If you are not vitally concerned about the possibility of radical Muslims infiltrating the U.S. government and establishing a Taliban-style theocracy, then you are not a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. In addition to talking about tax policy and Afghanistan, Republican candidates have also felt the need to speak out against the menace of "sharia."
Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum refers to sharia as "an existential threat" to the United States. Pizza magnate Herman Cain declared in March that he would not appoint a Muslim to a Cabinet position or judgeship because "there is this attempt to gradually ease sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government. It does not belong in our government."
The generally measured campaign of former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty leapt into panic mode over reports that during his governorship, a Minnesota agency had created a sharia-compliant mortgage program to help Muslim homebuyers. "As soon as Gov. Pawlenty became aware of the issue," spokesman Alex Conant assured reporters, "he personally ordered it shut down."
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich has been perhaps the most focused on the sharia threat. "We should have a federal law that says under no circumstances in any jurisdiction in the United States will sharia be used," Gingrich announced at last fall's Values Voters Summit. He also called for the removal of Supreme Court justices (a lifetime appointment) if they disagreed.
Gingrich's call for a federal law banning sharia has gone unheeded so far. But at the local level, nearly two dozen states have introduced or passed laws in the past two years to ban the use of sharia in court cases.
Despite all of the activity to monitor and restrict sharia, however, there remains a great deal of confusion about what it actually is. It's worth taking a look at some facts to understand why an Islamic code has become such a watchword in the 2012 presidential campaign.
What is sharia?
More than a specific set of laws, sharia is a process through which Muslim scholars and jurists determine God's will and moral guidance as they apply to every aspect of a Muslim's life. They study the Quran, as well as the conduct and sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, and sometimes try to arrive at consensus about Islamic law. But different jurists can arrive at very different interpretations of sharia, and it has changed over the centuries.
Importantly, unlike the U.S. Constitution or the Ten Commandments, there is no one document that outlines universally agreed upon sharia.
Then how do Muslim countries use sharia for their systems of justice?
There are indeed some violent and extreme interpretations of sharia. That is what the Taliban used to rule Afghanistan. In other countries, sharia may be primarily used to govern contracts and other agreements. And in a country like Turkey, which is majority Muslim, the national legal system is secular, although individual Muslims may follow sharia in their personal religious observances such as prayer and fasting. In general, to say that a person follows sharia is to say that she is a practicing Muslim.
How and when is it used in U.S. courts?
Sharia is sometimes consulted in civil cases with Muslim litigants who may request a Muslim arbitrator. These may involve issues of marriage contracts or commercial agreements, or probating an Islamic will. They are no different than the practice of judges allowing Orthodox Jews to resolve some matters in Jewish courts, also known as beth din.
U.S. courts also regularly interpret foreign law in commercial disputes between two litigants from different countries, or custody agreements brokered in another country. In those cases, Islamic law is treated like any other foreign law or Catholic canon law.
What about extreme punishments like stoning or beheading?
U.S. judges may decide to consider foreign law or religious codes like sharia, but that doesn't mean those laws override the Constitution. We have a criminal justice system that no outside law can supersede. Additionally, judges consider foreign laws only if they choose to -- they can always refuse to recognize a foreign law.
So if sharia is consulted only in certain cases and only at the discretion of the court, why has it become such a high priority for states and GOP candidates? One answer is that sharia opponents believe they need to act not to prevent the way Islamic law is currently used in the U.S. but to prevent a coming takeover by Muslim extremists. The sponsor of an Oklahoma measure banning sharia approved by voters last fall described it as "a pre-emptive strike." Others, like the conservative Center for Security Policy, assert that all Muslims are bound to work to establish an Islamic state in the U.S.
But if that was true -- and the very allegation labels every Muslim in America a national security threat -- the creeping Islamic theocracy movement is creeping very slowly. Muslims first moved to the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, for example, nearly a century ago to work in Henry Ford's factories. For most of the past 100 years, Dearborn has been home to the largest community of Arabs in the U.S. And yet after five or six generations, Dearborn's Muslims have not sought to see the city run in accordance with sharia. Bars and the occasional strip clubs dot the town's avenues, and a pork sausage factory is located next to the city's first mosque.
Maybe Dearborn's Muslims are just running a very drawn-out head fake on the country. It's hard to avoid the more likely conclusion, however, that politicians who cry "Sharia!" are engaging in one of the oldest and least-proud political traditions -- xenophobic demagoguery. One of the easiest ways to spot its use is when politicians carelessly throw around a word simply because it scares some voters.
Take Gerald Allen, the Alabama state senator who was moved by the danger posed by sharia to sponsor a bill banning it -- but who, when asked for a definition, could not say what sharia was. "I don't have my file in front of me," he told reporters. "I wish I could answer you better." In Tennessee, lawmakers sought to make following sharia a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison -- until they learned that their effort would essentially make it illegal to be Muslim in their state.
During last year's Senate race in Nevada, GOP candidate Sharon Angle blithely asserted that Dearborn, as well as a small town in Texas, currently operate under sharia law. And Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann used the occasion of Osama bin Laden's death to tie the terrorist mastermind to the word: "It is my hope that this is the beginning of the end of Sharia-compliant terrorism."
The anti-communist Red Scare of the 1950s made broad use of guilt by innuendo and warnings about shadowy conspiracies. If GOP candidates insist they are not doing the same thing to ordinary Muslims, they can prove it by explaining what they believe sharia is and whether they're prepared to ban the consideration of all religious codes from civil arbitration. Anything less is simply fear mongering.
Amy Sullivan is a contributing writer at Time and author of The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap.
This column was first published in USA Today.
Sharia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sharia law: A brief introduction
Islam: Governing Under Sharia - Council on Foreign Relations
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Where I live, Australia (basically a little village compared to the United States) there are communities within Sydney that are secretly enforcing their own version of community Sharia Law. We've had a recent incident where three men broke into the apartment of a married man (and new convert to a fundamentalist Islamic branch) and whip him more than forty times with an electric cord. Why did they do it? Because he drank alcohol.
And then there are woman who are now coming forth to say that they prefer to live by their own Islamic code ( http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/australian-muslim-women-choose-to-live-by-own-code/story-e6freuy9-1226100086248).
And this is in Australia, population 20 million. So imagine the possibilities within a country with a much larger population?
If anyone asked me a decade ago, whether Muslims would react this way in Australia, I would have laughed. But it is here and happening - not in government. No. But there is nothing to stop it from happening within strict Muslim communities within Australia (and America or other democratic countries). My view?
There is no room for Sharia Law in a democratic country.
B. Islam and anything related to Islam has become a punching bag for the west. Be it harmless veil, masjid minaret or the rev. prophet of Islam. At every apportunity they want to hate Muslims for following their religion.
C. Can we ever say that religion will not ovetake the man made rules? Every constitution availble out there is somehow based on religious principle. All we need to see is what principle we want to follow?
I do not love Christianity or Hinduism but that doesn't mean I go about hating its followers!!
Why west hate Islam?
http://www.ekhichdi.com/a/Why-do-west-hate-Islam-128.html
A Muslim member of the US Army has been granted conscientious objector status as a result of his claim that Sharia law does not permit a Muslim to kill another Muslim in a war Sharia law describes as unjust.
Daniel Pipes interprets the granting of this status:
“Allowing Abdo this status implies U.S. government endorsement that being Muslim and a loyal American are incompatible. This has portentous implications.”
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/08/can-a-muslim-be-a-loyal-american-soldier
Retired Navy Adm. James A. Lyons (commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations) has a different view:
“By acceding to the dictates of Shariah, the Army has tacitly endorsed an absurd position that in effect sanctions Muslim service members to kill non-Muslims but forbids them to kill Muslims. Further, it is an unbelievable basis on which to classify them as conscientious objectors.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/12/disarmed-by-shariah/print/
This decision reeks of the same political correctness that allowed Major Hasan to continue as an officer until he committed murder. Political correctness does not require analytical thought. It merely requires one to determine the direction of the prevailing wind.
Certainly not all American Muslims will agree with Abdo's understanding of Sharia law. However, Abdo's understanding is the same as mine.
a) no one should be able to get a conscientious objector exemption
b) people of other religions can get CO status, but Muslims shouldn't
c) something else?
But it is crystal clear that the issue revolves around the specific reasons for Mr. Abdo’s claim of CO status.
Abdo seems to be claiming that Sharia law takes precedence over American law in this instance--not because he is a member of a pacifist religion, but because he objects to killing Muslims unless it is approved of by Sharia law. Thus he claims that Islamic scholars, not American politicians, get to determine whether or not a war is legal or moral for him.
Portentous implications, indeed.
As Lyons points out, Abdo had no reservations when he signed up for service, so someone—a Muslim chaplain?—may have changed his mind.
Your opinion?
So unless you want women suppression back or non-Muslims to be considered less than human I suggest you pay attention and act accordingly. It may be a slow process but once a precedent is set that is all they will ever need to continue the march over American Laws and Ideals.
15 Feb 2008
What is Shari a?
Usama Hasan
“The same religion has He established for you as that which He enjoined on Noah - the which We have sent by inspiration to thee - and that which We enjoined on Abraham, Moses, and Jesus: Namely, that ye should remain steadfast in religion, and make no divisions therein: To those who worship other than God, hard is the way to which thou callest them. “
“God chooses to Himself those whom He pleases, and guides to Himself those who turn to Him.”
(Koran, chapter: Consultation, 42, 13, translated by A.Y. Ali)......
(Arabic: shar') of religion refers to the essence of all religion: the love and worship of the Divine. Related words, pregnant with meaning, are Shari', meaning both “lawgiver” and “road” (road signs in the Arab world proclaim a Shari' at every corner), and Shari’ a, a path or way; in classical Arabic this particularly meant a path to water in the desert and hence the Sacred Law of Islam, the moral code and ethical path to God, who alone quenches all thirst with mercy.
The Sharia is based on both universal and specific texts, principles and judgments from the Koran and the Sunnah, the example of the Prophet, peace be upon him... . . The four main areas covered by classical Shari a were: ibadat (ritual worship), mu'amalat (economics), munakahat (marriage, divorce and family) and jinayat (crime and punishment).
Once you have extreme knowledge on the Quran and the history of the Muslim countries (A.D
The oppression on women has been in the eastern world long before the creation of Islam. If the religion of Islam did not exist would you believe our world would be at peace? No. We would never have peace even if Islam never existed.
Anyways, thank you for being one of the few who actually took the time to study. You may be thinking it was a waste but trust me one day in the future it will be of help.
During the jahiliyyah, the pre-Islamic period, Arabia had preserved the attitudes towards women which had prevailed before the Axial Age. Polygamy, for example, was common and wives remained in their father's households.
Elite women enjoyed considerable power and prestige - Muhammad's first wife Khadija, for example, was a successful merchant - but the majority were on a par with slaves; they had no political or human rights and female infanticide was common.
Women had been among Muhammad's earliest converts and their emancipation was a project that was dear to his heart. The Koran strictly forbade the killing of female children and rebuked the Arabs for their dismay when a girl was born. It also gave women legal rights of inheritance and divorce: most Western women had nothing comparable until the nineteenth century.
Muhammad encouraged women to play an active role in the affairs of the ummah and they expressed their views forthrightly, confident that they would be heard. On one occasion, for example, the women of Medina had complained to the Prophet that the men were outstripping them in the study of the Koran and asked him to help them catch up.
That is the problem of Islam today. Not the book but the interpretation.
I believe things will reach a point where democratic countries will not allow the entry of extremist imams and so it should be. Any extremist (whether it's an extreme imam or a Holocaust denier like David Irving) that preaches the validity ignoring a country's laws shouldn't be allowed entry into a democratic country.
Mind you, the irony is that democratic countries give so much freedom of speech to these extremists. But if a non-Muslim were to go to a country like Saudi Arabia, and denigrate their religion and laws, they'd be executed.
Republicans know Sharia Law would never be used as the law of the land in America but are using it to scare voters into voting for them. Though it may work on the feeble minded Republicans, they are completely alienating many Muslim voters.
As the saying goes:
If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, then baffle 'em with bull (bleep).
And if that doesn't work, scare the crap out of 'em!
The Council of Foreign Relations offers this assess of sharia, and how it applies in the world: http://www.cfr.org/religion/islam-governing-under-sharia/p8034 "The debate is growing as to whether sharia can coexist with secularism, democracy, or even modernity."
I have seen this happen with italians too. Albeit, I can't say much because I do not know your situation.
But in any case, I have seen this with other ethnicities, not just Pakistanis.
And also, Pakistanis happen to be a lot more cultural than they are religious. In fact, certain Pakistani cultural practices are in fact, against the values of Islam.
I have been verbally and physically abused by people whose race/religious affiliations I do not need to mention. Because whatever their mistreatment of me, does not deserve that their race/affiliation be defined as dirt of the earth.
What is your excuse?
I also did not name call.
Now if you are saying that those specific Muslims you interacted with were not pleasant, then i agree with you. But since you said they were "people" of hate, I assume that you are associating the entire populous as "people of hate".
If I am wrong in interpreting your statement, correct me now before I make further remarks.
The laws of this nation must remain secular and free from religious influence.
If the parties in a case want to use their religious law for a civil matter, it is usually handled under non-binding arbitration, with any considering of that alternate legal system having very little input from a civil court judge.
Every so often it's the inverse, where it will be applicable to consider a matter of religious civil law (say in a case where one or more parties have a financial issue, or funds connected with a family matter in a country with a Sharia-based legal code).
Simply put: I trust our system.
I don't see anything nefarious, or threatening, in the parameters of our current system, or how religious law is handled within it, for civil matters.
It only affects people who are part of a given religion, who want to use their religious law for civil matters in the first case, and where considering facets of a system outside the U.S. may yield the best and most fair judgment, overall.
In any case where it doesn't work that way, and a U.S. engages in literal bad judgment -- that's how and why we have provision for cases to be overturned.
I don't see a problem.
We have both freedom of religion and freedom from religion, in this country. I'm not religious, but I support the freedoms of those who are, not out of support for religion, but out of support for freedom.
By Shaykh-ul-Islam, Dr. Muhammad Tahir ul Qadri, leader of moderate Muslim organization operating in 90 countries; expert in Islamic law (English) - September 8, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIdnswyRj4M
It breaks my black infidel heart whenever I think about it.
Many of these same people will not explain (in relation to Obama) what 'socialism' etc are. Precise definitions are way too intellectual and elitist for this bunch.
Mahatma Gandhi
These people are amazing.
...hee hee, that's a good one. I just like saying it. "Xenophobic demagoguery"...