the fold of Islam, because he has denied a definitely known [aspect] of the religion. Further, he is denying half of the religion, because the Prophet said: 'I have left for you something that if you cling to it you will never err after [my death] – [that is,] Allah's book [the Koran] and my Sunna.' The Sunna of the Prophet illuminates and interprets what the Koran says. It also includes matters that do not appear in the Koran, such as the way of prayer, pilgrimage, giving charity, and the rest of the commandments between man and Allah, and the rest of life's affairs. Anyone who says that the Sunna should be ignored is beyond doubt an apostate." [10]
Reformists: The Koranic Texts Are the Sole Authentic Source; There Should Be No Monopoly on the Interpretation of the Holy Text; Ijtihad Must Be Renewed in Line with the Present Century
The issue of rejection of the Sunna as a source of legislation was discussed in a workshop on "Islam and Reform," held in Cairo on October 5-6, 2004. The workshop's concluding statement stressed "the importance of implementing both religious and political reforms in order to achieve comprehensive reform." It called "for creating a new intellectual context for Islamic thought based on clear assumptions and unity that will take into account all the changes in Muslim society throughout the past 11 centuries." To this end, the statement said, there must be "a profound reexamination of Islamic heritage, including all the Islamic sciences established during the past three centuries of Islam – Koran commentary, the Hadith [Islamic traditions], the roots of the religion, and religious law," and "reliance on the Koranic texts as the only authentic source for the purpose of reexamining all of Islamic heritage."
The concluding statement further called for "confronting all the institutions that claim a monopoly on the religion and on the proper interpretation of the holy text [the Koran]. Instead, there is [a need for] a new trend that will establish everyone's right [to implement] Ijtihad, under the banner of Islamic reform that is right for this century." [11]
The concluding statement was signed by leading progressives and reformists in the Arab and Islamic world: Dr. Sa'd Al-Din Ibrahim, chairman of the Ibn Khaldun Center in Cairo; Egyptian intellectual Gamal Al-Banna; Egyptian intellectual Dr. Sayyed Al-Qimni; Syrian intellectual Muhammad Shahrour; Dr. Radhwan Masmoudi, executive director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy in the U.S.; Dr. Najah Kadhim, director of the Islamic Forum for Islamic Dialogue in Britain; Sharifa Macarandas, president of the Mindanao Women's League, the Philippines; Tunisian intellectual Salah Al-Din Al-Jurashi; Dr. 'Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, former director of the Faculty of Shari'a Law, Qatar University; Dr. Fabyola Badawi, director of the European Arabian Union for Democracy and Dialogue in France; and Abdallah Ali Sabri, editor-in-chief of the Yemenite Saut Al-Shura daily.
The workshop and its recommendations enraged Egypt's religious establishment. In statements to the Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai Al-'Aam, the Sheikh of Al-Azhar Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi said that the workshop had sounded "an explicit call to deny the Sunna of the Prophet, and the Al-Azhar [establishment] and [Egyptian] society rejects this." He added, "These centers [whose representatives participated in the workshop] have a destructive influence on Egyptian society, and [their activity] must be stopped and [their representatives] must be brought to trial… This is an explicit call to abandon the main source from among the sources of religious law in Islam – the Sunna of the Prophet. This is a danger that some of [our] foreign enemies are interested [in promoting]." [12]
In response to Sheikh Tantawi's statements, the Ibn Khaldun Center issued a communiqué arguing that it was not seeking to abolish the Sunna of the Prophet, but calling to issue religious rulings based solely on the Koran when disputes arose. In answer to Sheikh Tantawi's statement that the workshop participants were "a group of separatists, one of whom was in the past charged with treason," the communiqué explained that Tantawi was obviously referring to a case against Dr. Sa'd Al-Din Ibrahim and the Ibn Khaldun Center employees, and clarified that Dr. Sa'd Al-Din Ibrahim had not been charged with treason but with other false charges and the Egyptian Supreme Court had found him and the center's employees innocent.
The communiqué asked: "Is the Al-Azhar Sheikh entitled to accuse some of the Muslim intellectuals of separating from Islam? Doesn't that mean accusing us of apostasy and endangering our lives? Weren't similar charges responsible for the assassination of Faraj Foda, and for the assassination attempt on the world-renowned author Nagib Mahfouz? We call on Al-Azhar not to descend to the path of takfir taken by the violent and extremist groups…" [13]
About a month after the workshop,Al-Azhar Sheikh Tantawi again attacked the Sunna deniers who see the Koran as the sole source for religious rulings, calling them "ignoramuses, liars, and hypocrites" and warning the public not to listen to their views, which were aimed at fomenting confusion. In statements delivered on November 5, 2004 at a conference organized by the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Sheikh Tantawi said, "The attack on the Sunna is a means employed by the enemies of Islam for the [upcoming] attack on the Koran, because the Sunna is only a clarification of the laws appearing in the Koran… Thus, anyone who raises doubts about the prophetic Sunna as a source of legislation is acting according to a plan that is hostile to Islam… We have no life, future, or greatness among the societies except by clinging to the Koran and the Sunna. It is incumbent upon us all to stand in one rank and in one thought against anyone who attacks and denies the Sunna, because the laws [regarding matters] between man and Allah are not correct without the Sunna that explains in detail the rules and clarifies the things that are important." [14]
The Critical Approach to the Koran Is Also Considered Apotasy
Islamic circles refer to the critical or scientific approach to the Koran as apostasy as well. For example, a weekly talk show on the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV channel dealt with removing certain Koranic verses from the school curricula in Arab and Muslim countries. Al-Azhar University lecturer Ibrahim Al-Khuli accused a program guest, the progressive author and journalist Shaker Al-Nabulsi, of denying Allah, and said that he should be expelled from the fold of the Muslim community.
Speaking by phone from the U.S., Dr. Nabulsi stated: "There should be a distinction between the Koranic chapters concerning belief, most of which were revealed in Mecca during the first 10 years [of the Prophet Muhammad's activity] and the chapters dealing with legislation or the life of the Prophet and his relations with his wives and his Companions and so on. That is, there are chapters that cut across history, and these are the verses revealed at Mecca … and there are circumstantial verses of legislation that were revealed at Al-Madina as a result of events that took place 1,400 years ago and which are no longer in existence. Frankly, there are many verses that we call political and military verses, that is, 'verses of the sword,' that are connected to circumstances that existed in the past but exist no longer. The verses revealed at Mecca, about the Jews, the Christians, and the People of the Book, for example … were usually verses of support for them, but the verses concerning the Jews and Christians at the stages of the revelation at Al-Madina were contrary to these verses. Why? Because the verses revealed at Al-Madina were the result of the changing political relations [of the People of the Book and] the Muslims…
"Politics are fluid, not static; therefore, the laws built on a political foundation are also subject to movement, and are not static. On the contrary, most of the verses revealed at Al-Madina regarding this matter [the People of the Book] contradict each other…
"What is happening now in the Arab world [the debate over removing Koranic verses from the school curricula] is not the removal of the permanent verses of belief that cross history, but an attempt not to emphasize or teach the circumstantial verses that incite to accusing the other of apostasy and to hatred of the other. Why was [the Second Caliph] Omar ibn Khattab, 1,400 years ago, more courageous than us when he eliminated [even] the verses connected to the heart of the faith, not [only] circumstantial verses… Why was Omar ibn Khattab capable of doing this 1,400 years ago, while today [Ibrahim] Al-Khuli calls anyone who eliminates any verse or chapter of the Koran an apostate…?"
Ibrahim Al-Khuli rejected Al-Nabulsi's statements out of hand, saying "He doesn't understand [Caliph] Omar, and he spoke nonsense that is unworthy of a response. Neither Omar nor any of the Sahaba ever dared to eliminate even a single letter of the Koran. What changed was the circumstances of the implementation [of the words of the Koran]…"
According to Al-Khuli, "Al-Nabulsi and Nasr [Hamid] Abu Zayd and their gangs speak of the historic aspect of Koranic scripture… Nasr Abu Zayd went so far as to say that the Koran is a human text that developed and crystallized, and is a cultural product. This is a lie, [and therefore] the Egyptian court's sentence regarding him was the sentence of ridda – and had he not left Egypt he would have been executed… Al-Nabulsi is not worth holding a discussion with, or of me mentioning him. He lied when he said that there are Koranic verses that contradict one another. When you say that in the Koran there are verses contradicting one another, you commit apostasy, and you leave the fold of the [Muslim] community through its widest gate. I take responsibility for these words." [15]
* Aluma Dankowitz is Director of MEMRI's Reform Project.
[1] IRNA (Iran), February 12, 2005.
[2] See article by liberal Tunisian intellectual Lafif Lakhdar, http://www.rezgar.com/debat/show.art.asp?t=2&aid=8336, July 1, 2003.
[3] Al-Ahram Al-Arabi (Egypt), July 3, 2004.
[4] Roz Al-Yusouf (Egypt), September 17, 2004.
[5] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), October 19, 2004.
[6] Al-Hayat, London, September 9, 2004.
[7] Khawarij, the first religious opposition in Islam, was formed when a group of Muslims left the camp of the Fourth Caliph 'Ali bin Abu Taleb at the Battle of Sifin in 657.
[8] Mu'tazila, a theoretical rationalistic stream of the 9th and 10th centuries, sought to set out the principles of religious faith in logical and rational formulae.
[9] http://mojahid.net/ib/index.php?s=880b3a65504793196a9941ae472f7bf5&showtopic=4332&st
[10] Al-Masri Al-Yawm (Egypt), October 25, 2004, as cited in Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London), October 26, 2004.
[11] Ijtihad, or using individual judgment, was suspended in the 10th century by a consensus of ulema (Islamic clerics), and its resumption has not been permitted since. For the full text of the recommendations, see http://www.mengos.net/events/04newsevents/egypt/october/ibnkhaldun-English.htm
[12] Al-Rai Al-'Aam (Kuwait), October 8, 2004.
[13] http://www.hrinfo.net/egypt/makal/pr041010.shtml
[14] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, London, November 7, 2004.
[15] Al-Jazeera TV, Qatar, October 5, 2004.
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Sharia 101, ok, what about western civilization 101, thats all that matters.
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Sharia 101, ok, what about western civilization 101, thats all that matters.
That's pretty much my intent. The left wishes to empower sharia under their cultish "multiculturalism" concept, thus destroying the concepts of western freedom that allow them their existence. Ironic, no?
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Sharia 101, ok, what about western civilization 101, thats all that matters.
That's pretty much my intent. The left wishes to empower sharia under their cultish "multiculturalism" concept, thus destroying the concepts of western freedom that allow them their existence. Ironic, no?
That is not true at all. Sharia Law is not cultural so much as it is religious insanity. There is a big difference. I fall to the left in my political views but I can tell you that the last thing I want is Sharia Law. You know what else I don't want? Biblical Law. I don't want it for the same reasons. The bible is filled with dangerous superstitious nonsense that will destroy the very things this country stands for.
I was talking to a muslim just the other day about this subject. He went off for a time about how stupid other cultures were, and then he went on to say: "but you know the dumbest culture of all? Muslims! They have the wealth of the world in their hands and all they can do is fight over a book!" He is pakistani. He is totally against Sharia Law. If it were a cultural thing you would think he would have a different viewpoint on the subject right?
Why not incest? Because of very clear health risks. Why not polygamy? I don't know, but you are probably on to something when you say that monogamy worked so we kept it. I think what you are invoking is called "the slippery slope," and it is a well known logical fallacy. There is no evidence what-so-ever to indicate that allowing gay marriage will lead to incest or polygamy being legalized.
All of that being said, you are correct when you state that Sharia Law should not be protected behind the curtain of multiculturalism. We do agree on something after all GM! :D
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Why not incest? Because of very clear health risks.
MD: Agreed.
Why not polygamy? I don't know, but you are probably on to something when you say that monogamy worked so we kept it.
MD: Can it not be argued that polygamy has worked in certain times and places and that those who believe that God say polygamy is good show be allowed to follow their religion? How do we answer that?
I think what you are invoking is called "the slippery slope," and it is a well known logical fallacy. There is no evidence what-so-ever to indicate that allowing gay marriage will lead to incest or polygamy being legalized.
MD: I must have missed the exposition of this point. Would you please be so kind as to break down for me why the slippery slope is a logical fallacy? Furthermore, I challenge your assertion that there is no evidence that there is building legal pressure for polygamy. I cannot quote the citations, but it is my understanding that there are cases beginning to wend their way through the legal system pushing for exactly that.
All of that being said, you are correct when you state that Sharia Law should not be protected behind the curtain of multiculturalism. We do agree on something after all GM!
MD: I'm delighted we agree that some of the tenets of Sharia are, to use your term, "religious insanity". However, what is necessary and what remains to you/us to do is to articulate/define where the boundary between relgious freedom/tolerance and what we will not tolerate lays.
Care to take a stab at it? :-)
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Can it not be argued that polygamy has worked in certain times and places and that those who believe that God say polygamy is good show be allowed to follow their religion? How do we answer that?
I don't really know that it ever worked. People did it, but the historical record doesn't really contain much on the personal relationships of the people involved. As for what to do about it in the modern day... hmm... this is a tough question and I am certainly not advocating making it legal. At least not without serious debate and consideration. My instinct is that this infringes on the rights of the females involved... although what do you say to people that want to be subservient? Do you let them? I am interested to hear others ideas on this subject.
I must have missed the exposition of this point. Would you please be so kind as to break down for me why the slippery slope is a logical fallacy? Furthermore, I challenge your assertion that there is no evidence that there is building legal pressure for polygamy. I cannot quote the citations, but it is my understanding that there are cases beginning to wend their way through the legal system pushing for exactly that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
GM implied (maybe I am wrong here?) that gay marriage would somehow lead to incest and polygamy.
It's nothing I want or support, but again, if we want to live in the "post-modern, post-moral" age the left advocates, then why any limits on anything? Just call it a lifestyle choice and be done with it.
There is no causal chain between gay marriage, incest, and polygamy. Not that I have seen. This is the "slippery slope argument." One thing leads to another, and although on outward appearance they would seem to be related, there really isn't any hard evidence to support it. Consider this:
"I don't want my son to become an undertaker because it may lead him to necrophilia."
The profession of mortician, and the the condition of necrophilia have commonalities... the "handling" of dead bodies, but is there really a causal relationship between the two? Not really.
http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/slippery.htm
That last link is an interesting article I found when I googled the slippery slope. I have not read the entire thing yet but plan on it. It goes into the legal ramifications of the slippery slope argument.
Now that I think about it GM is also setting up the "false dichotomy," by claiming that all people on the left advocate the "post-modern, post-moral" lifestyle. This turns it into a black and white issue which clearly is not the case. People don't fall into two categories. I side with the liberals on a lot of things... but on an equal amount I side with conservatives... I don't think intelligent people vote purely along party lines, or definitions like "conservative" or "liberal." I suppose this is a different subject though...
I'm delighted we agree that some of the tenets of Sharia are, to use your term, "religious insanity". However, what is necessary and what remains to you/us to do is to articulate/define where the boundary between religious freedom/tolerance and what we will not tolerate lays.
Care to take a stab at it? :-)
I think we make this question much more difficult than it really is. You have every right to marry whoever you want, but you don't have the right to force a marriage on someone else. You have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But so do I, and that means that when your beliefs infringe on my rights we shouldn't tolerate it. Additionally, Sharia Law is based on religious belief. Religion has no place in the Law, or in the Government. We moved away from that model, and rightly so. It was oppressive and lead to such joyous time as the dark ages. And such merry events like witch burnings. All of this is pretty much covered in our constitution, and what a work of genius it is :)
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Sharia 101, ok, what about western civilization 101, thats all that matters.
That's pretty much my intent. The left wishes to empower sharia under their cultish "multiculturalism" concept, thus destroying the concepts of western freedom that allow them their existence. Ironic, no?
That is not true at all. Sharia Law is not cultural so much as it is religious insanity.
**Call it as you wish, but sharia is part of the islamic construct, where there is no divide between church and state.**
There is a big difference. I fall to the left in my political views but I can tell you that the last thing I want is Sharia Law. You know what else I don't want? Biblical Law. I don't want it for the same reasons. The bible is filled with dangerous superstitious nonsense that will destroy the very things this country stands for.
**The big difference is that there is the separation between church and state in christian theology. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's....." Unlike islam, there in no mandate to conquer the world and impose christianity.**
I was talking to a muslim just the other day about this subject. He went off for a time about how stupid other cultures were, and then he went on to say: "but you know the dumbest culture of all? Muslims! They have the wealth of the world in their hands and all they can do is fight over a book!" He is pakistani. He is totally against Sharia Law. If it were a cultural thing you would think he would have a different viewpoint on the subject right?
**No, many muslims chafe at the totalitarian nature of islam, but most dare not speak out least the face imprisonment of death, even in western nations.**
Why not incest? Because of very clear health risks.
**Again, as I stated earlier, there is no requirement that reproduction occur as an element of the crime. It's just as illegal for an elderly brother to marry his post-menopausal sister as those capable of bearing children.**
Why not polygamy? I don't know, but you are probably on to something when you say that monogamy worked so we kept it. I think what you are invoking is called "the slippery slope," and it is a well known logical fallacy. There is no evidence what-so-ever to indicate that allowing gay marriage will lead to incest or polygamy being legalized.
**NAMBLA cites the gay political movement as a model for the push for the social acceptance and legalization of what they are trying to label "intergenerational sex". Of course, an adult male marrying a 6 year old is already approved under sharia.**
All of that being said, you are correct when you state that Sharia Law should not be protected behind the curtain of multiculturalism. We do agree on something after all GM! :D
I'm glad we can agree on this point.
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**Call it as you wish, but sharia is part of the islamic construct, where there is no divide between church and state.**
So lets do our best to keep that wall of separation in tact.
**The big difference is that there is the separation between church and state in christian theology. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's....." Unlike islam, there in no mandate to conquer the world and impose christianity.**
I am familiar with that passage in the bible, but the christian dominionists don't seem to pay it any heed. Much like the rest of the bible they cherry pick the parts they like and ignore the rest. Let me be clear that I have no problem with christians for the most part, but there are some very scary people that number amongst them. They have a clear goal. They seek to overthrow, or infiltrate the American government and take us back to "biblical values." This would be a theocracy no different than islamic countries have.
**No, many muslims chafe at the totalitarian nature of islam, but most dare not speak out least the face imprisonment of death, even in western nations.**
Well, we seem to be in a unique position to help them get out from under that tyranny... and I am glad in many ways that we are.
**Again, as I stated earlier, there is no requirement that reproduction occur as an element of the crime. It's just as illegal for an elderly brother to marry his post-menopausal sister as those capable of bearing children.**
And it is illegal to tie your alligator to the fire hydrant in Detroit... It makes sense, but do we really need it? The law is not broken so it goes largely unnoticed. I am ok with that. For whatever reason, incest is illegal and I am glad.
**NAMBLA cites the gay political movement as a model for the push for the social acceptance and legalization of what they are trying to label "intergenerational sex". Of course, an adult male marrying a 6 year old is already approved under sharia.**
And everyone damn well knows their request is completely absurd. Again, unless such a thing is actually considered, the causal connection simply doesn't exist. No such law is on the books in this country, nor is any such law being voted on. Why? Because everyone knows that it would be wrong. Do I really need to go into the reasons why?
I'm glad we can agree on this point.
I bet we agree on more than we disagree. But those conversations are much less engaging right?
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**Call it as you wish, but sharia is part of the islamic construct, where there is no divide between church and state.**
So lets do our best to keep that wall of separation in tact.
***Agreed.***
**The big difference is that there is the separation between church and state in christian theology. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's....." Unlike islam, there in no mandate to conquer the world and impose christianity.**
I am familiar with that passage in the bible, but the christian dominionists don't seem to pay it any heed.
***Who are these christian dominionists? What sect of christianity are they and what percentage of the US and world population of christians fall into this grouping? Please cite your sources.***
Much like the rest of the bible they cherry pick the parts they like and ignore the rest. Let me be clear that I have no problem with christians for the most part, but there are some very scary people that number amongst them. They have a clear goal. They seek to overthrow, or infiltrate the American government and take us back to "biblical values." This would be a theocracy no different than islamic countries have.
***Again, please cite your sources on this group, including numbers.***
**No, many muslims chafe at the totalitarian nature of islam, but most dare not speak out least the face imprisonment of death, even in western nations.**
Well, we seem to be in a unique position to help them get out from under that tyranny... and I am glad in many ways that we are.
**Again, as I stated earlier, there is no requirement that reproduction occur as an element of the crime. It's just as illegal for an elderly brother to marry his post-menopausal sister as those capable of bearing children.**
And it is illegal to tie your alligator to the fire hydrant in Detroit... It makes sense, but do we really need it? The law is not broken so it goes largely unnoticed. I am ok with that. For whatever reason, incest is illegal and I am glad.
**NAMBLA cites the gay political movement as a model for the push for the social acceptance and legalization of what they are trying to label "intergenerational sex". Of course, an adult male marrying a 6 year old is already approved under sharia.**
And everyone damn well knows their request is completely absurd.
***Is it? 20 years ago the same thing would have been said about gay marriage.***
Again, unless such a thing is actually considered, the causal connection simply doesn't exist. No such law is on the books in this country, nor is any such law being voted on. Why? Because everyone knows that it would be wrong. Do I really need to go into the reasons why?
***According to post-modernism, everything is just a cultural construct. There is no right or wrong. Gender is a construct, age is a construct.***
I'm glad we can agree on this point.
I bet we agree on more than we disagree. But those conversations are much less engaging right?
Probably.
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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31465_UC_Irvine_Invites_Muslim_Brotherhood_Leader_to_Speak
University of California-Jihad.
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**Watch what you say about islam, kaffir.**
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,432502,00.html
U.N. Anti-Blasphemy Resolution Curtails Free Speech, Critics Say
Friday, October 03, 2008
By Jennifer Lawinski
Religious groups and free-speech advocates are banding together to fight a United Nations resolution they say is being used to spread Sharia law to the Western world and to intimidate anyone who criticizes Islam.
The non-binding resolution on “Combating the Defamation of Religion” is intended to curtail speech that offends religion -- particularly Islam.
Pakistan and the Organization of the Islamic Conference introduced the measure to the U.N. Human Rights Council in 1999. It was amended to include religions other than Islam, and it has passed every year since.
In 2005, Yemen successfully brought a similar resolution before the General Assembly. Now the 192-nation Assembly is set to vote on it again.
The non-binding Resolution 62/145, which was adopted in 2007, says it “notes with deep concern the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities in the aftermath of 11 September 2001.”
It “stresses the need to effectively combat defamation of all religions and incitement to religious hatred, against Islam and Muslims in particular.”
But some critics believe the resolution is a dangerous threat to freedom of speech everywhere.
The U.S. government mission in Geneva, in a statement, told the U.N. Human Rights Council in July that “defamation-related laws have been abused by governments and used to restrict human rights” around the world, and sometimes Westerners have been caught in the web.
Critics give some recent news events as examples of how the U.N. "blasphemy resolution" has emboldened Islamic authorities and threatened Westerners:
-- On Oct. 3 in Great Britain, three men were charged for plotting to kill the publisher of the novel "The Jewel of Medina," which gives a fictional account of the Prophet Muhammad and his child bride. FOXNews.com reported U.S. publisher Random House Inc., was going to release the book but stopped it from hitting shelves after it claimed that “credible and unrelated sources” said the book could incite violence by a “small, radical segment.”
-- An Afghan student is on death row for downloading an article about the role of women in Islam, FOXNews.com also reported.
-- In December 2007 “a court reportedly sentenced two foreigners to six months in prison for allegedly marketing a book deemed offensive to Aisha, one of the Prophet Muhammad's wives,” the U.S. government said.
-- A British teacher was sentenced to 15 days in jail in Sudan for offending Islam by allowing students to name the class teddy bear Muhammad in November 2007.
-- In February 2007 in Egypt an Internet blogger was sentenced to four years in prison for writing a post that critiqued Islam.
-- In 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered after the release of his documentary highlighting the abuse of Muslim women.
“It’s obviously intended to have an intimidating effect on people expressing criticism of radical Islam, and the idea that you can have a defamation of a religion like this, I think, is a concept fundamentally foreign to our system of free expression in the United States,” said former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton.
Passing the resolution year after year gives it clout, Bolton said. “In places where U.N. decisions are viewed as more consequential than they are in the U.S., they’re trying to build up brick-by-brick that disagreement with this resolution is unacceptable.”
Kevin “Shamus” Hasson, founder and president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a public interest law firm in Washington that opposes the resolution, said it is a slap in the face of human rights law.
“The whole idea of the defamation of religion is a Trojan horse for something else," Hasson said. "When you talk about defamation, you talk about people being defamed and people being libeled, but ideas can’t be defamed. Ideas don’t have rights, people have rights.”
He said the resolution is a shield for Islamic fundamentalists who retaliate against perceived offenses and want to make Islamic Sharia law the law of the land. He said the resolution passes under the guise of protecting religion, but it actually endangers religious minorities in Islamic countries.
“Who could possibly be in favor of defamation?” Hasson said. “God may well punish blasphemy in the hereafter, but it’s not the government’s job to police in the here and now.”
Paula Schriefer, advocacy director for Freedom House, a member of the Coalition to Defend Free Speech, agrees.
“You have to remember that many of the governments that are pushing forward this idea are not democratic governments,” she said. “Citizens of Pakistan or Egypt, who have been two of the ringleaders of this movement, are frequently put in prison or arrested. Even if they’re not arrested, the fear of being arrested creates an environment of self-censorship.”
Floyd Abrams, Visiting Professor of First Amendment Law at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, said that while Americans are protected by the Constitution at home, the U.N. resolution could affect those who travel to countries with anti-free-speech laws and isolate Westerners who oppose restricting religious dialogue.
Neither the Pakistani, the Indonesian nor the Egyptian missions to the U.N. responded to requests for comment. All three are members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
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For a plethora of examples, see the closely related thread "Islam vs. Free Speech".
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Muhammad’s Dead Poets Society
By James M. Arlandson
The American Thinker | Wednesday, March 15, 2006
The peaceful non-assassinations of mockers
In their replies to the uproar over satirical depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslim spokespersons who have access to the national media have recently withheld some valuable but unpleasant information about early Islam. Killing those who ridicule Muhammad is in the Quran.
On national television, Feb 2, 2006, Ibrahim Hooper, a leader of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), spoke only of the forgiveness and kindness of his prophet.
HOOPER: Let me tell you how the Prophet Muhammad responded to attacks on himself.
There was a lady who threw garbage in the path of the prophet on a daily basis. One day, she didn’t do it. The prophet went to inquire about her health, because he thought she might be sick. This lady ended up converting to Islam. So, that‘s how you respond to people who attack you, with forgiveness and with kindness. (Source)
On February 8, 2006, Amir Taheri, a reputable journalist who often explains Islam to the West, used the absolutist word “never” in the context of chopping off the heads of satirists during Islam’s founding.
The truth is that Islam has always had a sense of humor and has never called for chopping heads as the answer to satirists. Muhammad himself pardoned a famous Meccan poet who had lampooned him for more than a decade. (Source)
On February 9, 2006, a journalist for al-Jazeera, Abderrahim Foukara, appeared on the Charlie Rose Show saying about the same thing. After Muhammad conquered Mecca “peacefully” (in early AD 630), he forgave a satirical poet. Never mind that twenty-eight Meccans died in the “peaceful” conquest, after their city—weakened by eight years of Muslim raids on Meccan trade—was surrounded by 10,000 jihadists. [1]
In truth, however, while Muhammad forgave a poet and a singing girl right after his conquest of Mecca, he killed satirical poets more often than he forgave. Muhammad violently created a dead poets society of his own. He also killed non-poetic or ordinary mockers, and he used a poet to mock a tribe of Jews just before their conquest, slaughter, and enslavement.
These spokesmen for Islam presented only peaceful aspects. This is not full disclosure. This is wrong. The truth about all of Islam must be publicized, if we want to understand this religion fully. This article is intended to balance out the picture of Islam from the one that these spokespersons have presented.
The assassination of satirical poets
Once Muhammad reached Medina in AD 622 and gradually grew in military power, his tone and outlook changed. The following murders occur after the Hijrah.
(1) March 624: Al-Nadr bin al-Harith
Before Muhammad’s Hijrah, he used to sit in the assembly and invite the Meccans to Allah, citing the Quran and warning them of God’s punishment for mocking his prophets. A Meccan named Al-Nadr bin al-Harith would then follow him and speak about heroes and kings of Persia, saying, “By God, Muhammad cannot tell a better story than I, and his talk is only of old fables which he has copied as I have.” On other days al-Nadr would interrupt Muhammad until the prophet silenced him.
It was Nadr’s bad fortune to join Mecca’s army, riding north to protect their caravan, which Muhammad attacked at the Battle of Badr in AD 624. It pitted about 320 Muslims against about 1,000 Meccans, near the north-south trade route following the Red Sea. The story-telling polytheist was captured, and on Muhammad’s return journey back to Medina, Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, at Muhammad’s order, beheaded him, instead of getting some possible ransom money. He was one of two prisoners who were executed and not allowed to be ransomed by their clans—all because he harassed Muhammad and wrote poems and told stories critiquing him. [2]
(2) March 624: Uqbah bin Abu Muayt
A similar story as that of Nadr can be told about Uqba bin Abu Muayt. He too harassed and mocked Muhammad in Mecca and wrote derogatory verses about him. He too was captured during the Battle of Badr, and Muhammad ordered him to be executed. “But who will look after my children, O Muhammad?” Uqba cried with anguish. “Hell,” retorted the Prophet coldly. Then the sword of one of his followers cut through Uqba’s neck.
After the prophet’s victory at Badr, he was not always magnanimous. This passage finds him mocking the enemy dead in the middle of the night, as their bodies lie motionless in a pit:
. . . The apostle’s companions heard him saying in the middle of the night, “O people of the pit: O Utbah, O Shayba, O Ummayya, O Abu Jahl,” enumerating all who had been thrown in the pit, “Have you found what God promises you is true? I have found that what my Lord promised me is true.” The Muslims said, “Are you calling to dead bodies?” He answered: “you cannot hear what I say better than they, but they cannot answer me. [3]
The reliable hadith collector and editor Bukhari confirms Ibn Ishaq’s account.
These were the battles of Allah’s Apostle (which he fought), and while mentioning (the Badr battle) he said, “While the corpses of the pagans were being thrown into the well, Allah’s Apostle said (to them), ‘Have you found what your Lord promised true?” ‘Abdullah said, “Some of the Prophet’s companions said, “O Allah’s Apostle! You are addressing dead people.’ Allah’s Apostle replied, ‘You do not hear what I am saying, better than they.’ (Bukhari )
In this tradition the prophet is shown taunting the dead in a well, not a pit, and he seems to have done this in broad daylight. Maybe these are two different episodes in Ibn Ishaq and Bukhari; regardless, they convey the same unpleasant message. [4]
(3) March 624: Asma bint Marwan
She was a poetess who belonged to a tribe of Medinan pagans. She composed a poem blaming them for obeying a stranger (Muhammad) and for not taking the initiative to attack him by surprise. Perhaps in March 624, when the Allah-inspired Prophet heard what she had said, he asked, “Who will rid me of Marwan’s daughter?” A member of her husband’s tribe volunteered and crept into her house that night. She had five children, and the youngest was sleeping at her breast. The assassin gently removed the child, drew his sword, and plunged it into her, killing her in her sleep. [5]
(4) September 624: Kab bin al-Ashraf
Kab b. al-Ashraf had a mixed ancestry. His father came from a nomadic Arab tribe, but his mother was a Jew from the powerful al-Nadir tribe in Medina. He lived as a member of his mother’s tribe. He heard about the Muslim victory at the battle of Badr, and he was disgusted, for he thought Muhammad the newcomer to Medina was a trouble-maker and divisive. Kab had the gift of poetry, and after the Battle of Badr he traveled down to Mecca, apparently stopping by Badr, witnessing the aftermath. Arriving in Mecca, he wrote a widely circulated poem, a hostile lament, over the dead of Mecca.
Angered by the poems and now able to strike back after the Battle of Badr, Muhammad had had enough. He asked, “Who would rid me of [Kab]?” Five Muslims volunteered, one of whom was Kab’s foster-brother named Abu Naila. They informed him, “O apostle of God, we shall have to tell lies.” He answered, “Say what you like, for you are free in the matter.”
After deceitfully gaining Kab’s trust over time, a Muslim yelled to the four other murderers, “Smite the enemy of God!” Though outnumbered, Kab mounted a strong defense, so their swords were ineffective. Finally, one of the conspirators remembered his dagger, stabbed Kab in the belly, and then bore it down until it reached his genitals, killing him.
They made it back to Muhammad. They saluted the prophet as he stood praying, and he came out to them. They told him that the mission was accomplished. Early Muslim historian Tabari (d. 923) reports that the five Muslim thugs severed Kab’s head and brought it to Muhammad. [6]
(5) July-August 625: A one-eyed, unnamed Bedouin
In revenge for an ambush on some Muslim missionaries, Muhammad sent Amr bin Umayya and a companion to assassinate Abu Sufyan, a leader of the Meccans. This shows that the Prophet could get caught up in the cycle of violence that went on endlessly in seventh-century Arab culture. Umayyah failed in his attempt, and he had to flee under pursuit, hiding in a cave, murdering a man named Ibn Malik along the way. As the pursuit was dying down, a tall, one-eyed, unnamed Bedouin entered the cave, driving some sheep. Umayyah and the Bedouin introduced each other. After they settled down, the shepherd sang a simple two-line song in defiance of Muslims and Islam.
Unfortunately for this Bedouin, he was in the cave with a radical Muslim, who said: “You will soon see!” The Bedouin fell asleep, snoring. Umayyah recounts what he did: . . . “I went to him and killed him in the most dreadful way that anybody has ever been killed. I leaned over him, stuck the end of my bow into his good eye, and thrust it down until it came out of the back of his neck.” He fled back to Muhammad, who said, “Well done!” The account ends: The prophet “prayed for me [Umayyah] to be blessed.” [7]
(6) After January 630: One singing-girl
After Muhammad conquered Mecca in early AD 630, a conquest that saw some bloodshed of twenty-eight Meccans, he showed amnesty to the newly conquered. But on the list of those excluded from amnesty was not only Abdullah b. Katal, collector of legal alms, who had killed his slave for incompetence, apostatized from Islam, and took the money back to Mecca. But his two singing-girls who sang satirical verses about Muhammad, which Abdullah had composed, were also excluded from the list. He was killed, even though he was clinging to the curtain of the Kabah shrine. And one of the girls was killed, but the other ran away until she asked for pardon from Muhammad, who forgave her. [8]
(7) After February 630: close call for Kab bin Zuhayr
Confident with the victory over Mecca, Muhammad returned to Medina a hero and firmly in charge of the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula. In this context Muhammad nearly murdered another poet who satirized Muhammad and Muslims, Kab bin Zuhayr (here called Zuhayr to distinguish him from Kab bin al-Ashraf, above, no. 4). Zuhayr’s brother wrote him that Muhammad had killed a number of satirical poets during his conquest of Mecca, but that the Prophet would forgive a poet who came to him in repentance, which really meant becoming a Muslim. His brother told him that the poets who were left had fled in all directions.
“If you have any use for your life, then come to the apostle quickly, for he does not kill anyone who comes to him in repentance,” wrote the brother, continuing: “if you do not do that, then get to a safe place.”
Finding no way out, Zuhayr wrote a letter extolling Muhammad. Soon afterwards, he traveled up to Medina to ask for security as a Muslim. Muhammad was saying his morning prayers, and a friend took Zuhayr into Muhammad’s presence. “Would you accept him as such if he came to you?” his friend asked. The Prophet said he would.
As Zuhayr came into the Prophet’s presence, one of the Ansars (helpers or native Medinans who helped Muhammad after his Hijrah) leaped upon Zuhayr and asked Muhammad if he could behead the enemy of God, for some of Zuhayr’s verses mocked the Ansars, too. The apostle said to leave him alone, for Zuhayr was breaking free from his past. The implication is clear: if Muhammad had caught Zuhayr before his repentance, Muhammad would have allowed him to be beheaded. Either he converts or he dies—for writing derogatory poetry.
What is remarkable about the anecdote is how the morning prayer provides the setting for a Muslim leaping on a poet and threatening to cut his head off, as if this is an ordinary day and act. [9]
Murder of ordinary mockers
Two examples of murder demonstrate that Muhammad did not like mockery even by non-poets. Any ole insulter is vulnerable in original Islam.
(1) A blind man murders his slave-wife
Narrated Abdullah Ibn Abbas:
A blind man had a slave-mother who used to abuse the Prophet . . . and disparage him. He forbade her but she did not stop. He rebuked her but she did not give up her habit. One night she began to slander the Prophet . . . and abuse him. So he took a dagger, placed it on her belly, pressed it, and killed her. A child who came between her legs was smeared with the blood that was there. When the morning came, the Prophet was informed about it.
He assembled the people and said: I adjure by Allah the man who has done this action and I adjure him by my right to him that he should stand up. Jumping over the necks of the people and trembling, the man stood up.
He sat before the Prophet . . . and said: Apostle of Allah! I am her master; she used to abuse you and disparage you. I forbade her, but she did not stop, and I rebuked her, but she did not abandon her habit. I have two sons like pearls from her, and she was my companion. Last night she began to abuse and disparage you. So I took a dagger, put it on her belly and pressed it till I killed her.
Thereupon the Prophet . . . said: Oh be witness, no retaliation is payable for her blood. [10]
The last line of this hadith shows Muhammad not allowing even blood-wit (compensation for bloodshed) to be paid on her behalf. Apparently, she was worth nothing, even though she bore the blind man two sons.
(2) An unnamed man strangles an unnamed Jewish woman.
Narrated Ali ibn Abu Talib:
A Jewess used to abuse the Prophet . . . and disparage him. A man strangled her till she died. The Apostle of Allah . . . declared that no recompense was payable for her blood. (Abu Dawud)
This hadith communicates that a Jewish woman is worth nothing. In early Islamic sources, Jews too often appear as extra-bad. Who was killed? Who is a murderer? A Jew?
That’s no big deal. Of course. That’s to be expected. So what else is new?
Is it any wonder why so many Muslims who are educated in their source documents hate Jews? How can Muhammad and his sacred texts tell them to stop?
Regardless, in both murder cases, no one was arrested or executed, like-for-like. No one was even scolded. The murderers were let go on the grounds that insulting the Prophet deserves death. The translator of Abu Dawud informs us that all Jews or any non-Muslims who insult the Prophet should also be killed (vol. 3, note 3800).
Muhammad uses a satirical poet
Muhammad is fresh off a victory against a coalition of 10,000 Meccans and their allies in AD 627. After they depart, the last remaining major tribe of Jews, the Qurayza, is left alone, without allies. During Muhammad’s twenty-five-day siege of this tribe, which resulted in the slaughter of the men and pubescent boys and the wholesale enslavement of the women and children, he employed a poet to abuse them.
The Prophet said to Hassan, “Abuse them (with your poems), and Gabriel is with you (i.e. supports you).” (Through another group of sub-narrators) Al-Bara bin Azib said, “On the day of Quraiza’s (besiege), Allah’s Apostle said to Hassan bin Thabit, ‘Abuse them (with your poems), and Gabriel is with you (i.e. supports you).’” (Bukhari)
This shows how valued poetry was in seventh-century Arabia. In the absence of mass media, gathering around and listening to poets was an opportunity to persuade, smear, mock, praise, and otherwise influence large numbers. Now that Muhammad has the power, he employed a satirical poet without fear of reprisal. In fact, he refers to the Jews as brothers of monkeys, citing a legend that he believed, namely, that God turned some disobedient Jews into apes. (see also Ibn Ishaq pp. 461-62).
Conclusion
While it is true that Muhammad forgave a satirical poet and a singing girl (see no. 7 in “Assassination of satirical poets,” above), he murdered more than he forgave. Omitting the violent episodes in the Prophet’s life, the spokespersons for Islam act irresponsibly in their television appearances. Possibly their strategy is to make Islam and its Prophet seem only peaceful and loving, perhaps so that the uninformed may be drawn to this religion or at least not be turned off by it.
However, aggressive Islam is on the march. The riots over the cartoons are only one symptom. The stakes are high. Thus, the peaceful spokespersons’ partial presentation of Islam is misleading at best and dangerous at worse. When or if Islam gets a foothold in a region on the basis of “peace and love,” what happens when the hard line and traditional (not to mention nonviolent and violent fanatics) Muslims come to the region later and impose all sorts of violent laws and policies and practices in the Quran and hadith? Honesty demands full historical and scriptural disclosure, even if it hurts.
James M. Arlandson can be reached at jamesmarlandson@hotmail.com.
Endnotes:
[1] Go here for more information, and scroll down to no. 3, looking for a critique of Karen Armstrong. The transcript is available by purchase only. Here is a video clip of the discussion between Foukara, Rose, and others.
[2] Source: Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, (trans. A. Guillaume, Oxford UP, 1955, 2004), pp. 136, 163, 181, 262, 308. Reputable historians today consider Ibn Ishaq to be a reliable source of early Islam, though they may disagree on his chronology and miraculous elements.
[3] Ibn Ishaq, p. 306
[4] Bukhari, Spoils of War (online source); Muslim nos. 4421, 4422, and 4424; These are parallels in Bukhari about taunting the dead: here and here. Ibn Ishaq, pp. 306-08. Muslim is also a reliable collector and editor of the hadith (records of the words and deeds of Muhammad outside of the Quran).
[5] Ibn Ishaq, pp. 675-76.
[6] Bukhari, Military Expeditions (online sources: here; see also the one below); this one and this one show Muhammad giving permission to his assassin to say anything, i.e. lie; Muslim no. 4436 ; Ibn Ishaq pp. 364-69 ; Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, Vol. 7, (trans. by M.V. McDonald and annotated by W. Montgomery Watt, SUNYP, 1987), pp. 94-98. Reputable historians today consider Tabari to be a reliable source of data on early Islam, though they may not agree on his chronology or miraculous elements.
[7] Tabari, vol. 7, pp. 149-50; A later editor incorporated some of Tabari’s account into Ibn Ishaq’s biography, pp. 674-75.
[8] Bukhari, Military Expeditions, (Online source) ; Ibn Ishaq, pp. 550-51.
[9] Ibn Ishaq, pp. 597-602. Some Muslim polemicists consider him to be unreliable mostly because he preserves so many traditions that portray Muhammad as violent. But here the prophet is forgiving, so now Ibn Ishaq’s reliability cannot be doubted.
[10] Abu Dawud no. 4348 (he is another reliable hadith collector and editor)
Supplementary material:
This article contrasts the reactions of Jesus and Muhammad when they were insulted and threatened.
This short analysis discusses the similarities between assassinations in early Islam and the ones today.
This analysis examines the many causes of assassinations of journalists and intellectuals in several Islamic countries, notably Algeria, but the analysis fails to go back to the ultimate source: Muhammad himself.
In November 2004, Theo Van Gogh was assassinated by a Muslim because the descendant of the brother of the famous artist had made a film that depicted a Muslim woman who was forced into an arranged marriage, abused by her husband, and raped by her uncle. These two articles examine the assassination of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in light of the assassinations in early Islam.
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- Chesler Chronicles - http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler -
An American Dissident’s Fighting Words. My Speech at Columbia on 10/24/07
October 26, 2007 - by Phyllis Chesler
It is an honor and a privilege to be here today. Talking about Islamo-fascism and the violent Islamic oppression of Muslim women, Muslim intellectuals, and Muslim homosexuals is exactly the right thing to do at this moment in history. The western university campus is exactly the right place to do so since it is the university that has been hijacked, Palestinianized, Stalinized, Edward Said-ized, by a series of truly Great Lies.
It is time to take the campus back so that the rights of “free speech” and “academic freedom” also apply to those who tell the truth about Islam and who espouse minority and dissident intellectual points of view. Such rights also belong to those of us who are pro-American and pro-Israel and not only to those who demonize the West and valorize Islamist misogyny, death-cult terrorism, and Wahabi and Salafi fundamentalism.
Telling the truth about Islam is, apparently, “provocative.” One risks everything for doing so. In my opinion, one risks even more for failing to do so.
I want to thank the students at Columbia who have made this evening possible as well as David Horowitz and the Horowitz Freedom Center which has organized similar panels all over the country this week and has, in addition, published a pamphlet which I co-authored together with Robert Spencer which is titled The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam.
It is both extraordinary and tragic that one needs serious security in order to be heard on campus, that one must run a gauntlet of hostility for the right to teach. Please note who needs the security and who does not. Who disrupts and protests speeches and who does not. Goon-squad tactics of intimidation and disruption should have absolutely no place in the free exchange of ideas. We should exchange competing ideas civilly, with an open mind, and our ideas should be based on facts and truth, not on propaganda.
I have spoken at Barnard and Columbia many times over the years. Long ago, in the 1960s and 1970s, when I was a politically correct “rebel-girl,” I was more than welcome here.
More recently, in 2003, my words about Islamic gender and religious Apartheid caused a near-riot at a feminist conference at Barnard and I had to be hustled out for my safety.
In 2006 or 2007, I was persona non grata at Barnard at a panel organized by the Veteran Feminists of America. Although I am a founding member, my own group would not allow me to speak about the Islamist War Against Women. Here’s why.
No western academic is supposed to criticize anything that a formerly colonized man of color does–including gang-rape or stone women of color to death. Nor can he or she focus on the savage persecution of homosexuals or on the epidemic of homosexual pederasty in the Islamic world; or on the persecution of heroic Muslim and ex-Muslim intellectuals and human rights activists.
Muslim-on-Muslim homicide and genocide are also “unmentionables.” Any western academic who dares discuss such tabooed subjects will be defamed as a “racist” and “colonialist.” Fear of this allegation is so great that false concerns about racism have inevitably trumped all feminist concerns about sexism. This is the new McCarthyism and it is coming to us from the left.
In the early 1960s, I was held captive in Kabul, Afghanistan, in fairly posh purdah. I was a young bride. I escaped, I survived, I learned a thing or two. I write about this in The Death of Feminism which describes Islamic gender apartheid both way back then and now, as it is penetrating the West.
For example, I learned that what characterizes Islam (not Islamism) is mainly indigenous to the culture, the region, and the religion and is not necessarily caused by Western imperialism, colonialism, or capitalism.
The Christian crusades did not “cause” Arab or Muslim slavery, racism, polygamy, arranged child marriage, female genital mutilation, honor murders, forced face-veiling, capital punishment for apostates (Muslims who leave Islam), or the segregation of women. It did not cause Islamic jihad or Islamic imperialism which preceded the Crusades by centuries.
In the early 1970s, American imperialism and Israeli policies of self-defense did not force Bangladeshi Muslims to murder their own women for the crime of having been raped by enemy Muslim soldiers.
In the 1980s, when Iranian village mullahs ordered that women be lynched, the villagers did not stone their daughters, mothers, and sisters because America had, in the past, interfered with Iranian politics.
No American or European oil company ordered the men of Saudi Arabia to prohibit Saudi women from driving, or from going out without a male escort, nor did they order the be-heading of a Saudi Princess for daring to choose a love match.
No Israeli law forced Palestinians to honor-murder their women, beat their wives and daughters, or to force-veil women against their will. Only Hamas did that.
My Second Wave feminist credentials are rooted in a universalist vision of human rights. Because I believe that all women and men are equal, I am therefore, not a multi-cultural relativist. I believe that all human beings deserve certain unalienable rights, whether they live in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or in New York City.
I especially support such human rights for the most heroic of heroes today who are fighting against Islamism in their own countries and who are themselves Muslims, ex-Muslims, or Arab and Asian Christians. Their extraordinary heroism is in sharp contrast to and puts the blindness and cowardice of our tenured western radicals to shame.
Such secular and religious activists, influenced by western concepts of democracy, freedom, human rights, and women’s rights, are now fighting for those very rights in their own countries. They are being murdered, imprisoned, tortured, and censored for daring to hold the ideas that we safely take for granted in the West.
Fatwas (or death threats) have been issued against them. Some who live in hiding require serious, round-the-clock protection. Some must write under pseudonyms. Many such dissidents live in exile and simply cannot understand why western multi-cultural relativists refuse to side with them and instead, side with their persecutors.
Think: Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali for starters.
For daring to defend them I (and many others) are being censored in both Europe and America, whose Islamification is well under way.
Western dissidents have also been sued for telling the truth about Islam and about the Saudi and Islamic funding for terrorism against Western civilian targets.
Think: Oriana Fallaci, Rachel Ehrenfeld.
Western feminists and pro-woman academics must understand that like women everywhere, Arab and Muslim women have internalized their culture’s views of women. Therefore, like men, some women will justify wife-beating, purdah, polygamy, veiling, and female genital mutilation. Thus, just because Muslim women can be trotted out to support Islamic Gender Apartheid, does not necessarily mean that their words on such subjects are any more inviolate than those of their male counterparts.
In America, in the 1960s, most women denied that they were economically discriminated against or, if proven wrong, insisted that it did not bother them. They blamed themselves entirely when they were sexually harassed, raped, or beaten. Only years of education and struggle have begun to change these attitudes among American women and men.
If Western feminists are not committed to the same struggle for Muslim, Arab, and Third World women they have betrayed their own moral vision of equality for all women and men.
Today, in Muslim countries, women are being more forcefully and fully veiled. They are being imprisoned, gang-raped, flogged, and in Iran, often hung or stoned to death when they allege rape or run away from unusually cruel and life-threatening-families. Honor murders are either increasing or have become more visible – perhaps because Western and Western influenced feminists and human rights activists have begun to document them.
Recently, in the fall of 2006 (the end of Ramadan), perhaps a thousand men conducted a ‘sexual wilding’ in Cairo. They surrounded individual girls and women who were fully veiled, partly veiled, and unveiled, and groped and assaulted them. Individuals tried to help these women – who escaped from the male crowds naked and half-naked. The police refused to make any arrests and the media did not cover it. I and others only learned of this incident because some foreign journalists blogged it – and because one brave Egyptian woman spoke about it on a live Egyptian television programme.
Pro-Islamists are perfectly free to criticize, even to demonize the West in the West, because they live in a democracy where academic freedom and free speech are (still) taken seriously. Were they to dare criticize the barbarism, misogyny, and despotism of Third World countries, were they to do so in Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Bangladesh or Saudi Arabia (to name only a few such countries), they would be in serious danger of being shot to death in her own home, as happened recently to an Afghan woman journalist, or of being imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. This has happened to many Muslim dissidents and feminists.
In 2003, Wajeha Al-Huwaider was barred from publishing in the Saudi Kingdom; in 2006 she was arrested, interrogated, and forced to sign a statement agreeing to cease her human rights activities.
Bangladeshi writer Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, had his office bombed, was jailed for two years and is now on trial for his life. His crime? ‘Praising the Jew and Christians’, ‘attempting to travel to Israel’, and ‘predicting the rise of Islamist militancy’. These charges may carry a death sentence.
Women are not yet free from violence and inequality in America but really, we do not face these conditions.
In The Death of Feminism, I also describe another incident which took place in July 2001 in Hassi Messaoud, Algeria, in which a mob of three hundred men conducted a three-day pogrom against thirty-nine economically impoverished Algerian women. In his Friday sermons, the local mullah, Amar Taleb, had described these women as ‘immoral’ because they were working for a foreign company. The men tortured, stabbed, mutilated, gang-raped, buried alive and murdered these women.
Feminists especially need to acknowledge that this is happening. We need to wrestle with it and take a stand against it. We need to make common cause with Third World and Muslim feminists and dissidents who want to create alliances.
Western feminists and academics must end their unnatural obsession with the so-called “occupation” of Palestine and focus of the occupation of women’s bodies throughout the Muslim world. If they care about women, they must confront the issues that characterize Islamic gender apartheid and affect at least half a billion women in the Islamic world.
Western feminist academics have now become allied with Islamists—against Muslim and ex-Muslim women and against their own feminist principles. Now is the time for western intellectuals who claim to be antiracists or committed to human and women’s rights to stand with Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents. To do so, requires that we adopt a universal standard of human rights and abandon our loyalty to multicultural relativism which justifies, even romanticizes, indigenous barbarism, totalitarian terrorism and the persecution of women, religious minorities, homosexuals, and intellectuals.
Our abject refusal to judge between civilization and barbarism, and between enlightened rationalism and theocratic fundamentalism endangers and condemns the victims of Islamic tyranny even further.
Article printed from Chesler Chronicles: http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler/2007/10/26/an_american_dissidents_fightin/
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March 29, 2002 8:30 a.m.
Postmodern Palestine
The new amorality in the Middle East.
There is a postmodern amorality afloat — the dividend of years of an American educational system in which historical ignorance, cultural relativism, and well-intentioned theory, in place of cold facts, has reigned. We see the sad results everywhere in the current discussions of the Middle East and our own war on terror.
Palestinians appeal to the American public on grounds that three or four times as many of their own citizens have died as Israelis. The crazy logic is that in war the side that suffers the most casualties is either in the right or at least should be the winner. Some Americans nursed on the popular ideology of equivalence find this attractive. But if so, they should then sympathize with Hitler, Tojo, Kim Il Sung, and Ho Chi Minh who all lost more soldiers — and civilians — in their wars against us than we did.
Perhaps a million Chinese were casualties in Korea, ten times the number of Americans killed, wounded, and missing. Are we then to forget that the Communists crossed the Yalu River to implement totalitarianism in the south — and instead agree that their catastrophic wartime sacrifices were proof of American culpability? Palestinians suffer more casualties than Israelis not because they wish to, or because they are somehow more moral — but because they are not as adept in fighting real soldiers in the full-fledged war that is growing out of their own intifada.
We are told that Palestinian civilians who are killed by the Israeli Defense Forces are the moral equivalent of slaughtering Israeli civilians at schools, restaurants, and on buses. That should be a hard sell for Americans after September 11, who are currently bombing in Afghanistan to ensure that there are not more suicide murderers on our shores. This premise hinges upon the acceptance that the suicide bombers' deliberate butchering of civilians is the same as the collateral damage that occurs when soldiers retaliate against other armed combatants.
In fact, the tragic civilian deaths on the West Bank make a less-compelling argument for amorality than the one revisionists often use in condemning the Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo bombings. Then British and American planes knowingly incinerated civilians in their quests to shut down the warmaking potential of the Third Reich and imperial Japan. Unlike what the B-17s and B-29s did to stop fascist murdering on a global scale, the Israelis are not carpet-bombing indiscriminately. Rather they are doing precisely what we ourselves were forced to do in Mogadishu: Fighting a dirty urban war against combatants who have no uniforms, shoot from houses, and are deliberately mixed in with civilians. So far the Israelis have probably killed fewer civilians in a year of fighting on the West Bank than our trapped soldiers did in two days of similar gun battles in Somalia.
An ignorance of historical context is also critical for such postmodern revisionism. If the conflict is due to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, then the first three wars for the survival of Israel itself must be conveniently ignored. If there is a push for the exchange of land for peace, then we must overlook that some in the Arab world who have suggested just that bromide in the past three decades were either assassinated or executed. And if we accept that both sides are equally culpable for the current killing, we must forget that less than two years ago the Palestinians rejected an Israeli offer to return 97 percent of the West Bank, along with other major concessions — assuming that unleashing the present intifada could get them still more.
Facts mean nothing. The dispute is purportedly over the principle of occupation — but next-door Syria holds far more Lebanese land than Israel does the West Bank. The dispute is supposedly over ethnic intolerance and gratuitous humiliation — but Kuwait, quite unlike Israel, ethnically cleansed their entire country of Palestinians after the Gulf War. The dispute is said to be about treating the "other" fairly — but Syria and Iraq summarily expelled over 7,000 Jews after the 1967 war, stole their property, and bragged that they had rid their country of them. The upcoming Arab Summit could spend weeks just investigating the Arab murder and persecution of its own people and Jews.
Multicultural distortion also appears in a variety of strange ways. Palestinian spokesmen harangue Americans about their tilt toward Israel. Yet they also speak in grandiose terms of an "Arab summit" and a global Islamic brotherhood. Apparently, fellow Muslims, Arabs — and kindred autocracies — are supposed to support Palestinians unquestioningly because of religious, cultural, and political affinities. Yet we multicultural Americans are not entitled to exhibit similar sympathy for Israel, which like us and unlike Mr. Arafat's regime, is a Western, democratic, open, and free society.
Why do such bankrupt arguments find resonance? I think the causes have now permeated well beyond a few coffeehouse theorists blabbering away in Cambridge or Palo Alto. Rather it is because we live in a society in which playground fights in our schools are now often adjudicated by concepts such as "zero tolerance" and "equal culpability." Rather than exercising moral judgment — and investing time and energy in such investigation — our school principals simply expel any student caught fighting, as if the bully and his victim occupy the same moral ground.
Our schoolbooks devote more space to Hiroshima than to the far, far greater casualties on Okinawa. Students are not told that the two tragedies are connected — as if the American bombing to prevent an enormous bloodbath on the Japanese mainland is somehow not a direct result of the Japanese imperial military's efforts a few weeks earlier to unleash 2,000 kamikazes, and through suicide attacks and banzai charges kill every American (and tens of thousands of civilians) on the island rather than surrender.
Rather than do the hard work of learning about the historical relationships, conflicts, and similarities between Islamic and Christian culture, East and West, and Europe and Asia, our teachers simply avoid the trouble. They claim that all cultures are just "different," and thereby hope to avoid the hard and unpleasant questions that might prompt hurt feelings and eventual enlightenment, rather than ensure their own immediate raises and promotions. No wonder I have had college students who affirm that British imperialism in India was no different from Hitler's attempt at dominance in Europe — as if there were gas chambers in New Delhi, as if the Nazi "super-race" might have sought to eradicate the caste system, or as if Gandhi's civil disobedience would have worked against Himmler.
I do not think there is some grand postmodern scheme afloat to undermine the legacy of empiricism, history, and logic. Rather the spread of such amorality is simply a result of our own sloth and timidity — and perhaps ultimately the dangerous dividend of an increasingly affluent and cynical society. Teachers, professors, and reporters embrace such dubious notions because they either bring rewards or at least the satisfaction of being liked and in the majority.
It is also less demanding to watch television than read, safer to blame or praise both than investigate the culpability of one, neater to create rather than recall facts, and better to feel good about oneself by adopting platitudes of eternal peace and universal tolerance than to talk honestly of evil, war, and the tragic nature of man. When you combine such American laziness and lack of intellectual rigor with worries over oil and anti-Semitism, then our baffling nonchalance about the current war against Israel begins to make sense.
Moral equivalence, conflict-resolution theory, utopian pacifism, and multiculturalism are, of course, antirational and often silly. But we should also have the courage to confess that they bring on, rather than avoid, conflict and killing, and breed rather than eradicate ignorance. In short, they are not ethical ideas at all, but amoral in every sense of the word.
— Victor Davis Hanson, author most recently of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power.
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson032902.asp
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http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022978.php
October 5, 2008
Raymond Ibrahim: Islam and Innocence
Just recently, a high ranking Pakistani cleric, one Munib ur-Rehmen, asserted that “Islam does not allow anybody to take lives of innocent people by any means.” However, when he was grand mufti, two years earlier, he also said that “truly Islamic” states must kill the apostate from Islam. Considering his former statement, that Islam forbids the taking of “innocent” lives, has Munib been caught fibbing? Either way, this anecdote occasions the question: who is “innocent” in Islam?
Whereas other Muslims may shy away from this question, opting for the naïve Westerner to simply assume that “innocence” in Islam is akin to the liberal West’s notions of “innocence,” al-Qaeda—which seems to be supported by nearly half of the Muslim world—has been only to happy to clarify this matter.
Back in December, the terrorist organization’s primary media conduit, al-Sahab (the “clouds”) announced that al-Qaeda’s number two, Ayman Zawahiri, would be taking questions from the public and that he would “respond as soon as possible.”
Then, a few months later in April, according to the Associated Press, Zawahiri released a 90 minute audio tape, “billed as the first installment of answers to the more than 900 questions submitted on extremist Internet sites by al-Qaida supporters, critics and journalists.”
In response to a question that suggested al-Qaeda was responsible for the deaths of innocents in Baghdad, Morocco, and Algeria—Muslim areas where countless terrorist attacks in the name of al-Qaeda still occur daily—Zawahiri adamantly maintained that “We haven’t killed innocents,” not in any of those regions mentioned; “nor,” added Zawahari, “anywhere else”—which obviously includes 9/11, the London and Madrid bombings, and the rest.
Was Zawahiri being facetious, or does he truly deem all those killed in the aforementioned attacks as not “innocent”—that is, guilty?
As for Western infidels, Osama bin Laden himself has announced on various occasions that, since America is a democracy, and thus responsible for its government (which is always portrayed as one of the greatest enemies of Islam), “Every American man is an enemy—whether he fights us directly or pays his taxes,” (The Al Qaeda Reader, 281). Accordingly, al-Qaeda issued its famous fatwa in 1998 concluding that “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilian and military—is an individual obligation incumbent upon every Muslim who can do it and in any country” (AQR, 13).
What of women and children? What of fellow Muslims? Surely all these are innocent? In fact, Zawahiri, in one of his major treatises written for Muslim-eyes only, “Jihad, Martyrdom, and the Killing of Innocents” (see AQR,141-171), demonstrates the opposite. After quoting several anecdotes from authoritative hadith and sira sources documenting Muhammad legitimizing haphazard attacks against infidel strongholds—including by utilizing catapults (al-manjonil) and fire—even though women and children were known to be sheltered there, Zawahiri quotes the observations of a prominent exegete: “It is well known that whoever follows such a course, bombarding infidels, will inevitably hit their women and children, who are otherwise forbidden from being killed. Likewise, the same goes if Muslims are among them. It is compulsory that this [the possibility of hitting women, children, and Muslims] not dissuade the launching of an incursion against them… even if one dreads hitting another Muslim” (AQR,165).
As for “hitting another Muslim,” in Zawahiri’s April response, he concluded that “If there is any innocent [i.e., Muslim] who was killed in the mujahedeen’s operations, then it was either an unintentional error or out of necessity.” Again, this response accords perfectly with what he wrote in “Jihad, Martyrdom, and the Killing of Innocents”: after discussing the inevitability that faithful Muslims may be “accidentally” killed during the jihad, Zawahiri quoted the renowned Muslim jurist Ibn Taymiyya, who declared some 700 years ago that, “Based on the consensus of the ulema [Islamic scholars], those Muslims who are accidentally killed are martyrs; and the obligatory jihad should never be abandoned because it creates martyrs” (AQR,168). In other words, yes, Muslims who are slain “accidentally” are innocent; however, their recompense is to be deemed “martyrs,” that is, to attain the highest level of paradise, with all the sensual bliss that only Islam promises.
Also, the concept of “necessity” alluded to above—“any innocent who was killed…out of necessity”—seems to permeate Islam's worldview. Quoting yet another prominent sheikh, Zawahiri writes “If necessity compels one to fire at them [Muslims interspersed among infidels, e.g., the “apostate” governments of Algeria, Afghanistan, and Iraq], one should do so with impunity... For if we lay off them, they will emerge triumphant and cause even more harm…. It is better that one group [of Muslims] bear the burden and be destroyed in order to defend Islam and its territory and the welfare [of Muslims].” To this, Zawahiri concludes, “The evils produced by attacking impetuously [thereby accidentally killing Muslims] is forgiven due to the good of defending Islam” (AQR, 166).
Finally, as Zawahiri makes clear, the question of whether it is permissible to kill women, children, et. al. during the jihad was decided upon by the jurists (fuqaha) when Islam was on the ascendancy, and engaged in offensive warfare simply to conquer infidels and usurp their lands; in other words, the question of killing “innocents” was relevant only when Muslims were the aggressors, invading infidel territory. Writes Zawahiri: “But when Muslims are defending their religion and their sanctities, and the infidels are surrounding them from every corner, and instead they [infidels] are the ones seeking them out and pursuing them… —in these situations it becomes a binding obligation on every Muslim to fight them anyway he can… [even if] some Muslims might be killed mistakenly” (AQR, 168).
Indeed, this view is based on "ulemaic" consensus—which is often seen as binding on the umma. Ibn Taymiyya makes this clear: “As for defensive warfare, this is the greatest way to defend sanctity and religion.This is an obligation consensually agreed to [by the ulema]. After faith, there is nothing more sacred than repulsing the enemy who attacks religion and life” (AQR, 13).
In other words, in those Muslim countries where infidels and apostates are perceived as having the upper hand—such as Afghanistan, Algeria, and Iraq—far from worrying about whether infidel women and children are killed, Muslim women and children themselves are individually obligated to participate or at least support the jihad.
Most problematic of all is the fact that, neither Pakistani cleric Munib ur-Rehmen, nor Ayman Zawahiri, nor yet Osama bin Laden are responsible for these notions or what constitutes “innocence” in Islam. Rather, their views are grounded in the verdicts of Islam’s revered ulema and fuqaha, who, in their turn, came up with these conclusions after grappling (ijtihad) with Islam’s core texts—the way all of sharia law has been articulated. In short, though much of what was quoted here comes from the writings of al-Qaeda, such notions are not original to al-Qaeda but trace back to the ulema and sharia.
In closing, this somewhat idiosyncratic concept of “guilt” and “innocence” should better highlight the epistemic difficulties the Westerner may encounter when trying to understand Islam—a religion, it should be recalled, that deems even the Muslim who simply and peacefully wants to convert to another religion, “guilty” and worthy of execution.
As the Pakistani Munib indicated at the beginning of this discussion, only the “truly Islamic” state will execute the apostate, which itself is truly telling about Islam's notions of innocence and guilt and how radically different they are from Western ideals.
Posted at October 5, 2008 3:15 PM
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Why Islam’s Jew-Hating Hadith Matter
By Andrew G. Bostom
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, October 03, 2008
Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Arifi made the following “observations” which recently aired on Palestinian Arab Al-Aqsa TV, September 12, 2008:
Studies conducted in Tel Aviv and in the Palestinian lands occupied by the Jews showed that they plant trees around their homes, because the Prophet Muhammad said that when the Muslims fight the Jews, each and every stone and tree will say: “Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” The only exception is the gharqad tree, which is one of the trees of the Jews, and if they hide behind it, it will not reveal their presence. According to reports of people who went there and saw it with their own eyes, many Jews plant gharqad trees around their homes, so that when the fighting begins, they can hide behind them. They are not man enough to stand and fight you.
While such hatemongering statements appear utterly bizarre to non-Muslims who are unaware of Islam’s foundational texts, Al-Arifi’s inflammatory references to Jews have sacralized origins immediately apparent to Muslim audiences. The crux of Al-Arifi’s remarks, in fact, merely reiterate verbatim, a canonical hadith, specifically Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985, which is also featured prominently in the Hamas Covenant, article 7.
Briefly (go here for an in depth online discussion), what are the hadith, and which specific anti-Semitic motifs do they contain? Hadith, which means “story” (“narrative”), refers to any report of what the Muslim prophet Muhammad said or did, or his tacit assent to something said or done in his presence. Hadith is also used as the technical term for the “science” of such “Traditions.” As a result of a lengthy process which continued for centuries after Muhammad’s death (in 632), the hadith emerged for Muslims as second in authority to the Koran itself. Sunna, which means “path” refers to a normative custom of Muhammad or of the early Islamic community. The hadith “justify and confirm” the Sunna. Henri Lammens, a seminal early 20th-century scholar of Islam, highlighted the importance of the Sunna (and, by extension, the hadith):
As early as the first century A.H. [the 7th century] the following aphorism was pronounced: “The Sunna can dispense with the Koran but not the Koran with the Sunna”. Proceeding to still further lengths, some Muslims assert that “in controversial matters, the Sunna overrules the authority of the Koran, but not vice versa”…all admit the Sunna completes and explains it [the Koran].
The hadith compiled by al-Bukhari (d. 870) and Muslim b. al-Hajjaj (d. 875) are considered, respectively, to be the most important authoritative collections. The titles Sahih (“sound”) or Jami, indicating their comprehensiveness, signify the high esteem in which they are held.
Their comprehensive content includes information regarding religious duties, law and everyday practice (down to the most mundane, or intimate details), in addition to a considerable amount of biographical and other material. Four other compilations, called Sunan works, which indicates that they are limited to matters of religious and social practice, and law, also became authoritative. Abu Dawud (d. 888), al-Tirmidhi (d. 892), Ibn Maja (d. 896), and al-Nasi (d. 915) compiled these works. By the beginning of the 12th century, Ibn Maja’s collection became the last of these compilations of hadith to be recognized as “canonical.”
Before one can fully appreciate the major antisemitic themes in the hadith (summarized herein), it is critical to understand the antecedent Koranic motifs of Jew hatred which these hadith “complete and explain.” The Koran’s central antisemitic motif decrees an eternal curse upon the Jews (Koran 2:61/ reiterated at 3:112) for slaying the prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah. It should be noted that Koran 3:112 is featured just before the pre-amble to Hamas’ foundational Covenant. This central motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60, and 5:78, which describe the Jews transformation into apes and swine (5:60), or simply apes, (i.e. verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been “…cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary’s son” (5:78). Muhammad himself repeats this Koranic curse in a canonical hadith (Sunan Abu Dawoud, Book 37, Number 4322), “He [Muhammad] then recited the verse [5:78]: ‘…curses were pronounced on those among the children of Israel who rejected Faith, by the tongue of David and of Jesus the son of Mary’ ”. And the related verse, 5:64, accuses the Jews—as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did in a January 2007 speech, citing Koran 5:64—of being “spreaders of war and corruption,” a sort of ancient Koranic antecedent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The centrality of the Jews’ permanent “abasement and humiliation,” and being “laden with God’s anger” is clearly enunciated in the most authoritative Muslim exegetic literature on Koran 2:61/3:112, both ancient and contemporary. By nature deceitful and treacherous, the Jews rejected Allah’s signs and prophets, including Isa, the Muslim Jesus. Classical and modern Koranic commentators, when discussing Koran 5:82, which includes the statement (“Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews” , also concur on the unique animus of the Jews towards the Muslims, which is repeatedly linked to the curse of Koran 2:61/3:112. For example, in his commentary on 5:82, the great Muslim historian and renowned Koranic exegete al-Tabari (d. 923) writes,
In my opinion, [the Christians] are not like the Jews who always scheme in order to murder the emissaries and the prophets, and who oppose God in his positive and negative commandments, and who corrupt His scripture which He revealed in His books.
Tabari’s classical interpretations of Koran 5:82 and 2:61, as well as his discussion of the related verse 9:29 mandating the Jews payment of the jizya (Koranic poll-tax), represent both Anti-Semitic and more general anti-dhimmi views that became, and remain, intrinsic to Islam to this day. Here is Tabari’s discussion of 2:61 and its relationship to verse 9:29, which emphasizes the purposely debasing nature of the Koranic poll tax:
…“abasement and poverty were imposed and laid down upon them”, as when someone says “the imam imposed the poll tax (jizya)on free non-Muslim subjects”, or “The man imposed land tax on his slave”, meaning thereby that he obliged him [to pay ] it, or, “The commander imposed a sortie on his troops”, meaning he made it their duty.…God commanded His believing servants not to give them [i.e., the non-Muslim people of the scripture] security—as long as they continued to disbelieve in Him and his Messenger—unless they paid the poll tax to them; God said: “Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden—such men as practice not the religion of truth [Islam], being of those who have been given the Book [Bible]—until they pay the poll tax, being humble” (Koran 9:29)..
The dhimmis [non-Muslim tributary’s] posture during the collection of the jizya- “[should be lowering themselves] by walking on their hands, …reluctantly
… His words “and abasement and poverty were imposed upon them”, ‘These are the Jews of the Children of Israel’. ..‘Are they the Copts of Egypt?’…“What have the Copts of Egypt to do with this? No, by God, they are not; but they are the Jews, the Children of Israel.…By “and slain the prophets unrightfully” He means that they used to kill the Messengers of God without God’s leave, denying their messages and rejecting their prophethood.
Indeed the Koran’s overall discussion of the Jews is marked by a litany of their sins and punishments, as if part of a divine indictment, conviction, and punishment process. The Jews’ ultimate sin and punishment are made clear: they are the devil’s minions (4:60) cursed by Allah, their faces will be obliterated (4:47), and if they do not accept the true faith of Islam—the Jews who understand their faith become Muslims (3:113)—they will be made into apes (2:65/ 7:166), or apes and swine (5:60), and burn in the Hellfires (4:55, 5:29, 98:6, and 58:14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19). The Koranic curse (verses 2:61/3:112) upon the Jews for (primarily) rejecting, even slaying Allah’s prophets, including Isa/Jesus (or at least his “body double” 4:157-4:158), is updated with perfect archetypal logic in the canonical hadith: following the Muslims’ initial conquest of the Jewish farming oasis of Khaybar, one of the vanquished Jewesses reportedly served Muhammad poisoned mutton (or goat), which resulted, ultimately, in his protracted, agonizing death. And Ibn Saad’s sira (i.e., one of the earliest pious Muslim biographies of the Muslim prophet) account maintains that Muhammad’s poisoning resulted from a well-coordinated Jewish conspiracy.
George Vajda’s seminal 1937 analysis of the anti-Jewish motifs in the hadith remains the definitive work on this subject. Vajda concluded that according to the hadith stubborn malevolence is the Jews defining worldly characteristic: rejecting Muhammad and refusing to convert to Islam out of jealousy, envy and even selfish personal interest, lead them to acts of treachery, in keeping with their inveterate nature: “...sorcery, poisoning, assassination held no scruples for them.” These archetypes sanction Muslim hatred towards the Jews, and the admonition to at best, “subject [the Jews] to Muslim domination,” as dhimmis, treated “with contempt,” under certain “humiliating arrangements.”
The annihilationist sentiments regarding Jews expressed by Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Arifi, and incorporated permanently into the foundational 1988 Hamas Covenant, are also rooted in Islamic eschatology. As characterized in the hadith, Muslim eschatology highlights the Jews’ supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl—the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ—or according to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered— everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharqad tree, as per the canonical hadith included in the 1988 Hamas Charter (article 7). Another hadith variant, which takes place in Jerusalem, has Isa (the Muslim Jesus) leading the Arabs in a rout of the Dajjâl and his company of 70,000 armed Jews. And the notion of jihad “ransom” extends even into Islamic eschatology—on the day of resurrection the vanquished Jews will be consigned to Hellfire, and this will expiate Muslims who have sinned, sparing them from this fate.
Professor Moshe Sharon recently provided a very lucid summary of the unique features of Shi’ite eschatology, Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s deep personal attachment to “mahdism,” and the key point of consistency between Shi’a and Sunni understandings of this doctrine—which emphasizes Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985—noting:
both Shi’ites and Sunnis share one particular detail about “the coming of the hour” and the dawning of messianic times: The Jews must all suffer a violent death, to the last one. Both Shi'ites and Sunnis quote the famous hadith [Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985] attributed to Muhammad…
Professor Sharon further observes,
Not one Friday passes without this hadith being quoted in sermons from one side of the Islamic world to the other.
The rise of Jewish nationalism—Zionism—posed a predictable, if completely unacceptable challenge to the Islamic order—jihad-imposed chronic dhimmitude for Jews—of apocalyptic magnitude. As historian Bat Ye’or has explained,
…because divine will dooms Jews to wandering and misery [pace Koran 17:4-5/ 7:168; and 2:61/3:112], the Jewish state appears to Muslims as an unbearable affront and a sin against Allah. Therefore it must be destroyed by Jihad.
This is exactly the Islamic context in which the widespread, “resurgent” use of Jew annihilationist apocalyptic motifs, would be an anticipated, even commonplace occurrence. And for more than six decades, promoters of modern jihad genocide have consistently invoked Islam’s Jew-exterminating eschatology. Hajj Amin el-Husseini, ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, and Muslim jihadist, who became, additionally, a full-fledged Nazi collaborator and ideologue in his endeavors to abort a Jewish homeland, and destroy world Jewry, composed a 1943 recruitment pamphlet (see Jennie Lebel’s 2007 biography of the Mufti , pp. 311-319) for Balkan Muslims entitled, “Islam and the Jews.” This incendiary document hinged upon antisemitic motifs from the Koran (for example, 5:82), and the hadith (including Muhammad’s alleged poisoning by a Khaybar Jewess), and concluded with the apocalyptic canonical hadith describing the Jews’ annihilation.
Forty-five years later the same hadith was incorporated into the 1988 Hamas Covenant, making clear the jihad terrorist organization had its own aspirations for Jew annihilation. Sheer ignorance of this history and theology are pathognomonic of much larger and more dangerous phenomena: the often willful, craven failure to examine and understand the living legacy of Islam’s foundational anti-Jewish animus, or acknowledge the depth of Jew hatred that pervades contemporary Islam’s clerical leadership, including within major Muslim communities of the United States.
For example, Fawaz Damra, the former Imam of the Islamic Center of Cleveland, was touted as a promoter of interfaith dialogue even after evidence of his participation in fundraising events for the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), was produced, along with a videotape of the Imam telling a crowd of Muslim supporters in 1991 that they should aim “…a rifle at the first and last enemy of the Islamic nation, and that is the sons of monkeys and pigs, the Jews.” Convicted in 2004 for lying to immigration officials about his links to the PIJ, Damra, who was born in Nablus in 1961, was subsequently deported back to the West Bank in January 2007. And last October 30, 2007 it was announced that Imam Ahmed Alzaree—the first permanent successor to Damra—resigned as the new “spiritual leader” of the Islamic Center of Cleveland three days prior to officially beginning the job. Alzaree, who at one stage of the vetting process expressed the unusual reservation that “he would not come to Cleveland because a reporter was inquiring about his background,” ostensibly accepted the position as noted on October 26, 2007, then pre-emptively resigned a few days later, after the contents of two “khutbahs” (sermons) he had delivered on March 7, 2003, were revealed. Alzaree concluded the second sermon with the same apocalyptic canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985)—repeated in the 1988 Hamas Covenant.
Recently, the combined efforts of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and Rabbi Aron Hier of The Simon Wiesenthal Center, focused attention on the hadith collections—specifically Sahih Muslim Book 041, Numbers 6981 to 6985—posted at a website run by the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at the University of Southern California (USC). USC Provost, C. L. Max Nikias, first learned of these hadith when Rabbi Aron Hier approached USC trustee Alan Casden. Hier expressed his concerns over the five hadith advocating the Jews’ annihilation by Muslims to hasten the coming of the “final hour.” Upon reviewing these contents, Nikias declared that “the passage cited is truly despicable...The passage in the Hadith that you brought to our attention violates the USC Principles of Community, and it has no place on a USC website.” Nikias’ letter of August 11, 2008 (which can be viewed here) also stated, “I have ordered that the passage be removed.”
The USC-MSA—in grudging compliance—removed, but refused to condemn these living, sacralized invocations to genocidal violence. Moreover, another Muslim student organization at USC the Muslim Student Union also failed to repudiate the contents of these hadith, and declared it was “outraged” at the university’s “unprecedented and unconscionable” censorship. David Horowitz responded aptly to this statement by noting that the hadith which were removed from the USC website, “…may be part of the religious canon, but that doesn't make them less hateful.” Horowitz’s sober reflection recalls the lament of the late Dr. John Garang, who lead the Southern Sudanese Christian and Animist populations in their fight against the genocidal jihad campaign’s of the Arab Khartoum north during the 1990s. Garang left us with this critical question in 1999, which, almost beyond belief, remains largely ignored, and for certain, unresolved in the appropriate manner:
Is the call for jihad against a particular people a religious right by those calling for it, or is it a human rights violation against the people upon whom jihad is declared and waged?
Almost 850 years ago, elaborating on the depth of Muslim hatred for the Jews in his era, Maimonides (in ~ 1172 C.E.) made this profound observation regarding the Jewish predilection for denial, a feature that he insists will hasten their destruction.
We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation…All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment [by Muslims] which well nigh crushes us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition.
The Jews and their communal leaders like Maimonides living under Islamic rule in the Middle Ages—vanquished by jihad, isolated, and well-nigh defenseless under the repressive system of dhimmitude—can be excused for their submissive denial. There is no such excuse in our era given the existence of an autonomous Jewish State of Israel, and a thriving Western Jewish diaspora, particularly here in the United States, living under the blanket of hard won protections for their religious freedom, physical security, and dignity.
As a pre-condition to real dialogue—not its miserable simulacrum—Jews and their leadership—religious, political, and intellectual—must demand from their Muslim counterparts acknowledgment and wrenching reform of the sacralized Islamic Jew hatred which is still being taught and promoted in Islamic schools, religious institutions, and even on US university campuses. Speaking as a Jew, let us demonstrate as Jews that we are no longer content living with Maimonides’ 12th century expectations of Muslims, otherwise they will oblige us.
Andrew G. Bostom is a frequent contributor to Frontpage Magazine.com, and the author of The Legacy of Jihad, and the forthcoming The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.
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Fitzgerald: Islam for Infidels, Part One
Here is Part One of "Islam for Infidels," a new three-part series by Jihad Watch Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald. (Part 2 is here, the first section of Part 3 is here, and the rest of Part 3 is here.)
I. Taqiyya and Tu-Quoque
NPR’s All Things Considered. January 7, 2005 • "Jihad" is one of the few Arabic words used in English. It means "spiritual struggle," but many Muslims have pointed out that "jihad" is almost always used in English in the context of terrorism, even though the actual meaning is broader. Commentator Anisa Mehdi would like to propose a word that could be used instead of "jihad." -- From the NPR Website
Anisa Mehdi, a guest on NPR’s All Things Considered, has suggested that for the word “Jihad” – possibly the word of greatest significance in the texts, and history, of Islam – another word could be used. For Muslims, she insisted, were made uneasy by the continued use of this word “in the context of terrorism” when its “actual meaning is broader.” And so, to prevent unnecessary harm to Islam’s image, she asks if it might not be possible to avoid the word “Jihad” altogether.
She has a point. And we will sharpen her point, with a pencil-sharpener of our own choosing. But first it would be useful to describe the current state of Infidel knowledge about Islam, and of Muslim attempts to shape or limit that knowledge. An army of apologists for Islam, both Muslim and non-Muslim, is abroad in the land today, yet many Infidels seem not to be following the script. Some appear determined to educate themselves, rather than rely on the Outreach Programs of local imams in local mosques or, for that matter, on National Public Radio. Not everyone seems quite as willing, as they once were, to be satisfied by the pabulum of Karen Armstrong or the coffee-table books of John Esposito. Infidels have discovered websites where four or even five Quran’ic translations are laid out for comparative reading, a horizontal pentapla that may be accessed at www.usc.edu. At the same site, or at many others, Infidels can now read for themselves hundreds of the Hadith (the sayings and acts of Muhammad), as collected and catalogued according to its relative authenticity by such trusted Hadith-compilers, or muhaddithin, as Bukhari and Muslim (a proper name). In addition to reading Qur’an and Hadith, Infidels can read the sira, or life of Muhammad. As al-insan al-kamil, the Model of Perfect Man, the figure of Muhammad is at the center of Islam, and everything he is reported to have done or said, or even remained silent about, in 7th century Arabia, remains as vivid, compelling, and emulous today.
And finally, not content with reading Qur’an and Hadith and sira, those Infidels have embarked on learning about the history of Jihad-conquest of those vast lands where, far more numerous, settled, wealthy, and advanced populations, of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists all lived and, upon conquest, when not killed or forcibly converted at once to Islam, were permitted to live as “dhimmis,” as non-Muslims under Muslim rule were called, subject to carefully elaborated financial, legal, political, and social disabilities that made life for them one of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity.
It has been quite an effort to prevent Infidels from getting the wrong (that is to say, the right) impression of Islam, at least until such time as Muslims in the West currently singing the praises of “pluralism” no longer have need for Infidel good will and tolerance. To date, the twin techniques of “Taqiyya” and Tu-Quoque have been relied on. “Taqiyya” is the religiously-sanctioned doctrine, with its origins in Shi’a Islam but now practiced by non-Shi’a as well, of deliberate dissimulation about religious matters that may be undertaken to protect Islam, and the Believers. A related term, of broader application, is “kitman,” which is defined as “mental reservation.” An example of “Taqiyya” would be the insistence of a Muslim apologist that “of course” there is freedom of conscience in Islam, and then quoting that Qur’anic verse -- “There shall be no compulsion in religion.” But the impression given will be false, for there has been no mention of the Muslim doctrine of abrogation, or naskh, whereby such an early verse as that about “no compulsion in religion” has been cancelled out by later, far more intolerant and malevolent verses. In any case, history shows that within Islam there is, and always has been, “compulsion in religion” for Muslims, and for non-Muslims. The “compulsion” for Muslims comes from the treatment of apostasy as an act punishable by death. And though “dhimmis” are allowed to practice their religion, they do so under conditions of such burdens and restrictions that many, not as an act of conscience but rather as a response to inexorable Muslim pressure, have converted (or “reverted”) to Islam.
“Kitman” is close to “taqiyya,” but rather than outright dissimulation, it consists in telling only a part of the truth, with “mental reservation” justifying the omission of the rest. One example may suffice. When a Muslim maintains that “jihad” really means “a spiritual struggle,” and fails to add that this definition is a recent one in Islam (little more than a century old), he misleads by holding back, and is practicing “kitman.” When he adduces, in support of this doubtful proposition, the hadith in which Muhammad, returning home from one of his many battles, is reported to have said (as known from a chain of transmitters, or isnad), that he had returned from “the Lesser Jihad to the Greater Jihad” and does not add what he also knows to be true, that this is a “weak” hadith, regarded by the most-respected muhaddithin as of doubtful authenticity, he is further practicing “kitman.”
The use of the word in Qur’an and Hadith, and constantly through 1350 years of Muslim history, has certainly endowed the word “Jihad” with a meaning of struggle, usually through military means, to expand the domain of Islam. Almost all Muslims understand that “warfare” (qital, qatala) is the essential meaning of the word. But Infidels, who prefer to think otherwise, have eagerly snapped up little guides such as that put out a few years ago by Karen Armstrong, a compleat apologist and no scholar of Islam, who made sure to quote that hadith in support of her proposition that Jihad is a “spiritual struggle.” The meaning of words comes from their common and accepted usage, not from what someone wishes to convince us should, for the purpose of a temporarily comforting harmony, be believed to be the meaning.
Jihad as military conquest is of course discussed in the Qur’an and Hadith, and in the commentaries on the Qur’an. And while “qital” or combat is mentioned 27 times in the Qur’an, other instruments of Jihad are also commonly discussed; any Islamic website will provide examples. One is the use of “wealth” to create the conditions that will help to spread Islam. Another is the use of “pen, speech” – persuasion, propaganda -- to spread Islam. Still another instrument of Jihad discussed, for example, in the pages of Muslim newspapers, is the use of demography as a weapon of Jihad. Muslim populations within the Bilad al-kufr, or Lands of the Infidels, are seen as helping to spread through Da’wa, the Call to Islam, and in their own increasing presence within Infidel lands, as contributing to the inexorable spread of Islam.
The situation in the world today borders on the fantastic. Never before in history has one civilization allowed large numbers of those who come from an alien, and immutably hostile situation, to settle deep within that first civilization’s borders. Never before have the members of one civilization failed to investigate, and even willfully refused to investigate, or to listen to those who warn about, the consequences for all non-Muslims of the belief-system of Islam. In history, the phenomenon of the Barbarians at the Gates is hardly new. Those barbarians lay siege; if they win, they enter in triumph. Should they lose, the advanced civilization survives. But never before have the gates been opened, to an entering force that has not even been identified or understood. Never before have the inhabitants of the by-now vulnerable city made efforts not to recognize, or realize, what they have done, and what they have undone. That demographic intrusion shows no signs of diminishing. The systematic building of mosques and madrasas, paid for by Saudi Arabia, everywhere in the Western world, helps to make the conduct of Muslim life easier. Western populations have been trained to make much of “celebrating diversity” and “promoting difference” and constructing, on a base of militant but unexamined pluralism, an edifice of legal rights and entitlements. These rights, these entitlements, this militant pluralism are exploited by Muslims who do not believe in pluralism. Nor do they accept the individual rights of conscience and free speech, the legal equality of men and women, and of religious and racial minorities, recognized, for example, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Their current claim to support pluralism is based on the need to protect, and increase the power of, the Muslim umma, or Community, within the West, until such time as that umma no longer needs to pretend to have any interest in Western pluralism and Western values.
“Taqiyya” and “kitman” are no longer needed for Muslims addressing purely Muslim audiences. While in the early days, the Shi’a were afraid of Sunni persecution, and therefore needed to practice taqiyya, today both Sunni and Shi’a, by and large, do not find that they need dissimulate about the nature of Islam for other Muslims. It is only when non-Muslims may overhear, and begin to understand, an intra-Muslim discussion, that the need to dissimulate is emphasized. Yassir Arafat could, with impunity, refer to the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya in speeches to fellow Muslims. He was fortunate; no Westerners, or even Israelis, seemed to think that the significance of that repeated allusion to Muhammad’s treaty with the Meccans in 628 A.D. needed to be examined.
Among those who see no need to practice taqiyya when rousing fellow Muslims, but instead see the need to remind their listeners of the central tenets and teachings of Islam, are Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. The canonical texts support their view of the need for, the duty for, Jihad. And they receive a good deal of support, and admiration, all over the Muslim world. For they are not renegades, not unorthodox, not the promoters of a wild misinterpretation of Islam. Their view of Islam is exactly what Muhammad, Ibn Taymiyya, Al-Ghazali, Ibn Khaldun, and all the greatest Qur’anic commentators, muhaddithin, and theologians in the history of Islam, would have understood and shared. Some Muslims believe that at the moment, Islam is too weak, and therefore, for the sake of Islam itself, the truth of its teachings should not be so clearly expressed, and acted upon. It may be that Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri themselves will reach the same conclusion. That would not constitute an abandonment of Jihad, but rather a prudent relinquishing of terrorism as a weapon of Jihad, and greater emphasis on other, tactically more effective, weapons of Jihad, such as Da’wa and demographic increase. The idea that “Jihad” is primarily a “spiritual struggle” would cause laughter everywhere in the world’s mosques and madrasas, for Muslims know that this definition is flatly contradicted by their texts and their entire history. Yet, the same imam who gives a fiery speech about Jihad can show up at an Interfaith Rally and, with seemingly complete conviction, assure his Infidel audience that, of course, “Jihad” refers only to “a spiritual struggle.” This kind of thing is second nature.
Infidels need to understand that however wary they may pride themselves on being, they are still not prepared for the world of the Muslim East. After many decades of work in Egypt, Lord Edward Cecil affixed, as the epigraph to his once-famous Memoirs of an Egyptian Official, the following: “Here lies one who tried to hustle the East.” Many Englishmen regarded that epigraph as the perfect summary of their own encounters with the Muslim world. “War is deceit,” Muhammad said, and those who regard him as al-insan al-kamil, the Most Perfect of Men, have become past masters at the art of deceit. It is nearly impossible to find a Muslim who will admit to the full truth of what Islam teaches about Infidels, though occasionally it happens. Ex-Muslims are just as well-versed in the teachings of Islam as those who remain Muslims, for they do not suddenly cease to understand Islam when they leave the faith.. They remain the best sources of knowledge about what it means to grow up as a Muslim, in a Muslim society, surrounded by the attitudes toward Infidels that Islam engenders and promotes.
Sometimes Taqiyya is not enough. Muslim spokesmen often attempt to convince an audience of Infidels that Islam is a religion of “peace” and “tolerance.” This, nowadays, works less well than it used to, and if an audience shows signs of not being completely convinced, another tack – that of Tu-Quoque – is attempted. Now these same spokesmen, who a minute before were all sweetness-and-light, begin to attack Christianity and Judaism for their own lack of “peace” and “tolerance.” They support this attack with bloodcurdling passages from Leviticus or some obscure text, possibly attributed to a rabbi from 2500 years ago.
The Crusades are presented by Muslim apologists as a defining moment in Muslim-Christian relations, a moment in which the peaceful and inoffensive Muslims were attacked, without cause. In this version, not a word is uttered about the centuries of Muslim Jihad-conquest that preceded the Crusades – nearly 400 years of seizing lands formerly occupied by Christians in Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, North Africa (where, among other Fathers of the Church, Tertullian and St. Augustine were born and lived).
Nor is what prompted the Crusades ever mentioned. For in 1009 A.D. the Fatimid Caliph Hakim had ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and for almost a century the Muslims steadily made encroachments on the Christian presence in, and access to, what was for Western Christendom the Holy Land. And there were, for a thousand years, until the 19th century, a constant series of Muslim raiding-parties that came by sea, and attacked the coastal villages throughout Europe, as far as Ireland and even, in one instance, Iceland. Villages were razed, and many villagers killed, and a million European Christians were kidnapped (see the recent White Gold, by Giles Milton), brought back to dar al-Islam, enslaved, and often forcibly converted. The Crusades have to be understood in their full context.
In Islam the world is uncompromisingly divided between dar al-Islam, the House of Islam, and dar al-harb, the House of War, where Infidels have not yet been subjugated to Islam. “Islam is to dominate and not to be dominated” and eventually, all of the world, which belongs to Allah, will become part of dar al-Islam. The Jihad is the “struggle” to expand Islam, to create the conditions where Muslims may rule, and Islam may prevail. This Jihad to spread Islam has lasted 1350 years. It has no end, until its goal is reached, whatever periods of quiescence must be observed because of lack of effective instruments or power. Not every Muslim heart beats with passion for this idea, but around the world, a great many do. Furthermore, Infidels can never know when a Muslim who seemed so Westernized, so removed from such matters, may undergo a transformation, into a much more menacing True Believer.
The Crusades were different. They were limited in both time and space. There was no interest in re-conquering, for Christianity, any territories held by Muslims beyond the Holy Land itself. The Crusades lasted a mere 200 years. Yet this difference is never noted by Muslims intent on blaming “the Crusades” and not the history of Jihad-conquest of Christian lands, and of the subjugation of Christian populations, to Muslim rule and to Muslim oppression (for the “dhimmi” was not so much a member of a “protected people” as of an “oppressed” –because deliberately humiliated and degraded -- “people”).
Tu-Quoque has led to real absurdities. At one gathering with a Muslim panel and an audience of Infidels, a Muslim professor recently assured his listeners that “Ku Klux Klan members used to sing Christian hymns as they crucified Afro-Americans.” No one bothered to point out that the Ku Klux Klan did not “crucify,” but lynched, its victims; that the Grand Kleagle did not lead his followers in song, much less Christian hymns, during these lynchings, and that the stoutest enemies of slavery, and then of the Ku Klux Klan, were to be found in the churches themselves, beginning with such celebrated abolitionist ministers as the Reverend Theodore Parker and Henry Ward Beecher.
Though NPR has had hosts and guests who allude to Islam, those hosts, and those guests, almost without exception, are well-versed graduates of the Taqiyya and Tu-Quoque schools or, as the taxonomically-minded rhetoricians would say, suppressio veri and suggestio falsi. Those with degrees in Taqiyya insist on focusing on that “handful of extremists,” and “radical Islamists” who, of course, have nothing to do with “the real Islam,” the “peaceful, tolerant Islam” practiced by “the vast majority of moderate Muslims.” Graduates of the Tu-Quoque Academy (whose diplomas are still written in Latin) like to refer airily to “fundamentalists on all sides” who pose an equal threat to one another, and how important it is to “rein in the crazies” that “every society” and “every religion” throws up. But now, at least one invited guest commentator on NPR has suggested that things need to be taken one step further, and the word “Jihad” be dispensed with altogether. And should that step be taken, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will not be able to put NPR together again.
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Special Dispatch Series - No. 2085
October 17, 2008 No. 2085
Muslim Brotherhood Website: Jihad Against Non-Muslims Is Obligatory
On a website devoted to Ramadhan, the Muslim Brotherhood posted a series of articles by Dr. Ahmad 'Abd Al-Khaleq about Al-Walaa Wa'l-Baraa, an Islamic doctrine which, in its fundamentalist interpretation, stipulates absolute allegiance to the community of Muslims and total rejection of non-Muslims and of Muslims who have strayed from the path of Islam.
In his articles, the writer argues that according to this principle, a Muslim can come closer to Allah by hating all non-Muslims - Christians, Jews, atheists, or polytheists - and by waging jihad against them in every possible manner.
For full report, visit http://www.memriiwmp.org/content/en/report.htm?report=2877.
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http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022664.php
Idiocy from Michael Scheurer, dissected by Raymond Ibrahim.
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http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2008/10/023245print.html
October 26, 2008
Muslim students: Bali bombers are "holy warriors"
The cognitive dissonance between what these students say and what I hear from Muslim students on university campuses in the U.S. is enormous. These students openly acknowledge the Islamic imperative of violent jihad; on American campuses, Muslim students profess outrage and wounded indignation, exhorting me to "Stop the Hate" and pretending that I made up this Islamic imperative, and that it doesn't really exist at all. But if they consider Muslims such as the students at the Darusy Syahadah Islamic school -- and those who taught them -- to be twisting Islam and distorting its teachings, why is it that they never seem to do anything within the Islamic community to fight the spread of these teachings, but instead reserve all their ire for me simply for pointing out that many Muslims understand Islam to be exhorting them to violence and supremacism?
I've asked this question innumerable times, of course, and never gotten an answer, because there is no answer. Or rather, there is only one answer, and it is obvious, but Islamic groups in the U.S. still seem to be banking on the majority of Americans not noticing, or caring about, this obvious answer and its implications.
"Islamic students praise Bali bombers," from AFP, October 26 (thanks to JE):
FOR the skullcapped students of the Darusy Syahadah Islamic school there is no question that the three radical jihadis behind the 2002 Bali bombings are heroes.
Sheltering from the equatorial sun on the steps of the school's mosque, the students crowd to offer their approval of bombers Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra.
Authorities say the three bombers will face the firing squad by early November for their role in the attack, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
"They're holy warriors, that's how I respond, they're holy warriors,'' said Sir Muhammad Royhan Syihabuddin Ar-Rohmi, a slight 18-year-old.
His friend Nawawi, also 18, leaned forward in agreement: "They are like us, they wanted to do good deeds.''
Good deeds, i.e., killing 200 infidels.
With its peeling buildings, stray sheep and low-hanging mango trees, Darusy Syahadah in Central Java has long been a key hub for recruitment and indoctrination in the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militant network, experts say.
While authorities have wound up JI cells and killed and imprisoned key militants, JI-linked Islamic boarding schools across Indonesia have been left to spread the network's radical ideology.
If a new generation of JI bombers were to emerge, it would be from schools like this. Alumni include Salik Firdaus, a suicide bomber who obliterated himself in the 2005 Bali bombing that killed 20 people.
If the Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims™ really deplored the jihad ideology, as everyone from George Bush and Colin Powell to students at the MSA's around the country at colleges where I have been speaking would have us believe, it would be reasonable to assume that their highest priority, or one of their highest priorities, would be to educate their own people against it. After all, if "a new generation of JI bombers were to emerge, it would be from schools like this," it is because the teachers at the the Darusy Syahadah Islamic school are teaching their students the propriety of killing or subjugating unbelievers. This is an ideology that is spread by education. Yet nowhere in the world -- not in the U.S., not anywhere else -- is there any counter-pedagogical effort by self-professed anti-terror Muslims.
However, analysts say the picture is not quite that simple.
Hurt by the police crackdown and facing public disgust over bombings, JI is deeply split, said Sidney Jones, a JI expert at the International Crisis Group think-tank.
A small minority faction behind fugitive Malaysian Noordin Mohammed Top still supports and is working towards bombing local and foreign targets, she said.
The other more numerous faction, dominating the schools, continues to glorify jihad, or holy war, but many of its members have been influenced by a government "deradicalisation'' strategy that has helped halt attacks.
"I think the schools are still problematic, they are inculcating the idea of the glory of jihad. But there isn't a jihad to fight now,'' Jones said.
"The question is: what will these graduates be doing five to 10 years from now?''
Finding a jihad to fight, of course, and one that will probably end up being on the doorstep of many people who today are insisting that Islam is a Religion of Peace™ and that those who are concerned about massive Muslim immigration into the West are just bigots and racists.
For Mustaqim, the principal of Darusy Syahadah, the watchword is preparation.
The school encourages exercise and self-defence and aims to strengthen and defend Islam, said Mustaqim, sporting white robes, a wispy beard and bruises on his forehead from frequent prayer.
"It says in the Koran that infidels will strengthen each other and wage a war of falsehood. We have been instructed to strengthen Islam against falsehood,'' he said.
That's rich, given how the entire edifice of Islam in the West is built on falsehood -- a well thought-out, carefully orchestrated campaign of falsehood, that meets with furious indignation and cries of "bigotry" anyone who dares to examine the stated motives and goals of the jihadists.
On suicide bombings against civilians - the hallmark of Noordin's faction - Mustaqim stressed that the aim is noble but the methods incorrect.
"In the methods (Noordin) has taken, we're not on the same path. Methods, that's what I'm talking about, methods,'' emphasised Mustaqim, whose wife is the sister of Ubeid, a JI militant jailed for helping the fugitive Noordin.
Methods, that's what he's talking about, methods. Yet in the U.S. Lawrence Wright wrote a much-lauded piece in the New Yorker about how some jihadists were changing their methods, and innumerable commentators, conservatives and liberals alike, could scarcely contain their excitement: Muslims were denouncing al-Qaeda! The Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims™ was finally asserting itself! The end of the War On Terror was at hand!
It never seemed to occur to these learned analysts that all that was being discussed was a change of methods, not of goals, as was patently clear from Wright's piece itself, although even Wright seemed to miss it. But since they have been focused on methods (terrorism) rather than goals (Sharia supremacism) all along, they missed this one also.
There are indeed peaceful Muslims, and there are indeed some among those who aren't interested in waging any kind of jihad. They either don't know or don't care about the imperative to struggle against unbelievers. They may have what they consider to be better things to do. Of course, such people are everywhere being challenged by Muslims who insist that they represent pure and true Islam, and that those who are not waging jihad are not good Muslims. Such people, being indifferent to or ignorant of these matters, are not going to stand up against the jihadists, and the jihadists regard them as a large recruiting field.
There is a very small group of Muslims who are actively trying to reform these Islamic imperatives, but don't kid yourself: it is a very small group, and not an influential one. The group of Muslims who feign indignation when non-Muslims discuss the jihad ideology, and who claim never to have heard of such a thing or that it is a heretical version of Islam cooked up by a Tiny Minority of Extremists™ -- they are much more numerous. They are dangerous, also, because they fool so very many people.
Outside the mosque, student Nawawi said it was "up to God'' whether he would follow the example set by the Bali bombers.
"Not everyone has to follow them,'' he said.
He is quite right. In Islamic theology there are many ways to aid the jihad. Nawawi can wage the jihad of the tongue or the pen, or the jihad of the pocketbook. He may also be referring, although this is unlikely, to the fact that in classic Islamic theology jihad warfare is fard kifaya, an obligation of the community as a whole but not of every individual believer. Jihad becomes fard ayn, obligatory on every individual Muslim to aid in some way, when a Muslim land is attacked. I say that it is unlikely that he was referring to that distinction because jihadists today generally argue that Muslim lands have been attacked, and that therefore jihad is fard ayn. On the other hand, he may be referring specifically to Bali, where it would be hard to argue that a Muslim land has been attacked.
At the al-Mukmin boarding school founded by alleged JI spiritual head Abu Bakar Bashir in the nearby town of Ngruki, the bombers are honoured but opinions are similarly mixed.
About 1,600 students attend classes in rooms bedecked with cardboard cutouts of assault rifles and posters extolling the virtues of "martyrdom''.
Cardboard cutouts of assault rifles in a religious school. Yet no Muslim who gets so indignant at me seems to be upset about this. Now, why is that? Is it really so unclear?
Sitting on the floor of his lounge in the school grounds, the acid-tongued Bashir blamed the main 2002 blast on a CIA "micro-nuclear'' device fired from a ship off the Balinese coast.
"The bomb Amrozi set off, the first one, at most it shattered glass and didn't wound people, or at most wounded them a little,'' he said.
''(The bombers) struggled in that way, not as terror, but with the aim of defending Islam, which is being terrorised by America and its friends ... they are counter-terrorists, not terrorists,'' he said.
Remember that one the next time you hear a Muslim say that he condemns "terrorism," without defining his terms.
But al-Mukmin school principal Wahyudin said the bombers' indiscriminate bombing of nightclubs on the island was a disproportionate response to the global oppression of Muslims.
"What I can fault is that Bali is not a conflict area, it's not an area of war. Although we can say there certainly were enemies there, there were also non-enemies. That has to be avoided. That was a mistake there,'' he said.
What Wahyudin is saying is that jihad violence is fine in a conflict area, but not in an area in which there are present in significant numbers people who are not considered to be at war with Islam. But he has no problem with the concept of violent jihad in principle.
Posted at October 26, 2008 8:30 AM
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http://www.douglasfarah.com/article/415/a-necessary-reminder-of-what-the-jihadists-are-about.com
Nov 5, 12:48
A Necessary Reminder of What the Jihadists Are About
Every once in a while, it is necessary to step back from the abstract world of ideas and see what the ideas actually mean in people’s lives. That is particularly true as the new administration enters and has to think about what the radical Islamist agenda really means to those who live under it.
It is also worth noting the little-noticed support some of the worst parts of the Islamist agenda get from so-called moderate and mainstream Islamist groups who are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Nothing could be a more stark reminder than the story of the young Somali woman who was stoned to death for adultery after reporting to authorities that she had been raped.
Amnesty International reported that partway through the stoning nurses checked whether Aisha was still alive. They pulled her body out of the ground to ascertain she was still breathing before the stoning continued.
A Unicef statement said: ‘She sought protection from the authorities, who then accused her of adultery and sentenced her to death. ‘A child was victimised twice – first by the perpetrators of the rape and then by those responsible for administering justice.’
This is what the Taliban means when it talks of sharia law and what has in mind for the rest of the world. This is why the idea of engaging in talks with the Taliban over the future of Afghanistan is such a dangerous idea.
The jihadists cannot compromise and have already demonstrated, during their barbaric governance of Afghanistan from 1996-2001 that they are cannot be part of a civilized coalition to govern anything.
It is worth remembering that the Muslim Brotherhood, including its supposedly enlightened leaders like Tariq Ramadan, do not condemn this barbaric form of justice. Why? Because they can’t without disowning the same general goals the Ikhwan share with the jihadist: A world under sharia law where this is not only condoned but mandatory.
Here is the nicest possible description of Ramadan’s stand, taken from a sympathetic article in Foreign Affairs magazine.
In front of six million viewers, Ramadan refused to call for a ban on the stoning of adulterers, arguing instead for a “moratorium.” This apparently semantic distinction reveals Ramadan’s reformist logic: it is a way to stop capital punishment immediately while engaging its proponents on their terms. Ramadan concedes that stoning may be supported in part of the Muslim world and by the instructions of law books. But such punishment, he argues, should be suspended while a debate is held over the conditions of its actual application.
For some critics, this kind of reasoning is unacceptably ambiguous: Ramadan will not categorically denounce stoning! But by calling for a moratorium, Ramadan avoids the Islamic equivalent of excommunication.
So, one would be excommunicated from the Muslim faith, or at least the Muslim Brotherhood, if one does not denounce stoning. Yet we are repeatedly told by U.S. Muslim Brotherhood groups that they are mainstream and moderate. How do they reconcile these opposing statements? They don’t. They simply denounce those who raise the questions as Islamophobes and racists.
It is worth remembering that when one engages with groups who cannot disown criminal and barbaric conduct, one legitimizes them. The Obama camp would do well to keep this in mind as the Muslim Brotherhood front organizations come knocking on the door of the new administration, as they will, presenting themselves as enlightened and moderate forces for good.
posted by Douglas Farah
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Here's an article about it:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1081214/Somali-girl-pleaded-mercy-Islamists-stoned-death-raped.html?ITO=1490
Somali girl 'pleaded for mercy' before Islamists stoned her to death for being raped
By David Williams
Last updated at 8:00 AM on 05th November 2008
Comments (184) Add to My Stories
A girl of 13 begged for mercy moments before a mob buried her up to her shoulders and stoned her to death, it was claimed yesterday. The Somalian youngster is said to have pleaded 'Don't kill me, don't kill me' before her horrific execution in front of a 1,000-strong crowd. A boy is thought to have been shot dead amid the appalling scenes inside a football stadium in Kismayu, a rebel-held port.
An armed soldier guards a crowd in Kismayo, Somalia, which is currently ruled by an Islamist militia (file picture). Amnesty International has said that a 13-year-old girl, who had been raped, was stoned to death there. According to Amnesty International, the girl was 13 and had been raped by three men.
Officials say she was 23 and had confessed adultery before an Islamic court. The stoning, which took place on October 28, is the first public killing in war-torn Somalia for two years. Convicting a girl of 13 for adultery would be illegal under sharia law but the authorities said she had lied about her age. Print and radio journalists who were allowed to attend the execution put her age at 23.
Amnesty and Unicef, the UN children's agency, said that the girl, identified as Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, was raped while travelling to see a relative in Mogadishu, the Somalian capital. Her family is said to have tried to report the crime to the militia who control Kismayu, only for Aisha to be arrested and accused of adultery. None of the men she accused of rape was detained.
David Copeman, Amnesty's Somalia campaigner, said: 'This was not justice, nor was it an execution. This child suffered an horrendous death at the behest of the armed opposition groups who currently control Kismayu. This killing is yet another human rights abuse committed by the combatants in Somalia and again demonstrates the importance of international action to investigate and document such abuses, through an international commission of inquiry.'
Amnesty said partway through the stoning nurses checked whether Aisha was still alive. They pulled her body out of the ground to ascertain she was still breathing before the stoning continued.
A Unicef statement said: 'She sought protection from the authorities, who then accused her of adultery and sentenced her to death. A child was victimised twice - first by the perpetrators of the rape and then by those responsible for administering justice.'
The agency said the incident highlighted the vulnerability of girls and women in Somalia, which has suffered civil conflict for the past 17 years. In the latest cycle, Islamist rebels are fighting the government and their backers in the Ethiopian military.
A witness told the BBC the woman had begged for her life and had been crying as she was forced into the hole in the ground. He said the girl had asked the Islamic administration in Kismayo: 'What do you want from me?'
They replied : 'We will do what Allah has instructed us.'
She said: 'I'm not going, I'm not going. Don't kill me, don't kill me.'
The witness added: 'A few minutes later more than 50 men tried to stone her.'
He said no one tried to stop the Islamist officials, who were armed.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/04/treasury-submits-to-shariah/
GAFFNEY: Treasury submits to Shariah
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
COMMENTARY:
The U.S. Treasury Department is submitting to Shariah - the seditious religio-political-legal code authoritative Islam seeks to impose worldwide under a global theocracy.
As reported in this space last week, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt set the stage with his recent visit to Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Persian Gulf states. His stated purpose was to promote the recycling of petrodollars in the form of foreign investment here.
Evidently, the price demanded by his hosts is that the U.S. government get with the Islamist financial program. While in Riyadh, Mr. Kimmitt announced: "The U.S. government is currently studying the salient features of Islamic banking to ascertain how far it could be useful in fighting the ongoing world economic crisis."
"Islamic banking" is a euphemism for a practice better known as "Shariah-Compliant Finance (SFC)." And it turns out that this week the Treasury will be taking officials from various federal agencies literally to school on SFC.
The department is hosting a half-day course entitled "Islamic Finance 101" on Thursday at its headquarters building. Treasury's self-described "seminar for the policy community" is co-sponsored with the leading academic promoters of Shariah and SCF in the United States: Harvard University Law School's Project on Islamic Finance. At the very least, the U.S. government evidently hopes to emulate Harvard's success in securing immense amounts of Wahhabi money in exchange for conforming to the Islamists' agenda. Like Harvard, Treasury seems utterly disinterested in what Shariah actually is, and portends.
Unfortunately, such submission - the literal meaning of "Islam" - is not likely to remain confined long to the Treasury or its sister agencies. Thanks to the extraordinary authority conferred on Treasury since September, backed by the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the department is now in a position to impose its embrace of Shariah on the U.S. financial sector. The nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Treasury's purchase of - at last count - 17 banks and the ability to provide, or withhold, funds from its new slush-fund can translate into unprecedented coercive power.
Concerns in this regard are only heightened by the prominent role Assistant Treasury Secretary Neel Kashkari will be playing in "Islamic Finance 101." Mr. Kashkari, the official charged with administering the TARP fund, will provide welcoming remarks to participants. Presumably, in the process, he will convey the enthusiasm about Shariah-Compliant Finance that appears to be the current party line at Treasury.
As this enthusiasm for SCF ramps up in Washington officialdom, it is worth recalling a lesson from "across the pond." Earlier this year, the head of the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, provoked a brief but intense firestorm of controversy with his declaration that it was "unavoidable" that Shariah would be practiced in Britain. Largely unremarked was the reason he gave for such an ominous forecast: The U.K. had already accommodated itself to Shariah-Compliant Finance.
This statement provides an important insight for the incumbent U.S. administration and whomever succeeds it: Shariah-Compliant Finance serves as a leading edge of the spear for those seeking to insinuate Shariah into Western societies.
Regrettably, SCF is not the only instrument of the stealth jihad by which Shariah-promoting Islamists are seeking to achieve "parallel societies" here and elsewhere in the West. The British experience is instructive on this score, too. Her Majesty's government has allowed the establishment of at least five Shariah courts to hear (initially) family law cases. Polygamists in the U.K. can get welfare for each of their wives (as long as all the marriages beyond the first were performed overseas).
Thus far, we in this country may not have reached the point where evidence of this sort of creeping Shariah is so manifest. But Treasury's accommodation to SCF demonstrates that we are on the same trajectory - the one ordained and demanded by the promoters of Shariah, one to which we serially accommodate ourselves at our extreme peril.
After all, the object of Shariah is the supplanting of our government and Constitution, through violent means if possible and, until then, through stealthy ones. Islamists, having secured footholds via their parallel societies, inevitably use those to extend their influence over Muslims who have no more interest in living under authoritative Islam's Shariah than the rest of us do. Inexorably, it becomes the turn of non-Muslims to accommodate themselves to ever more intrusive demands from the Islamists. It is known as submission, or dhimmitude.
Soon - possibly as early as this Wednesday - the Treasury Department and the other federal agencies will be taking orders from representatives of Barack Obama or John McCain. It may be that the outgoing administration's determination to advance the Islamist agenda via "Islamic Finance 101," and what flows from it, may be the first, far-reaching policy decision inherited by the new president-elect. If he does not want to have his transition saddled with an implicit endorsement of submission to Shariah, the winner of the White House sweepstakes would be well-advised to pull the plug on Thursday's indoctrination program and the insidious industry it is meant to foist on the "policy community," our capital markets and our country.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for The Washington Times.
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Not waiting long before moving in for the kill.
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GM:
As a matter of more than comparitive theology, would you please post that piece on the Political Economics thread too please?
TIA,
Marc
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At my request, a couple of days ago GM posted some very interesting articles on the Bush administration's proposals regarding SCF (Sharia Compliant Finance) in the Political Economy thread, but now I am thinking that the subject really belongs here, and so I incorporate those posts by reference here and apologize for the inconvenience of having to look them up there :oops:
Following up, here's this on Sharia Finance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking
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In their own words
http://www.islamic-bank.com/islamicbanklive/IslamicFinance/1/Home/1/Home.jsp
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http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=1208&p=culture&a=2
Wirasat (Succession), neglected rights of woman
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Qazi Dr. Shaikh Abbas Borhany For the Yemen Times
Except Islam which attained its perfection divinely, no other religion grants and honours the share of women in Wirasat (inheritance). According to the Qur’an and Ahadith such laws, are considered and judged to be tyrannical and against the law of nature, which totally neglect the rights of women in Wirasat. Today, the so-called ‘Liberals’, who in general are also called ‘Reformists’ are in fact a group of that class who are ignorant of the Shariah. They raise the slogan of equality in the shares of men and women in Wirasat, which is totally repugnant to the Shariah. These inimical forces of Islam totally forget that neither Christians nor Jews or Hindus grant the Rights of Women in the Wirasat, as is bestowed by Islam.
Sharia law is no longer a difficult to understand in the study of Islam. Today Sharia, its role in political Islam and its impact on the daily lives of Muslim women and humanity has made headlines everywhere, almost daily. The word "Sharia" literally means "the path on sand created by camels walking to water-spots" but spiritually it means Hidayat-guidance. Islam initially restore women's rights by taking the first steps in that desert society by banning female-infanticide, preventing forcing of women into unwanted marriages, allowing women to retain their fathers' names after marriage, permitting women to be witnesses (albeit their testimony counted as half of a man's) and establishing Haq ul Wirasat- their ownership rights to property and their income. All of these advances in women's rights occurred in the Middle East when Europe was in the midst of the Dark Ages. The term "Fiqh" emerged, which literally means human understanding. "Where an explicit command of Allah or His Rasul already exists, no Muslim leader or legislature, or any religious scholar can form an independent judgment not even all the Muslims of the world put together, have any right to make least alteration to it". Believing so is regarded as alliance to Islam itself. All books on Sharia law univocally maintain this dictum. The Qur'an and the Ahadith are two of the most important sources of Sharia.
From early days to the present so-called civilized period, women have been a victim of injustice. Fourteen centuries have passed and the benedictions of Islam have covered a large part of the world, and now we are in the 15th century, but women are still deprived of their Right of Wirasat. The major reason for not acting upon the laws of Wirasat, conferred by Shariah, is due to the filthy rich selfish class. This cursed class has set aside the commandments of Shariah so that their property and estate may not get divided, and due to this reason keep their sisters and daughters unmarried. Before the dawn of Islam, daughters, whether, old or young, were not given any share in Wirasat. In the days of Jahiliyah, Arabs did not give their own daughters any Right of Wirasat but adopted a boy of some one else as their own son (Mutabanna in Arabi) and gave him the status of successor. Islam eliminated this injustice and strongly ordered to distribute the due share of their wealth and property to their women. One of the most important differences between the Qur'an and the Bible is their attitude towards female inheritance of the property of a deceased relative. According to Numbers 27:1-11, widows and sisters don't inherit at all. Daughters can inherit only if their deceased father had no sons. Otherwise the sons receive the entire inheritance. Prior to Islam, inheritance rights were confined exclusively to the male relatives. The Qur'an abolished all these unjust customs and gave all the female relatives their just share (see Qur'an 4:7, 11, 12 and 176). It is a matter of sorrow and regret that the practice prevalent before Islam still exists and women are bereft of their share in Wirasat. To dispel this tyranny Ayat 7 of Surah al Nisa was sent down by Allah. The principle was fixed divinely so that both men and women become rightful share holders in Wirasat. Qur’an says:
“For men, there is a share in what their parents and kindred leave behind, and for women a share in what their parents and kindred leave behind, be it little, or be it much: a decreed share”.
The cardinal principal of Wirasat is to distribute the wealth among all the near relatives, and not to let it accumulate in the hands of one person, a wise and effective check on concentration of wealth in few hands. In Surah al Nisa it has been clarified:
“A man would get share equal to two women”.
This law of Wirasat contains a clarification of the shares of a man and a woman and is like other laws of Shariat, conferred by the divine institution of Wahi. It is not a law passed by any Council, Senate, Assembly, Committee or Organization, which may be approved today or amended and rejected tomorrow. After the Wahi, the matter does not rest on the opinion of any human bequeathing wealth/property. The distribution of shares and every right of Wirasat has been fixed by the Divine Law of Shariah. It cannot be amended at will by the so-called enlightened or reformist, whenever they wish to do it, and due to the Wahi, their thoughts and Aqaid become null and void in which a woman remains deprived of any share in Wirasat. If we look at the spirit of Shariah, we will find that the responsibilities of men and women are quite distinct and separate. Their duties and rights are separate and different. Men have been made responsible for supporting women; but not vice-versa. The responsibility of man in regard to the sustenance of woman has been fixed by Islam. A woman has been given half the share of man in wealth/property because there are separate laws for her sustenance, military services and punishment. A woman’s special right in the Wirasat is due to Mehar, and the right of Nufuqa. If we look at the social order of Islam, we will find that according to the law of Wirasat, a man gets two thirds while a woman gets one third because men are responsible for the expenses of women. Therefore the wealth/property of a woman remains immune from the use or grip of men, while two third share of man is spent on both man and woman. If we consider this point, we find that a woman gets a substantial share in Wirasat as an additional benefit.
In his famous book “Daem al Islam”, Vol. II., Syedna Qazi al Numan has mentioned that Abi Jafar Imam Mohammad al Baqir and Abi Abdullah Imam Jafar Assadiq have jointly declared that women are not entitled for inheritance in movable property, but are only entitled to their proper share of Wirasat according to the Law of Qur’an, the amount being taken for the price of land forming part of the heritable estate. Thus the woman would get her proper share, not in the shape of land, but in other forms of property known at that time. Syedna Qazi al Numan explained further: this is not a general rule, (very unfortunately many Fuquha (Muslim Jurists) still consider it as general rules and applying the same formula on every case) but restricted
(a) to land which had been dedicated as Waqf for the benefit of men, who had undertaken Jihad in defense of the Muslims or
(b) to land dedicated as Waqf for the benefit of one group of persons (namely men) to the exclusion of the other group (women).
According to the pre Islam customary law, females and cognate were excluded from Wirasat. The amendments in the law of Wirasat conferred by Islam fall generally under two heads:
The husband or wife and females as well as cognates are recognized as competent to inherit.
Parents and ascendants are given a Right to inherit even when there are male Wurus’a who are present.
It is a provision of Qur’an that the daughter is entitled to succeed with the son, as interpreted by the Ahl al Bait as applicable to all female Wurus’a. Fuquh’a takes the provision of the Qur’an as not restricted to individual instances of the daughter or the sister, but as establishing a new principle for the benefit of the women, which is the most important legal reform introduction by Islam when referring to the rights of women.
Summarizing this we can confirm that Islam has totally eliminated all injustices regarding the Wirasat of women, and that the double share of man in Wirasat is due to the fact that the man has to bear other burdens (family) on his budget. Also the aspect of Wirasat of a wife is on the basis of her Mehar and the right of Nufuq’a. If only an economic aspect was under consideration, Islam would not have differentiated in the rights of Wirasat of men and women, like the worshippers of the West.
The writer is Attorney at Law & Religious Scholar. He has a PhD (USA), NDI, Shahadat al A’alamiyyah (Najaf, Iraq), M.A., LLM (Shariah)and is a member, Ulama Council of Pakistan.
Email address: qazishkborhany@hotmail.com
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Swimming in modesty
Muslim women head to a Cary pool as another cultural barrier falls
BY YONAT SHIMRON, Staff Writer
Comment on this story
Salman Sheikh was organizing a swim class for his two sons last summer when fellow Muslim parents approached him about starting a class for girls.
Sheikh told them he would ask the Curran Aquatic Center in Cary whether it could accommodate a group of Muslims who preferred a women-only pool.
Yes, of course, the leaders of the aquatic center said, and showed him a 15-yard pool that could be rented for $170 an hour.
Problem was, the small pool overlooked a larger, Olympic-size pool, and Sheikh wondered whether the center could provide blinds to cover the windows and shield the women from onlookers.
Sure, the center's leaders said, but it would cost $3,000 for custom-made blinds. Sheikh was ready to drop the idea. But the Muslim community in Raleigh and Cary wouldn't let him.
Within a month, Sheikh, a native of Pakistan who works as a project manager for the state Department of Health and Human Services, raised the money and signed up 35 women for the first class.
Last month, a group of women of all ages dipped their toes into the water for the first time.
This type of accommodation to the religious requirements of their faith is something Muslims are seeing more. All-Muslim Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops have cropped up across the country. Muslims are entering politics, studying Islam at major American universities, even finding halal, or ritually slaughtered foods, at local stores.
"I see this as sign of Muslims learning to operate within American civic institutions," said Omid Safi, a professor of Islamic studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.
For many of the women who signed up for the first class, learning to swim had been a long-deferred wish.
"I didn't ever want to be in a situation where I fall in the water and can't help myself," said Tarannum Khan, 30, who signed up for the class in Cary.
Many devout Muslim women adhere to their faith's requirements to guard their modesty, which for them means covering their hair and bodies in the presence of men who aren't their relatives. By doing so, they believe they are deflecting the desires and gazes of the opposite sex and living the kind of life the Prophet Muhammad might have approved.
Deprived of a dip
In mostly Muslim countries, it is common to have separate pools for men and women. But in the United States that's virtually unheard of, and as a result many Muslim women grow up not knowing how to swim.
Saleha Bhatti of Raleigh, who accompanied her 16-year-old daughter, Sanaa, to the swim class, said that was the case in her family. Had she stayed in Pakistan, she might have taken lessons at a women's pool, but in the United States, it wasn't an option.
"We never had the chance to learn," Bhatti said.
Jenny Jaber, a convert to Islam who lives in Raleigh, said learning to swim should not be a luxury. Indeed, she said, learning to swim is encouraged in the oral sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, known as the hadith.
"I've wanted to waterproof this community for a long time," said Jaber, who worked as a water safety instructor until she converted. "We're around water all the time, and it unnerves me to see these women standing on piers."
The first swimming class for Muslim women focused mostly on the fundamentals of water safety: wading, learning to float, learning to breathe.
Many of the women came dressed in full-length Burkinis, swimming costumes that looks much like a scuba-diving suit but are made of water-protected polyester rather than rubber. Designed for Muslim women, they cover the entire body except for the hands, feet and face.
Huma Sheikh, the wife of Salman, said she considers herself a pioneer among Triangle Muslim women who have learned to swim. She is proud that her husband and her two boys, Hamza, 9, and Mohhid, 7, can swim. And proud that she can, too.
"I've learned all the strokes," she said, "but I'm best at the breast stroke."
The first class ended last month, and the Sheikhs are planning another one in March or April.
"It's created a lot of excitement," said Doracy Harrison, program manager at the Curran Aquatic Center. "It's been really neat."
For the Sheikhs, the success of the class is a lesson in cultural adjustment. "It makes sense for business and service providers to accommodate the needs of the community," Salman Sheikh said. "All it takes is dialogue to make it happen."
yonat.shimron@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4891
To sign up for the all-women Muslim swim class, send e-mail to the Sheikhs at mohni16@hotmail.com.
http://www.newsobserver.com/347/story/1351642.html
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Suicide Bombings and Islam
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, January 19, 2009
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Syed Kamran Mirza, the author of Roots of Islamic Terrorism and co-author of Beyond Jihad and Leaving Islam-Apostates Speak Out.
FP: Dr. Syed Kamran Mirza, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Mirza: Thank you Jamie.
FP: I would like to talk to you today about suicide bombing as a phenomenon in Islamic warfare. We are witnessing this horrifying pathology in Gaza today, as Hamas militants are carrying out different forms of suicide operations, using their children and women as human shields, etc.
Let me begin with this question: many apologists of Islamic suicide bombing point out that other cultures and groups employ suicide bombing and that, therefore, no one has a right to point a finger at Muslims or Islam in this regard. What would you say to that?
Mirza: Yes, Islamic apologists often argue that suicide bombings are not just committed by the Muslims, but by many other nations – among them Tamils, Jews and Japanese. According to these apologists, since these groups engaged in suicide bombings for the cause of freedom in their eyes, then it means that Muslims are doing the same. The implication here is that Muslims are committing suicide for a freedom struggle and their suicide bombings have nothing to do with Islam. But a serious question can be asked here: Are all those past suicide bombings the same as Islamic suicide bombings? Are their patterns the same? Let us examine the facts:
The so called Tamil Tigers, Jews or Japanese Kamikazes may have used a technique of suicide bombings very rarely in their desperate quest—but only, in their view, to defend or free their own motherland, and their suicide acts were absolutely limited to targeting soldiers and leaders; they never targeted innocent civilians.
Tamils, Jews, Kamikazes or the IRA never blasted bombs in other countries outside their own geographical boundary; they only primarily blasted bombs within their own border or on enemy troops. Rarely, an isolated single bomb went off in the vicinity of the border, such as in the Tamils’ killing of Razib Ghandi, for his support of the Sri Lankan Government. But they never came to America, Britain, Spain, Indonesia, Tanzania, Uganda, Yemen, Saudi Arabia etc. to blast suicide bombs inside restaurants, buses, trains, metros, ocean beaches, tourist resorts etc. None of them engaged in suicide bombings throughout the whole world like Islamists vigorously do today. How many Tamils blasted suicide bombs in Europe or America? Was there any global jihadi phenomenon of suicide bombings by Tamil Tigers like there is the one waged by Islamists?
FP: Apologists for Islam also argue that the Qur’an prohibits suicide.
Mirza: It’s a lie to say that the Qur’an prohibits committing suicide. The Qur’an only prohibits taking one’s life for no holy purpose. The Qur’an condemns killing one-self only out of frustrations and for no good reason. But to die in the process of killing non-muslims/kaffirs for the cause of Islam is considered a good deed for believers, and Allah promises many rewards for it.
FP: Ok, so expand for us on the place of suicide bombings in Islam.
Mirza: There is one most important and appropriate quote that we must consider in beginning a discussion on this issue: “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” (Blaise Pascal, 1670).
The Holy Qur’an and Sahih (pure) hadiths do encourage believers to commit suicide if necessary, in order to kill infidels/kaffirs, for the sake of Islam. The Qur’an repeatedly promises terrestrial handsome rewards for those who can kill kaffirs (enemy of Allah and His messenger) and dreadful punishing hellfire for those who refuse to kill kaffirs.
Muslims believe that their actual life starts after death and they have very little desire to prolong their life in this material world. The Qur’an also incites followers to sacrifice their lives in order to kill kaffirs in exchange of a much better and lucrative after life. In the Qur’anic verse 9:111, we find the incentive for jihadis to die in battle: the rewards of paradise, which involves sex with virgins. There are many other verses that promise rewards in paradise for death in jihad (i.e. 4:74, 4:95, 3:169). Such verses clearly order devout Muslims to kill and be killed. Allah is teaching Muslims to sacrifice their own lives, to commit suicide, in His cause in order to kill infidels (enemies of Allah).
The verse 9:111 says: “Allah has purchased of their faithful lives and worldly goods, and in return has promised them the Garden. They will fight for His cause, kill and be killed.”
This verse very precisely justifies suicide bombing - the most lethal, terrifying, inhuman and successful weapon Islamic terrorists are using today to kill Allah's enemies. It is the perfect example (without any ambiguity) of the suicidal method Allah has prescribed for devout Muslims. In verse 9:111 Allah is clearly saying that He has purchased life and property of believers in exchange of lustful and unimaginable lucrative heavenly pleasures for those who will die (commit suicide) for the cause of killing kaffirs. And the Qur’an is loaded with many more verses ordering the ardent followers to carry out endless killing of infidels/unbelievers until only Muslims remain to inhibit this Earth owned by the Islamic Allah (i.e. 8:39, 9:29, 3:85, 9:39, 9:73, 8:65, 8:66, 4:78, 2:193, 2:216, 5:33, 4:89, 9:5, 9:28, 8:67, 8:17, 9:23, 3:28, 5:45, 47:4, 9:123, 2:191, 8:12).
FP: The hadiths preach the same thing, yes?
Mirza: Absolutely. Killing and dying for the cause of Allah (Jihad) was sanctioned widely in sahi hadiths, which often incite Islamic suicide terrorists. Almost one-third of the fourth of nine volumes of Bukhari, Islam's principal collector of Hadith, focused on jihad as physical war. In Sahi Bukhari: Volume 4, Book 52, Number 44, for example, Abu Huraira narrated: “A man came to Allah's Apostle and said, "Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward)." He replied, "I do not find such a deed." Then he added, "Can you, while the Muslim fighter is in the battle-field, enter your mosque to perform prayers without cease and fast and never break your fast?" The man said, "But who can do that?" Abu- Huraira added, "The Mujahid (i.e. Muslim fighter) is rewarded even for the footsteps of his horse while it wanders bout (for grazing) tied in a long rope."
Many other hadiths stress the same themes: Sahi Bukhari: Volume 4, Book 52, Number 53, Mishkat al-Masabih, Vol. 1:814, Sahi Bukhari 35, page-102. etc.
Now, does it take a rocket scientist to understand the source of the fanatical will of the September 11 terrorists? Does it ring a bell from where Islamic terrorists all over the world get their inspiration and hope? Will our Islamists still say, "Islam is a religion of peace," or that "Qur'an is full of kind and compassionate advises."?
Purely and solely—the real motivation behind suicide terrorism by Islamic terrorists is the teachings of Qur’an and Sunnah (Prophetic traditions). Western politicians erroneously and ignorantly call it “radical Islam” or “evil or distorted ideology.” This is absolutely a wrong statement by the politically correct western politicians. That ideology is nothing but the ideology of pure Islam, which is the holy teaching of the Qur’an.
Palestinian problems, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan etc. are all rooted in the Islamic plea to wage Islamic Jihad. Poverty or frustrations are not the cause of terrorism, because poverty and frustrations also exist amongst millions of poor people from other religions. Will any poor Christian, Hindu or a Buddhist bother to commit suicide to kill innocent westerners? Absolutely not.
FP: And Islamic terrorists consistently refer to the teachings of their religious texts to sanction their violence.
Mirza: Absolutely. All Islamic terrorists arrested by police in Europe – like Mohammed Bouyeri, the murderer of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh in Amsterdam, Netherlands -- readily cited the Qur’an as their teacher to commit their crimes. Bouyeri confessed his guilt and showed no remorse for his act of Islamic slaughter. During the court trial he stated to the victim’s mother: “I don’t feel your pain because I was driven by my religious conviction.” He also said, “If I were released and would have the chance to do it again…I would do exactly the same thing.” At another point he said to the victim’s mother, “I have to admit I don’t have sympathy for you. I can’t feel for you because I think you are a non-believer.”
In the train terrorism incident in Madrid, Spain, the Islamic terrorists were all longtime residents of Spain -- and North American and Syrian born. They admitted to police that they were inspired by the Qur’an and the doctrines of Islam to rise up against their adopted host country to kill 191 Spanish innocent citizen.
During 2005-2006, in Bangladesh experienced an epidemic of bomb blasts by Islamic terrorists (homegrown in Bangladeshi) which included scores of suicide bombings to kill judges in the various court premises. In this process of suicide bombing attempts, two terrorists were captured by the police. When asked by reporters why they were going to kill people by suicide, they answered: "We were doing it by the order of the Qur’anic instructions by Allah."
When Bangladesh terrorist leaders Maulana Shaikh Rahman and Bangla Bhai were captured by police, Maulana Shaikh Rahman explained their actions: "We did it to establish Allah's laws in Bangladesh and we were doing it according to the Quran." Showing one copy of the Qur’an in his hand, Maulana said: "If I am a terrorist, then the Qur’an is also a terrorist."
In America, the 20th hijacker of 9/11 terrorism, Zacaria Moussaoui, proudly declared in court: "I wish I could kill more Americans, because my religion Islam demands that I kill infidels." Moussaoui or any other Islamic terrorist never told anyone that they had been incited to engage in terrorism for the reasons of “poverty” or “political oppression.”
FP: Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda jihadis have also frequently cited many passages from the Qur’an to justify their acts of terrorism and suicide bombings.
Mirza: Yes indeed. In his famous 'fatwa' of declared war against Americans in 1998, bin Laden repeatedly used verses from the Qur’an, that I cited earlier, to incite his followers to kill Americans and infidels -- primarily by the act of suicide bombing.
All the 9/11 Islamic terrorists left their private notes (especially Muhammad Ata) citing Qur’anic killing verses and they all committed suicide to kill American infidels and kaffirs according to the Qur’anic verse 9:111. Not a single time have they have ever claimed or mentioned any other inciting agent for their killing spree. Israel has captured numerous would-be suicide bombers (who failed to detonate themselves) and they were all interviewed by western reporters in their Israeli prison cell. All of them told the reporters that they wanted to die by killing infidels because the Qur’an instructed them to do so – and they also wanted to achieve heavenly pleasures with 72 virgin houris.
FP: Dr. Syed Kamran Mirza, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.
Mirza: Thank you sir.
Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1126556/Muslim-cleric-tells-Australians-Husbands-allowed-rape-beat-wives.html?ITO=1490
Muslim cleric tells Australians: 'Husbands should be allowed to rape and beat their wives'
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 1:16 PM on 22nd January 2009
A Muslim cleric has sparked outrage by telling his followers it is acceptable to rape and beat their wives.
Samir Abu Hamza, who runs an Islamic centre in Melbourne, ridiculed Australian laws banning forced sex within marriage.
Hamza told a male audience in Sydney: 'Amazing, how can a person rape his wife?'
He added that wives must immediately respond to their husbands' sexual demands.
The firebrand preacher also said a man was entitled to use 'limited force' as a last resort to punish a disobedient wife.
Hamza told a male audience in Sydney: 'Amazing, how can a person rape his wife?'
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd
He explained: 'After you have advised them for a long, long time, then you smack them, you beat them and - please brothers, calm down - the beating that the Muhammad showed is like the toothbrush that you use to brush your teeth.'
'You are not allowed to bruise them; you are not allowed to make them bleed,' he added in a video of the 2003 lecture in Sydney recently posted online.
'You don't go and grab a broomstick and say that is what Allah has said.'
In another online sermon, Hamza branded Australians 'boozers who are hooked on gambling and prostitution'.
The cleric urged followers to spread the word of Islam to save Australians.
'They think happiness can be achieved by being intoxicated, by going to the casino and blowing your money away, by going from one prostitute to the other,' he said.
'They don't know what life is all about, that's why they are on the booze, why they are binge drinking... why unfortunately suicide has skyrocketed, murder, anxiety and depression.'
Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd condemned Hamza's comments about marriage, insisting that violence towards women was not permissible under any circumstances.
He said: 'Australia will not tolerate these sort of remarks. They don't belong in modern Australia, and he should stand up, repudiate them, and apologise.'
Joumanah El Matrah, the executive of the Islamic Women's Welfare Council of Victoria state, said Hazma's comments were 'a grossly inappropriate representation of both the Quran and Muslim views on violence, both in wife beating and rape'.
'I don't like to use the word extremism, but certainly his views are outdated and a minority view that is insistent on seeing women as less human than men, she said.
Sherene Hassan, the vice president of the Islamic Council of Victoria, said research has found that some imams in Australia share Hamza's stance on domestic violence.
She said the council will hold a series of workshops aimed at changing those views.
Conflicts between mainstream Australia and its fast-growing Muslim minority, who number 400,000 in a population of 21 million, have gained a higher profile in recent years.
Australia's former mufti, Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali, created a furor in 2006 which split the Islamic community with a lecture in Sydney in which he compared women who do not wear head scarves to 'uncovered meat' and said immodestly dressed women invite rape.
Mr Hamza, born in Lebanon, moved to Australia as a youth with his parents.
He has delivered contradictory lectures, at times telling his followers they should be grateful to live in Australia because it had a fair system of justice, welfare safety nets and the rights for individuals to express their views.
Tensions between Muslim and non-Muslim youths erupted into days of rioting at Sydney's Cronulla beach in late 2005.
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Sorry I don't have a URL for this.
Reactions anyone?
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She turned around and was startled to see Movahedi. A moment later came the agonizing pain. Movahedi had thrown something over her. What felt like fire on her face was acid searing through her skin.
"I was just yelling, 'I'm burning! I'm burning! For God's sake, somebody help me!' "
The acid seeped into Bahrami's eyes and streamed down her face and into her mouth. When she covered her face with her hands, streaks of acid ran down her fingers and onto her forearms.
Two weeks after the attack, Movahedi turned himself in to police and confessed in court. He was convicted in 2005 and has been behind bars all along.
Bahrami's lawyer, Ali Sarrafi, said Movahedi had never shown any remorse. "He says he did it because he loved her," Sarrafi said.
Attack victims in Iran usually accept "blood money": a fine in lieu of harsh punishment. With no insurance and mounting medical bills, Bahrami could've used the cash, but she said no.
"I told the judge I want an eye for an eye," Bahrami said. "People like him should be made to feel my suffering."
Bahrami's demand has outraged some human rights activists. Criticizing acid-attack victims is almost unheard of, but some Internet bloggers have condemned Bahrami's decision.
"We cannot condone such cruel punishment," wrote one blogger. "To willingly inflict the same treatment on a person under court order is a violation of human rights."
Late last year, an Iranian court gave Bahrami what she asked for. It sentenced Movahedi to be blinded with drops of acid in each eye. This month, the courts rejected Movahedi's appeal.
Bahrami's lawyer, Sarrafi, said the sentencing might be carried out in a matter of weeks. He said he doesn't think Bahrami will change her mind. Neither does Bahrami.
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I seen this woman on FOX she was messed up but is living her life the best she can. What would make someone do this to another human being? I say good if they blind him. Really, what is a fitting punishment for permantly disfiguring and blinding somone?
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Seriously, what is wrong with these leftists. hah. a zen momment- I answered my own question. :-)
Fareed Zakaria
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Mar 9, 2009
Pakistan's Swat valley is quiet once again. Often compared to Switzerland for its stunning landscape of mountains and meadows, Swat became a war zone over the past two years as Taliban fighters waged fierce battles against Army troops. No longer, but only because the Pakistani government has agreed to some of the militants' key demands, chiefly that Islamic courts be established in the region. Fears abound that this means women's schools will be destroyed, movies will be banned and public beheadings will become a regular occurrence.
The militants are bad people and this is bad news. But the more difficult question is, what should we—the outside world—do about it? That we are utterly opposed to such people, and their ideas and practices, is obvious. But how exactly should we oppose them? In Pakistan and Afghanistan, we have done so in large measure by attacking them—directly with Western troops and Predator strikes, and indirectly in alliance with Pakistani and Afghan forces. Is the answer to pour in more of our troops, train more Afghan soldiers, ask that the Pakistani military deploy more battalions, and expand the Predator program to hit more of the bad guys? Perhaps—in some cases, emphatically yes—but I think it's also worth stepping back and trying to understand the phenomenon of Islamic radicalism.
It is not just in the Swat valley that Islamists are on the rise. In Afghanistan the Taliban have been gaining ground for the past two years as well. In Somalia last week, Al-Shabab, a local group of Islamic militants, captured yet another town from government forces. Reports from Nigeria to Bosnia to Indonesia show that Islamic fundamentalists are finding support within their communities for their agenda, which usually involves the introduction of some form of Sharia—Islamic law—reflecting a puritanical interpretation of Islam. No music, no liquor, no smoking, no female emancipation.
The groups that advocate these policies are ugly, reactionary forces that will stunt their countries and bring dishonor to their religion. But not all these Islamists advocate global jihad, host terrorists or launch operations against the outside world—in fact, most do not. Consider, for example, the most difficult example, the Taliban. The Taliban have done all kinds of terrible things in Afghanistan. But so far, no Afghan Taliban has participated at any significant level in a global terrorist attack over the past 10 years—including 9/11. There are certainly elements of the Taliban that are closely associated with Al Qaeda. But the Taliban is large, and many factions have little connection to Osama bin Laden. Most Taliban want Islamic rule locally, not violent jihad globally.
How would you describe Faisal Ahmad Shinwari, a judge in Afghanistan? He has banned women from singing on television and called for an end to cable television altogether. He has spoken out against women and men being educated in the same schools at any age. He has upheld the death penalty for two journalists who were convicted of blasphemy. (Their crime: writing that Afghanistan's turn toward Islam was "reactionary.") Shinwari sounds like an Islamic militant, right? Actually, he was appointed chief justice of the Afghan Supreme Court after the American invasion, administered Hamid Karzai's oath of office and remained in his position until three years ago.
Were he to hold Western, liberal views, Shinwari would have little credibility within his country. The reality—for the worse, in my view—is that radical Islam has gained a powerful foothold in the Muslim imagination. It has done so for a variety of complex reasons that I have written about before. But the chief reason is the failure of Muslim countries to develop, politically or economically. Look at Pakistan. It cannot provide security, justice or education for many of its citizens. Its elected politicians have spent all of their time in office conspiring to have their opponents thrown in jail and their own corruption charges tossed out of court. As a result, President Asif Ali Zardari's approval rating barely a month into office was around half that enjoyed by President Pervez Musharraf during most of his term. The state is losing legitimacy as well as the capacity to actually govern.
Consider Swat. The valley was historically a peaceful place that had autonomy within Pakistan (under a loose federal arrangement) and practiced a moderate version of Sharia in its courts. In 1969 Pakistan's laws were formally extended to the region. Over the years, the new courts functioned poorly, with long delays, and were plagued by corruption. Dysfunctional rule meant that the government lost credibility. Some people grew nostalgic for the simple, if sometimes brutal, justice of the old Sharia courts. A movement demanding their restitution began in the early 1990s, and Benazir Bhutto's government signed an agreement to reintroduce some aspects of the Sharia court system with Sufi Muhammed, the same cleric with whom the current government has struck a deal. (The Bhutto arrangement never really worked, and the protests started up again in a few years.) Few people in the valley would say that the current truce is their preferred outcome. In the recent election, they voted for a secular party. But if the secularists produce chaos and corruption, people settle for order.
The militants who were battling the Army (led by Sufi Muhammed's son-in-law) have had to go along with the deal. The Pakistani government is hoping that this agreement will isolate the jihadists and win the public back to its side. This may not work, but at least it represents an effort to divide the camps of the Islamists between those who are violent and those who are merely extreme.
Over the past eight years such distinctions have been regarded as naive. In the Bush administration's original view, all Islamist groups were one and the same; any distinctions or nuances were regarded as a form of appeasement. If they weren't terrorists themselves, they were probably harboring terrorists. But how to understand Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the countries "harbor" terrorists but are not themselves terrorist states?
To be clear, where there are Qaeda cells and fighters, force is the only answer. But most estimates of the number of Qaeda fighters in Pakistan range well under a few thousand. Are those the only people we are bombing? Is bombing—by Americans—the best solution? The Predator strikes have convinced much of the local population that it's under attack from America and produced a nationalist backlash. A few Qaeda operatives die, but public support for the battle against extremism drops in the vital Pashtun areas of Pakistan. Is this a good exchange?
We have placed ourselves in armed opposition to Muslim fundamentalists stretching from North Africa to Indonesia, which has made this whole enterprise feel very much like a clash of civilizations, and a violent one at that. Certainly, many local despots would prefer to enlist the American armed forces to defeat their enemies, some of whom may be jihadists but others may not. Across the entire North African region, the United States and other Western powers are supporting secular autocrats who claim to be battling Islamist opposition forces. In return, those rulers have done little to advance genuine reform, state building or political openness. In Algeria, after the Islamists won an election in 1992, the military staged a coup, the Islamists were banned and a long civil war ensued in which 200,000 people died. The opposition has since become more militant, and where once it had no global interests, some elements are now aligned with Al Qaeda.
Events have taken a different course in Nigeria, where the Islamists came to power locally. After the end of military rule in 1999, 12 of Nigeria's 36 states chose to adopt Sharia. Radical clerics arrived from the Middle East to spread their draconian interpretation of Islam. Religious militias such as the Hisbah of Kano state patrolled the streets, attacking those who shirked prayers, disobeyed religious dress codes or drank alcohol. Several women accused of adultery were sentenced to death by stoning. In 2002 The Weekly Standard decried "the Talibanization of West Africa" and worried that Nigeria, a "giant of sub-Saharan Africa," could become "a haven for Islamism, linked to foreign extremists."
But when The New York Times sent a reporter to Kano state in late 2007, she found an entirely different picture from the one that had been fretted over by State Department policy analysts. "The Islamic revolution that seemed so destined to transform northern Nigeria in recent years appears to have come and gone," the reporter, Lydia Polgreen, concluded. The Hisbah had become "little more than glorified crossing guards" and were "largely confined to their barracks and assigned anodyne tasks like directing traffic and helping fans to their seats at soccer games." The widely publicized sentences of mutilation and stoning rarely came to pass (although floggings were common). Other news reports have confirmed this basic picture.
Residents hadn't become less religious; mosques still overflowed with the devout during prayer time, and virtually all Muslim women went veiled. But the government had helped push Sharia in a tamer direction by outlawing religious militias; the regular police had no interest in enforcing the law's strictest tenets. In addition, over time some of the loudest proponents of Sharia had been exposed as hypocrites. Some were under investigation for embezzling millions.
We have an instant, violent reaction to anyone who sounds like an Islamic bigot. This is understandable. Many Islamists are bigots, reactionaries and extremists (others are charlatans and opportunists). But this can sometimes blind us to the ways they might prove useful in the broader struggle against Islamic terror. The Bush administration spent its first term engaged in a largely abstract, theoretical conversation about radical Islam and its evils—and conservative intellectuals still spout this kind of unyielding rhetoric. By its second term, though, the administration was grappling with the complexities of Islam on the ground. It is instructive that Bush ended up pursuing a most sophisticated and nuanced policy toward political Islam in the one country where reality was unavoidable—Iraq.
Having invaded Iraq, the Americans searched for local allies, in particular political groups that could become the Iraqi face of the occupation. The administration came to recognize that 30 years of Saddam—a secular, failed tyrant—had left only hard-core Islamists as the opposition. It partnered with these groups, most of which were Shiite parties founded on the model of Iran's ultra-religious organizations, and acquiesced as they took over most of southern Iraq, the Shiite heartland. In this area, the strict version of Islam that they implemented was quite similar to—in some cases more extreme than—what one would find in Iran today. Liquor was banned; women had to cover themselves from head to toe; Christians were persecuted; religious affiliations became the only way to get a government job, including college professorships.
While some of this puritanism is now mellowing, southern Iraq remains a dark place. But it is not a hotbed of jihad. And as the democratic process matures, one might even hope that some version of the Nigerian story will play out there. "It's hard to hand over authority to people who are illiberal," says former CIA analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht. "What you have to realize is that the objective is to defeat bin Ladenism, and you have to start the evolution. Moderate Muslims are not the answer. Shiite clerics and Sunni fundamentalists are our salvation from future 9/11s."
The Bush administration partnered with fundamentalists once more in the Iraq War, in the Sunni belt. When the fighting was at its worst, administration officials began talking to some in the Sunni community who were involved in the insurgency. Many of them were classic Islamic militants, though others were simply former Baathists or tribal chiefs. Gen. David Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy ramped up this process. "We won the war in Iraq chiefly because we separated the local militants from the global jihadists," says Fawaz Gerges, a scholar at Sarah Lawrence College, who has interviewed hundreds of Muslim militants. "Yet around the world we are still unwilling to make the distinction between these two groups."
Would a strategy like this work in Afghanistan? David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency expert who has advised Petraeus, says, "I've had tribal leaders and Afghan government officials at the province and district level tell me that 90 percent of the people we call the Taliban are actually tribal fighters or Pashtun nationalists or people pursuing their own agendas. Less than 10 percent are ideologically aligned with the Quetta Shura [Mullah Omar's leadership group] or Al Qaeda." These people are, in his view, "almost certainly reconcilable under some circumstances." Kilcullen adds, "That's very much what we did in Iraq. We negotiated with 90 percent of the people we were fighting."
Beyond Afghanistan, too, it is crucial that we adopt a more sophisticated strategy toward radical Islam. This should come naturally to President Obama, who spoke often on the campaign trail of the need for just such a differentiated approach toward Muslim countries. Even the Washington Institute, a think tank often associated with conservatives, appears onboard. It is issuing a report this week that recommends, among other points, that the United States use more "nuanced, noncombative rhetoric" that avoids sweeping declarations like "war on terror," "global insurgency," even "the Muslim world." Anything that emphasizes the variety of groups, movements and motives within that world strengthens the case that this is not a battle between Islam and the West. Bin Laden constantly argues that all these different groups are part of the same global movement. We should not play into his hands, and emphasize instead that many of these forces are local, have specific grievances and don't have much in common.
That does not mean we should accept the burning of girls' schools, or the stoning of criminals. Recognizing the reality of radical Islam is entirely different from accepting its ideas. We should mount a spirited defense of our views and values. We should pursue aggressively policies that will make these values succeed. Such efforts are often difficult and take time—rebuilding state structures, providing secular education, reducing corruption—but we should help societies making these efforts. The mere fact that we are working in these countries on these issues—and not simply bombing, killing and capturing—might change the atmosphere surrounding the U.S. involvement in this struggle.
The veil is not the same as the suicide belt. We can better pursue our values if we recognize the local and cultural context, and appreciate that people want to find their own balance between freedom and order, liberty and license. In the end, time is on our side. Bin Ladenism has already lost ground in almost every Muslim country. Radical Islam will follow the same path. Wherever it is tried—in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in parts of Nigeria and Pakistan—people weary of its charms very quickly. The truth is that all Islamists, violent or not, lack answers to the problems of the modern world. They do not have a world view that can satisfy the aspirations of modern men and women. We do. That's the most powerful weapon of all.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/187093
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Acid Trip
In 2004, an Iranian man named Majid developed feelings for a woman named Ameneh Bahrami. She did not reciprocate his interest, and he took the rejection poorly: He splashed acid on her face, causing her to go blind.
The Associated Press reports that an Iranian court has passed sentence in the case, ruling that Majid "should also be blinded with acid based on the Islamic law system of 'qisas,' or eye-for-an-eye retribution." But there's a catch:
Bahrami, who moved to Spain after the attack to get medical treatment, said Wednesday that under Iranian law, she is entitled to blind him in only one eye, unless she pays €20,000 ($25,110), because in Iran women are not considered equal to men.
"They have told us that my two eyes are equal to one of his because in my country each man is worth two women. They are not the same," she told Cadena SER. , , ,
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/6274387/Obama-adviser-says-Sharia-Law-is-misunderstood.html
Barack Obama adviser says Sharia Law is misunderstood
President Barack Obama's adviser on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, has provoked controversy by appearing on a British television show hosted by a member of an extremist group to talk about Sharia Law.
By Andrew Gilligan and Alex Spillius in Washington
Published: 8:00PM BST 08 Oct 2009
Miss Mogahed, appointed to the President's Council on Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, said the Western view of Sharia was "oversimplified" and the majority of women around the world associate it with "gender justice".
The White House adviser made the remarks on a London-based TV discussion programme hosted by Ibtihal Bsis, a member of the extremist Hizb ut Tahrir party.
The group believes in the non-violent destruction of Western democracy and the creation of an Islamic state under Sharia Law across the world.
Miss Mogahed appeared alongside Hizb ut Tahrir's national women's officer, Nazreen Nawaz.
During the 45-minute discussion, on the Islam Channel programme Muslimah Dilemma earlier this week, the two members of the group made repeated attacks on secular "man-made law" and the West's "lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism".
They called for Sharia Law to be "the source of legislation" and said that women should not be "permitted to hold a position of leadership in government".
Miss Mogahed made no challenge to these demands and said that "promiscuity" and the "breakdown of traditional values" were what Muslims admired least about the West.
She said: "I think the reason so many women support Sharia is because they have a very different understanding of sharia than the common perception in Western media.
"The majority of women around the world associate gender justice, or justice for women, with sharia compliance.
"The portrayal of Sharia has been oversimplified in many cases."
Sharia in its broadest sense is a religious code for living, which decrees such matters as fasting and dressing modestly. However, it has also been interpreted as requiring the separation of men and women.
It also includes the controversial "Hadd offences", crimes with specific penalties set by the Koran and the sayings of the prophet Mohammed. These include death by stoning for adultery and homosexuality and the removal of a hand for theft.
Miss Mogahed admitted that even many Muslims associated Sharia with "maximum criminal punishments" and "laws that... to many people seem unequal to women," but added: "Part of the reason that there is this perception of Sharia is because Sharia is not well understood and Islam as a faith is not well understood."
The video of the broadcast has now been prominently posted on the front page of Hizb ut Tahrir's website.
Miss Mogahed, who was born in Egypt and moved to America at the age of five, is the first veiled Muslim woman to serve in the White House. Her appointment was seen as a sign of the Obama administration's determination to reach out to the Muslim world.
She is also the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, a project which aims to scientifically sample public opinion in the Muslim world.
During this week's broadcast, she described her White House role as "to convey... to the President and other public officials what it is Muslims want."
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, said Miss Mogahed was “downplaying” Sharia Law.
“There is a reason sharia has got a bad name and it is how it has been exercised. Regrettably in the US there have been acts of injustice perpetrated against women that are driven by the Sharia-type mindset that women are objects not human beings,” she said.
She cited the example of Muzzammil Hassan, a Buffalo man who ran a cable channel aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes and was charged earlier this year with beheading his wife after she filed for divorce.
“Americans understand by example, it’s not as if we are an ignorant mass of people. Just as we don’t broad brush all Muslims, so should Dalia not downplay the serious nature of sharia law.”
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Was Marco Polo an 'Islamophobe'?
A Study in Continuity
by Raymond Ibrahim
Pajamas Media
April 16, 2010
http://www.meforum.org/2637/marco-polo-islamophobe
Was Marco Polo an 'Islamophobe'?
A Study in Continuity
by Raymond Ibrahim
If the same exact criticisms being made against Islam today were also made centuries ago, is it reasonable to dismiss them all as "Islamophobic"— that is, as "unfounded fear of and hostility towards Islam," as the Council on American Islamic Relations would have it?
This is the question I often ask myself whenever I read pre-modern writings on Islam. Take that elementary schoolbook hero, Marco Polo and his famous memoirs, for example. By today's standards, the 13th century Venetian merchant would be denounced as a rabid "Islamophobe." For me, however, his writings contain a far more important lesson — one in continuity — and deserve closer scrutiny.
Before examining Polo's observations, it should be noted that his anthropological accounts are, by and large, objective. Unlike simplistic explanations that portray him as a prototypical "Orientalist" with an axe to grind against the "Other" — specifically non-whites and non-Christians — in fact, Polo occasionally portrayed the few Christians he encountered in a negative light (such as those of the island of Socotra) and frequently praised non-Christians, including Muslims.
For example, he hails the Brahmins of India as being "most honorable," possessing a "hatred for cheating or of taking the goods of other persons. They are likewise remarkable for the virtue of being satisfied with the possession of one wife (p.298)." He refers to one Muslim leader as governing "with justice" (p.317) and another who "showed himself [to be] a very good lord, and made himself beloved by everybody (p.332)."
That said, Polo clearly had no problem being blunt about Islam (political correctness being nonexistent in the Middle Ages). Whereas he praised the Brahmins for their "hatred for cheating or of taking the goods of other persons," regarding the Muslims of Tauris, (modern day Iraq), he wrote:
According to their doctrine, whatever is stolen or plundered from others of a different faith, is properly taken, and the theft is no crime; whilst those who suffer death or injury by the hands of Christians, are considered as martyrs. If, therefore, they were not prohibited and restrained by the powers who now govern them, they would commit many outrages. These principles are common to all Saracens (p.63).
In fact, based on the Muslim prophet Muhammad's numerous raiding expeditions, plundering infidels is quite standard in Islam and treated regularly in legal manuals; the Koran has an entire chapter dedicated to and named after plunder (Surat al-Anfal). As for being a martyr simply by dying at the hands of the infidel enemy, this too has ample support in Islam's texts and enjoys consensus among the ulema. The authoritative Hans Wehr Arabic-English Dictionary translates shahid (martyr) as "one killed in battle with infidels."
A more telling anecdote follows: According to Polo, a certain "Achmath" (probably "Ahmed"), one of the few Muslims to have had great influence over Kublai Khan, habitually abused the largely non-Muslim subject peoples without the Khan's knowledge: he put to death anyone he pleased, robbed them of their possessions, and, most notoriously, he and his sons regularly raped and coerced into concubinage countless women. Due to Achmath's many atrocities, he was eventually assassinated. When the Khan later discovered the extent of Achmath's crimes, his
attention [went] to the doctrines of the Sect of the Saracens [i.e., Islam], which excuse every crime, yea, even murder itself, when committed on such as are not of their religion. And seeing that this doctrine had led the accursed Achmath and his sons to act as they did without any sense of guilt, the Khan was led to entertain the greatest disgust and abomination for it. So he summoned the Saracens and prohibited their doing many things which their religion enjoined (p.173).
Of course, crimes against non-Muslim infidels have a doctrinal base and fall within the legal jurisdiction of jihad and its attendant institutions (e.g., dhimma status): war upon and death for non-subjugated infidels is a Koranic mandate (e.g., 8:39, 9:5, 9:29); the sub-human treatment of infidel slaves, particularly women, or, in the Koran's language, "what your right hand possesses," is well codified. Little wonder that Muslims like this Achmath — or today's terrorists — can act "without any sense of guilt."
(It is significant to note that, in both of Polo's block quotes above, he criticizes Muslim doctrine — not so much Muslim peoples. In other words, he allows for what would today be called "moderate" Muslims, as shown by his aforementioned praise for individual Muslim leaders.)
Polo also confirms that Muslim leaders have long relied on Muhammad's account of a lusty paradise to lure young men into becoming "martyrs." He recounts how the Shia assassins dedicated their lives to assassinating and terrorizing their opponents simply to enter into "paradise, where every species of sensual gratification should be found, in the society of beautiful nymphs" (p.78). (It is further interesting to note that the assassin leader took into his service men primarily between the ages of 12-20 — not unlike Osama bin Laden's position that Muslim men aged 15-25 are most suited for jihad and martyrdom: The Al Qaeda Reader, p.267.)
Other "Islamophobic" allusions are scattered throughout Polo's account: the caliph of Baghdad's "daily thoughts were employed on the means of converting to his religion [Islam] those who resided within his dominions, or, upon their refusal, in forming pretences for putting them to death" (p.59); and Muslims "utterly detest the Christians" (p.316), perhaps in accordance to Koran 60:4 — still cited by today's Islamists as mandating permanent hatred for non-Muslims.
Here, then, is the problem: If today it is "Islamophobic," that is, irrational, to claim that Islam advocates war against and subjugation for infidels, permitting the latter to be abused, plundered, and enslaved in the process — what does one make of the fact that, some 700 years ago, the same exact claims were made by our Venetian traveler? Indeed, what does one make of the fact that, centuries before and after Polo, a diverse host of writers — including John of Damascus (d.749) Theophanes the chronicler (d.818), Francis of Assisi (d.1226), Joinville the crusader (d.13th century), and Manuel the Byzantine emperor (d.1425) — all made the same "Islamophobic" observations about Islam? (The latter's writings, when merely quoted by the pope, caused an uproar in the Muslim world.) This, of course, is to say nothing of the countless Muslim ulema who regularly affirm that Islam teaches war, subjugation, slavery, and plunder vis-a-vis the infidel, tracing it back to the words of the Koran and Muhammad.
In short, the word "Islamophobia" is a ruse — also permitted in Islam under the doctrine of taqiyya — meant to paralyze all discussion concerning Muslim doctrine; and it has been successful: the United Nations has already presided over a conference titled "Confronting Islamophobia" and a Council of Europe summit condemned "Islamophobia." Moreover, the influential Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) regularly lambasts the specter of Islamophobia, calling it the "worst form of terrorism," and publishing two reports on the phenomenon.
Yet, in a classic twist of irony, the opening assertion of the OIC's first report — "Islamophobia has existed since the time of inception of Islam" — contradicts its entire argument, for it begs the following question: How can something, in this case "unfounded fear of and hostility towards Islam" — to use CAIR's definition of Islamophobia — be a constant aspect of Islam's fourteen-hundred year history, and yet still be regarded as "unfounded"?
Raymond Ibrahim is associate director of the Middle East Forum, author of The Al Qaeda Reader, and guest lecturer at the National Defense Intelligence College.
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Nice find. Fascinating Thanks GM
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Saudi Textbooks:Still Teaching Hatred
Saudi royals are regularly hailed for their philanthropy. Their fans should take a closer look at the content of the kingdom’s 1–12 education.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah will be received by President Obama in Washington today, nearly two years after the deadline by which the kingdom’s educational curriculum was to have been completely reformed. As the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom wrote to the president last week, “This promise remains unfulfilled.”
According to Arab News, the U.S. ambassador to Riyadh, James Smith, described this White House visit as a “very important” meeting, directed toward coordinating efforts to confront terrorism. The test of its seriousness will be whether President Obama uses the occasion to personally press King Abdullah to finally keep his pledge of textbook reform.
Saudi textbooks teach, along with many other noxious lessons, that Jews and Christians are “enemies,” and they dogmatically instruct that various groups of “unbelievers” — apostates (which includes Muslim moderates who reject Saudi Wahhabi doctrine), polytheists (which includes Shiites), and Jews — should be killed. Under the Saudi Education Ministry’s method of rote learning, these teachings amount to indoctrination, starting in first grade and continuing through high school, where militant jihad on behalf of “truth” is taught as a sacred duty. These textbooks are used not only in Saudi Arabia but in Saudi-funded schools around the world.
King Abdullah has presided over some welcome counterterrorism measures, such as last month’s long-overdue fatwa — issued by the Saudi clerical establishment, the Council of Senior Ulema — condemning the financing of terrorism as a criminal act. But, as Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey, America’s top financial-counterterrorism official, reminded us in a recent op-ed, despite progress in thwarting the financing of al-Qaeda, “a more difficult strategic battle remains.”
Levey stressed the primary importance of directing our policy at preventing people from embracing violent extremism in the first place. He warned, “Among other things, we must focus on educational reform in key locations to ensure that intolerance has no place in curricula and textbooks. . . . nless the next generation of children is taught to reject violent extremism, we will forever be faced with the challenge of disrupting the next group of terrorist facilitators and supporters.”
The primary “key location” is undoubtedly Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is not just any country with problematic textbooks. As the controlling authority of the two holiest shrines of Islam, Saudi Arabia is able to disseminate its religious materials among the millions making the hajj to Mecca each year. Such teachings can, in this context, make a great impression. In addition, Saudi textbooks are also posted on the Saudi Education Ministry’s website and are shipped and distributed by a vast Sunni infrastructure established with Saudi oil wealth to Muslim communities throughout the world. In his book The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright asserts that while Saudis constitute only 1 percent of the world’s Muslims, they pay “90 per cent of the expenses of the entire faith, overriding other traditions of Islam."
Given that most of the 9/11 terrorists and Osama bin Laden himself were Saudi born and educated, it has to be acknowledged that Saudi education not only is deficient, but poses a direct danger to American national security. Saudi foreign-affairs officials and ambassadors do not dispute this. Their reactions, though, have alternated over the years between insisting that reforms had already been made and stalling for time by stating that the reforms would take several years to complete, banking on the hope that American attention would drift.
Four years ago, after years of maintaining (including by taking out ads in American political magazines and on the sides of Washington Metro buses) that their textbooks had been cleaned up, when they demonstrably had not, the Saudis gave a solemn and specific promise to the United States. Its terms were described in a letter from the U.S. assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs to Sen. Jon Kyl, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security: “In July of 2006, the Saudi Government confirmed to us its policy to undertake a program of textbook reform to eliminate all passages that disparage or promote hatred toward any religion or religious groups.” Furthermore, the State Department letter reported that the pledge would be fulfilled “in time for the start of the 2008 school year.”
In its 2010 annual report on human rights, the State Department itself concluded, with diplomatic understatement, that Saudi Ministry of Education textbooks continued to contain “some overtly intolerant statements” against various religious groups, that they “provided justification for violence against non-Muslims,” and that reforms remained “incomplete.”
Meanwhile, Saudi royals have stepped up their philanthropy to higher education around the world, for which they have garnered many encomiums and awards. Hardly a month goes by without a news report that one of the princes is endowing a new center of Islamic and Arabic studies, or a business or scientific department, at a foreign university — so far, the list includes Oxford, Georgetown, Berkeley, Berlin, Harvard, Moscow, Sarajevo, Australia, and many others. The king himself founded a new university inside Saudi Arabia.
These efforts have bought the royal family much good will, but they should not distract our political leaders from the central concern of the Saudi 1–12 religious curriculum. This is not the time for heaping unqualified praise on the aging monarch for promoting “knowledge-based education,” “extending the hand of friendship to people of other faiths,” promoting “principles of moderation, tolerance, and mutual respect,” and the like (all phrases from Secretary Clinton’s “salute” last summer to King Abdullah for his philanthropy).
With Islamist radicalization spreading even within the United States — as seen from terrorist plots at Fort Hood and in Times Square, Northern Virginia, Colorado, and elsewhere over the past year — Saudi textbook reform has never been more important for American security.
— Nina Shea is director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. Bonnie Alldredge is a research assistant at the center.
http://article.nationalreview.com/437282/saudi-textbooksbrstill-teaching-hatred/nina-shea-bonnie-alldredge
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http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/10/13/tolerance-and-diversity-teaching-girls-that-misogyny-and-beatings-are-an-honor/
“Allah honored wives by instating the punishment of beatings.” So said Cleric Sa’d Arafat earlier this year. Last month, a Wellesley, Massachusetts public school took a trip to a mosque, where the school children were taught to pray to that same Allah.
The result is stunning: an unabashed exercise in Islamic dawa, the “call to Islam” and the manner by which the Brotherhood’s spiritual guide, Yusuf Qaradawi, promises that Islam will “conquer America” and “conquer Europe.” Qaradawi — wonder of wonders — is a trustee of the Roxbury mosque (although he is banned from the U.S. for sanctioning terrorism). As the video relates, “Dawa Net,” one Islamic organization that instructs on how to use the schools to inculcate the young, explains that public schools in America are “fertile grounds where the seeds of Islam can be sowed inside the hearts of non-Muslim students.”
Well, except for the icky girls. Cooties, and all. They were not allowed to take part in the “tolerance” indoctrination. Have to teach these girls how to show respect! And teach them a little about the benefits of misogynistic subjugation in the Muslim world, right?
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http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4677.htm
Lebanese Liberal: Cordoba Initiative Chairman Abdul Rauf Is Not Truly Moderate
In a September 19, 2010 article on the liberal website Elaph, Lebanese journalist Joseph Bishara wrote that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, does not really believe in tolerance. He stated that Rauf is deceiving the public based on the Islamic principle of taqiyya (concealing one's true beliefs) – that is, he is hiding his real intentions, which are to spread Islam in the U.S. while exploiting the liberties granted him by the U.S. Constitution.
Following are excerpts from Bishara's article:[1]
"Abdul Rauf's Statements Raised Many Questions In My Mind – For I Do Not Believe That Islam Is Compatible With the Principles and Customs of American Society"
"Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is mentioned almost daily on the news, ever since he entered into conflict with over 70% of the American public over the mosque he wishes to build near [the former site of] the Twin Towers in New York. Until quite recently, most people had never even heard of him, but now he has become one of the [country's] biggest celebrities, pursued by news agencies and media channels [alike]. He became famous after he and some of his Muslim partners purchased an old building, only a few meters away from [Ground Zero], in order to build, according to his statement, a large public facility that will include a mosque.
"Abdul Rauf provoked the American public when he released his plan [to build his Islamic center] near the place that, in the Americans' eyes, has been sanctified by the blood of the hundreds [sic] of people who died in the 9/11 attacks.
"The American right is using all its influence to try and persuade the public to demand the removal of the planned mosque to another location. To this end, it is presenting Abdul Rauf's statements and positions [to the public], so as to show that the man is not [really] moderate, that their apprehensions are well-founded, namely that the building of the mosque will be construed by the extremist Islamists as a victory...
"The American right accuses Abdul Rauf of extremism, of supporting terrorist organizations, and of refusing to condemn terror. Among his statements that the Americans have presented as damning are his claim that the U.S. administration was behind 9/11, that bin Laden is a product of U.S. [policy], that the 9/11 attacks benefited Islam and constitute an important milestone in the history of Islam in the U.S., and that the number of Muslims killed by the U.S. is larger than the number of Americans killed in 9/11.
"The Americans have also criticized Abdul Rauf for refusing to condemn terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hizbullah, and for saying that the U.S. must admit it has harmed Muslims [if it wants] terrorism to stop.
"I was disinclined to accept the position of the right-wing American media on Rauf without any evidence, so I decided... to follow his statements in order to discover what he is like and what his positions really are. One of his statements that caught my attention had to do with his efforts to Americanize Islam. He did not explain what he meant by this, so [the statements] was difficult to understand. I asked myself: How is it possible to paint Islam in American colors, when the Muslims condemn the U.S. as a land of heresy and hedonism, and as a land of perversions and licentiousness?
"Abdul Rauf's statements raised many questions in my mind, for I do not believe that Islam is compatible with the principles and customs of American society, which are based upon the sanctifying of complete freedom... I told myself: if American culture is compatible with Islam, why then do Islamic scholars associate it with the devil's unholiness, and why do most Muslims throughout the world reject it?...
"After thinking long and hard about Abdul Rauf's statements, which stirred many doubts [in my mind] about the man, I concluded that his statement [about Americanizing Islam] could have [only three possible goals]: to generate a media storm, to convince the Americans that Islam is tolerant and can advance along with the culture in which it exists, or to convince the Americans that Islam and the American culture have principles in common. I rejected the second and third goals, because I believe that Islam, which is regarded by its adherents as sacred and absolute, is not compatible with American culture, which allows individuals to reject the absolute and rebel against the sacred."
The Islamic Shari'a Is Incompatible with the U.S. Constitution
"A few days after making his statement about Americanizing Islam, Adbul Rauf made another statement – a very strange one that increased my suspicions regarding the goals of his illogical proclamations. He said that '90% of the laws of the Islamic shari'a are fully compatible with the Articles of the American Constitution,' and that 'the disagreements between the two are few and insignificant.' This statement is not merely puzzling but [totally] ludicrous.
"Abdul Rauf seems to think, with peculiar naiveté, that all those who hear him are stupid and ignorant, and know nothing about the real facts... because I know that the Islamic shari'a grants privileges only to Muslims, and not to others. The laws of the shari'a do not treat non-Muslims as [equal] citizens, but as dhimmis, who do not have the same rights and duties as Muslims. I asked myself: how can the shari'a be fully compatible with the U.S. Constitution? How can the seven Articles of the U.S. Constitution, which safeguard its institutionalized secular democracy that guarantee freedoms and equality to [all] citizens, be compatible with the Islamic shari'a, which places the fate of countries and peoples in the hands of an unworthy religious elite?
"The U.S. Constitution is man-made, modern and compatible with [today's] reality. It separates church from state; guarantees [rights] and dignity [even] to criminals; grants freedom of speech, worship and the press; prohibits violating the citizens' right to protection; grants equal [status] to all citizens and [safeguards] the political rights of women.
"How can this constitution be compatible with the Islamic shari'a, which is immutable and not compatible with the times, makes religion a political matter and politics a religious matter, [advocates] chopping off body parts [as a punishment for criminals], designates Islam as the true religion and all other religions as heresy, threatens the safety of non-Muslims and treats them as dhimmis... and subjects women to male domination?"
Imam Abdul Rauf Is Deceiving the Public
"Imam Abdul Rauf's statements raised many questions that I could not answer. But all these questions helped me understand that he is mocking the Americans, while counting on [the fact that] most of them are ignorant of the facts, on the American law that guarantees his rights... and on the Americans' fear of terrorism and their wish never to see another event like 9/11.
"Imam Abdul Rauf calls for moderation, but his actions say otherwise. He is not trying to Americanize Islam, as he claims, because that is not possible. [On the contrary], he is trying to Islamize America by demanding to implement the Islamic shari'a and through his attempt to convince the Americans that Islam and the Islamic shari'a are compatible with the American culture and constitution.
"Abdul Rauf says he is trying to build bridges among religions, and that he is a man of peace trying to illuminate the tolerant face of Islam. But his illogical statements and his provocative actions reveal him in a different light. He is employing [the principle of] taqiyya,[2] which is sanctioned by the shari'a, in order to Islamize America."
Endnotes:
[1] www.elaph.com, September 19, 2010.
[2] A principle which permits a Muslim to conceal his true beliefs or intentions, in order to protect his life or attain a worthy goal.
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November 3rd, 2010
Law professor: Ban on Sharia law 'a mess'
Oklahoma's new ban on Islamic law poses potential legal hurdles.
Oklahoma voters on Tuesday approved a measure that bans the application of Islamic law and orders judges in the state to rely only on federal law when deciding cases. State Rep. Rex Duncan, a Republican, was the primary author of the measure, which amends that state constitution.
For months, legal experts had lambasted the initiative as biased toward a religion and potentially harmful to local businesses that engage in commerce with international companies. It also presents potential constitutional law problems, experts say. Is Oklahoma's state constitution now in direct conflict with the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, which states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion ... "?
There has never been a previous case in the state in which Sharia law was applied, said Rick Tepker, the first member of the University of Oklahoma School of Law faculty to try a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Tepker called the passage of the measure "a mess" with implications unknown until a case that challenges it arises.
"Many of us who understand the law are scratching our heads this morning, laughing so we don't cry," he said. "I would like to see Oklahoma politicians explain if this means that the courts can no longer consider the Ten Commandments. Isn't that a precept of another culture and another nation? The result of this is that judges aren't going to know when and how they can look at sources of American law that were international law in origin."
What is Sharia law, and how is it defined in the ban?
Businesses that engage with international companies may also find the ban is a stumbling block, Tepker said. The ban also requires all state business to be conducted in English.
Duncan has said he knew of no precedent in the state's history in which a judge applied Sharia law. But he backed the measure, he told reporters, as a "pre-emptive strike."
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Gee, all these leftists suddenly can't find a dividing line between islamic theology and sharia law?
"I would like to see Oklahoma politicians explain if this means that the courts can no longer consider the Ten Commandments."
Oh really? What case or cases have cited the 10 commandments? The very same leftists would scream were the 10 commandment cited in a court case.
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**Isn't it tragic that there is no possibility of a judge being able to have a rape victim stoned to death in Oklahoma now, JDN? Those unsophisticated rubes probably wouldn't want to share a stage with Cat "Death to Salman Rushdie" Stevens either.Oh well, not everyone can be as sophisticated and tolerant as you are.**
When a young, illiterate housewife named Zafran Bibi went to the police last year, pregnant and claiming a fellow villager had raped her while she was cutting grass, she didn't expect that she'd be the one to get punished. But last month, a judge in Pakistan's ultra-conservative Northwest Frontier province convicted her of adultery. "I hereby convict and sentence the accused Zafran Bibi to stoning to death," wrote Judge Anwar Ali Khan, "and that she be stoned to death at a public place."
If Pakistan is sometimes a bizarre blend of the modern and the archaic, nowhere is the archaic more powerful than in the way the country's legal system treats women who accuse men of rape. The problem lies in the so-called Hudood ordinances, a series of Islamic decrees that are enforced in tandem with the country's secular legal system. Human rights activists say these laws blatantly discriminate against women. For a rapist to be convicted, for example, his crime has to be confirmed by four adult male Muslim eyewitnesses, or the rapist must confess. If the court rules that there was consent, the woman can be convicted of adultery. Sentences under the Hudood ordinances include amputation for theft, flogging for drinking alcohol and stoning for adultery.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,238673,00.html#ixzz14HCfLI5L
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8057179.stm
The dusty streets of Kismayo in Somalia echoed to the sound of a vehicle with loudspeakers summoning residents to a new form of public "entertainment" earlier this month.
People were being invited to see a man have his hand chopped off in a public park in the city.
The young man, Mohamed Omar Ismail, had been found guilty of stealing goods from another man's house.
That afternoon, hundreds of local people flocked to Freedom Park in order to see the amputation.
After a long wait, Mr Ismail was brought out in front of the people and an official started to read out the court decision from a piece of paper.
Clothes theft
"The Islamic Sharia court of Kismayo district confirms that Mohamed Omar Ismail has been found guilty of stealing," the official announced.
"Mr Ismail stole 10 pairs of trousers, 10 shirts, eight other items and a bag. The value of all the items is estimated to be $90."
map
The official quoted a chapter from the Koran known as Surah Maida, verse 38, which is about stealing and relevant punishment.
He said that the verse decreed that punishment for stealing was that the right hand of the thief should be cut off.
A local journalist who witnessed the events unfold saw a shocked-looking Mr Ismail brought into the park.
His right hand was held up to the crowds.
It was then laid on a table and severed immediately and without ceremony at the wrist.
Bloody hand dangled
The eyewitness told of his horror as the bloody body part was dangled by its index finger in front of the crowd to prove that punishment had been meted out.
Mr Ismail is now recovering from his injury in Kismayo General Hospital, where he is being guarded by the Islamist militia who punished him.
Mohamed Omar Ismail
Mohamed Omar Ismail reportedly insists he did not commit the burglary
They do not allow him to talk to the media.
But according to an independent source, Mr Ismail insists he did not commit the burglary for which he lost his hand.
He said he was still appalled at what had happened to him and the terrible pain he had suffered.
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The law in Oklahoma is a joke;
"Many of us who understand the law are scratching our heads this morning, laughing so we don't cry,"
It will be thrown out.
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Wow. That's a very compelling legal argument you've put together.
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And you think the law was stand? :?
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STATE QUESTION NO. 755 LEGISLATIVE REFERENDUM NO. 355
This measure amends the State Constitution. It changes a section that deals with the courts of this state. It
would amend Article 7, Section 1. It makes courts rely on federal and state law when deciding cases. It
forbids courts from considering or using international law. It forbids courts from considering or using Sharia
Law.
International law is also known as the law of nations. It deals with the conduct of international organizations
and independent nations, such as countries, states and tribes. It deals with their relationship with each other.
It also deals with some of their relationships with persons.
The law of nations is formed by the general assent of civilized nations. Sources of international law also
include international agreements, as well as treaties.
Sharia Law is Islamic law. It is based on two principal sources, the Koran and the teaching of Mohammed.
SHALL THE PROPOSAL BE APPROVED? FOR THE PROPOSAL — YES
AGAINST THE PROPOSAL — NO
**Yeah, I think a state constitution can require that judges rely on federal and state law when deciding cases. You don't?**
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Well, completely apart from whatever I may think on the merits FWIW I think the law will be strongly challenged. The level of scrutiny required will probably be strict scrutiny and that is a tough standard to meet when the judge is inclined for you to fail.
Look at how the courts have intervened in gay marriage, gays in the military, etc in contravention of longstanding tradition, state law, initiatives by the people (didn't Prop 8 in CA modify the State Constitution? I'm not sure, , ,) etc etc I really don't see how a challenge to this law will not get serious consideration.
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H.RES.372 -- Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that judicial determinations regarding the meaning of the Constitution of the United States should not be based on judgments, laws,... (Introduced in House - IH)
HRES 372 IH
110th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 372
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that judicial determinations regarding the meaning of the Constitution of the United States should not be based on judgments, laws, or pronouncements of foreign institutions unless such foreign judgments, laws, or pronouncements inform an understanding of the original meaning of the Constitution of the United States.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
May 3, 2007
Mr. FEENEY (for himself, Mr. GOODLATTE, Mr. SESSIONS, Mr. JONES of North Carolina, Mr. HERGER, Mr. PENCE, Mr. KING of Iowa, Mr. DOOLITTLE, Mr. SAM JOHNSON of Texas, Mr. ISSA, Mr. FRANKS of Arizona, Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey, Ms. FOXX, Mrs. MYRICK, Mr. BISHOP of Utah, Mr. CONAWAY, Mr. PAUL, Mrs. MUSGRAVE, Ms. FALLIN, Mr. CAMPBELL of California, Mr. AKIN, Mr. GOHMERT, Mr. LAMBORN, Mr. MILLER of Florida, Mr. CHABOT, Mr. FORBES, Mr. CANNON, Mrs. BLACKBURN, Mrs. JO ANN DAVIS of Virginia, Mr. WESTMORELAND, Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida, Mr. SMITH of Texas, Mr. SENSENBRENNER, Mr. BOOZMAN, Mr. TERRY, Mr. WILSON of South Carolina, Mr. CANTOR, Mr. FORTUN.AE6O, Mr. MACK, Mr. BLUNT, Mr. SULLIVAN, Mr. GALLEGLY, Mr. GOODE, Mr. TIAHRT, Mr. PITTS, Mr. WELDON of Florida, Mr. CARTER, Mr. POE, and Mr. INGLIS of South Carolina) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that judicial determinations regarding the meaning of the Constitution of the United States should not be based on judgments, laws, or pronouncements of foreign institutions unless such foreign judgments, laws, or pronouncements inform an understanding of the original meaning of the Constitution of the United States.
Whereas the Declaration of Independence announced that one of the chief causes of the American Revolution was that King George had `combined to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws';
Whereas the Supreme Court has recently relied on the judgments, laws, or pronouncements of foreign institutions to support its interpretations of the laws of the United States, most recently in Lawrence v. Texas, 123 S.Ct. 2472, 2474 (2003);
Whereas the Supreme Court has stated previously in Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 921 n.11 (1997), that `We think such comparative analysis inappropriate to the task of interpreting a constitution . . .';
Whereas Americans' ability to live their lives within clear legal boundaries is the foundation of the rule of law, and essential to freedom;
Whereas it is the appropriate judicial role to faithfully interpret the expression of the popular will through the Constitution and laws enacted by duly elected representatives of the American people and our system of checks and balances;
Whereas Americans should not have to look for guidance on how to live their lives from the often contradictory decisions of any of hundreds of other foreign organizations; and
Whereas inappropriate judicial reliance on foreign judgments, laws, or pronouncments threatens the sovereignty of the United States, the separation of powers and the President's and the Senate's treaty-making authority: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that judicial interpretations regarding the meaning of the Constitution of the United States should not be based in whole or in part on judgments, laws, or pronouncements of foreign institutions unless such foreign judgments, laws, or pronouncements inform an understanding of the original meaning of the Constitution of the United States.
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"Measure 755 makes courts rely on federal and state law when deciding cases" Of course courts already are. The point about this Sharia law would, in effect, "prevent courts from enforcing private contracts in which the parties mutually agreed upon the use of Sharia laws--restricting the right of free people to contract as they choose." Finally, the point about international law "means that an Oklahoma state court would have to disregard international agreements and treaties if those were invoked in a particular dispute... The authors of Measure 755 should read Article VI of the United States Constitution.
Time will time; I predict this law will never survive....
It's a joke....
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It's not a law, it's an amendment to Oklahoma's constitution. Do you understand the difference? I think not.
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**Sharia law as part of the marriage contract allows the husband to physically punish his wife and have sex with her as he wishes, regardless her wishes. Should US courts enforce this contract?**
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/09/02/the-real-impact-of-sharia-law-in-america/
The Real Impact of Sharia Law in America
Posted September 2nd, 2010 at 11:00am in Rule of Law with 30 comments Print This Post
Does Sharia law allow a husband to rape his wife, even in America? A New Jersey trial judge thought so. In a recently overturned case, a “trial judge found as a fact that defendant committed conduct that constituted a sexual assault” but did not hold the defendant liable because the defendant believed he was exercising his rights over the victim. Fortunately, a New Jersey appellate court reversed the trial judge. But make no mistake about it: this is no isolated incident. We will see more cases here in the United States where others attempt to impose Sharia law, under the guise of First Amendment protections, as a defense against crimes and other civil violations.
In S.D. v. M.J.R., the plaintiff, a Moroccan Muslim woman, lived with her Moroccan Muslim husband in New Jersey. She was repeatedly beaten and raped by her husband over the course of several weeks. While the plaintiff was being treated for her injuries at a hospital, a police detective interviewed her and took photographs of her injuries. Those photographs depicted injuries to plaintiff’s breasts, thighs and arm, bruised lips, eyes and right check. Further investigation established there were blood stains on the pillow and sheets of plaintiff’s bed.
The wife sought a permanent restraining order, and a New Jersey trial judge held a hearing in order to decide whether to issue the order. Evidence at trial established, among other things, that the husband told his wife, “You must do whatever I tell you to do. I want to hurt your flesh” and “this is according to our religion. You are my wife, I c[an] do anything to you.” The police detective testified about her findings, and some of the photographs were entered into evidence.
The defendant’s Imam testified that a wife must comply with her husband’s sexual demands and he refused to answer whether, under Islamic law, a husband must stop his sexual advances on his wife if she says “no.”
The trial judge found that most of the criminal acts were indeed proved, but nonetheless denied the permanent retraining order. This judge held that the defendant could not be held responsible for the violent sexual assaults of his wife because he did not have the specific intent to sexually assault his wife, and because his actions were “consistent with his [religious] practices.” In other words, the judge refused to issue the permanent restraining order because under Sharia law, this Muslim husband had a “right” to rape his wife.
Besides the fact that the ruling is wrong as a legal matter, and offensive beyond words, it goes to the heart of the controversy about the insidious spread of Sharia law—the goal of radical Islamic extremists. Fortunately, the New Jersey appellate court refused to tolerate the trial judge’s “mistaken” and unsustainable decision. The appellate court chastised the trial judge’s ruling, holding among other things that he held an “unnecessarily dismissive view of defendant’s acts of domestic violence,” and that his views of the facts in the case “may have been colored by his perception that…they were culturally acceptable and thus not actionable – -a view we soundly reject.” Although appellate courts typically defer to findings of fact by trial judges, under the circumstances, this appellate court correctly refused to do so, and reversed the trial court and ordered the permanent restraining order to issue.
The truth is that imposition of Sharia law in the United States, especially when mixed with a perverted sense of political correctness, poses a danger to civil society. Just last year, a Muslim man in Buffalo, New York beheaded his wife in what appeared to be an honor killing, again using his faith to justify his actions. It is doubtful that the domestic violence and rape in this recently overturned case will be the last Americans see of Sharia being impermissibly used to justify brutal acts on our soil. As former Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney wrote recently:
Sharia is no less toxic when it comes to the sorts of democratic government and civil liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. According to this legal code of Saudi Arabia and Iran, only Allah can make laws, and only a theocrat can properly administer them, ultimately on a global basis.
The trial opinion in this case shows that, indeed, the global reach of Sharia law is expanding. The trial court allowed the testimony of an Imam to be entered so that his account of Sharia’s standards could supercede the standards set by the New Jersey legislature. This is not just about cultural defenses, which by themselves are not proper under United States law, but about giving up control of the law to a religious code citizens of this country have no control over, a theocratic code world famous for its antidemocratic, sexist nature and its human rights abuses.
So-called “cultural defenses” have existed in other contexts for a long while and, for the most part, such defenses have been rejected. As a domestic violence prosecutor in San Diego, I ran across a case where the accused was charged with assault for punching his girlfriend, and the defense wanted to introduce an expert in Latin cultures. The expert was to testify that in Latin culture, it is acceptable for a man to strike “his woman” as punishment as long as it doesn’t cause serious lasting injury. This was rejected outright by the court, as it should have been. These attempts are not uncommon, but the cultural relativism they espouse is different than the more dangerous trend here.
In S.D. v. M.J.R., the husband’s defense for sexually assaulting his wife was not just another attempt to erode the protection of our own social mores. The specific threat that comes from attempting to establish Sharia law in the United States is that justification for doing so has been couched in the protections of the First Amendment. As noted by the appeals court in its decision overturning what amounted to the replacement of New Jersey’s rape law with Sharia, “the judge determined to except [the] defendant from the operation of the State’s statutes as the result of his religious beliefs.” Doing so was contrary to several Supreme Court decisions, which hold that an individual’s responsibility to obey generally applicable law—particularly those that regulate socially harmful conduct—cannot be made contingent up on his or her religious beliefs.
The U.S. Constitution cannot and should not be used to subvert legislatures and allow brutes such as the husband in this case to harm others simply because their actions are legal under Sharia law. It was impermissible for the trial court to act as it did in this case, and the appellate judges very correctly overturned the ruling below. This is not the last we will hear of such attempts, however, as Sharia-loving extremists are determined to establish an Islamic Caliphate around the world, especially in America. As Andy McCarthy has written, “Our enemies are those who want Sharia to supplant American law and Western culture.” We cannot allow that to happen.
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**JDN, if a slave was purchased lawfully per sharia law outside the US, should those islamic property rights apply within the US? If not, why not?**
A shadow cast by the strength and perdurability of Islamic slavery can be seen in instances where Muslims have managed to import this institution to the United States. A Saudi named Homaidan Al-Turki, for instance, was sentenced in September 2006 to 27 years to life in prison, for keeping a woman as a slave in his home in Colorado. For his part, Al-Turki claimed that he was a victim of anti-Muslim bias. He told the judge: “Your honor, I am not here to apologize, for I cannot apologize for things I did not do and for crimes I did not commit. The state has criminalized these basic Muslim behaviors. Attacking traditional Muslim behaviors was the focal point of the prosecution.” The following month, an Egyptian couple living in Southern California received a fine and prison terms, to be followed by deportation, after pleading guilty to holding a ten-year-old girl as a slave. And in January 2007, an attaché of the Kuwaiti embassy in Washington, Waleed Al Saleh, and his wife were charged with keeping three Christian domestic workers from India in slave-like conditions in al-Saleh’s Virginia home. One of the women remarked: “I believed that I had no choice but to continue working for them even though they beat me and treated me worse than a slave.”
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=27440
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Shaira Law does not supersede our Criminal State and Federal Law.
Shaira Law is VOLUNTARY; ALL parties must agree.
Just like binding arbitration, Beth Din, etc.
I'll make a follow up note; let's just see if this Amendment/Law is challenged. :-)
I predict it will get strict scrutiny and will be tossed by the Courts..... :-D
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Déjà vu. I could swear I recall a similar stand being taken re Sharia law in the UK, a line that was embraced throughout despite numerous cogent arguments and a fair amount of evidence that sharia law running counter to English common law was indeed being applied to British citizens.
Is this ballot issue largely symbolic? It appears so. Will folks on both sides who get their undies in a bunch over this sort of stuff duke it out? Yep, and it will hopefully keep them out of other mischief for the duration. Is sharia law a means by which some seek to foist Islamic mores on a host society? The question ought to be rhetorical instead of inspiring yet another lap around the same track.
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JDN is 100% fact-proof.
So please explain how CAIR has legal standing to challenge Oklahoma's constitution.
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Rarick; I find that I usually agree with your opinions, therefore I just wanted to quickly clarify....
Perhaps I was not clear....
I DO NOT in any way defend or approve
"That wife- Husband thing was obviously non-consensual, yet you defend the decision?"
It's simple. "non consensual" means non-consensual .....
not to mention criminal....
lock the guy up!
Further, nor do I defend or approve
"A slave does not have Liberty or Pursuit of Happiness so that violate highest law of the land, that IS agoing to War Issue (Hello McFly?)
A "slave" in America has every right to pursue Liberty or Happiness.
If his rights are violated that is a criminal action and the perpetrator should be punished (as they were). You can throw away the key...
Sharia rulings apply to Civil Law only (not criminal law) and all parties must agree to abide by the agreement otherwise there is no agreement.
It's similar to binding arbitration.... Or the Jewish Beth Din, and similar organizations... All parties must voluntarily agree to participate.
I don't know about your state, but CA Courts aggressively push mediation and arbitration. The Courts here are clogged and slow.
Obviously it must be voluntary, however, if accepted by both parties, binding arbitration is faster and cheaper than a
long drawn out legal battle. Still, if you don't want to use Beth Din, a Mediator, or court appointed Arbitrator or follow Sharia Law, the legal system is aways available to you.
It's your voluntary choice...
Why is this bad?
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“Just going from personal experience- opinion. The ten Commandments are not the law of the land since the are of religious origin. They have influenced the culture though. The Law of the Land is the Constitution. Anyone who has had any quality education has the preamble memorized. The traditional view has always been where the law and religion collide, basic rights/natural rights win over religion. Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness wins. Religions that involve Human sacrifice, Slavery, and Non-Consensual Dominance in relationships are anathema.”
While I take your point: The Constitution over rides dogmatic religious views, I want to point out the relationship between the Judeo-Christen tradition and the Constitution.
The founders were adamant that the natural rights of man came from God. How each individual defined God falls into the realm of dogma. They were not interested in getting between a person and God(protestant Judeo Christian belief). The source of natural rights is the key stone for the Constitution. If the rights come from any other source they can be taken away, they would be alienable not inalienable.
Perhaps I just restated your argument......it could just be semantics. I think this point is critical to keep in mind in our day and age.
I will not pursue this tangent on this thread but felt the point was pertinent at this point in the conversation
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The constitution emerged from judeo-christian civilization, but our legal system is secular in nature. Judges should only concern themselves with the constitution and the laws of this nation when rendering a decision. If someone wants to live under sharia law, they need to leave the US. If someone wants to live under another judicial system, they need to move to where that system is the law. Enough of those that come here to subvert this country and the leftists that see nothing wrong with the subversion.
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Sharia? What Sharia?
by Robert Spencer
10/19/2010
As Sharron Angle, Newt Gingrich and others have started making Islamic law (Sharia) part of the national debate, and Oklahoma actually moves to outlaw it, there is a new attempt to confuse the American people about the nature of the threat we face. It’s a large-scale mainstream media effort to deny both that there is any attempt to bring Sharia to the United States, and that Sharia is anything to be concerned about in the first place. Unfortunately, there is plenty of evidence of attempts to establish the primacy of Islamic law over American law, and much to indicate that Sharia is anything but benign.
Characteristic of the media campaign was a Saturday Religion News Service story by Omar Sacirbey, which asserted that “no one in Oklahoma, Michigan or anywhere else is calling for Shariah — including and especially Muslims.” Sacirbey quoted Ibrahim Hooper of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) – without noting, of course, CAIR’s status as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas funding case, the jihad terror convictions of various former CAIR officials, or the Islamic supremacist statements made by Hooper and CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad. Hooper said: “This is another right-wing fantasy that started on the hate blogs and worked its way into the mainstream media. Where is the evidence of the takeover?”
The RNS story goes on to cite as evidence the New Jersey judge who declined to charge a Muslim with sexual assault on his wife because under Sharia, a woman may not deny sex to her husband at any time under any circumstances. This remarkable introduction of Islamic law into American jurisprudence was overturned, leading those who would dismiss the threat of Sharia to claim that its spread in the U.S. is simply a matter of one lone example. Unfortunately, there are more.
There have been successful attempts by Muslim workers at meat packing plants in Nebraska and Colorado to force their employers to restructure the work schedule to give them special breaks at times for Islamic prayer. These efforts initially met with protests from non-Muslim workers, who complained to no avail that the special breaks given to Muslims forced the non-Muslims to work longer hours, and thus discriminated against them. The result? Muslims in these plants have special privileges that other workers do not have – in accord with the privileged status Muslims enjoy over non-Muslims in Sharia societies.
Another example of Sharia insinuating itself into American life are the footbaths that have been constructed in airports and schools for the ablutions prescribed before Islamic prayers. Imagine the outcry if holy water fonts were being placed in airports for Catholic travelers – but Islamic footbaths have been dismissed as non-religious, on the pretext that anyone can use them. It would be interesting to see what would happen if a non-Muslim tried.
Yet Sharia, claims Jehan S. Harney, an Egyptian-American filmmaker writing in the Huffington Post, “is simply the rules that govern the lives of Muslims from daily prayers and fasting to inheritance. Sharia does not -- and never will -- apply to non-Muslims.”
Harney doesn’t mention the Christian women who have been threatened and sometimes even killed in Iraq and elsewhere for not wearing the Islamic headscarf. Nor does she mention the elaborate superstructure of Sharia laws governing the conduct of non-Muslims in Islamic societies, and mandating for them a second-class status that deprives them of basic rights. Just this week, Catholic bishops have been meeting in a synod to discuss the plight of Christians in the Middle East. Reports on the status of those Christians noted that they routinely face job discrimination (in accord with the Sharia provision that non-Muslims must not hold authority over Muslims) even in states where Sharia is not fully enforced; they have immense difficulty getting permits to build new churches (which is forbidden by Sharia); and converts from Islam must always live under the threat of death (in accord with Sharia’s death penalty for apostasy).
Eventually Sharia advocates will attempt to bring even those elements of Sharia to the U.S.: there is no form of Sharia that does not contain them. But if the mainstream media has its way, Americans will sleep on as those advocates continue to work.
Mr. Spencer is director of Jihad Watch and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad (both from Regnery—a Human Events sister company) and most recently coauthor of Pamela Geller’s The Post-American Presidency (Simon & Schuster).
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I'll try once more....
You said,
"A contract is a contract and what the beth din and such is basically a witness to a contract. Contract law is respected, therefore within the law of the land."
No that's not quite accurate. Beth Din is an arbitrator, a kind of a judge if you will. They are much more than a mere "witness" to a contract. Similar to binding arbitration; let's say
if you and I have a disagreement, i.e. I don't like you tree hanging over my yard. I have the choice to hire an attorney to pursue the matter in Civil Court; yet this alternative is slow and expensive. Or much quicker and probably at less cost is if we both agree to hire an Arbitrator and agree that his decision will be binding. He is more than a "witness". But it only applies to Civil matters. For example, if I hate your tree so much I attack you or your family that is a criminal action. The Arbitrator has no authority; the police will come and arrest me and the Criminal System will pursue the matter.
As for Honor Killings, Apostasy killings, etc. these laws do exist in some Muslim States, as do heinous practices exist in some African States, yet no one in their right mind here in America I assume approves, but the question on the table here is ONLY applicable to the United States of America and the state of OK. Giving examples of the law concerning Apostasy for example in Iran (death) America (protected under the First Amendment) is not relevant. I'm referring to America's laws and practices and by extension in this discussion, England, France, etc. And no one in America is "Being treated as a second class citizen under the law if you are not of the faith".
I will repeat; it's not "Bullcrap" but truth; in America, Sharia Law only applies, as does Beth Din now and Binding Arbitration, to Civil Law. Not criminal law. And participation is voluntary; all parties must voluntarily agree to participate. Despite some posters opinion to the contrary, this fact is also true in England.
That all said, I have no desire to live in a Muslim country governed by Sharia. Nor would I submit to a Sharia Civil Arbitration here in America. But then I'm not Muslim. But I might agree to let a Minister of my Church decide our tree issue. And if you are of the same faith, you too might agree versus protracted litigation. And if I am a Jew, I might agree to let Beth Din hear our case. http://www.bethdin.org/cases.asp
Is that so bad?
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Once there is an agreement to arbitrate, the ruling of the arbitrator is enforceable by the power of the state, yes? Should we as a society have the secular state enforcing a codified law based on a religious text?
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Irfan Aleem v. Farah Aleem, No. 108, September Term 2007
HEADNOTE: The Court declines to afford comity to the Pakistani talaq divorce. The
alleged Pakistani marriage contract and the Pakistani statutes addressing the division of
property upon divorce conflict with the public policy of Maryland and the Maryland courts
will not afford comity to such contracts and foreign statutes.
http://mdcourts.gov/opinions/coa/2008/108a07.pdf
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AIFD PRESS RELEASE: American Muslim organization applauds Oklahoma anti-shariah law
November 5, 2010
AIFD
American Islamic Forum for Democracy
SQ755 protects the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution's Establishment Clause and the rule of One Law
PHOENIX (November 5, 2010) - Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and the president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) issued the following statement regarding the passage of Oklahoma's State Question 755.
"As Muslims dedicated to modernity, reform and our one law system in the west and in the United States, AIFD applauds the people of Oklahoma for passing State Question 755 and making "the legal precepts of other nations or cultures" off-limits to Oklahoma courts and specifically denying the use of Sharia Law.
The issue is simple. As Americans we believe in the Constitution, the Establishment Clause, and our one law system. SQ755 reaffirms the First amendment to the Constitution and prevents the Establishment or empowerment of a foreign legal system like the specific shariah legal systems implemented in many Muslim majority nations and in western shariah courts seen in places like Britain.
By filing a lawsuit, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has wasted no time in proving once again that they are unable to stand behind public declarations that the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights and our one law system supersede and are preferable to a sharia law system. They are using the American cover of religious freedom to try and knock down a simple law that prohibits the domination of one religion over others.
SQ755 is not about religious freedom or minority rights. It is about the inviolable sanctity of the U.S. constitution and our country's foundational belief in a legal system based in one law that is based in reason and individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The law has no impact on the personal practice of Islam or the personal interpretation of "shariah" (God's law to a Muslim), but rather SQ755 focuses on shariah as a total legal system that the people of Oklahoma wanted to make clear shall not be used or respected systemically in deciding law in Oklahoma. CAIR's assertion that it is akin to France's ban of the hijab or personal head covering for women is absurd. There is no evidence that this law prevents any of the personal manifestation of the practice of Islam or the use of personal religious principles in arguing law based in reason in state or federal court. Shariah as a legal system can just not be used as prima facie evidence in court.
SQ755 also thus prevents the establishment of separate shariah or Islamic courts in Oklahoma. As we have seen in Britain, Islamists have transformed the British arbitration system to the point that they are operating upwards of 85 shariah courts now. These courts are mostly operated out of mosques in Britain. While they claim that the courts are voluntary, as Canadians voiced loudly in their rejection of shariah courts, these groups exploit tribal pressures and coercion within Muslim communities in order to circumvent the one law and one legal system of Britain and western nations. It is naïve and ignorant to believe that such courts are purely "voluntary". Just ask many of the women who get pressured through them and pressured to stay "out of western un-Islamic courts."
CAIR's lawsuit proves that they are part of an Islamist establishment in America that do not and will not believe in the separation of mosque and state and that they promote the ideology of political Islam. This ideology is based in a belief in the supremacy of Islamic legal systems and is often a conveyer belt toward radicalization. CAIR shows once again that they are part of the problem not the solution.
To those who say "Why Oklahoma?", we say "Why not Oklahoma?" The Oklahoma precedent and example is important. It has already showed CAIR's hand and where they place shariah law in relation to the Constitution. CAIR flippantly states that the law is not necessary. By implying that Islam and shariah are inseparable they demonstrate a willful denial of the internationally pervasive draconian shariah law systems around the world in places like Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia to name a few, and how academically clear the legal system of shariah law is. Note should be made of how CAIR's response to SQ755 does not address any of the harms instituted against Muslims and non-Muslims around the world in the name of shariah law.
AIFD and most reformist Muslims believe a ban on shariah courts is necessary to protect the rights of the individual and in particular the rights of women."
About the American Islamic Forum for Democracy
The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization. AIFD's mission advocates for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state. For more information on AIFD, please visit our website at http://www.aifdemocracy.org/
Media contact:
office 602-254-1840
email: info@aifdemocracy.org
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Once there is an agreement to arbitrate, the ruling of the arbitrator is enforceable by the power of the state, yes? Should we as a society have the secular state enforcing a codified law based on a religious text?
From what I understand Beth Din Arbitrations work pretty well here in America....
Contractual Beth Din Arbitration Provisions
When two or more people enter into a contract, they may include a provision which states that disputes arising out of the contractual relationship between the parties be resolved by an arbitration panel or organization agreed upon by the parties. If a dispute relating to the contract arises, each party is then obligated, as a matter of contract law, to appear before the designated arbitration panel. The Beth Din of America encourages people to include a beth din arbitration clause in their business contracts, since the inclusion of such a clause ensures that disputes will be adjudicated in a beth din, consistent with the requirements of Jewish law.
A din torah is the Jewish substitute for going to court. Jewish law does not allow one to be a plaintiff in a secular court without first obtaining permission from a Jewish court. In a din torah, people who have a dispute present their cases before a panel of three judges, generally rabbis. At the end, the judges issue a decision which is binding on the parties, both as a matter of secular and Jewish law.
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Last time I checked, there was no jewish version of a stealth jihad to impose sharia law on the western nations. Do you know of anything similar from jews? Again, why should American judges enforce religious law?
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Remember, CAIR leaders have stated:
“Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith but to become dominant.” ~ Omar Ahmad
“I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future…” ~ Ibrahim Hooper
Any jews that have said anything like the above, JDN?
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Again, why should American judges enforce religious law?
:?
You are in Law Enforcement; but perhaps you are unacquainted with the rules of Civil Law...?
Or, perhaps you did not read my immediate preceding post in your haste to identify the evils of Islam....
I already answered your question.... That IS our Civil Judicial System (contract law) and has been for many years....
"When two or more people enter into a contract, they may include a provision which states that disputes arising out of the contsractual relationship between the parties be resolved by an arbitration panel or organization agreed upon by the parties. If a dispute relating to the contract arises, each party is then obligated, as a matter of contract law, to appear before the designated arbitration panel."
Source - Beth Din (Note: a religious organization).
I am sure they have some excellent and I'm sure very religious attorneys on staff plus Arbitrators (aka Rabbis who enforce religious law) among whom I am sure could better answer your question than myself... As I said, they seem to do an excellent job.
http://www.bethdin.org/cases.asp
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So the stealth jihad to impose sharia on the western world should be ignored? The victimization of women in the UK sharia courts there is no big deal to you?
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Creche on the front lawn of city hall? Nope, violates separation of church and state.
Prayer in school? Nope, violates the separation of church and state.
Ten Commandments on the courtroom wall? Nope, violates the separation of church and state.
Allowing a religion that has not undergone reformation and hence embraces many medieval practices to do so in the United States provided all parties are said to agree to it? No problem at all.
The whole contracting element is a nice red herring. Too bad it has little to do with the way Sharia law is practiced anywhere on the globe.
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http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/10/shariasanctioned_marital_rape.html
October 15, 2010
Sharia-Sanctioned Marital Rape in Britain -- And North America
Andrew G. Bostom
As reported in the UK Independent, president of the Islamic Sharia Council in Britain, Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, has reiterated alarming comments made during a March, 2010 interview, sanctioning marital rape.
Sheikh Sayeed was in fact responding to an inchoate effort at modernizing the contracts which govern Muslim marriages in Britain. The good Sheikh, representing Britain's main Islamic Sharia court, the Islamic Sharia Council, promptly published a rebuttal of the contract, which included a statement on sexual abuse (page 6 here). He opined in the March interview:
Clearly there cannot be any "rape" within the marriage. Maybe "aggression", maybe "indecent activity."
He further rejected both the characterization of non-consensual marital sex as rape, and the prosecution of such offenders as "not Islamic." Sheikh Sayeed, who came to Britain from Bangladesh in 1977, also brazenly expressed his Sharia-supremacism and accompanying disdain for Western, i.e., British Law, stating,
...to make it exactly as the Western culture demands is as if we are compromising Islamic religion with secular non-Islamic values.
Sayeed re-affirmed these sentiments to The UK Independent:
In Islamic sharia, rape is adultery by force. So long as the woman is his wife, it cannot be termed as rape.
Crowing with pride during his March 2010 interview, Sheikh Sayeed maintained,
No other sharia council can claim they are so diverse as ours because other sharia councils, they are following one school of fiqh [Islamic jurisprudence]. Ours is diverse -we are hanafi, shafi'i, hanbali.we have Bangladeshi...we have Pakistani, we have Indian, we have Palestinian, we have Somali scholars on our board.
At present there are 16 main sharia courts around Britain, located in Birmingham, Bradford, and Ealing in West London. These institutions are "complemented" by more informal sharia-based tribunals-the think tank Civitas asserting that up to 85 tribunals currently exist in Britain.
But for those who naively-and smugly-proclaim such phenomena are absent within the Muslim communities of North America, consider AMJA, the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America. AMJA's mission statement claims the organization was, "...founded to provide guidance for Muslims living in North America...AMJA is a religious organization that does not exploit religion to achieve any political ends, but instead provides practical solutions within the guidelines of Islam and the nation's laws to the various challenges experienced by Muslim communities."
In response to the specific query, “Is there a such thing as Marital Rape?,” the AMJA issued fatwa #2982:
In the name of Allah, all praise is for Allah, and may peace and blessing be upon the Messenger of Allah and his family. To proceed:
For a wife to abandon the bed of her husband without excuse is haram [forbidden]. It is one of the major sins and the angels curse her until the morning as we have been informed by the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace). She is considered nashiz (rebellious) under these circumstances. As for the issue of forcing a wife to have sex, if she refuses, this would not be called rape, even though it goes against natural instincts and destroys love and mercy, and there is a great sin upon the wife who refuses; and Allah Almighty is more exalted and more knowledgeable.
An ocean apart from Britain—now a recognized Western hotbed for “Islamic fundamentalism”—the same Sharia-sanctioned misogynistic bigotry prevails in a North American clerical organization openly advising US and Canadian Muslims.
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It looks like the first step to this law/state constitutional amendment being rejected by the Court....
OKLAHOMA CITY -- A hearing began at 10 a.m. set on a request for a temporary injunction against a state constitutional amendment that prohibits Oklahoma courts from considering Islamic law.
Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange approved the injunction in federal court Monday morning.
"This court will issue a detailed order as soon as possible," she said.
The lawsuit stated the amendment singles out Islam for special restrictions by prohibiting use of the law that is also known as
Islamic Sharia law.
The temporary restraining order will be in effect for 14 days. The next hearing to hear arguments on both sides of the controversial State Question 755 is expected to take place on Nov. 22.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/252792/judicial-mischief-oklahoma-ed-whelan
Judicial Mischief in Oklahoma?
November 8, 2010 3:09 P.M.
By Ed Whelan
According to AP, federal district judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange today issued a temporary restraining order blocking implementation of Oklahoma’s recently adopted constitutional amendment barring Oklahoma state courts from considering or using international law or shariah law in deciding cases. Specifically, the judge’s TRO prevents the state election board from certifying that the amendment was approved by the voters (with support of 70%).
The judge’s reported order—I haven’t seen the text or any supporting opinion—strikes me as highly dubious. The plaintiff, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oklahoma, evidently claims that the amendment stigmatizes Islam. It’s true that, among the different existing bodies of religious law, the amendment identifies only shariah law as impermissible. But that, I gather, is because advocates of shariah law make comprehensive claims to supplant civil law that no other body of religious law is seen to threaten.
Among other things, issuance of a TRO would generally require some determination that the plaintiff faces irreparable injury and is likely to succeed on the merits. I don’t see how either prong would likely be satisfied. Further, considerations of federalism ought to make a federal court very hesitant to interfere with a state’s election-certification process.
As I’ve previously indicated, I’m open to the possibility that a categorical bar on the use of international law or shariah law for any purpose might have some improper applications. It’s possible that a particular application of the state constitutional amendment might be preempted by federal law (statute or treaty) or even violate the federal Constitution. But any such claim is best pursued by a party in the context of an independently existing case.
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As the Federal Judge wrote when she issued the TRO,
"It clearly appears from the specific facts shown that immediate and irreparable
injury, loss, or damage will result to Plaintiff if Defendant’s are not enjoined from
certifying the election results for State Question 755."
The full court document, including Awad's arguments and the judge's initial ruling, can be found at
http://ztruth.typepad.com/files/argument-1.pdf
Frankly the CAIR position seems rather well reasoned. I anticipate that this law/amendment
will soon be tossed in the garbage can after having wasted a great deal taxpayer's time and money.
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Typical JDN. Tireless cheerleader for evil/anti-americanism. If this was the 1930's, you'd be a member of the german-american bund, no doubt.
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Typical JDN. Tireless cheerleader for evil/anti-americanism. If this was the 1930's, you'd be a member of the german-american bund, no doubt.
As someone once said, "Wow. That's a very compelling legal argument you've put together." :-o
You can "reason" yourself or "logic" yourself into any end goal you want, that is the way the lawyers have wrote the law- that still does not make it right. Bottom line is that the law of the land in the main body of the constitution, much less bill of rights, is being violated. The decision amounts to granting extraterritoriality to Moslems. That law was to ensure it did not start to happen in Oklahoma. People wonder why some of the foil hats call judges Nazgul.............
:?
The way the "lawyers" wrote the law/amendment is wrong. The Federal Judge agreed. She granted a TRO and I think she will soon rule in favor of the Plaintiff because this law/amendment does violate the U.S. Constitution.
Our Constitution, our Bill of Rights protects everyone, treats everyone as equal, not just groups in favor and out of favor at the moment.
And yes, I prefer "reason and logic"...
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The ban on sharia in no way violates constitutional rights. It affirms constitutional rights by banning sharia's oppression of women/non-muslims.
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I skimmed the first 2-3 of the 27 pages. Regardless of the ultimate determination on the merits, it is not clear to me that the standard for a TRO has been met (immediate and irreparable); the logic with regard to this point seems a bit circular to me.
Also, why not limit the TRO to the part about Islam and leave in place the part about international law?
Concerning the part about Islam, as best as I can tell this is a matter of first impression and both sides have yet to make their arguments and have them tested.
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http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Punjab:-Christian-woman-sentenced-to-death-for-blasphemy-19940.html
11/09/2010 13:06
PAKISTAN
Punjab: Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy
For the first time, a woman is sentenced to death in Pakistan for this kind of “offence”. The blasphemy law was introduced in 1986 by then Pakistani dictator Zia-ul Haq and since then it has become a tool for discrimination and violence. Part of the Pakistan Penal Code, the law imposes life in prison for defiling the Qur’an and death for insulting Muhammad.
Islamabad (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Pakistan has “crossed a line” in sentencing a Christian woman to death for blasphemy. Asia Bibi, a 37-year-old farm worker mother of two, was convicted of committing blasphemy before her fellow workers during a heated discussion about religion in the village of Ittanwali in June last year.
Some of the women workers had reportedly been pressuring Bibi to renounce her Christian faith and accept Islam. During one discussion, Bibi responded by speaking of how Jesus had died on the cross for the sins of humanity and asking the Muslim women what Muhammad had done for them.
The Muslim women took offence and began beating Bibi. Afterwards she was locked in a room. According to Release International, a mob reportedly formed and “violently abused” her and her children.
The charity, which supports persecuted Christians, said that blasphemy charges were brought against Bibi because of pressure from local Muslim leaders.
Release International’s chief executive, Andy Dipper, expressed his shock at Sunday’s ruling.
“Pakistan has crossed a line in passing the death sentence on a woman for blasphemy,” he said.
In addition to the death sentence, Bibi was also fined the equivalent for an unskilled worker of two and a half years’ wages.
Another Christian woman, Martha Bibi (no relation to Asia), is also on trial in Lahore for blasphemy.
According to the National Commission on Justice and Peace (NCJP) of the Catholic Church, between 1986 and August 2009, at least 974 people have been charged for defiling the Qur’an or insulting the Prophet Muhammad. They include 479 Muslims, 340 Ahmadis, 119 Christians, 14 Hindus and 10 from other religions.
The blasphemy law has often been used as a pretext for personal attacks or vendettas as well as extra-judicial murders. Overall, 33 people have died this way at the hands of individuals or crazed mobs.
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http://volokh.com/2010/11/09/district-court-temporarily-enjoins-oklahoma-no-use-of-shariah-law-in-court-constitutional-amendment/#more-39134
District Court Temporarily Enjoins Oklahoma No-Use-of-Shariah-Law-in-Court Constitutional Amendment
Eugene Volokh • November 9, 2010 2:12 pm
The decision was announced yesterday, but the opinion was apparently just released today. This is just a temporary restraining order, entered without even any written argument from the state; there’ll be a hearing on the request for the longer-lasting preliminary injunction on Nov. 22.
You can also see the plaintiff’s Complaint and Memorandum in Support. Thanks to Josh Gerstein (Politico) for the pointer.
UPDATE [3:06 pm]: I’m no fan of the amendment, which would also apparently ban the use of foreign law in Oklahoma courts, even in situations — such as disputes about whether two people were validly married in a foreign country, enforcement of contracts that provide for the use of (say) British law, and tort litigation over conduct that happened in a foreign country — where foreign law has long been used under standard choice-of-law principles. And it’s also possible that the specific ban on the use of Sharia law might be unconstitutional, though that depends on exactly how the amendment is interpreted. But my tentative sense is that the plaintiff doesn’t have standing to challenge the ban on the use of Sharia.
1. The plaintiff argues that the amendment is unconstitutional because it impermissibly expresses governmental hostility to Islam, and provides for discrimination against Muslims. But the mere existence of the law does not, I think, amount to a constitutionally sufficient injury on which a lawsuit can be founded. (That’s the legal requirement of “standing.”)
It’s true that the Supreme Court has sometimes allowed standing in Establishment Clause cases based on symbolic injuries. But the Court has never allowed standing simply based on the existence of a law that allegedly conveys an impermissible message of endorsement, and lower courts have not accepted such claims. See Newdow v. Lefevre (9th Cir. 2010):
Newdow lacks standing to challenge 36 U.S.C. § 302, which merely recognizes “In God We Trust” is the national motto. Unlike §§ 5112(d)(1) and 5114(b) [which provide for the placement of the motto on currency], § 302 does not authorize or require the inscription of the motto on any object. Without §§ 5112 and 5114, the motto would not appear on coins and currency, and Newdow would lack the “unwelcome direct contact” with the motto that gives rise to his injury-in-fact. Although Newdow alleges the national motto turns Atheists into political outsiders and inflicts a stigmatic injury upon them, an “abstract stigmatic injury” resulting from such outsider status is insufficient to confer standing.
People can have standing to object to the placement of religious symbols in particular places, when the objectors have “frequent regular contact” with the symbols (in the sense of often being around where the symbols are visible). But the presence of words in a law — even words that express endorsement or disapproval of religion — does not yield standing.
2. The plaintiff also argues that he suffers a more tangible injury, because his will directs the executor of the estate to follow Islamic law in arranging the funeral, and directs his wife to contribute to charity in accordance with Islamic law. The constitutional amendment, the plaintiff argues, bars courts from effectively probating the will in accordance to the plaintiff’s wishes, and thus unconstitutionally discriminates against plaintiff.
It’s not clear to me whether plaintiff might lack standing on the grounds that the harm will only happen some time in the future, or whether he could in principle have standing in such a case because the prospect of the courts’ inability to apply Sharia law in the future might cause sufficient harm to plaintiff now. (All this would involve the legal requirement of “ripeness.”)
But in any case, I think plaintiff has a deeper problem here: Even without the constitutional amendment, the First Amendment would bar American courts from “consider[ing] Sharia law” in interpreting the will. I blogged about this general point here, but the short version is this: Under the Court’s precedents (e.g., Presbyterian Church in the United States v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church (1969)), secular courts may not resolve questions that require interpretation of religious doctrine.
This would include, I think, decisions about what Sharia law — or kosher law or the proper understanding of Presbyterian doctrine — requires, even when a contract or will calls for such interpretation. Thus, lower courts have held that, for instance, “a court [deciding a church property dispute] can invoke a secular interpretation of church deeds, by-laws and canons, thereby avoiding judicial entanglement in issues of religious doctrine, polity and practice. When the application of this standard requires judicial involvement in a [religious] doctrinal question, however, it may not be relied upon.” “[P]rovisions in deeds or in denomination’s constitution for the reversion of local church property to the general church, if conditioned upon a finding of departure from doctrine, could not be civilly enforced [quoting and endorsing a concurring opinion in a different Supreme Court case].” Likewisee, see this case, which refused to decide whether a church “cease[d] to be a Southern Baptist Church,” language that appeared in the church’s bylaws and that would be judicially interpretable if it hadn’t required resolution of questions of religious doctrine.
So the amendment would thus have no tangible effect on the probate of plaintiff’s will. The will’s references to Sharia would be unenforceable in secular courts even without the amendments, just as terms in a will that require compliance with Orthodox Jewish doctrine or with Southern Baptist doctrine could not be enforced. (Terms in a will that expressly set forth certain secularly determinable requirements would be enforceable, even if the requirements were religiously motivated; but that remains true under the Oklahoma constitutional amendment as well.)
3. More broadly, it’s hard to tell what exactly the Oklahoma amendment would do. It might or might not bar the consideration of Sharia Law in cases that call for the application of foreign law, whether, say, Saudi contract law or Israeli family law applicable to Muslims. But given the amendment’s broader ban on the use of foreign law, I don’t think the amendment would in fact discriminate against Sharia law in this respect.
If the amendment banned religious exemption claims brought by Muslims under existing religious accommodation rules that would otherwise apply to a wide range of religions, then it would be unconstitutionally discriminatory. But it’s not clear that considering such accommodation requests would be seen as “considering ... Sharia Law”; it might well just be seen as considering the particular claimant’s sincere religious beliefs, with no requirement for the courts to consider their relationship with Sharia.
This is further reason, I think, for federal courts to abstain from deciding whether the amendment is unconstitutional until they actually have someone before them to whom the amendment will be applied (that’s the “standing” requirement), and until they can tell — likely based on state court decisions — just what the amendment means (that’s often labeled the Pullman abstention doctrine. And while that still leaves the general objection that the very existence of the law unconstitutionally expresses disapproval of Islam, I doubt that under current law an objector has standing to bring such a challenge, for the reasons I mentioned in item 1.
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"2. The plaintiff also argues that he suffers a more tangible injury, because his will directs the executor of the estate to follow Islamic law in arranging the funeral, and directs his wife to contribute to charity in accordance with Islamic law. The constitutional amendment, the plaintiff argues, bars courts from effectively probating the will in accordance to the plaintiff’s wishes, and thus unconstitutionally discriminates against plaintiff."
IMHO this clearly is a justiciable claim with sufficient standing.
"It’s not clear to me whether plaintiff might lack standing on the grounds that the harm will only happen some time in the future, or whether he could in principle have standing in such a case because the prospect of the courts’ inability to apply Sharia law in the future might cause sufficient harm to plaintiff now. (All this would involve the legal requirement of “ripeness.”)"
IMHO this simply is profoundly stupid. The harm as the author defines it is such that when the harm it occurs, by definition the injured party, the plaintiff here, will already be dead! Cf. Roe v. Wade wherein the issue presented was one of mootness. By the time the case got heard, the woman would already be a mother and no case could ever be heard.
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As long as the burial was not done in violation of health codes/statutes in Oklahoma, how is the religious nature applicable? There is nothing that would stop the decedent from being buried facing Mecca or having an imam conduct islamic funeral services or probating a will in compliance with OK. law just as the wills of christians, jews or atheists are probated.
Would a Mexican national who legally or illegally resided in Oklahoma have the right to have Mexican civil code considered in probating his/her will by the OK. courts?
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Backing up now. I was in a mood when I posted that.
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Michael A. Helfand is an associate professor of law at Pepperdine University and associate director of the university's Glazer Institute for Jewish Studies.
A law we don't need
By Michael A. Helfand
November 10, 2010
Oklahoma's amendment prohibiting courts from considering Islam's Sharia law in decisions is the product of fear-mongering.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-helfand-oklahoma-20101110,0,162228.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29
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http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-use-and-misuse-of-foreign-law-in-u-s-courts/
The Use and Misuse of Foreign Law in U.S. Courts
Posted by Ilya Shapiro
On Tuesday I discussed the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down laws that allow juveniles to be sentenced to life without parole (LWOP) for non-homicide crimes. What concerns me here isn’t so much the morality or policy wisdom in applying such sentences — though Chief Justice Roberts makes some good policy points in his concurrence — or even the interpretation of what constitutes a “cruel and unusual punishment” — which I think Justice Kennedy mishandles in a confusing discussion of national consensuses.
No, the most troubling part of that case was the unfortunate reference to foreign authorities to support the Court’s interpretation of the Eighth Amendment. Justice Kennedy notes that juvenile LWOP has been “rejected the world over.” “The judgment of the world’s nations that a particular sentencing practice is inconsistent with basic principles of decency,” he writes, “demonstrates that the court’s rationale has respected reasoning to support it.”
Justice Thomas, in his dissent, disputes Justice Kennedy’s math, noting that 11 countries allow the punishment. More importantly, “foreign laws and sentencing practices” are “irrelevant to the meaning of our Constitution.” He adds that most democracies around the world remain free to adopt the punishment should they wish to. “Starting today,” Thomas concludes, “ours can count itself among the few in which judicial decree prevents voters from making that choice.”
And that’s the crux of the matter: citing foreign law, using it to support a given reading of domestic law undermines democratic self-governance. The interpretation of the U.S. Constitution should depend on that document’s text, structure, and history, what it means in the context of the American polity. Even if a judge cares about ”evolving standards of decency” or invokes the “living Constitution,” it should be the updated standards in America that matter, or the opinions and values of modern Americans.
That is, federal judges derive their powers from the Constitution, which is a wholly American document. To the extent they use foreign extrinsic evidence to interpret this document, they are engaging in something — comparative law? social science? — that is not judging. It’s not a matter of being closed-minded or provincial — I actually enjoy reading comparative political research, and think our legislators and constitutional draftsmen engage in malpractice if they don’t use it — but, as Justice Thomas describes in Graham, the judicial role is different than the legislative or academic one.
Now, in practice U.S. courts actually rarely cite foreign law, and most of the time when they do it’s not controversial. For example, it’s relevant to see how all the contracting parties interpret a treaty, because you want a treaty (a contract among nations) to be understood the same way everywhere. Similarly, foreign court pronouncements are relevant to interpreting customary international law – the law of nations as the Framers understood it — to the limited extent it applies to a given case (crime on the high seas and the like). Next we have the coordination of litigation, with international companies suing each other based on contracts that specify that “X” provision is subject to British law whereas “Y” deals with Hong Kong law, and that the arbitration forum is supposed to be Switzerland: here the citation of foreign law is absolutely appropriate. Another appropriate use is in conflict of laws analysis: figuring out which law applies and sometimes even applying foreign law as binding in a dispute.
But using foreign law to interpret domestic law, and especially the Constitution, is problematic — but the Supreme Court does it more than lower courts, particularly in high profile cases: those involving the culture wars, moral issues like the death penalty and abortion, and other charged cases like affirmative action and sex discrimination. Libertarians should not welcome this trend because it signals judging based on something other than the principled reading of our own laws — in short, judicial usurpation of the policy-making function.
Hans Bader of CEI provides a longer write-up of Graham, and here again is Cato’s brief. For a pithy critique of the improper use of foreign law by U.S. courts, see Richard Posner’s now-famous article in Legal Affairs. And for an in-depth and entertaining exploration of these issues, read or watch a debate Justices Scalia and Breyer had in 2005.
Coincidentally, the same day the Court issued both Graham and Comstock (which I discuss here), it also decided an important case, Abbott v. Abbott, that uses foreign law to interpret an international treaty on child abduction. (While I haven’t yet gone through the Abbott decision, both the majority and dissent are correct to use foreign law to help them reach their conclusions.)
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"And that’s the crux of the matter: citing foreign law, using it to support a given reading of domestic law undermines democratic self-governance. The interpretation of the U.S. Constitution should depend on that document’s text, structure, and history, what it means in the context of the American polity."
Exactly so!
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101108/ap_on_re_us/us_islamic_law_lawsuit
I was reading this and it caused me some thought. The Republic where my wife and I have a home in Russia, is 70% Muslim. Having said that, the Russian approach to having her laws tampered with, is not what it is here, and the Muslim influence upon Russian law is kept to a minimum.
Here, IMO, outside influences are granted the power to supercede the beliefs and views of the whole i.e., negating the basic principles of the constitution and I'm not sure that it is a wise path to follow.
I understand that personal freedom is a value that is paramount to the system that we use here, but when we allow another system to gain purchase here, especially when it is an idea that is wholly contrary to that of personal freedom, is it wise to allow it under the guise of "religious freedom?"
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No, sedition to the American Creed is a bad idea. Sedition is not a concept within the "freedom of religion" of the First Amendment, it is a political ideology and can and should be analyzed as such.
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November 09, 2010
De Facto Shariah Law in America
By Janet Levy
Is the United States today a de facto shariah state? A close look at recent events points to some alarming conclusions about the tenets of shariah law taking hold in our once-proud constitutional republic and the unwitting, unequal application of existing U.S. laws. The result is that when it comes to religious expression, Muslims now enjoy more freedom of religion and speech under our Bill of Rights than non-Muslims. Equal protection under the laws of our country holds for Muslims far better than for non-Muslims. Several recent examples illustrate this point.
Christianity Suppressed
In October, students at a Chattanooga, Tennessee high school were told that their longtime tradition of praying at practice and before games would no longer be allowed. The school superintendent had called an end to prayer at all school functions following a complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
In July, students visiting the Supreme Court from an Arizona Christian school were stopped by police as they bowed their heads and quietly prayed for the justices. The students were standing outside the court building to the side at the bottom of the building steps. They weren't blocking traffic, but an officer abruptly approached them and ordered them to stop praying immediately.
Four Christians were arrested in June for disorderly conduct at the Dearborn Arab International Festival after handing out copies of the Gospel of John. The four had stationed themselves five blocks from the festival and did not actively approach anyone, but instead waited for others to approach them. Still, police officers confiscated their video cameras and led the four Christians away in handcuffs to shouts of "Allah hu Akbar" from Muslim bystanders.
In June of 2006, an instrumental rendition of "Ave Maria" was banned at the Henry Jackson High School graduation in Everett, Washington. Despite Justice Samuel Alito's protests, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider whether the case was an example of censorship of student speech.
In direct contrast to the above incidents, which limit Christian prayer and expression, numerous examples exist of special accommodations for Muslim activities and religious practices. These indicate an adherence to a separate and distinct policy for Muslims that mirrors the supremacist requirements of shariah law.
Islam Accepted
In the State of California, 7th-grade students at Excelsior Middle School in Discovery Bay, California adopted Muslim names, prayed on prayer rugs, and celebrated Ramadan under a state-mandated curriculum that requires instruction about various religions. In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court again declined to hear legal challenges by concerned Excelsior parents, who complained that the instruction was actually religious indoctrination and that Christianity and Judaism were not given equal time and exposure. The curriculum has been upheld as appropriate multicultural material.
After Carver Elementary School in San Diego absorbed Muslim students from a defunct charter school in September 2006, a special recess was provided for the students to pray, classes were segregated by gender, and pork was removed from the school menu. A teacher's aide at the school led children in prayer and was provided with a lesson plan allotting an hour of class time for Islamic prayer. In essence, Muslim students alone were privileged with public school time to practice their religion at an additional cost of $450,000 in public funds and a loss of instruction time. (Note: Looked this up also and revised it a bit as well.)
In May, students at a Wellesley, Massachusetts middle school visited a local radical mosque and participated in a prayer session. Parents, who gave signed permission for students to visit the mosque, were not informed in advance that students would also be bowing to Allah and listening to lectures on Islam. Surprisingly, teachers did nothing to intervene as students participated and a mosque spokesperson denigrated Western civilization while glorifying and misrepresenting Islam, even falsely referring to the greater rights of women under Islam. Astonishingly, this occurred in a state that has prohibited the sale of Christmas items, including red and green tissue paper, at a school store and forced firefighters to remove a "Merry Christmas" sign from their station.
Over the last few years, the University of Michigan, a taxpayer-funded school, has provided separate prayer rooms and ritual foot baths, requiring bathroom modifications costing over $100,000, for Muslim observances.
At Minneapolis Community and Technical College, where religious displays, including those for Christmas, have been strictly prohibited, foot-washing facilities are being installed using taxpayer dollars after one student slipped and injured herself washing her feet in a sink. Director of Legal Affairs and President Phil Davis justified the disparate treatment of Muslims, explaining, "The foot-washing facilities are not about religion; they are about public safety."
Muslims periodically block the streets of New York City, prostrating themselves in the middle of roadways and sidewalks undisturbed by police and other authorities. The resulting traffic jams are ignored, the double- and illegally parked vehicles are free of citations, and law enforcement officers are nowhere to be seen. Surely, practitioners of other religions or groups planning similar gatherings would be required to obtain permits for such an activity. Reportedly, the police have been ordered not to interfere with the Muslim prayer spectacle.
These special accommodations for Muslims effectively elevate the Islamic faith above that of Christians and Jews, reinforcing the message of the Koran -- "Allah proclaims Islam over all other religions" (48:28), "Islam will dominate other religions" (9:33), and "Islam does not coexist with other faiths" (5:51). Muslims are required by the teachings of their faith to conquer and subjugate non-Muslims and Ensure worldwide submission to Islam -- "The believers must make war on infidels around them and let the infidels find firmness in them" (9:123).
Under Islamic shariah law, Christians may not even speak to Muslims about Christianity nor provide them with any literature about Christianity. With the recent arrests of Christians in Dearborn juxtaposed with prostrate Muslim worshipers in Manhattan (where a mosque is planned at Ground Zero at the same location where a church will not be rebuilt), it appears that the principles of Islamic supremacy and prohibitions against Christian proselytizing have begun to gain traction in America.
Meanwhile, Christianity in America is withering as Bible study is eradicated in public schools, crosses are removed from the public square, and "winter holidays" replace Christmas celebrations. Remarkably, as Christianity is being dethroned and denied public expression, Islam is being unabashedly and openly promoted in what has been a Christian country for over two hundred years. It is truly remarkable that as American students chant prayers in Arabic in California's classrooms, Christmas music and graphics that refer to both Christmas and Chanukah are prohibited in New Jersey.
Censure of Non-Muslims
Further, the First Amendment, free-speech rights of non-Muslims are being curtailed amidst the demands of Muslims who operate under few constraints. While non-Muslims are self-censoring out of fear and being shut down by authorities, Muslims enjoy almost unfettered rights to speak out.
For example, leading up to the 9th anniversary of the Muslim attack on 9/11, Pastor Terry Jones of Florida announced that he would burn the Koran in protest of the proposed Ground Zero mosque. Not only was Jones's life threatened by Muslims, but an Obama administration official asked him to cancel his plans. New York Governor David A. Paterson commented in response to Jones' threat: "More and more, particularly this year, I feel that the memory of those who were lost is being disrespected." However, Paterson did not criticize the Muslim threat on Jones' life, nor the plan itself to build a mosque over the remains of the victims of Islamic terrorism killed on 9/11.
While Pastor Jones was punished by the loss of his mortgage and insurance and was presented with a bill for $180,000 for security by the City of Gainesville, Muslims avoided any public opprobrium even though twenty innocent people around the world died during Muslim protests against Jones. Like the response to the Danish Mohammed cartoons years earlier, the Koran-burning activity was suppressed and censured as disrespectful to Muslims. It was even compared to the burning of churches and synagogues. Yet Muslims who threatened violent reprisals against Jones were not warned that attempts to curtail First Amendment rights and even mayhem, assaults, or murder would not be tolerated and would be punished to the full extent of the law.
In another instance of free speech rights violations, when New Jersey Transit Authority (NJTA) worker Derek Fenton burned a Koran near Ground Zero on 9-11, he was promptly removed by authorities as much for the perceived insult to Islam as for his own safety. The very next day, he was fired from his job of eleven years.
In October, NPR reporter,Juan Williams was fired for expressing on Fox News a fear shared by the majority of Americans in a post-9/11 world -- his discomfort about being on a plane with people who dress as conservative Muslims. Thanks to pressure from CAIR, a Hamas-supporting, extremist-linked organization, Williams was punished for this thoughtcrime and, without first talking to Williams, an NPR spokesperson broke the news on Twitter. Ironically, CAIR spokespersons are regular guests on NPR programs.
Cartoonist Molly Norris was forced to disappear after declaring April 20 "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day." Norris ignited a religious firestorm with radical Islamic cleric Imam Anwar al-Awlaki publicly ordering her execution. Under FBI recommendations and at her own expense, Norris went underground, changing her name and identity. She is no longer publishing cartoons at the publication where she has been a regular contributor.
Freedom of Speech for Muslims
Whereas Norris was forced to enter a witness-protection program in response to a fatwa against her, Islamic leaders enjoy unlimited freedom to spread their messages of hate within the United States. Some even receive protection at taxpayer expense, as did Feisal Abdul Rauf, an Egyptian-American Sufi imam who plans to build a mosque at Ground Zero. Rauf is closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim Brotherhood organizations, endeavors to supplant U.S. law with shariah, and refuses to condemn jihadist groups and terrorism. In addition, he refused to sign a pledge revoking the mandatory death sentence for Muslim apostasy, has encouraged U.S. government officials to negotiate with the terrorist group Hamas, and blames the United States for 9/11. Imam Rauf, who created the Shariah Index Project, which rates countries around the world on shariah compliance, has said that he believes in shariah supremacy.
Tariq Ramadan, a highly controversial leader in the fundamentalist Muslim world and the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan Al-Banna, visited the United States in April. As a keynote speaker at the Hamas-supporting Council on American Islam Relations and as a speaker before another Muslim Brotherhood organization, the Muslim American Society, Ramadan refused to condemn the shariah law provision that calls for stoning women for alleged improprieties or to denounce suicide bombing. Ramadan is suspected by U.S. intelligence of having ties to al-Qaeda. He espouses amicable messages of peace and respect when speaking with Western audiences, while endorsing Wahhabism and spreading hatred of the West to Arabic-speaking audiences.
Even Muslims targeted by our own government for their crimes receive protection. Anwar al-Awlaki, dubbed the "bin Laden of the internet" and suspected of having prior knowledge of 9/11 by having met privately with two of the 9/11 hijackers, has been defended by the American Civil Liberties Union. After President Obama approved placing Awlaki on a government assassination list, the ACLU initiated a lawsuit against the U.S. government challenging the order to kill him. This despite Awlaki being on the FBI's Most Wanted List and his having met and corresponded with Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood assassin. He trained the Christmas underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and was the inspiration for Faisal Shahzad, the attempted Times Square car bomber. In a recent video delivered to CNN, Awlaki stated that Muslims are obligated to wage jihad against the United States.
Nine years after 9/11, in contrast to protections enjoyed by Muslims, individuals perceived by Muslims to have damaged Islam in some way have been threatened, fired, and publicly censured. This development indicates how far we have come down the road to dhimmitude, a subservient status in relation to Muslims. Clearly, if Norris had organized a Draw Jesus or Draw Moses Day, her life would be very much intact. If Juan Williams had talked about his fear of fundamentalist Christians, he would still be an NPR host in good standing. Had Jones burned the Old Testament, twenty people murdered by Muslims jihadists would still be alive, his reputation would be untarnished, and his financial situation would be undamaged. Had Derek Fenton burned a copy of the Old or New Testament, it is unlikely that the NJTA would have taken any action against him.
Islamization of America
We are witnessing a transformation of American society in which Islam enjoys a privileged place among the country's religions. The sensitivities of the country's 3 to 5 million Muslims are considered above those of non-Muslims. Non-Muslims even assist sensitive Muslims in the weeding out of potentially offensive statements or actions that could be remotely critical of Islam or Muslims. Since 9/11, Americans have been well-trained not to talk about Islam and terrorism or to use the word "jihad." Publicly criticizing, voicing concern about, or even expressing fear about Muslim behavior or activities is forbidden. While other religions may be freely criticized, lampooned in cartoons, and denigrated by artwork, Islam is sacred, supreme, and beyond reproach.
Every effort is made in the United States to accommodate Muslims and engage them in interfaith dialogue and community affairs. Muslims may pray openly in public -- on city streets and in airport terminals. Many U.S. government departments hold Iftar dinners to celebrate the end of Ramadan. The Ground Zero mosque will be built over the ashes of 9/11 victims, but the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church that was destroyed by Muslims will not. Non-Muslims enjoy no such privileges or special treatment in Muslim countries. They may not visit Mecca nor build churches or synagogues. U.S. forces stationed in Saudi Arabia are prohibited from wearing visible religious symbols.
The foregoing examples, not exhaustive by any means, point to the fact that we are living under a de facto shariah law system in the United States today that has compromised the freedoms we have enjoyed under our Constitution -- freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. Now, we no longer enjoy equal protection under the law. Our uniquely American virtues of tolerance and freedom have worked against us to produce intolerance and oppression. This has led to the stealthy introduction of shariah law and a climate in which criticisms of Mohammed and Islam are no longer possible without serious repercussions.
Instead, claims of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bias are rampant. Yet consider the following: the Muslim atrocity of 9/11, the attempt by the Nigerian Muslim Abdulmutallab to detonate plastic explosive in his underwear on a Northwest Airlines flight in 2009, the massacre of thirteen soldiers at Fort Hood by jihadist psychiatrist Nidal Hassan in 2009, the failed bombing of Times Square by Faisal Shahzad last May, the violent jihad plot in North Carolina planned by Daniel Patrick Boyd, the recent storming of a Baghdad church and murder of 58 Christians, the UPS plot to bomb synagogues in the Chicago area uncovered this past weekend, and countless other incidents over the past several years.
It is not irrational and biased to fear practitioners of a religion who are trying to kill non-Muslims based on teachings from their religion's doctrine. Apologists for Islam whitewash these events, but Islamic teachings (Reliance of the Traveller, o4.9, p. 590) specifically state that a Muslim's life is worth three times that of a Christian or Jew and fifteen times more than that of a Zoroastrian. (The Consulate General of India, Jeddah lists indemnities for Hindus and Buddhists at 1/15 that of Muslims). When non-Muslims so much as express any discomfort with Muslims and Islamic ideology, they risk public censure, financial ruin, loss of livelihood, and even death. he United States is truly under shariah law when it is forbidden and a punishable offense to call out Islamic doctrine for what it is.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/de_facto_shariah_law_in_americ.html at November 10, 2010 - 02:38:26 PM CST
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http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20101122/tuk-pupils-taught-to-carry-out-sharia-pu-a7ad41d.html
Pupils at Islamic schools across the country are being taught to chop off a criminal's hand and that Jews are conspiring to take over the world, a BBC investigation claimed on Monday.
Up to 5,000 pupils aged between six and 18 are being taught Sharia law punishments using "weekend-school" text-books which claim those who do not believe in Islam will be subjected to "hellfire" in death, the Panorama programme said.
A text book for 15-year-olds advises: "For thieves their hands will be cut off for a first offence, and their foot for a subsequent offence."
"The specified punishment of the thief is cutting off his right hand at the wrist. Then it is cauterised to prevent him from bleeding to death," it added.
Young pupils are warned that the punishment for engaging in homosexual acts is death by stoning, burning with fire or throwing off a cliff and that the "main goal" of the Jews is to "have control over the world and its resources."
The schools are part of the "Saudi Students Clubs and Schools in the UK and Ireland" organisation. The BBC investigation claimed that one school in London is owned by the Saudi government.
Education Minister Michael Gove told the BBC programme: "I have no desire or wish to intervene in the decisions that the Saudi government makes in its own education system.
"But I?m clear that we cannot have anti-Semitic material of any kind being used in English schools. Ofsted (Britain's education watchdog) will be reporting to me shortly."
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Federal judge keeps Sharia law restriction out of Oklahoma Constitution
11.30.10
http://newsok.com/judge-issues-injunction-against-sharia-law-ban/article/3519229
“While the public has an interest in the will of the voters being carried out … the Court finds that the public has a more profound and long-term interest in upholding an individual’s constitutional rights,” the judge wrote.
In Monday’s order, the judge wrote that Awad “has made a strong showing that State Question 755’s amendment’s primary effect inhibits religion and that the amendment fosters an excessive government entanglement with religion.”
The judge rejected the state’s argument that the amendment is a broad ban on state courts applying the law of other nations and cultures regardless of what faith they may be based on.
She wrote, “The actual language of the amendment reasonably … may be viewed as specifically singling out Sharia law, conveying a message of disapproval of plaintiff’s faith.”
The judge wrote: “This order addresses issues that go to the very foundation of our country, our (U.S.) Constitution, and particularly, the Bill of Rights. Throughout the course of our country’s history, the will of the ’majority’ has on occasion conflicted with the constitutional rights of individuals, an occurrence which our founders foresaw and provided for through the Bill of Rights.”
Quoting from a 1943 U.S. Supreme Court decision, she wrote, “One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”
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Something you and this leftist judge seem incapable of grasping is that OKhoma's law does not in any way stop a muslim from attending a mosque, praying towards Mecca 5 times a day, following halal dietary rules or making a haj to Mecca. It tells the courts they can't apply sharia law to Oklahoma law.
Useful idiots to the global jihad.
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(http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2010/1007/a_time_cover_0809.jpg)
Bask in the multicultural glory, JDN. You and CAIR against all that's good and decent.
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http://bigjournalism.com/dreaboi/2010/12/21/csp-responds-to-wapo/#more-151496
Yesterday’s feature, “Monitoring America,” by Dana Priest and William Arkin, intentionally distorts the role of outside experts training local law enforcement in matters related to terrorism.
In an effort to smear the Center for Security Policy, Arkin and Preist erroneously describe the Center’s book, Shariah: The Threat to America, as “expanding on what [Walid] Shoebat and [Ramon] Montijo believe.”
This is false. In fact, Shariah: The Threat to America is an independent work of nineteen national security experts, including the former Director of Central Intelligence, former directors of military intelligence agencies, a former counterterrorism agent in the FBI, experts in Shariah law, and many others. Each of the authors is an expert in his own right on a diverse array of national security issues; in that capacity, they can authoritatively address the nexus between America’s national security and Islamic law, called Shariah.
The study of Shariah is important to the nation’s national security because America’s Islamist enemies—from the inhabitants of al Qaeda-linked training camps in Yemen and Pakistan to homegrown American “lone-wolf” bombers—declare, above all other concerns, that they fight to install Islamic law and in furtherance of its explicit dictates.
Shariah: The Threat to America demonstrates that the mainstream legal code understood by many of the world’s Muslims to be divinely sanctioned law (Shariah) is a knowable system of law, making the practice of Islam possible in an organized way. Its foundational rulings—on issues like jihad, relations with non-Muslims, mandatory punishments for adultery and apostasy, and more—are objectively knowable. The book takes great pains to present the most mainstream Islamic sources, like the classic of Shafi’i law, Umdat Al-Salik (or Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law) and, in describing the tenants of Shariah, use texts written by Muslims for an Islamic audience.
In writing on the Center for Security Policy’s book, Shariah: The Threat to America, “Monitoring America” gives no more accurate or deep a description of the nearly 400-page work than dismissive posts on far-left blogs and missives from organizations linked by the US Government to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
Arkin and Preist write, “government terrorism experts call the views expressed in the center’s book [Shariah: The Threat to America] inaccurate and counterproductive. They say the DHS should increase its training of local police, using teachers who have evidence-based viewpoints.”
Predictably, the un-named “government terrorism experts” who, according to Preist and Arkin, critiqued the book, could not point to a single assertion or fact that is “inaccurate and counterproductive.” Shariah: The Threat to America may indeed be “counterproductive”—but only to politically correct fictions these un-named experts cling to at the expense of national security.
The premise of Shariah: The Threat to America is that America’s law enforcement and national security professionals must orient on the terrorist threat itself, using an unconstrained analysis that should begin with what the nation’s enemies themselves declare as war aims. It is unreasonable and counterproductive for national security professionals to substitute Western rationalizations—like poverty, localized political aspirations, the effect of globalization, or territorial claims—for terrorist groups’ motivations; this analysis will inevitably fail, at the detriment of both America’s foreign policy goals and its own security.
In addition, while lamenting the viewpoints of terrorism experts currently training local police around the country, no article has appeared in The Washington Post describing the other groups involved with training and advising national security professionals, from local police forces to consulting at the National Counterrerrorism Center and the White House: the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and many other groups previously named by the U.S. Government as unindicted co-conspirators in US vs. Holy Land Foundation, the largest and most sweeping terrorism-financing case in America’s history. As recently as this year, a Federal Judge Jorge Solis reiterated the close links between these groups and the recognized terrorist entity Hamas, writing of, “at least a prima facie case as to CAIR’s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas.” Indeed, according to the United States government, the seed for the most vocal group, CAIR, was created at a Hamas meeting in Philadelphia taped by the FBI as an explicit branch of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee.
Evidently, Arkin and Priest are not concerned about the security implications of or, indeed, the scandal of, relying on associates of a known terrorist entity to provide national security professionals with advice or guidance in combating terror. This pernicious influence is felt less in mandatory sensitivity training than in the ability of groups like CAIR, ISNA, MPAC and others to define what’s known as the “war on terror” for us. Allowing our national security epistemology to be ‘outsourced’ to any group prior to an understanding of what motivates jihadist terrorism is a recipe for both continued potentially disastrous attacks, as well as the confusion and demoralization of watching those with the responsibility to protect us prove to be ineffective and clueless.
The bulk of “Monitoring America” takes a critical look at the gathering of raw intelligence by law enforcement nationally and locally; the effort, made clear by previous reporting from Preist and Arkin, is to enflame civil libertarians about possible violations of privacy at the expense of security. There is, however, no “false choice between liberty and security”—it is difficult, but it is a reality any free society must necessarily negotiate.
The authors, however, do not see the contradiction in their concerns: by maintaining a stubborn refusal to look at the motivating doctrine of terror on its own terms, the nation’s security establishment has no choice but to fiddle with data points and “See Something, Say Something” campaigns at Wal-Mart. Our intelligence bureaucracy decided it was more beneficial to its politically correct shibboleths to ignore the most important determining factor, a legal system that demands jihad.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2011/03/02/haunting-video-assassinated-pakistani-christian-cabinet-minister-on-why-he-defied-threats-on-his-life/
Haunting video: Assassinated Pakistani Christian cabinet minister on why he defied threats on his life
posted at 4:16 pm on March 2, 2011 by Allahpundit
This makes two Pakistani officials murdered in two months for the “crime” of opposing the country’s blasphemy laws. The first, Punjabi governor Salman Taseer, was gunned down in January by one of his own security people. Who, naturally, was then treated as a hero by Pakistan’s many, many jihadi sympathizers.
Taseer was a liberal Muslim; Shahbaz Bhatti was a Catholic, which made him both a blasphemer and an apostate. He was a marked man and he knew it only too well, as Nina Shea vividly recounts at The Corner:
He had waged a strong campaign — inside the government as a minister and outside it in cooperation with human-rights groups — for the repeal of the country’s draconian blasphemy law, which mandates the death penalty for insulting Islam. The 42-year-old was a Roman Catholic, the government’s only Christian minister, and the longtime head of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, a non-governmental organization promoting national unity, interfaith harmony, social justice, and human equality…
Death threats were a constant in Bhatti’s life for many years. He once told me that he had never married because he did not think it would be fair to a wife and children to subject them to this concern. His work was his life: At the end of each day, he left his government Cabinet office and headed over to his office at the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, where he continued to help Pakistan’s persecuted minorities until late into the night.
“I personally stand for religious freedom, even if I will pay the price of my life,” he had said when he received the USCIRF award. “I live for this principle and I want to die for this principle.”
A pamphlet left at the scene named Bhatti in connection with the blasphemy laws and claimed responsibility for Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Punjab. The second video below shows what they did to his car; this graphic photo from Getty will give you an idea of what they did to him. It’s the first video, though, that’s unforgettable — recorded four months ago, even before Taseer’s assassination, a weary Bhatti contemplates his fate. So sure was he of being murdered, in fact, that he left instructions with friends to send this clip to broadcasters when the inevitable deed was done. He reminds me of Franz Jagerstatter, another devout Catholic who resisted monsters knowing full well what the consequences would be. Jagerstatter is already on his way to sainthood; I assume the process will begin for Bhatti sooner rather than later.
The fact that he spent years working for human rights but only recently felt compelled to record a postmortem testimonial tells you everything you need to know about where Pakistan is these days. Hitchens marveled just yesterday at how “sick” our relationship with this sickening country is; the only silver lining in withdrawing from Afghanistan will be that we can stop pretending that we’re impartial as between India and this cancer on the region. Which won’t be much of a comfort to India: The weaker and more insane Pakistan gets, the more fissile material they pile up, and the more a horrendous outcome — a suicide bombing on a global scale — seems all but assured. I’m not sure there’s any way out.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBTBqUJomRE&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAX828wVZBc&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
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http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/29/bangladesh.lashing.death/
Only 14, Bangladeshi girl charged with adultery was lashed to death
By Farid Ahmed and Moni Basu, CNNMarch 29, 2011 -- Updated 2309 GMT (0709 HKT)
Darbesh Khan and his wife, Aklima Begum, had to watch their youngest daughter being whipped until she dropped.STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Hena Akhter, in her last words to her mother, said she was innocent
At first, an autopsy said she committed suicide
But later, the ugly details of her case surfaced
Her family says she was punished twice -- raped and then lashed
Shariatpur, Bangladesh (CNN) -- Hena Akhter's last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.
Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh's Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.
Hena dropped after 70.
Bloodied and bruised, she was taken to hospital, where she died a week later.
Amazingly, an initial autopsy report cited no injuries and deemed her death a suicide. Hena's family insisted her body be exhumed. They wanted the world to know what really happened to their daughter.
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http://biggovernment.com/pgeller/2011/04/22/islamic-law-comes-to-dearborn/
Islamic Law Comes to Dearborn
by Pamela Geller
Dearborn, Michigan has become a Sharia enclave, much like those populating many European countries. The city of Dearborn, Michigan denied a permit Wednesday for Qur’an-burning Pastor Terry Jones’ planned protest outside the Islamic Center of America on Good Friday.
Islamic supremacists were handed a victory for their violent intimidation and threats. City spokeswoman Mary Laundroche said that Jones’ permit had been denied for “public safety reasons.” In other words, they’re afraid Muslims will riot. And so the rights of free Americans have to be curtailed.
Terry Jones burned a Qur’an. So what? What happened to the freedom of assembly, the freedom of speech, and the freedom of expression? Terry Jones is prohibited from rallying in Michigan for fear of Islamic violence. Is that how far down the Sharia rabbit hole we have gone? Why is it that any time American law comes into conflict with Islamic law, it is American law that has to give way?
How dare they prohibit this march? Nazis marched in Skokie. Americans better stand up to this enforced Sharia. The idea that Muslims in America would get violent because of Jones speaks volumes about Muslims in America, does it not? Why don’t we don’t see Muslims taking to the streets every time there is an honor killing, or a church bombing, or an act of jihad, jihad piracy, forced marriage, or child slavery? Where are they?
Dearborn is trying to charge Jones for the extra police protection that his rally will require. But he is not the one responsible for that; the Muslims who might get violent are. If Jones had burned a Bible, no one would be threatening violence against him. Dearborn should charge the Muslims for the extra police, not Jones.
Once again Dearborn shows itself to be a pro-Sharia city that oppresses Christians. Who can forget the Christians who were arrested for passing out leaflets at a Muslim festival last July? Or the lawsuit that challenges the official cooperation by the city of Dearborn, Michigan with Islamic interests, and makes a stunning allegation: that under the recognized “Shariah” law in the city, there have been “honor killing” murders that have been “covered up”?
Wednesday’s court filing against Constitutional freedoms “equates the actions of zealots in Afghanistan with Muslim Americans in Dearborn.” I pulled that quote from Muslim Brotherhood-tied CAIR. Indeed.
As for Jones, I don’t like book burning, but so what? I have repeatedly stated my position on this. Jones does a grave disservice to the cause of spreading awareness about Islamic teachings and the threat that Sharia poses to our way of life. The burning of books is wrong in principle: the antidote to bad speech is not censorship or book-burning, but more speech. Open discussion. Give-and-take. And the truth will out. There is no justification for burning books.
Nonetheless, if Americans are free and not under Sharia, then Jones can burn any book he wants, and his church and people of like mind can hold any demonstration they want. His freedom and rights should be protected. Islamic supremacists should not be allowed a victory for their violent intimidation — if these people want to stage a protest, they’re free to do so.
This is another challenge to the U.S. to stand up for free speech and free expression. Popular speech needs no protection. As such all Americans should support the right of the church to have done this, even if they dislike what they’re doing.
Many people have said that Jones’s actions will endanger American troops in Afghanistan. This warning is just another terror tactic. It is based on the assumption that the Taliban and others in Afghanistan are fighting us because we are doing things they don’t like, and so if we stop doing those things, they will stop fighting us. But actually they are fighting us because of imperatives within the Islamic faith. They will never like us unless we convert to Islam or submit to Islamic rule. If we stop doing things they dislike, where will we draw the line? How far will Sharia advance in the U.S., with Americans afraid to stop its advance for fear of offending Muslims and stirring them up to violence? The Muslim Students Association is already pushing for halal cafeterias, segregated dorms, segregated gym facilities on campus. This is incompatible with American freedom. We have to draw the line.
I will tell you this: Islamic law (Sharia) cannot, must not, and will not have its way over our free speech. That is worth fighting for, worth dying for.
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That would be better in the Free Speech vs. Islam thread. Also not exactly related to the subject of this thread but I don't know where else to put it is this which comes to me from a source I believe to be reliable, but without citation:
Excerpt from a Wash Post article:
It was an unusual complaint for someone who was so committed to al-Qaeda. According to documents, to avoid the distraction of women, he “reportedly received injections to promote impotence and recommended the injections to others so more time could be spent on the jihad.”
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Well, I think it's relevant here, as the voters in Michigan were not as insightful as the good people of Oklahoma. Islamic blasphemy laws are being enforced in the US now. Being moderates, they aren't executing people, yet.
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Islamic Law comes to Dearborn.....
That's ridiculous. No where does it say Islamic Law is coming to Dearborn.
No one is challenging free speech or free expression. Or Qur'an burning however ill advised it might be.
But like yelling "fire" in a crowded room, there are safety concerns. And financial concerns.
"Dearborn is trying to charge Jones for the extra police protection that his rally will require."
I bet GM your city too would consider the same thing; why should tax payers pay? Like a KKK rally (they too have freedom of expression)
or a Civil Right's March, the cost to the local community is high. It's high time that these fringe groups pay or at least acknowledge the burden
placed upon the local community.
However, I concede the Supreme Court decided in the Forsyth case that few if any restrictions could be placed upon the group.
http://supreme.justia.com/us/505/123/
Yet I find it interesting that Chief Justice Rehnquist, White, Scalia, and Thomas dissented referencing Cox vs. New Hampshire and other cases.
I agree with them.
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The nazis can march in Skokie, the "god hates fags" idiots can scream at a fallen soldier's funeral, but Terry Jones gets arrested and jailed in Dearbornistan, MI. Why?
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Please explain why islam gets treated differently.
Supreme Court: 'hurtful speech' of Westboro Baptist Church is protected
Supreme Court Justice Alito is the lone dissenter in the 8-to-1 ruling on free-speech principles, saying the conduct of the Westboro Baptist Church 'caused petitioner great injury.'
By Warren Richey, Staff writer / March 2, 2011
Washington
In an important reaffirmation of free speech principles, the US Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that noxious, highly offensive protests conducted outside solemn military funerals are protected by the First Amendment when the protests take place in public and address matters of public concern.
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The high court ruled 8 to 1 that members of the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church are entitled to stage their controversial antigay protests even when they cause substantial injury to family members and others attending the funeral of a loved one.
“Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and – as it did here – inflict great pain,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker,” he said.
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I'm not an attorney, but I believe the difference is that the issue is a fee be charged to cover the costs; not that the protest itself cannot take place.
I too believe in free speech, regardless of whether I agree or not with the content.
But my real point, why I posted a reply on this subject was the absurdity of calling your post, "Sharia Law comes to Dearborn"
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Islam is being treated differently than any other group, just as sharia law requires. Are you aware of the arrests by Dearborn police of christians missionaries?
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/06/026594.php
Sharia Comes to Michigan
Under Sharia law, it is forbidden to proselytize to Muslims, and no Muslim can leave the faith. Dearborn, Michigan, is home to a substantial Muslim population, and there is strong evidence that local authorities now enforce sharia in preference to the Constitution of the United States. Thus this Associated Press story about the arrest of four Christian missionaries that took place on Friday:
Police in the heavily Arab Detroit suburb of Dearborn say they arrested four Christian missionaries for disorderly conduct at an Arab cultural festival.
Police Chief Ron Haddad says his department made the arrests Friday. The four are free on bond.
Here is video of the arrest. The "disorderly conduct" consisted of handing out copies of the Gospel of John outside the festival. Note the police demand that one of the group stop filming the arrest:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smw9QuH1xkA&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Many people seem to believe that concerns about creeping sharia are exaggerated or misplaced. This incident demonstrates, I think, the contrary.
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http://www.mymichigandefenselawyer.com/michigan-criminal-laws/disorderly-persons/
Disorderly Persons
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disorderly conduct, known under Michigan law as a disorderly persons offense (MCL 750.168) is a catch all for several offenses in Michigan. What might be considered under a heading all its own in other states (public intoxication for instance) can be grouped in the disorderly persons statute. Because this offense is so common, and subjectively applied having a skilled defense attorney can be extremely helpful. If is often possible to get these charges completely dropped, preserving you for getting a permanent criminal record. Call and talk to us about the specifics of your case.
What is a Disorderly Persons Charge?
You can be considered disorderly and subsequently charged with this offense if you:
• Refuse to support your family
• Are a prostitute, window peeper, or vagrant
• Engage in illegal business
• Beg in public
• Loiter where illegal activities are taking place
• Cause a public disturbance in public while intoxicated
• Crowd or jostle people unnecessarily in public
The penalty for this misdemeanor charge is up to 90 days in prison and a fine of not more than $500.00.
Molesting and Disturbing Persons in Pursuit of Occupation MDL 750.352
If you hinder or interfere with someone while they are in commission of their occupation or on their way to their occupation, you can be charged with a misdemeanor. Misdemeanors typically bring less than one year in prison and a fine.
False Report of Crime MDL 750.411a
If you report to law enforcement that a crime took place when you know that to be untrue, you can be charged with this offense.
The severity of the sentence depends on the crime you falsely reported. If the crime you reported was a misdemeanor, you can be charge with a misdemeanor. If you falsely reported a felony, you may be charged with a felony.
Misdemeanor false reporting carries a potential sentence of up to 93 days in jail and a fine of up to $500.
Felony false reporting, however, carries a possible sentence of up to 4 years in prison and a fine of up to $2,000.
In this offense, you can be charged if your report to the police or dispatch.
Hazing MDL 750.411t
Once quite common, hazing has become a crime in most states. In Michigan, you may be charged with hazing if you (while attending or being employed by an educational institution), commit an intentional act against someone knowing it will endanger their physical health or safety for the purpose of pledging, initiation, or maintaining office in any organization.
There are a range of activities that can be considered hazing, including:
• Physical brutality
• Physical activities involving sleep deprivation, exposure to elements, confinement, or excessive exercise
• Activities involving the consumption of food, alcohol, drugs, or other drinks
• Forcing or coercing someone into criminal activity
If the hazing causes:
• Physical injury (misdemeanor)
• Serious impairment of a body function (felony)
• Death (felony)
_______________________________________________________________
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GM:
As important as this theme is, it is an example of Islam vs. Free Speech and there is a thread for exactly that. As I understand it, this thread is for what Sharia says or does not say e.g. can women drive cars, must they cover themselves, that sort of thing.
If a woman believes Allah does not want her to drive (e.g. as Sharia is interpreted in Saudi Arabia) that for her to decide and a subject for this thread so that we may become more educated about Sharia. OTOH if Christian missionaries are being denied their First Amendment rights because of PC pre-emptive dhimmitude or because of intimations of intimidation on the part of certain Muslim groups, that is a matter of Islam vs. Free Speech.
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Ok.
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Will Calls for Distribution “According to Islamic Laws and Sharia”; Pennsylvania Court Gives Twice as Much to Each Son as to Each Daughter
from The Volokh Conspiracy by Eugene Volokh
That seems to be what happened in Alkhafaji v. TIAA-CREF Individual and Instit. Services LLC, 2010 WL 1435056 (Pa. Ct. Com. Pl. Jan. 14, 2010), which is now on appeal. I’m posting about this now because the briefs were just posted on Westlaw, and confirm the details of the will, as well as giving some extra perspective on the disputes related to what Sharia law provides in such situations.
Prof. Abbass Alkhafaji died, and left a will that apparently said, in relevant part,
(4) About my pension, the beneficiaries are all my biological kids and my current wife, ... after reducing all costs associated with the house.... [The] rest of the pension, if any left, should be divided according to Islamic Laws and Sharia....
(9) In case I have additional monetary benefits from my job, such as life insurance, 401K, 403B or any other retirement funds that I am not aware of, Allah as my witness, They should be divided, after costs associated with the payment of those funds according to Islamic Laws and “Sharia.”
The trial court entered an order that concluded with, “(1) TIAA-CREF Individual and Institutional Services LLC, shall make distribution of the pension accounts of the TIAA-CREF certificates ... to the decedent’s surviving spouse, ... in accordance with decedent’s last will and testament dated July 17, 2007, and to his biological children, ... in accordance of the law of Sharia, mainly [sic], one-eighth share to the surviving spouse, ... and thereafter, the remaining balance to be divided, two shares each to the six male children, and one share each to the [two] female children.”
Now if Prof. Alkhafaji had specified in his will that he was leaving a 1/8 share to his wife, and then 1/8 to each of his sons and 1/16 to each of his daughters, that would be fine, regardless of whether his motivation was religious or secular. (This is subject to any state law that might give his wife the power to get some minimum prescribed share, but apparently this was not argued in this case, perhaps because part of the argument — which I won’t get into here — was that Prof. Alkhafaji had left his wife certain assets for the duration of her life, with only the remainder after her death to be split between the children.) People are free to discriminate based on sex, religion, race, and so on in their wills, including in their gifts to their children.
But apparently the will had no such specific provision; rather, it called for distribution under religious law. This raises two questions:
(1) May a court interpret a will — or a contract, deed, trust instrument, or what have you — that calls for the application of religious law (whether Islamic law, Jewish law, canon law, or any other religious law)? Or does the Establishment Clause preclude courts from deciding what, say, Islamic law actually requires, at least if there’s a controversy between the parties about what the “true” interpretation of the religious law should be? Here, one side argues that under Islamic law, the contested provisions of the will are invalid, and that the court erred in relying on the widow’s interpretation of Sharia law; to quote the appellee’s brief, 2011 WL 1573386:
The Court’s determination that the pension should be distributed by giving the widow one eighth of the estate, with the remainder going to the children with two parts for each male and one part for each female, was not only a violation of the terms of the MDA, but also an incorrect interpretation of Shariah law. Had the trial court consulted an expert or referenced judicial texts rather than an interested non-expert, it would have noted that the will offered by a person who is in the illness of death is invalid under Shariah law. The illness of death is defined as the illness which would most likely lead to death. In other words, had the court correctly interpreted Shariah law, it would have found paragraph four of Decedent’s most recent will to be invalid. Because Shariah law is codified in judicial texts which were referenced at the trial court level, and the trial court failed to consult those texts, it committed an error of law when it incorrectly interpreted Shariah law.
(2) May a court apply a foreign or religious legal rule that requires discrimination based on sex, religion, race, and the like, when it is doing so in the course of interpreting a will, contract, etc., on the theory that the court is simply effectuating the author’s discriminatory preferences rather than itself engaging in constitutionally suspect discrimination?
Here’s my tentative answer to question (1), based on an earlier post: I think courts must refuse to interpret religious terms of wills and other such documents, because of what I call the No Religious Decisions strand of Establishment Clause caselaw. Here’s a very brief summary of that strand: In a long line of cases (such as Presbyterian Church in the United States v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church (1969)), the Supreme Court held that secular courts may not resolve religious questions, such as which rival church group most closely follows orthodox church teachings. Some states had rules, borrowed from English law, under which the more orthodox group would get to keep the church property, presumably on the theory that this would be more in keeping with what was intended by past donors to the church. But the Court held that such rules may not constitutionally be applied by civil courts (paragraph break added):
First Amendment values are plainly jeopardized when church property litigation is made to turn on the resolution by civil courts of controversies over religious doctrine and practice. If civil courts undertake to resolve such controversies in order to adjudicate the property dispute, the hazards are ever present of inhibiting the free development of religious doctrine and of implicating secular interests in matters of purely ecclesiastical concern. Because of these hazards, the First Amendment enjoins the employment of organs of government for essentially religious purposes; the Amendment therefore commands civil courts to decide church property disputes without resolving underlying controversies over religious doctrine. Hence, States, religious organizations, and individuals must structure relationships involving church property so as not to require the civil courts to resolve ecclesiastical questions.
The Georgia courts have violated the command of the First Amendment. The departure-from-doctrine element of the implied trust theory which they applied requires the civil judiciary to determine whether actions of the general church constitute such a “substantial departure” from the tenets of faith and practice existing at the time of the local churches’ affiliation that the trust in favor of the general church must be declared to have terminated. This determination has two parts. The civil court must first decide whether the challenged actions of the general church depart substantially from prior doctrine. In reaching such a decision, the court must of necessity make its own interpretation of the meaning of church doctrines. If the court should decide that a substantial departure has occurred, it must then go on to determine whether the issue on which the general church has departed holds a place of such importance in the traditional theology as to require that the trust be terminated. A civil court can make this determination only after assessing the relative significance to the religion of the tenets from which departure was found.
Thus, the departure-from-doctrine element of the Georgia implied trust theory requires the civil court to determine matters at the very core of a religion — the interpretation of particular church doctrines and the importance of those doctrines to the religion. Plainly, the First Amendment forbids civil courts from playing such a role.
Now one could argue that this only applies to “resolving underlying controversies over religious doctrine” when called on to do so by a special state-created legal rule, such as the preference for the more orthodox group, and that such resolution of doctrinal controversies could take place when interpreting voluntarily entered into contracts, wills, deeds, trusts, and the like. But I think the logic of the Court’s decision encompasses all civil court decisions about what is the right interpretation of legal doctrine (as opposed to questions, which arise in religious exemption schemes, about whether a claimant sincerely believes in a particular interpretation), especially given the later decision in Jones v. Wolf (1979). And that’s the view lower courts have taken: “[A] court can invoke a secular interpretation of church deeds, by-laws and canons, thereby avoiding judicial entanglement in issues of religious doctrine, polity and practice. When the application of this standard requires judicial involvement in a [religious] doctrinal question, however, it may not be relied upon.” “[P]rovisions in deeds or in denomination’s constitution for the reversion of local church property to the general church, if conditioned upon a finding of departure from doctrine, could not be civilly enforced [quoting and endorsing a concurring opinion in a different Supreme Court case].” See also this decision.
And I think this rule is right, even though it does make things difficult for religious people who want the religious terms of their wills and contracts enforced. The alternative, after all, is for courts to take sides in deciding which rival religious view — say, which understanding of Islamic law — is right and which is wrong, which would itself involve discrimination in favor of one religious subgroup (the one whose view is adopted by the civil courts as the true view of Islamic law, Jewish law, etc.) and against another religious subgroup. That strikes me as worse than civil court abstention from all attempts to decide how to interpret religious concepts.
Fortunately, religious observers who want their disputes settled according to religious law generally have a simple solution: They can provide for arbitration by some religious tribunal that they choose, and courts will generally then enforce the result of that arbitration. Civil courts will no longer be called to decide what Islamic/Jewish/etc. law “really” requires, yet religious believers can have their disputes adjudicated under religious principles. And in fact there are such arbitral bodies around, in a wide range of religions, and they are often used. And if people want their property distributed under religious law after their death, they can just set forth in secular terms their instructions (e.g., “1/8 to my wife, 1/8 to each of my sons, 1/16 to each of my daughters”) rather than incorporating the religious law by reference.
For more on related questions in the context of kosher enforcement laws — and proposed halal enforcement laws — see here and here. For the backstory on who is challenging the will and why, see this later opinion.
http://volokh.com/2011/04/29/will-calls-for-distribution-according-to-islamic-laws-and-sharia-pennsylvania-court-gives-twice-as-much-to-each-son-as-to-each-daughter/
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Interesting case and interesting legal question presented. My first read is that the facts in the case law can be distinguished from the question presented; I'd certainly be interested to see what is decided on appeal.
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You think things would change if race were substituted for gender? Say a gent had kids by 3 women, one a full MOYCH (minority of your choice), one a half blood, and one 1/4 with funds distributed according to whoever had the least MOYCH in 'em.
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The man had every right to leave the money to whomever he wants; nothing wrong with his decision. If he left, "a 1/8 share to his wife, and then 1/8 to each of his sons and 1/16 to each of his daughters" that is entirely his prerogative.
Also as the article points out, "people are free to discriminate based on sex, religion, race, and so on in their wills, including in their gifts to their children."
He can name his dog if he wants and exclude his sons and daughters.
It's unfortunate; this decedent should have had his wishes granted. But it was his own fault there are problems (or sue his attorney if he had one); he was not specific in the distribution. The problem then was for the Judge; trying to fulfill the wishes of the decedent, tried to interpret religious law, but whether it is Islam, Judaism, Christianity, or whatever; that is a daunting task. Also, probably the Judge erred in relying on the widow's interpretation of religious law. Probate Court is full of cases where a decedent wasn't specific enough and therefore left to interpretation.
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I see, and the courts should thus be forced to participate in discrimination by gender which it otherwise finds abhorrent, and should be forced to interject its interpretations into matters of church, which it is constitutionally prohibited from doing.
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I certainly would not want to see the insanity of US racial laws imposed here.
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"The man had every right to leave the money to whomever he wants;"
JDN, With that kind of thinking you will never be part of the leftist movement that believes all money really belongs to the state. I agree with you, but in estate law as I know it - you have to spell it out.
To write: "divided according to Islamic Law" is a blank, unrecognized note on a page in a U.S. court with no authority to discern the meaning.
His money should be divided exactly as it would have been without a will.
Like Crafty said, the appeal decision will be interesting.
Amazing that the same people who accept this BS accuse the right of trying to bring religion into politics and public affairs.
His right to learn all about Islam and practice and honor his religion is matched by my right to learn none of it if I am the judge or opposing attorney.
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Doug said, "I agree with you, but in estate law as I know it - you have to spell it out."
That is true and that is the problem here. Anything vague, i.e. I leave all my money to my favorite children for example
rarely wil stand up. Nor could I leave my money according to Christian Law, Hindu Law, or whatever that is too vague.
And yes, you definitely can discriminate based upon gender. For example, I love my daughter so I leave everything to her
and nothing to my worthless son who is in prison is perfectly permissible. For example my first born son can inherit my business; everybody
else can get the scraps. In England, the first born son becomes King and inherits nearly everything. Etc.
My money, my choice.
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Fighting mosques in the name of freedom
The real threat in a Tennessee case is to our nation's Bill of Rights.
Doyle McManus
May 19, 2011
Last year, a Muslim congregation in Murfreesboro, Tenn., a pleasant college town of about 110,000 people southeast of Nashville, decided that the time had come to build a proper mosque.
For 20 years or more, the town's roughly 250 Muslim families had met for prayers in makeshift quarters, and the congregation's prosperous leaders — doctors, professors, auto dealers — thought they could do better. They bought a 15-acre plot of land next to a Baptist church south of the city limits, and won approval from the Rutherford County Planning Commission for a 53,000-square-foot community center.
Then, as has happened in several places around the country lately, bedlam broke out.
Conservative activists protested that they didn't want a big, visible mosque in their quiet Southern town. A candidate for the Republican congressional nomination decried the construction. Vandals torched one of the (non-Muslim) contractor's bulldozers. And a group of residents filed suit, charging that the building permit had been issued improperly and that they would suffer "emotional distress" if they had to live near a mosque.
What happened next was unexpected, but it was what should happen in a country where freedom of religion is enshrined in the Constitution: Most of Murfreesboro rallied around the Muslims. Christian clergymen and a rabbi formed a support committee; there were marches and teach-ins. The fiery congressional candidate lost her primary race.
Among the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro's most important supporters was the elected mayor of Rutherford County, a Republican farmer and retired healthcare executive named Ernest G. Burgess. He's also an elder at North Boulevard Church of Christ.
"This is going to sound a little philosophical, but this is a matter of principle," Burgess told me this week. "When I took this office, I promised to uphold the constitutions of the United States and the state of Tennessee.... As far as I'm concerned, that's the end of the story."
Only it wasn't.
In a move that could portend a shift away from mosque battles as strictly local fights, the anti-mosque forces consulted with national conservative groups to marshal arguments against the project. And they imported a Washington-based activist, former Reagan administration official Frank Gaffney Jr., to testify in court that American Muslims — including those in Murfreesboro — want to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on the United States, and that the proposed mosque, gymnasium and swimming pool were part of a "stealth jihad."
"I'm willing to take this case all the way to the Supreme Court if I have to," said Joe Brandon Jr., the plaintiffs' lawyer. "And I'm getting a lot of help. I didn't know anything about Islam or Sharia when this started — I'm just a criminal lawyer — but I've learned a lot."
In short, what began as a strictly local zoning case that looked open and shut — under federal law, religious congregations can build houses of worship almost anywhere — has become the focus of a battle that opponents would like to take national.
"I can't help thinking that if this were just a local controversy, it would have been settled by now," Mayor Burgess said last week.
Brandon, the plaintiffs' lawyer, dismisses the idea of outside agitation, noting that national donations to pursue the case haven't been pouring in. But he acknowledges that national groups such as Gaffney's Center for Security Policy have helped him make his case.
Gaffney's argument boils down to this: Devout Muslims want to live under Sharia, the religious legal code that governs in Saudi Arabia and other traditional Islamic societies. But Sharia, which treats women as unequal, is incompatible with U.S. law. So organized Islam, Gaffney charges, is conspiring to supplant American law with Muslim law — and that, he says, is sedition.
"What is going on in Murfreesboro … fits into the profile of the stealth jihad that is being waged by the Muslim Brotherhood," he told me. "It's a mega-mosque that's clearly disproportionate to the community that it's intended to serve. It has the purpose of demonstrating a kind of triumphalist agenda."
Murfreesboro's Muslims haven't actually done anything explicitly seditious, he acknowledges, but "you want to err on the side of caution."
It's hard to see how the lawsuit against the Murfreesboro mosque can prevail. Even if Brandon wins his case, the most he can ask for is a rehearing on the building permit. Meanwhile, the Muslim congregation has actually sped up construction on the advice of its lawyers, who say that once the building is up, it will be harder to undo.
But it's unlikely that even a resounding defeat in court will end attempts to stop mosque construction. In Gaffney's view, the protests across the country are crucially important, "analogous to the Cold War and the struggle against communism."
Newt Gingrich probably wouldn't disagree; last year he called Sharia "a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States."
Gaffney has a point: Not since the communist scares of the Cold War have we heard that kind of rhetoric. Back then, plenty of politicians found it useful to run against sedition, both real and imagined. The Bill of Rights survived, but it certainly came under attack. Looks as if it's in for another battle.
doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vW2NYOD1OU&feature=related[/youtube]
It'll be good news for those people facing the death penalty for blasphemy in Pakistan to learn there is no sharia there.
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"Gaffney's argument boils down to this: Devout Muslims want to live under Sharia, the religious legal code that governs in Saudi Arabia and other traditional Islamic societies. But Sharia, which treats women as unequal, is incompatible with U.S. law. So organized Islam, Gaffney charges, is conspiring to supplant American law with Muslim law — and that, he says, is sedition."
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y4TLQbVs5LQ#t=968s[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y4TLQbVs5LQ#t=968s
http://peaceandtolerance.org/
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"Gaffney's argument boils down to this: Devout Muslims want to live under Sharia, the religious legal code that governs in Saudi Arabia and other traditional Islamic societies. But Sharia, which treats women as unequal, is incompatible with U.S. law. So organized Islam, Gaffney charges, is conspiring to supplant American law with Muslim law — and that, he says, is sedition."
Many religions treat woman as unequal; Amish, some Orthodox Jews, some fundamentalist Christians, etc. While I am not agreeing with this sexist attitude, I do respect
their right of religious freedom to worship their God as they see fit in their own church.
Confucius
"One hundred girls are not worth as much as one boy."
Hinduism
"A woman must never enjoy independence."
Christian Bible: Paul to the Ephesians in the New Testament
"The women shall be servants to their men who are their masters."
"Murfreesboro's Muslims haven't actually done anything explicitly seditious, he acknowledges, but "you want to err on the side of caution."
Such paranoia does not belong in America. Religious tolerance does. The local town and their diverse religious leaders seems to understand that.
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The problem is, those groups mentioned above are not waging a global war to impose their religious views on the world's population, unlike islam.
Did you watch the video on the sharia advocates in Tennesee, JDN?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y4TLQbVs5LQ[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y4TLQbVs5LQ
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Glenn Beck talks about a spooky alliance between Islamists and leftists. Newt Gingrich calls sharia law abhorrent and urges the western world to ban it. Bill O’Reilly says that sharia law allows for things that most Americans think are illegal. Sean Hannity challenges Imam Rauf’s agenda of imposing sharia law on America. Are conservatives erecting a sharia bogeyman -- or is there a real threat?
There is an easy answer that does not require historical knowledge, political insight or religious study. It is possible to know if sharia is a threat to American culture by looking at the amount of sharia influence accepted in Europe. As Europeans have been swallowing bits and pieces of sharia cultural codes, they have normalized enough sharia practice for Americans to assess whether the same process is occurring here.
First, civilizational jihad operates by stealth. Islamists are not going to announce that there is a plan to subtly and incrementally inject sharia-compliant practices into western culture. The concessions Europeans have made resulted from coordinated public relations campaigns that cornered the culture into caving or being called intolerant. Thus, a seemingly innocuous accommodation like serving halal (Muslim approved) foods in public school cafeterias – as part of a year-round, daily regime – becomes a soothing matter of kindness and tolerance and is not honestly recognized as preferring one group’s socio-religious demands. Since sharia touches every area of a practicing Muslim’s life -- personal, social, familial, political, and legal -- there are many more such demands to be made of compliant communities.
For example, many French are outraged by the closure of streets in districts of Paris and Marseille for Friday prayers. As Muslims barricade the streets, they block traffic for curb-to-curb prayers in defiance of laws in this strictly secular society. Police are nearby, now to keep this new order. This practice started on the sidewalks as a demand for larger state-funded mosques and now spreads by sections of streets. This creeping expansion of turf is an instructive metaphor for western culture’s initial willingness to compromise and ultimate inability to draw a line. The west’s lack of cultural identity is allowing what cannot be accomplished at the ballot box to be accomplished by multicultural coercion.
Currently, there are hundreds of Muslim enclaves in France where sharia practices dominate and the French sense of “liberte, egalite, or fraternite” do not penetrate.
The United Kingdom has authorized sharia courts for Muslims to resolve civil disputes including marital and family conflicts. (Marc: To be precise, does this not apply to all religions?) Philip Davies, MP for Shipley, has observed that these sharia courts “lead to a segregated society” and “entrench division in society.” In a 2008 House of Lords appellate judgment Lord Hope said that the sharia law tenets at issue were “created by and for men in a male dominated society. There is no place . . . for equal rights between men and women.”
Recent examples show that Americans are keeping pace with Europe’s rate of Islamist accommodation. When the U.S. Government orders Bibles to be burned by the military in Afghanistan to avoid offending Muslims, but censors an American protestor who burned the Koran, this is de facto submission to sharia. When the government will not even try to protect an American cartoonist who proposes an “Everybody Draw Mohammad Cartoon Day” but tells her to go into hiding; when a radio station blacklists host’s wife for being “too anti-sharia;” when Yale University Press removed depictions of the controversial Danish cartoons from a book entitled The Cartoons That Shook the World; and, when four Dearborn Christians are arrested for handing out copies of the Gospel of St. John on a public street outside a Muslim festival, there is evidence that America is conceding important principles of individual liberty, equal protection, and constitutionally protected freedom.
The most culturally restrictive of the European concessions to Islam are the incitement-to-hate laws. Just the chance that racially-toned speech may trigger an angry reaction can provoke a criminal investigation. Several high profile “hate speech” prosecutions have demonstrated that the loss of speech freedoms will inhibit the ability of Europeans to define their culture according to their own Enlightenment values. Dearborn’s recent pre-emptive legal smackdown of Terry Jones’ demonstration near a mosque shows a similar erosion of vital expressive rights in the United States.
Each accommodation of Islamist demands is costly beyond measure when translated to a significant symbolic victory. For what the Islamists propose as an isolated act of cultural sensitivity is interpreted when conceded without a fight as powerful evidence of a culture that is morally weak and historically disconnected. While there is no tangible threat to the American way of life, it is easy to rationalize that the gains being consolidated by Islamists are not compromising American liberties. The sacrifice of expressive rights and cultural identity for temporary relief from the charges of intolerance only telegraphs willing incremental capitulation. What is lost in the race to placate the political Islamists among us is the reality that moderate Muslims are learning whether liberty-loving Americans can be trusted to keep sharia hardliners at bay.
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Remember when illegal aliens were few in number and thus not a big deal? Small problems have a way of growing when neglected.
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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/25/saudi-facebook-campaign-calls-men-beat-women-drivers/?test=latestnews
A campaign on Facebook is calling for Saudi men to beat women who plan to drive cars in a protest next month, AFP reports.
"The Iqal Campaign: June 17 for preventing women from driving" advocates a cord be used to beat women who plan to drive. Women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia.
Some 6,000 people have "liked" the campaign on Facebook.
It was created in response to female activist Manal al-Sharif, who created a page calling for Saudi women to defy the driving ban on June 17.
The Facebook page, called "Teach me how to drive so I can protect myself," was removed after more than 12,000 people indicated their support. The campaign's Twitter account also was deactivated.
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women — both Saudi and foreign — from driving. The prohibition forces families to hire live-in drivers, and those who cannot afford the $300 to $400 a month for a driver must rely on male relatives to drive them to work, school, shopping or the doctor.
The issue is a highly emotional one in the kingdom, where women are also not allowed to vote, or even travel without their husbands' or fathers' permission.
About 800 Saudi people have signed a petition urging Saudi King Abdullah to release al-Sherif and to make a clear statement on women's right to drive.
"We are fed up," Waleed Aboul Khair, a lawyer and rights activists said. "Be frank," he said, addressing the country's rulers. "For the first time in the history of the kingdom, we have hundreds of people calling for the king to be frank."
"The society has moved. The society is not silent anymore," Aboul Khair said.
There is no written Saudi law banning women from driving, only fatwas, or religious edicts, by senior clerics that are enforced by police. King Abdullah has promised reforms in the past and has taken some tentative steps to ease restrictions on women. But the Saudi monarchy relies on Wahhabi clerics to give religious legitimacy to its rule and is deeply reluctant to defy their entrenched power.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/25/saudi-facebook-campaign-calls-men-beat-women-drivers/
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http://www.raymondibrahim.com/9685/raped-and-ransacked-in-the-muslim-world
Raped and Ransacked in the Muslim World
by Raymond Ibrahim
FrontPageMagazine.com
May 31, 2011
Huwaini: "When I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her"
Plundering the possessions, lives, and dignity of Christians in the Islamic world: is this a random affair, a product of the West's favorite offenders—poverty, ignorance, grievance—or is it systematic, complete with ideological backing?
Consider the very latest from the Muslim world:
•Pakistan: Muslim landowners used tractors to plough over a Christian cemetery in order to seize the land illegally. A young Christian mother was raped by six men. "In both cases, police covered up for the culprits."
•Iraq: A Christian youth was kidnapped and decapitated: his family could not pay the €70,000 ransom demanded by his abductors. "The murder was meant to intimidate Christians so that in the future they will more readily pay ransom demands."
•Egypt: Christian girls continue to be abducted and forced into conversion or concubinage (which amount to the same thing) and "kept as virtual slaves."
None of this is surprising listening to popular Muslim preacher Abu Ishaq al-Huwaini:
If only we can conduct a jihadist invasion at least once a year or if possible twice or three times, then many people on earth would become Muslims. And if anyone prevents our dawa or stands in our way, then we must kill them or take as hostage and confiscate their wealth, women and children. Such battles will fill the pockets of the Mujahid who can return home with 3 or 4 slaves, 3 or 4 women and 3 or 4 children. This can be a profitable business if you multiply each head by 300 or 400 dirham. This can be like financial shelter whereby a jihadist, in time of financial need, can always sell one of these heads (meaning slavery) [translated by Nonie Darwish; original Arabic recording here].
Huwaini actually made these scandalous assertions some eighteen years ago. But because they were only recently exposed, he was invited to "clarify" his position on Hikma TV last week. Amazingly, though he began by saying his words were "taken out of context," he nonetheless reasserted, in even more blunt language, that Islam justifies plundering, enslaving, and raping the infidel. (Al Youm 7 has the entire interview, excerpts of which I translate below.)
According to Huwaini, after Muslims invade and conquer a non-Muslim nation—in the course of waging an offensive jihad—the properties and persons of those infidels who refuse to convert or pay jizya and live as subjugated dhimmis, are to be seized as ghanima or "spoils of war."
Huwaini cited the Koran as his authority—boasting that it has an entire chapter named "spoils"—and the sunna of Muhammad, specifically as recorded in the famous Sahih Muslim hadith wherein the prophet ordered the Muslim armies to offer non-Muslims three choices: conversion, subjugation, or death/enslavement.
Huwaini said that infidel captives, the "spoils of war," are to be distributed among the Muslim combatants (i.e., jihadists) and taken to "the slave market, where slave-girls and concubines are sold." He referred to these latter by their dehumanizing name in the Koran, ma malakat aymanukum—"what your right hands possess"—in this context, sex-slaves: "You go to the market and buy her, and she becomes like your legal mate—though without a contract, a guardian, or any of that stuff—and this is agreed upon by the ulema."
"In other words," Huwaini concluded, "when I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her."
Lest Muslims begin attacking all and sundry, however, Huwaini was careful to stress that Islam forbids Muslims from plundering and enslaving nominal or even "heretical" Muslims, such as Shias. He used the Iran-Iraq war as an example, saying that a Sunni man is not permitted to enslave and abuse a Shia woman, "for she is still a Muslim and thus considered free."
Unfortunately Huwaini's position is not "radical." One is reminded of when Sheikh Gamal Qutb was asked on live TV if Islam permits men to rape their female captives. The one-time grand mufti of Islam's most authoritative university, Al Azhar—the institution that once gave us the "adult breast-feeding" fatwa—refused to answer and, when pressed, became hostile and stormed off the set.
Let us now return to the atrocities that opened this article and ask: In light of the above, is it any wonder that Christians under Islam are routinely raped and ransacked, even as the "humanitarian" West yawns?
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In Defense Of The Constitution
News & Analysis
June 20, 2011
http://www.anti-cair-net.org/CAIRandShariaLaw.html (
http://www.anti-cair-net.org/CAIRandShariaLaw.html )
CAIR &Sharia Law; The Center For Security Policy Gets It Right
In the last few months much has been said about the rise of such
new (for Americans) ideas as: "Sharia-compliant finance (
http://www.shariahfinancewatch.org/blog/ )" and "Sharia Law (
http://www.aifdemocracy.org/news.php?id=6302 )for Muslims (
http://www.aifdemocracy.org/news.php?id=6302 )". The mainstream press
has either failed to report accurately on Sharia Law (
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/shariah-law-on-americas-shores-townhall-magazine-examines-terrors-secret-weapon/
), or purposely ignores its impact on America .
Many Americans are thus confused. Is Sharia Law a threat or not?
Who is hurt if Muslims decide their disputes in a Sharia Court? What
about contract law between Muslims and non-Muslims? Can, and should,
the United States of America have a parallel legal system dominated by
Islam? If so, how will it work? Will Muslims and non-Muslims be
treated equally? What are the rights of Muslim minorities?
The Center for Security Policy (
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.xml ) (CSP) has produced
a stunning report on Sharia Law. The CSP report (
http://shariahthethreat.org/ ) is important for several reasons:
- It reveals how Sharia Law has been used to settle cases in
American courts in the past.
- It reveals how Sharia Law is being implemented through a well
thought out program of "death by a thousand cuts".
- It reveals the impact of Sharia Law on the every day functioning
of our court system and why this cannot be allowed to continue.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is strongly in
support of Sharia Law ( http://www.anti-cair-net.org/HooperStarTrib ),
deceptively broad brushing Sharia Law (
http://hussamayloush.blogspot.com/2011/04/khutbahsermon-understanding-and.html
) as just another benign legal system (
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/16/2270624/sharia-law-is-not-a-threat.html
) for the adherents of Islam. But is it?
Consider that under Islam, Muslim women have half the word as a
Muslim man; i.e., it takes two Muslim women's testimony to equal that
of one Muslim man ( http://www.islamqa.com/en/ref/20051 ). This is
bad enough, yet how many female or male Christians, Jews, Buddhists,
or Sikhs would have to testify in a Sharia court to equal the word of
one Muslim male? Can non-Muslims even testify (
http://www.gazette.com/opinion/sharia-119978-islam-bar.html ) in a
Sharia court? One growing Sharia compliant phenomenon in Muslim
countries is for a Muslim husband to declare he is divorced from his
wife by sending a text message (
http://www.international-divorce.com/uae_divorce.htm ) through a cell
phone (
http://www.gazettenet.com/2011/04/28/tajik-divorce-when-u-c-it039s-over
), yet a woman cannot (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Islam#Divorce ) do the same. How
long will it be before this technique for divorce is attempted in
America? How does this square with our Constitutional right of equal
protection under the law? Do the Islamic-Supremacists of CAIR condone
this unfair practice?
There are many other issues that come up as a result of Sharia Law
but the main issue that the CSP report conveys is that those who
support Sharia Law are not acting in the best interests of anyone, not
least of all Muslims. Many Muslims came to the United States to get
away (
http://www.mzuhdijasser.com/7943/8-questions-with-dr-zuhdi-jasser )
from this misogynistic, barbaric, and unequal legal system that serves
no other purpose than to elevate Muslim men to a position they
couldn't possibly attain by peaceful means. To paint Sharia Law
as"religious law" is to ignore reality. It is a legal system using the
cover of religion to impose restrictions on people that are laughable
at best and deadly serious to those who adhere to it.
There is no healthy median or redeeming qualities to Sharia Law.
It must be kept out of our legal system and public life as there is no
room for both the Constitution and Sharia Law.
We ignore the threat at our peril.
Andrew Whitehead
Director
Anti-CAIR
ajwhitehead@anti-cair-net.org
www.anti-cair-net.org ( http://www.anti-cair-net.org/ )
Story Links:
http://www.shariahfinancewatch.org/blog/
http://www.aifdemocracy.org/news.php?id=6302
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/shariah-law-on-americas-shores-townhall-magazine-examines-terrors-secret-weapon/
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.xml (
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.xml )
http://shariahthethreat.org/ ( http://shariahthethreat.org/ )
http://www.anti-cair-net.org/HooperStarTrib (
http://www.anti-cair-net.org/HooperStarTrib )
http://hussamayloush.blogspot.com/2011/04/khutbahsermon-understanding-and.html
(
http://hussamayloush.blogspot.com/2011/04/khutbahsermon-understanding-and.html
)
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/16/2270624/sharia-law-is-not-a-threat.html
(
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/16/2270624/sharia-law-is-not-a-threat.html
)
http://www.islamqa.com/en/ref/20051
http://www.gazette.com/opinion/sharia-119978-islam-bar.html
http://www.international-divorce.com/uae_divorce.htm (
http://www.international-divorce.com/uae_divorce.htm )
http://www.gazettenet.com/2011/04/28/tajik-divorce-when-u-c-it039s-over
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Islam#Divorce
http://www.mzuhdijasser.com/7943/8-questions-with-dr-zuhdi-jasser
Follow Anti-CAIR on twitter
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-
From what I read on this forum they must be Muslim following the evil's of Sharia Law! :-o
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20504196,00.html?hpt=hp_bn11
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From what I read on this forum they must be Muslim following the evil's of Sharia Law! :-o
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20504196,00.html?hpt=hp_bn11
Yes, it's pretty creepy and disgusting. Do you imagine there is much support for this? Now, remember that Mohammed's 3rd wife was 6 years old, though he didn't consummate the marriage until she was 9 years old.
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Must remember to put in a buy order for Pfizer, which makes Viagra, tomorrow , , ,
JDN: I'm guessing she wasn't a virign on their wedding night and had not been one for quite some time. Your comparison might be more apt if Jesus were a pedophile.
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http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/062.sbt.html
Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88:
Narrated 'Ursa:
The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with 'Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).
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http://abcnews.go.com/Health/International/yemeni-bride-11-hospitalized-genital-injuries/story?id=10362500
An 11-year-old Yemeni girl who was was married to a man in country's Hajja province was hospitalized today with genital injuries, said a human rights group in Sanaa.
It was the second incident involving a child bride in the last week. A 13-year-old girl died after being sexually assaulted by her adult husband. Both girls were married in the country's rural Hajja province.
The 11-year-old girl was married last year only under the condition that the adult husband would wait until she reached puberty to consummate the marriage. He did not wait, nor do many of the men who marry young brides, says Amal Basha, director of the Arabic Sisters Forum.
An estimated 50 percent of women in Yemen are married before age 18, some as young as 8.
Less than a week ago the Sana'a-based human rights group reported the death of a 13-year-old bride in the same rural area. The Associated Press reported the girl was allegedly raped, and that her 23-year-old husband is now in police custody.
"She looked like she was butchered," said the girl's mother, Nijma Ahmed. The AP also cited police a report saying the husband forced himself on his young bride, feeling under pressure to prove his manhood.
An average of eight women die each day in Yemen due to child marriage, many of them in childbirth, according to the Arabic Sisters Forum. The group runs a hotline for victims of domestic violence and has been lobbying in support of a minimum marriage age now under consideration by the Yemeni parliament.
Pushing against the proposed law is the strong hand of Islamic conservatives in Yemen. Clerics have declared women like Amal Basha apostates from Islam for opposing child marriage, which they see as divinely ordained. The government, she says, is intimidated by the religious and tribal customs.
"They say this is Islamic…and they declared jihad against... the UN treaty on women's rights," she said. (G M-A unique religious ontology!)
"They say my campaign is a Western agenda, that it will lead to sex out of wedlock and prostitution," Basha said.
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Shock: Dept. of Defense Vindicates Fort Hood Killer
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/shock-dept-of-defense-vindicates-fort-hood-killer/?singlepage=true
U.S. Army tacitly endorses a religiously bigoted position: it is fine for Muslim service members to kill non-Muslims, but killing Muslims is grounds for an honorable discharge.
June 21, 2011 - 10:11 am - by Patrick Poole
A shocking decision made by the secretary of the Army last month — in the case of an U.S. Army soldier with the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell who refused to deploy to Afghanistan claiming that Islamic law prevented him from killing other Muslims — vindicates Fort Hood killer Major Nidal Hasan. He made identical claims and threatened that “adverse events” would occur if military officials didn’t accede to shariah principles.
The subject of the Fort Campbell case is PFC Nasser Abdo, who was granted conscientious objector status last month, only to be brought up on charges last week — two days after being informed of the secretary of the Army’s decision — after child pornography was found on his government-issued computer. The news reports about Abdo’s arrest were the first to mention the Army recognizing him as a conscientious objector. After his arrest, Abdo is now claiming that the child porn charges are the Army’s way of retaliating against him.
Abdo’s case has been championed by a number of media outlets, including Al-Jazeera and CNN. According to the Associated Press, in his claim for conscientious objector status, Abdo cited a number of Islamic scholars and Koranic verses in his defense:
I realized through further reflection that God did not give legitimacy to the war in Afghanistan, Iraq or any war the U.S. Army would conceivably participate in.
Abdo told Al-Jazeera:
I don’t believe I can involve myself in an army that wages war against Muslims. I don’t believe I could sleep at night if I take part, in any way, in the killing of a Muslim.
He also told ABC News:
A Muslim is not allowed to participate in an Islamicly unjust war. Any Muslim who knows his religion or maybe takes into account what his religion says can find out very clearly why he should not participate in the U.S. military.
In a perverse twist, the ABC News report noted that a website dedicated to his cause operated by his friends claimed that Abdo:
… will be at danger of harassment and even death from his fellow soldiers, many of whom will be resentful of PFC Abdo’s religious beliefs and his desire to be discharged from the military.
No mention was made by ABC News of the potential of harassment and death for non-Muslim soldiers if Abdo wasn’t granted conscientious objector status, as was the case at Fort Hood with Major Nidal Hasan.
In Major Hasan’s case, the Washington Post reported just days after the Fort Hood massacre that he had warned his Army colleagues and supervisor at Walter Reed of “adverse events” if Muslims were not granted conscientious objector status. The warning occurred during a June 2007 Power Point presentation that was part of his psychiatric residency program. Major Hasan cited previous cases of Muslims murdering their fellow soldiers, spying against the U.S., deserting their units, and refusing to deploy as examples of the kinds of “adverse events” that would follow if the Army didn’t bow to the precepts of Islamic law.
Some Muslim groups have disagreed with Major Hasan and PFC Abdo, such as the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, run by retired Navy Commander Zuhdi Jasser. And Muslim soldiers at both Fort Hood and Fort Campbell, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan, are serving without any qualms.
But as veteran Pentagon reporter Bill Gertz reported in the Washington Times in March 2010, groups such as the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) have issued fatwas prohibiting Muslims from even serving as military contractors aiding U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the notorious Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) even went so far as to write a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on behalf of another Muslim Army soldier stationed at Fort Hood claiming conscientious objector status on the same grounds as Hasan and Abdo.
By granting PFC Abdo’s conscientious objector claim, the Army may have created trouble for themselves in the court martial of Major Hasan for the murder of his thirteen fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. Hasan’s attorney can now claim that by refusing to acknowledge Major Hasan’s claims under Islamic law as a conscientious objector and granting him an honorable discharge, the Army created irreconcilable conflict that prompted the Fort Hood massacre. And they can use the secretary of the Army’s decision in the Abdo case as proof.
But they have also created a greater problem. By bowing to the dictates of Islamic law, which defines the killing of a Muslim by another Muslim without right as terrorism, the U.S. Army has tacitly endorsed a religiously bigoted position that it is perfectly fine for Muslim service members to kill non-Muslims, but killing their co-religionists is totally out-of-bounds and is grounds for an honorable discharge. Is any other religion granted such accommodation? Will this decision help or discredit those Muslims serving honorably with both their fellow soldiers and the Muslim community?
Despite years of protestation by the U.S. government to the contrary, this decision vindicates all of these who have claimed that America is engaged in a war against Islam (including Osama bin Laden). The position that the Army now takes would also appear to acknowledge the classic Islamic doctrine of jihad that states that any incursion by non-Muslims into the lands of Dar al-Islam makes it an incumbent duty upon all Muslims everywhere to resist the “occupiers” — the position taken by al-Qaeda and every Islamic terrorist group on the planet.
How did the Unites States Army arrive at such a convoluted, ill-informed, contradictory, and self-defeating policy? By listening to the very Islamic “outreach” partners they have falsely assumed are operating in America’s best interests.
Patrick Poole is a regular contributor to Pajamas Media, and an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military.
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- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com -
Religion of Rape
Posted By Jamie Glazov On June 29, 2011 @ 12:02 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 33 Comments
[Editor's note: Jamie Glazov's article below, Muslim Rape, Feminist Silence, is reprinted from our Nov. 1, 2006 issue. The subject is Western feminist silence about the Muslim rape of kafirs (non-Muslims) and the Islamic theology that sanctions it. Frontpage's editors thought it would be relevant to rerun in light of the recent startling Oslo police report confirming that every single solved case of assault-rape in the country in 2010 was carried out by a Muslim immigrant. Meanwhile, the Western Left remains completely silent.]
(http://cloud.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/swed1.jpg)
*
Muslim Rape, Feminist Silence
By Jamie Glazov
Unveiled women who get raped deserve it.
That’s the pedagogy preached by the Mufti of Australia, Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali, who recently sparked an international stir by pronouncing that women who do not veil themselves, and allow themselves to be “uncovered meat,” are at fault if they are raped.
This is nothing new, of course, and it is somewhat mysterious why the Sheikh’s comments have caused any shock at all, since his view is legitimized by various Islamic texts and numerous social and legal Islamic structures. And that is why back in September 2004 in Denmark, al-Hilali’s Australian counterpart, the Mufti Shahid Mehdi, declared exactly the same thing, stating that unveiled women are “asking for rape.”
All of this, in turn, explains the skyrocketing epidemic of Muslim rape in non-Islamic countries. Muslim newcomers are significantly overrepresented among convicted rapists and rape suspects throughout European nations such as Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
No wonder why many Muslim rapists openly admit their actions and justify them smugly with casual references to their religious and cultural beliefs. This horrifying phenomenon was on display in a court trial in Australia last year, in which a Muslim rapist, going by the name ”MSK”, taunted his sobbing 14-year-old victim and proudly professed the legitimacy of his sexual assaults on young girls by explaining that his victims were not veiled — as the Islamic religion mandates women to be. [1]
“MSK” is from Pakistan. He is doing in Australia what he learned best back home: in some of the most notorious rural areas of Pakistan, gang rape is officially sanctioned as a legitimate form of keeping women marginalized and “in their place.” As noted earlier, certain realms of Islam help institutionalize this form of violent misogyny. The Koran, for instance, permits Muslim men to enslave – and have sexual relations with – the women of unbelievers captured in the spoils of war (Sura 4:23-24). The Islamic legal manual ‘Umdat al-Salik, which is endorsed by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, sanctions this violence, affirming that Muslims can enslave captured infidel women and make them concubines.
To compound this pathology, a notion has developed within the system of gender apartheid in which Muslims like “MSK” have grown up: the idea that a woman who does not veil herself is somehow responsible for any sexual or physical harm done to her. In the psychopathic mental gymnastics that occur in the perpetrators’ minds, the unveiled woman must be sexually punished for violating the “modesty” code. Thus, when Islamic Muftis like Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali and Shahid Mehdi declare that women who refuse to wear headscarves are “asking for rape,” they are merely regurgitating a popular theme in many segments of Islamic culture.
In traditional Islamic law, rape cannot be proven unless four males testify as witnesses (Sura 24:4 and 24:13). In other words, raped women cannot get justice anywhere Islamic law prevails. More horrifying still, a woman who has the courage to say she was raped, and fails to produce the four male witnesses (which is obviously almost always the case), ends up being punished because her accusation is regarded as an admission of pre-marital sex or adultery. And this is why seventy-five percent of the women in prison in Pakistan are behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape.
In Holland, myriad women now bear the horrible scar that has infamously become known as “smiley,” whereby one side of the face is cut up from mouth to ear – a war mark left by Muslim rapists as a warning to other women who don’t veil themselves.
In France, the phenomenon of Muslim gang rape as punishment for non-veiling even has a word to describe it: “tournante” (take your turn). In areas where Muslims form the majority (i.e. the Muslim suburb of Courneuve, France), even non-Muslim women feel pressured to veil themselves in fear of Muslim sexual and physical punishment.
In the context of this epidemic of Muslim violence against women, and the open legitimization of it pronounced by Islamic clerics, one would think that the Western feminists of our time would be up in arms, sympathetically coming to the side of their raped sisters and standing up for women’s rights in general.
But this is just not the case.
The West’s leftist feminists are responding with an apathetic heartlessness and deafening silence. [2]
It’s all very much understandable and expected, of course: it is politically correct and cutting-edge to scream with moral indignation about a woman’s right to an abortion in the West, but to actually care for – and come to the public defense of – the female victim of a gang-rape committed by Muslims is unthinkable. This is so because admitting the Muslim rape epidemic, and the theology and institutions on which it is based, and denouncing it, would violate the central code of the “progressive” leftist faith: anti-Americanism and cultural relativism. No culture can be said to be better than any other – unless it is American culture, which is always fair game for derision and ridicule. But to criticize any Third World culture in general – and an adversary culture in particular – is to surrender the political cause and faith.
And that’s why leftist feminists are also completely mum on the horrors of forced marriages, honor killings and female genital mutilation within the Islamic world.
The worldview of Oslo Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Unni Wikan, is perfect in representing leftist feminists’ stand on Muslim rape and Islamic gender apartheid. Wikan’s solution for the high incidence of Muslims raping Norwegian women stresses neither the punishment of the perpetrators nor the repudiation of the Islamic theology that legitimizes such abuse of women. Instead, Wikan recommends that Norwegian women veil themselves. This is because, in Wikan’s view, Western women must take their share of responsibility for the rapes, since they are not dressing and behaving according to Muslim understanding. The Norwegian women, in her view, are to realize that they live in a multicultural society and should, therefore, adapt themselves to it. Sheikhs Taj al-Din al-Hilali and Shahid Mehdi would be proud.
It has long been evident that Western leftist feminists couldn’t care less about real actual breathing women; they care only about their ideological beliefs. For them, the victims of Muslim rape can be easily forgotten and dismissed — for the pursuit of their ultimate goal: to aid and abet the West’s totalitarian enemies and to wreak the destruction of their own free societies which bestow the individual liberties and rights that they despise and abhor.
NOTES:
[1] Although debate exists about whether Islam enforces women’s veiling, and there are some valiant Islamic reformers fighting for a tolerant Islam that does not enforce veiling, the unfortunate reality is that Muslim fundamentalists find legitimacy for forced veiling in Islamic texts. See Robert Spencer’s Onward Muslim Soldiers, pp. 77-78 and The Truth About Mohammad, pp. 44 and 61.
[2] Dr. Phyllis Chesler has powerfully documented Western feminism’s betrayal of Islamic gender apartheid’s victims in The Death of Feminism.
*
Get the whole story of leftist feminists’ alliance with Islamofascists in Jamie Glazov’s United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/06/29/muslim-rape-feminist-silence-1/
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www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/us/31shariah.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23
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www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/us/31shariah.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23
“All good propaganda is based on half-truths.”
Yes, the POTH would know all about that, given they quote CAIR and MPAC without mentioning that they are Muslim Brotherhood/HAMAS front groups. They touch on "unindicted coconspirator" status, without mentioning that CAIR was listed as one.
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A hyperventilating tone here, but interesting nonetheless:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/08/chris-christie-backs-hamas-linked-judge-pick-blasts-crazies-after-appointing-muslim-judge-the-sharia.html
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http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/10/ohio-officials-cave-to-islmic-demands-of-muslim-honor-killer-on-death-row.html
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http://english.pravda.ru/world/asia/16-12-2011/119998-saudi_arabia-0/
Saudi Arabia executes 73rd victim of Sharia laws
16.12.2011
In Saudi Arabia, Sharia court sentenced a woman accused of engaging in witchcraft to beheading by a sword. There are some unpleasant details: before dying, the "witch", apparently, suffered as the beheading was performed gradually, in three steps. Thus, she became the 73rd person executed this year in the country living under Sharia.
The Kingdom authorities do not always provide accurate information on the number of women executed in Saudi Arabia. However, from time to time the details in this regard come out.
For example, shortly before the "witch" was sentenced, by the verdict of the Sharia court an Indonesian woman was executed who killed her employer that tried to force her to have sex.
In October, the sentence was carried out against a Saudi woman who killed her husband. In Saudi kingdom death sentence is given to rapists, murderers and drug traffickers. The execution is usually carried out through severing heads with a sword.
Human rights organization "Amnesty International" calls on Riyadh to abolish the death penalty, but also points to a host of other violations of human rights (especially in relation to women), but these calls are not heard in the kingdom.
The last sentence again raises questions about women's issues in Saudi Arabia. Of all Muslim countries, the situation of women in this country raises most questions. Of course, there is Somalia, where raped and, therefore, dishonored women get stoned. But now, when the country is in a state of chaos and division and has no legitimate power, it is difficult to make particular claims against it. However, in Saudi Arabia, where women in the best case are treated as pets, and in the worst case as female species deprived of elementary human rights, it is quite possible to do so.
Yet, the West is very careful in making claims to the royal dynasty. In most cases, the "waters are mudded" by human rights activists and feminist organizations. The Western authorities fighting for the democratization of Libya, Syria and other countries for some reason do not see Saudi Arabia and its laws that many human rights and feminist organizations called "brutal" and "medieval."
However, the events of the "Arab Spring" gave some hope that things will change even in this country. But when and under what circumstances it can become a reality? Vladimir Isayev, chief researcher of the Center for Arab Studies with the Institute of Oriental Studies answered this and other questions in an interview with "Pravda.Ru":
"Indeed, in Saudi Arabia women's inequality to men is particularly noticeable. Suffice it to point to the fact that women cannot go out unaccompanied by men.
However, when someone in the West raises a question about the prospects for the triumph of democracy and human rights in the Arab world, many people forget that some things in Islamic countries simply cannot be undone. In this case, someone is perturbed by the fact that in Saudi Arabia a woman was executed with three hits of a sword, completely losing sight of the fact that it represents one of the Sharia laws. Sharia cannot be undone, as it is impossible to cancel, for example, the Bible. After all, the Quran prescribes certain standards of behavior in everyday life. This is the word of God, and no one can cancel or change it.
For example, Christian churches have their heads. In Islam, there is no authoritative person who would say "no" to the executions, although scholars can issue fatwas, for example, for the murder of Americans.
It is worth noting that Saudi Arabia is not the only example of Arab-Muslim country with strict laws. Each country should be regarded specifically. If you take Syria, such laws do not exist there since it is a secular country. But, for example, in Oman for the abuse of alcohol one can be not only thrown to jail, but given very painful hits with a stick on the soles of their feet. Even in the most liberal of all the Gulf countries, Kuwait, one can be arrested for kissing in public. This is the uniqueness of local laws.
However, even the provisions of Sharia are not performed in practice in all countries of the region. Currently some significant changes are observed in certain countries. If you take Iran, two years ago the women could be stoned for adultery. Now this practice has been suspended.
Another example from the Gulf: Kuwait's government allowed female TV hosts to appear on the central channel without a veil. In addition, recently a member of the local parliament for the first time in history included as many as four women. By the standards of the Gulf it is a real breakthrough. I am not even talking about the fact that in Kuwait and the Emirates, unlike in Saudi Arabia, women are not only able to walk with open faces, but also drive cars. It is important to note that Kuwait is a much more liberal country than its neighbors in terms of finance, which has a certain effect on other aspects of life.
In some countries secular and Sharia justice are combined to a certain extent, and the courts have a clear indication of their jurisdiction. However, in Saudi Arabia no breakthroughs are observed. As I said above, much depends on the specifics of a particular country. Saudis, due to the fact that their territories host the main Muslim shrines - Mecca and Medina - are inclined to further demonstrate their commitment to Islamic values and be closer than others to Islam.
This is not the least factor that affects the conservative nature of the leadership of the country. Should it be surprising that the position according to which "even the best of women is a snake" still takes place? I would not count on any global changes with the women issue in this country in the foreseeable future."
Sergei Balmasov
Pravda.Ru
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A federal appeals court has blocked an Oklahoma voter-approved measure barring state judges from considering Islamic and international law in their decisions.
"The proposed amendment discriminates among religions," said the judges. "The Oklahoma amendment specifically names the target of its discrimination. The only religious law mentioned in the amendment is Sharia law."
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/10/justice/oklahoma-sharia/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
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http://pjmedia.com/blog/western-courts-bend-to-islamic-practices/
Judges’ consideration of Shari‘a when deciding cases may be the most alarming avenue by which Islam influences Western legal systems, but it is not the only one. With increasing regularity, Islamic practices sway the administration of courtrooms, affecting when sessions are held, who must rise, and what attire is permissible. This trend should not be overlooked. Courts that yield to Islamic norms, even in mundane matters, encourage Islamists and cast doubt on the future of equal rights and responsibilities under the law.
Ramadan. The Islamic month of fasting can require significant shuffling of schedules by devout Muslims, but are secular courts obligated to alter theirs? Some answer in the affirmative.
Muslim convert Mark Edward Wetsch is one recent beneficiary. Charged with robbing 13 Minnesota banks, he objected to a hearing set for July 20, 2012, the first day of Ramadan, and asked that it be pushed back for a month. Though Judge Jeanne Graham initially declined the request, he persisted. Ramadan means “not engaging in conflict and argument,” but rather taking part in “work to reconcile differences and seek peace,” according to a motion filed on his behalf. “Clearly, a contested hearing in which the government is making allegations against Mr. Wetsch and he is fighting against [them] causes him to engage in conflict and argument.” Graham relented and issued the desired continuance.
The U.S. military court that will try five al-Qaeda terrorists accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks bent to similar sensitivities this year. After turning their May 5 arraignment into a circus, the jihadists sought to postpone a hearing scheduled for the week of August 8, near the end of Ramadan. James Connell III, a government-compensated defense attorney, stressed in a filing that “the last 10 days of Ramadan commemorate the night God — Allah — revealed the Holy Quran to the Prophet Mohammed.” Hence, “these 10 days are the most holy period of the Muslim calendar and are typically observed by fasting, prayer, and seclusion.” Despite having previously ruled out Ramadan-related extensions, the judge, Colonel James Pohl, agreed to a delay. Connell was relieved: “It’s very difficult to pay attention to sometimes intricate legal proceedings when you haven’t had any sleep and you haven’t had any food.” (In one bright spot, Pohl rebuffed a petition not to hold hearings on Fridays, the day of communal Islamic prayers.)
Such Ramadan accommodations are not new. Four years ago, a French judge postponed a trial after a lawyer complained that “his client, a Muslim, would have been fasting for two weeks and thus, he said, be in no position to defend himself properly,” in the words of the BBC. “He would be physically weakened and too tired to follow the arguments as he should.” (Note that Muslims have played professional football during Ramadan fasts, so it is not obvious that ordinary Muslims are incapable of sitting in a courtroom.) A prosecutor denied that Ramadan had anything to do with the change, but others believed it to be the sole viable explanation. Fadela Amara, a Muslim then serving as urban affairs minister, decried the “knife wound” to France’s separation of religion and state.
Of course, scheduling controversies are not exclusive to Islam. In 2011, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that a lower court had “abused its discretion” by rejecting an Orthodox Jewish plaintiff’s motion to suspend a malpractice trial for two days due to Shavuot, during which his faith would preclude him from working or having work done for him. However, the decision stands out because many other U.S. federal and state courts have found no abuse of discretion by judges who did not grant similar Jewish holiday requests. If a continuance of one or two days is not automatic, then certainly the bar should be that much higher for a month-long Ramadan break — especially when its religious necessity is far less concrete than the work proscriptions characterizing strictly observed Jewish holidays.
Rising for judges. Standing when a judge enters and leaves the courtroom is a centuries-old tradition conveying respect for authority and maintaining order. Those who fail to rise may be cited for contempt, but some Muslims are challenging this point of protocol.
The most important U.S. case has centered on Amina Farah Ali, a citizen and Minnesota resident who, along with a second woman, faced federal charges of funding a Somali terrorist organization; both were convicted last autumn. After Ali did not stand at a pretrial hearing, Judge Michael Davis warned that all must do so. Unlike other Muslims present, she refused again and again for the first two days of the trial, prompting Davis to issue 20 contempt citations carrying jail time. The defendant said that because Islam’s prophet had told his followers that they did not need to honor him in that way, it would be wrong of her to stand for anyone but Allah. An appeals court threw out 19 of the citations in June, determining that an ultimatum to rise “substantially burdens the free exercise of religion” for her. It instructed Davis to consider her rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which declares that religious exercise can be curbed only if the government has a compelling reason. On September 18, Davis reinstated contempt charges but then quickly “purged” them, dropping the penalties. While there are precedents for religious exemptions from the standing requirement, involving Quakers in particular, Ali’s case opens the door for a very different group: American Islamists eager to thumb their noses at the secular legal system. Expect more such incidents in the U.S.
Comparable conflicts have erupted elsewhere. Several radicals later found guilty of shouting hatred at British troops during a 2009 homecoming parade would not rise at their trial, because “in Muslim countries it is a grave and cardinal sin to show respect in this way to anyone other than God himself.” Although the UK is not a Muslim country — at least not yet — the judge caved, acceding to a compromise whereby they could enter the courtroom after she did. Accused terrorists are not big fans of the standing requirement either, as seen in 2007 at the outset of proceedings against nine men from Sydney, Australia, charged with plotting attacks. According to one account, the judge “was not concerned by the refusal but suggested it might not be a wise course of action when the trial started,” for jurors could take a harsher view. The jihadists got their comeuppance regardless: all eventually pleaded guilty or were convicted.
The issue has extended to lawyers as well. Mohammed Enait, a fundamentalist attorney in the Netherlands, initiated a long dispute over his resolve to stay seated on the grounds that all are equal before Allah. Mixed messages ensued. A court in 2008 approved an exception for Enait, but it was reversed. Meanwhile, the bar association reprimanded him, but an appeals tribunal voided it, referencing his “sincere and authentic religious convictions.”
Clothing. Common sense dictates that face veils (niqabs) should not be welcome in a court of law, where security is critical, participants must be identified, and some judges and lawyers use facial expressions to analyze the veracity of statements. Yet none of this has slowed the push for concessions.
The good news is that most witnesses wanting to wear niqabs are turned down, as demonstrated by examples from Australia, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. However, the temporarily uncovered women often are allowed to testify with backs to the audience or from behind screens — an accommodation in and of itself. Also of relevance, judges have been known to expel women in niqabs from public seating areas, with recent ejections in France, where face-concealing attire is now broadly restricted, and Sweden, where safety concerns were voiced at a hearing related to a plot to kill cartoonist Lars Vilks.
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http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/cair-michigan-goes-after-us-constitution/#fm
There they go again. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has just put out an Action Alert that takes direct aim at the Constitution of the United States.
At issue is the Michigan state legislature’s House Bill No. 4769, which looks likely to pass in coming days. Quite simply, that bill states that no foreign law may take precedence over American law or Michigan state law in a Michigan court room.
The key provision of the bill is Section 2, which says:
“A court, arbitrator, administrative agency, or other adjudicative, mediation, or enforcement authority shall not enforce a foreign law if doing so would violate a right guaranteed by the constitution of this state or of the United States.”
That’s it. Seems pretty straightforward and entirely in keeping with Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, which states:
“This Constitution and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby…”
So why would CAIR call on its members to oppose legislation that protects all American citizens, upholds the U.S. Constitution and in no way interferes with the right of any individual to freely exercise his or her religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment?
CAIR (a Muslim Brotherhood front group) points to the answer in its own words. Its Action Alert decries “discrimination on followers of a minority faith” and terms the legislation “anti-Islam,” even though there is no mention of Islam or any other faith in the bill.
There’s also no mention of any specific foreign law, just the general proviso that if ever there is a conflict between any foreign law – be it French law, Islamic law, Japanese law, Zambian law or any other – and U.S. and/or Michigan state law, it is the American law and the Michigan law that will prevail.
So, then, in what way is such legislation “anti-Islam”?
It would seem that CAIR is saying that Islam is not just a religion, but actually a legal system (hint: it’s called “sharia.”) This is quite forthcoming of them, because in fact, of course, Islam is not merely about diet/fasting, devotion, prayer, worship, pilgrimage, and proselytizing (Da’wa), which are completely 100% protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. No, as CAIR is rightly pointing out, Islam is also a “complete way of life,” encompassing a legal, military, political, and social system. The name of that “complete way of life” is sharia (Islamic law), which governs every aspect of a Muslim’s life and actually forbids a separation between faith and governance. It is unlawful under sharia for a devout, practicing Muslim to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.”
The CAIR Action Alert against Michigan’s pending legislation perhaps unintentionally illustrates this in a most instructive way. The reason the Muslim Brotherhood and all other sharia-adherent Muslims cannot accept that sharia provisions that conflict with U.S. law be superseded by Constitutional law in American courts is precisely the notion that Islamic law must dominate all other laws on earth in every respect.
Of course, this sort of legal supremacism is not only in direct contravention of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution; if acted upon, it arguably also could be grounds for a charge of sedition, conspiracy to commit sedition, or misprision of sedition.
Aside from the obvious need to ensure that American law prevails in American courts, the specific nature of Islamic law is particularly problematic. Of course, CAIR does not mention this in its Action Alert, but although sharia indeed contains legal prescriptions about devotion and worship as well as many other aspects of life, there are also multiple elements of sharia that are utterly antithetical to the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
Most important of all is that the Islam of sharia mandates legal inequality between Muslims and non-Muslims, and between men and women. Sharia also imposes barbaric, mutilating punishments for theft, flogging for “fornication” and the death penalty for adultery, apostasy, homosexuality and, in some cases, slander/blasphemy. For those who do not accept the rule of Islam, sharia is a supremacist, violently expansionist doctrine that requires every Muslim to participate in jihad, which is “warfare to spread the religion.”
Clearly, then, CAIR, which was named by the Department of Justice an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror funding trial, is presenting a misleading impression of Michigan’s “Restriction of Application of Foreign Laws Act” and also concealing its real reasons for opposing it.
This kind of deliberate dissimulation is called taqiyya and is often used by adherents of sharia to deceive the non-Muslim (infidel or kafir). Quite helpful for everyone, however, is the unintended way that CAIR provides a revealing look inside the operations of the Muslim Brotherhood in America as it seeks to protect the insinuation of sharia provisions into the U.S. legal system.
As a careful reading of Michigan’s House Bill No. 4769 will confirm, this legislation actually provides assurance that American Muslim families are afforded the same constitutional protections and liberties as other Americans. Unfortunately, as a June 2011 Center for Security Policy study demonstrated, Islamic law (sharia) is present already in the U.S. legal system in a significant way.
The data presented in the “Shariah Law and American State Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court Cases” study documented a total of 50 cases from 23 different states involving a “conflict of law” between sharia and American state law. Sharia-based legal conventions or decisions from 16 foreign countries had been brought to bear upon these 50 cases.
Muslim Americans, many of whom came to the U.S. to escape the oppressive rule of sharia in their home nations, are no less deserving of the protections of American law than other Americans born into the privilege of living in a free country where faith and state are kept separated by law.
Liberty-and-equality-protecting legislation like Michigan’s House Bill No. 4769 already has been passed in Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana and Tennessee and has been introduced in more than 20 more states, including Michigan. Emails, letters and phone calls from constituents in these states to state legislators can help to ensure passage for such measures. Residents of Michigan can contact their state representatives here.
Ironically, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper himself supports the intent behind this legislation when it serves his purposes. When a Muslim woman working in Washington, D.C.'s Dulles International Airport for Aerotek, a local staffing agency for Air France, was told she could not wear her hijab to work because it was against Air France's uniform policy, Hooper was quoted as saying:
“Our position is that no company doing business in America has the obligation to enforce discriminatory foreign policies on American employees,” he said. “A discriminatory dress code implemented in France does not supersede American laws protecting the religious rights of American citizens.”
Mr. Hooper, we couldn’t agree more. Perhaps you could mention this to the folks in Michigan.
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Second post
http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/us-policy-defending-sharia-not-american-citizens/#fm
U.S. Policy Defending Sharia, Not American Citizens
Sun, December 2, 2012
by: Clare Lopez
U.S. Sec. of State Hilliary Clinton with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi (Photo: U.S. State Dept.)America’s involvement in the global jihad against Western civilization—on the side of the jihadis—is accelerating. Instead of standing firm as leader of the free world and defender of inalienable human rights, U.S. policy is shifting demonstrably to the defense of those who systematically deny such rights to their own people and seek to suppress them everywhere.
Since 2009, U.S. foreign policy has backed Al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood power plays in Libya, Egypt and now Syria, too. As reported by RadicalIslam.org, the U.S. Department of State is working closely with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), whose top objective is the criminalization of the criticism of Islam.
U.S. troops in Afghanistan are subject to suicidal Rules of Engagement (ROEs) drafted in deference to Islamic law by commanders desperate to appease Islamic sensibilities. At home, the White House cultivates relationships with CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations)/HAMAS and Muslim Brotherhood leadership figures and associates. Instructors, trainers and any curriculum that would describe accurately the link between Islamic doctrine, law, and scripture and Islamic terrorism have been methodically purged from U.S. government, intelligence and law enforcement classrooms.
And now, an American citizen, a pastor, has just been sentenced to death in absentia by an Egyptian state security court for his alleged involvement in promoting an obscure online film called “The Innocence of Muslims.” Egyptian Judge Saif al Nasr Soliman handed down the death penalty on charges of “insulting the Islamic religion” on November 28, 2012 for Florida Christian pastor Terry Jones and seven expatriate Egyptian Coptic Christians who are reported to have helped produce and promote the video.
The low-budget film was made in the U.S. and accurately, if crudely, depicts some of the less admirable episodes from the Sirat Rasul Allah (biography of the Muslim prophet Mohammed). Orchestrated demonstrations broke out across the Muslim world in September, 2012 involving thousands of angry people who’d never seen the film and probably had no access to the Internet anyway (where the film’s 14-minute trailer had been posted for over two months at that point).
Instead of taking the opportunity to explain the U.S.’s commitment to First Amendment free speech rights, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were quick to disclaim any responsibility for the video and attempted to assuage Islamic feelings by sending out a stream of Twitter apologies (that were later deleted):
@USEmbassyCairo
We condemn the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims—
US Embassy Cairo (@USEmbassyCairo) September 11, 2012
11 Sep 12
Worse yet, the September 11, 2012 Ansar al-Shariah assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens, his staffer Sean Smith, and two former Navy SEAL CIA security contractors, was deceitfully used by the Obama administration for weeks afterwards as an excuse to promote a narrative in perfect sync with the OIC and aimed at curbing American free speech rights.
Indeed, as if on cue, OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu (whom Secretary of State Clinton had welcomed to Washington, D.C. in December 2011 for closed door talks) called on for a “global ban on offending the character” of Mohammed on September 29, 2012 at the United Nations (UN).
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president Morsi, the U.S.’s new man in Cairo, likewise used the occasion of his first address to the UN to launch an attack on free speech, avowing that insults against Mohammed and Islam “are unacceptable” and adding that, “We reject this. We cannot accept it,” and “We will not allow anyone to do this by word or deed.”
Unfortunately in this, Morsi was only echoing the words of his sponsor, U.S. President Barack Obama, who spoke at the UN the day before and, after a perfunctory nod in the general direction of America’s foundational principles on free speech, let the world know that he really didn’t believe in it all that very much and in fact, felt a lot closer to the Islamic doctrine on slander than to the First Amendment.
After making no fewer than six deliberately misleading references to the Internet film narrative as the cause of the Benghazi base attack, he declared that, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” In a deferential bow to Morsi’s warning two days after the Benghazi attack that the prophet Mohammed “is a red line nobody can touch,” Obama was openly responding to Morsi’s reported request that he ''take dissuasive measures against those trying to demolish relations with the U.S.''
While the death sentences against the film team were pronounced in absentia by an Egyptian sharia-compliant court, given the direction Obama, Clinton, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Ambassador Susan Rice and a good part of the U.S. government seem to be leaning—empowering the forces of Islamic jihad and sharia abroad and embracing them at home—the guarantee of free speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution begins to seem a little less ironclad than it did before.
As of this writing, there’s been not a peep of condemnation from a one of them for Egypt’s blatant act of aggression against a U.S. citizen and seven other Christians who fled sharia in Egypt and thought they’d found a safehaven in the West. The alleged producer of the film, an Egyptian Coptic expatriate who has used the name Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, was ostentatiously arrested on September 27, 2012, just as Hillary Clinton had promised to Charles Woods (the father of CIA contractor Tyrone Woods slain in the Benghazi attack) and subsequently sentenced to one year in jail, supposedly on probation violation charges. Sharia regimes like Egypt’s know how that works.
It is time to ask, “What exactly is official U.S. policy on jihad, sharia and the Islamic Awakening?” President Obama is now on record with two intelligence findings (one for the Libyan opposition and one for the Syrian opposition) that have committed the resources of the U.S. government to fighters whose ranks were known to be dominated by jihadis affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood seeking to replace regional strong men with Islamic rule. The Benghazi base is reported to have been the command and control hub for U.S. efforts to remake the map of the Middle East in favor of the forces of sharia.
Open backing for Mohammed Morsi has not been balanced by so much as a hint of U.S. criticism for his dictatorial power grab in Egypt, undisguised support for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Gazan off-shoot HAMAS and its naked aggression against Israel, or failure to condemn the Egyptian judge’s death sentence against an American citizen.
In the absence of a clear White House policy statement that the liberty-crushing mandate of Islamic jihad and sharia are a clear and present danger to American national security, accompanied by a new National Security Strategy document that lays forth the plan to confront and defeat all who promote such ideology, it must be concluded that the current policy of the U.S. government is to empower and enrich the jihadist enemy. The American citizen is on his own.
Clare Lopez is a senior fellow at RadicalIslam.org and a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on the Middle East, national defense and counterterrorism. Lopez served for 25 years as an operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
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http://www.thestar.com/news/world/ar...d-says-morocco
Law allowing rapists to marry underage victims to be changed, says Morocco
RABAT, MOROCCO—Nearly a year after Morocco was shocked by the suicide of a 16-year-old girl who was forced to marry her alleged rapist, the government has announced plans to change the penal code to outlaw the traditional practice.
Rape victim forced to marry attacker commits suicide
Women's rights activists on Tuesday welcomed Justice Minister Mustapha Ramid's announcement, but said it was only a first step in reforming a penal code that doesn't do enough to stop violence against women in this North African kingdom.
A paragraph in Article 475 of the penal code allows those convicted of “corruption” or “kidnapping” of a minor to go free if they marry their victim and the practice was encouraged by judges to spare family shame.
Last March, 16-year-old Amina al-Filali poisoned herself to get out of a seven-month-old abusive marriage to a 23-year-old she said had raped her. Her parents and a judge had pushed the marriage to protect the family honour. The incident sparked calls for the law to be changed.
The traditional practice can be found across the Middle East and in places like India and Afghanistan where the loss of a woman's virginity out of wedlock is a huge stain on the honour of the family or tribe.
While the marriage age is officially 18, judges routinely approve much younger unions in this deeply traditional country of 32 million with high illiteracy and poverty.
“Changing this article is a good thing but it doesn't meet all of our demands,” said Khadija Ryadi, president of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights. “The penal code has to be totally reformed because it contains many provisions that discriminate against women and doesn't protect women against violence.”
She singled out in particular outmoded parts of the law that distinguish between “rape resulting in deflowering and just plain rape.” The new article proposed Monday, for instance, gives a 10-year penalty for consensual sex following the corruption of a minor but doubles the sentence if the sex results in “deflowering.”
Fouzia Assouli, president of the Democratic League for Women's Rights, echoed Ryadi's concerns, explaining that the code only penalizes violence against women from a moral standpoint “and not because it is just violence.”
“The law doesn't recognize certain forms of violence against women, such as conjugal rape, while it still penalizes other normal behaviour like sex outside of marriage between adults,” she added. Recent government statistics reported that 50 per cent of attacks against women occur within conjugal relations.
The change to the penal code has been a long time in coming and follows nearly a year of the Islamist-dominated government balking at reforming the law.
The Justice Ministry at the time argued that al-Filali hadn't been raped and the sex, which took place when she was 15, had been consensual. The prime minister later argued in front of parliament that the marriage provision in the article was, in any case, rarely used.
“In 550 cases of the corruption of minors between 2009 and 2010, only seven were married under Article 475 of the penal code, the rest were pursued by justice,” Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane said on Dec. 24.
While Morocco updated its family code in 2004, a comprehensive law combating violence against women has been languishing in Parliament for the past eight years.
Social Development Minister Bassima Hakkaoui, the sole female minister in Cabinet, said in September she would try to get the law out of Parliament and passed.
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http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/11/20/graphic-anatomy-of-a-stoning/
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http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/11/20/graphic-anatomy-of-a-stoning/
(http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/na0124_stoningweb940.jpg?w=940&h=1896)
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Good thing Obama will prevent them from getting nukes! Right Rachel?
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http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/11/20/graphic-anatomy-of-a-stoning/
Ughh!!! The religion of peace, gay rights, women's rights. One might say that such harsh penalties, no one would commit the 'crime'. Unfortunately, among the 'offenders' are young female rape victims:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/world/africa/05somalia.html
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http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/11/20/graphic-anatomy-of-a-stoning/
Ughh!!! The religion of peace, gay rights, women's rights. One might say that such harsh penalties, no one would commit the 'crime'. Unfortunately, among the 'offenders' are young female rape victims:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/world/africa/05somalia.html
It's not rape unless four adult male muslim men were witness to the assault and testify in sharia court to that effect. Lacking that testimony, a female that reports having had sex outside of marriage is admitting to "zina", which depending on the sharia court jurisdiction, is punishable by imprisonment or execution.
On the bright side, they don't have to worry about carrying a concealed weapon on a campus, which makes democrat legislators feel better.
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http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/04/daily-chart-20?fsrc=scn/tw/te/dc/Shariadolikeit
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkM_DHQEvAE
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Not All Muslims imprison, torture two men for helping someone convert to Christianity
7:57 AM 05/13/2013
Jim Treacher
This post is racist because it contains facts about what some Muslims did. The following incident has nothing to do with any other incidents, past or future.
AFP:
A Saudi court jailed a Lebanese man for six years and sentenced him to 300 lashes after convicting him of encouraging a Saudi woman to convert to Christianity, Saudi dailies reported Sunday.
The same court sentenced a Saudi man convicted in the same case to two years in prison and 200 lashes for having helped the young woman flee the ultra-conservative, US-backed Sunni kingdom, local daily Al-Watan said.
A court delivered the verdict in Khobar in the kingdom’s east, where the woman and the two accused worked for an insurance company…
The woman, known only as “the girl of Khobar,” was granted refuge in Sweden where she lives under the protection of unspecified NGOs, according to local press reports…
Saudi women are banned from travelling without their guardians’ permission.
Which would be bad, if she wasn’t being subjugated by members of a Designated Victim Group. In the byzantine calculus of political correctness, Islam > feminism. It’s only a War on Women when Republicans refuse to pay for other people’s birth control, not when an entire gender is subjugated by a religion we’re not supposed to criticize because it’s exotic.
We have to respect their cultural differences, because they’re not conservative Caucasians with cash. And if Not All Muslims decide to blow up some more people at a marathon or someplace, well, we should’ve thought about that before we decided to be evil Americans.
Any questions? Good. Get back to work. You’ve got taxes to pay.
(Hat tip: Eugene Volokh)
P.S. Boston bombers’ mosque recommended men beat their wives. Which has nothing to do with anything, racist. Racist.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/13/not-all-muslims-imprison-torture-two-men-for-helping-someone-convert-to-christianity/
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http://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-punishment-for-reading-bible-in-saudi-arabia/
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Guest Column: The False Religious Argument Over the Burqa
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
August 6, 2013
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4113/guest-column-the-false-religious-argument-over
For two days, they burned cars. They shouted about racism and attacked police, hurling stones and shattering windows of the local police department. In Trappes, France, the riots that broke out last month over laws against wearing a niqab (or veil) in public threatened lives, disrupted the country, and raised, yet again, questions about conflicts between the culture of France's secular democracy and much of its Muslim population. And though such riots take place frequently in France (in 2005, they ended only after the government was forced to impose a state of emergency), those conflicts – and the issues they represent – seem no closer to resolution.
This time, the trouble broke out after police, conducting a routine identity check, stopped a woman wearing niqab in Trappes, near Versailles, on July 18. When they asked her to remove the face-covering, her husband – a French-born convert to Islam – allegedly attempted to strangle one of the officers. He was immediately arrested, but the riots broke out soon after. By July 20, nearly 1,000 of Trappes' 30,000 inhabitants had joined the violent clashes, which spread to nearby neighborhoods.
The events have reignited concern over a number of issues regarding the clashes between Muslim and non-Muslim communities that continue to plague France, which has the largest population of Muslims in Europe (numbering about 5 million). These same issues, in fact, have come to haunt all of Europe as its Muslim population grows, and, with it, the radicalization of European Muslim youth.
France banned the burqa and the niqab, both of which hide women's faces, in 2010, imposing a fine on women who continue to wear the garments in public. (The law became active one year later.) Belgium and the Netherlands have since followed suit, and the idea is repeatedly broached in other European countries. Supporters of the policy claim that the burqa and niqab oppress women and violate Western mores; and that the inability to see a person's face presents a security risk to the public.
Opponents maintain that the garments represent a religious mandate, and that such bans constitute religious discrimination and infringe on the rights of Muslim women – though in truth, there is nothing in the Koran that mandates any such form of dress. Yet others argue more simply that the subject of wardrobe choice is not and should not land in the realm of the law.
In an ideal world, perhaps this last argument would be the case; but in fact, niqab-clad women – and men – have used the garment as a tool in committing crimes from robbery (including a string of five bank robberies in Pennsylvania) to kidnapping and worse, relying on the ease with which they can move about entirely anonymously within.
Moreover, with so-called "burqa bans" in place in a number of Muslim countries including Turkey and Tunisia, the law hardly, as many Western Muslims argue, represents a form of institutionalized "Islamophobia." Indeed, barely more than 400 French Muslim women have been cited for violating the ban, indicating that several million of their French sisters have been unaffected in the practice of their religion.
Interestingly, too, most of those who have persisted in wearing the niqab are under age 30, according to Le Journal du Dimanche. That fact meshes with signs that many of Europe's young Muslims are becoming more religiously conservative, often in rebellion against the Western traditions of the countries in which they live – and in most cases, were born and raised.
What's more, Abdallah Zekri, president of L'observatoire de l'Islamophobie, a French Muslim rights organization, says that the majority of these women are converts. They "understand nothing about Islam or the Koran, who want to be more Muslim than Muslims."
In France, as elsewhere, it is both young, Western-born Muslims and Muslim converts who are the easier and more frequent targets for Al Qaeda recruiters, and for radical imams seeking to build Shariah-ruled communities in the West. The niqab fight is, in effect, simply a manifestation of this.
And that, argues the French state and other proponents of the ban, is quite the point: the niqab has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the politics of culture, in this case, that reflect a very real threat to the Enlightenment values of the West. As one American Muslim woman (who asked to remain anonymous given the sensitive nature of the subject) told me, "the niqab isn't even an Islamic code of dress."
"The Prophet's wives did not dress like this," said the woman, a Pakistani-American Muslim who divides her time between the two countries, "and so I don't understand this radical interpretation. In fact, it's not even an interpretation. It's just crazy."
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http://www.examiner.com/article/victim-sentenced-200-lashes-by-saudi-court?cid=taboola_inbound
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http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/22/240012174/sultan-of-brunei-introduces-sharia-law
Sultan Of Brunei Introduces Sharia Law
by Eyder Peralta
October 22, 2013 8:39 PM
Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah attends the first working meeting of the G20 summit in September in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Vladimir Astapkovich/Getty Images
The Sultan of Brunei said his country would soon be ruled by a set of strict Islamic criminal laws, making Brunei the first Southeast Asian country to institute Sharia Law at a national level.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
"Islam has long been the official religion of this tiny country in the Borneo island, which is split into three parts with Malaysia and Indonesia as well. Brunei, with a population of more than 400,000, has one of the highest per-capita incomes in Southeast Asia, thanks to its offshore oil reserves in the South China Sea. Its monarch, who has ruled the country from 1967, is also the prime minister and controls the defense and finance ministries.
"'It is because of our need that Allah the Almighty, in all His generosity, has created laws for us, so that we can utilize them to obtain justice,' Sultan and Prime Minister Hassanal Bolkiah said in a statement.
"The new set of laws under Islamic code, the Shariah Penal Code, would broaden the scope of religious justice that is now limited to some Sharia courts dealing in personal and family issues, such as marriage disputes. The new laws, the sultan said, would go into effect in six months."
The AFP reports that under the new law, an adulterer could be stoned to death, a thief could face a severed limb, drinking alcohol could lead to flogging.
The French wire service reports that Human Rights Watch is calling the legal change "abhorrent."
"Brunei is showing its feudal characteristics as an 18th-century state rather than an important member of a regional Southeast Asian economic and social consensus in the 21st century," Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, told AFP.
Voice of America, a foreign news service funded by the U.S. government, reports the punishments will only apply to Muslims, who make up two-thirds of the country. VOA adds:
"Officials have promised that the new punishments would require a high burden of proof and that their application would be subject to approval by judges.
"In his speech Tuesday, the sultan insisted the new rules will not change his country's relationship with other nations. Some viewed this as an assurance to foreign investors."
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/16/in-graphic-videos-and-on-twitter-isis-members-record-and-tout-executions-of-gay-men.html?source=TDB&via=FB_Page
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/10/this-is-wrong-and-it-needs-to-be-stopped-beck-unpacks-interview-with-texas-islamic-tribunal-judges/
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http://annals.org/aim/article/2632371/moral-dilemma-er
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Apparently subscription is necessary. Is this something you can share here?
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I cannot copy or link. Site will note let me .
Basically it is story of Iraqi doctor who was trying to save life of a Muslim women who was in accident . Her lung collapsed and she needed a chest tube to re expand it. When he tried to do this her brother refused to let him because it would involve removing clothing and exposing her breasts.
The doctor said she would die without procedure but brother threatened him not to do and find another way to save. There were no female doctors working that shift though it is not clear if brother would have allowed them to do procedure.
Legally the doctor could not forcefully do the procedure due to rights to refuse treatment as the brother was adhering to his beliefs to follow Sharia law.
Woman died as expected and bother threatened to kill doctor to save his honor. He had to be forcefully removed by security at the hospital and again when he waited outside the hospital to attack the doctor.
The doctor who wrote the article has Muslim name.