Last weekend saw a veritable who's who of conservative luminaries hit Washington at a conference bearing the Orwellian appellation of "The Value Voters Summit." Now, in addition to the usual anti-Democrat, anti-Obama stuff that's about par for this type of gathering, the other big booga-booga trotted out by speaker after speaker after speaker was the clear and present threat Islam represents to America, culminating in our friend Newtie exhorting his audience that, "we should have a federal law that says under no circumstance, in any jurisdiction in the United States, will Sharia be used in any court to apply to any judgment made about American law."
To which I'm pretty sure most American Muslims reacted the same way I did: "Uh...what?
I mean, even leaving to one side how a relatively benign concept like Sharia -- Islamic jurisprudence -- has been transmogrified into the new Face of Evil on the Right, who's even talking about enacting Sharia in this country? Because I know I'm not, nor is anyone I know, nor is anyone in the media, nor is anyone in politics -- but nonetheless, we have to stop it. To hear Gingrich & Co. slam that podium, the many-headed monster of Obama, liberalism, and the Park51 Center have coalesced Blob-like into the singular threat of encroaching Sharia (or, put another way, "The Muslims are coming! The Muslims are coming!"). Steven Benen at The Washington Monthly said it best (under a post with the title of "Gingrich Demands Legislation To Address Imaginary Threat":)
I was disappointed he didn't also call for a federal law that says, under no circumstances, will Bigfoot be allowed to run for Congress. Also, unicorns must not be permitted to roam the streets, and flying saucers must not land within 100 yards of a school. We must think of the children, you know.
Also, while I'm no Constitutional scholar, I'm fairly certain the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment licked this way back in the 1860s. So why the alarm bells over a non-existent, vaporous threat that's already been addressed in our country's most sacred of documents? Well, why else? We know that nothing quite energizes the hardcore Republican base than having their fear tanks filled to the brim, and how better to do that then trot out a foreign-sounding concept like "Sharia." It's coming for you -- and everyone you love! (For maximum impact, read that last part like Don LaFontaine.);
Still, the current bombast, which some would say really kicked into gear thanks to Pamela Gellar's "Ground Zero Mosque" hysterics, actually goes back much further and has roots that go much deeper. As Talking Points Memo has found, when you do a little digging, it's the same Three Tenors of Islamophobia that it's always been: Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, and Robert Spencer (aptly described by one commenter as "chronically terrified, emotionally stunted bed-wetters who could find a conspiracy in a kindergarten class").
So the real problem isn't Gaffney, et al. doing what they've always done. Rather, it's that their mix of racial, ethnic, and religious animus has found mainstream expression thanks to the perverse Imperial Nativism that's overrun the GOP in its current configuration. Gingrich may simply be the most vocal, granted, but he's hardly alone, and that toxicity is trickling straight down to the Republican rank-and-file, a scary number of whom seem to be functioning under the impression that every Muslim in America is a "stealth jihadist" waiting to flip the switch from "good" to "evil" like the Clone Troopers in Star Wars.
It's actually a brilliant rhetorical dodge that allows one to discount the words and actions of the vast majority of sensible, reasonable Muslims the world over, and it's working at least well enough to spark a standing ovation following Gingrich's remarks (not to mention nonsense like this from July). The real "stealth jihad" these folks should worry about is the one occurring within their own party, making it acceptable and even concomitant upon them to hate and fear an entire segment of their fellow countrymen. This is the kind of rhetoric that will sit and ferment, the full effects of which will continue to be felt long after the cynical electioneering that initially engendered it has receded into the distance.
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Qasim Rashid: The War Over Muslims in America
Mona Eltahawy: Muslims in America: A Year In Review
The War On Sharia Started Long Before You Ever Heard 'Ground Zero Mosque'
"Islamic" or "the Muslim world" is a huge group of countries, but the Arab culture is a bully culture. They fear the strong and attack the weak. North African and Pakistani Muslims seem to have adopted that as well. They view Europeans as weak (due to demographic changes, embrace of multiculturalism, liberal social policies and the freedom women have) and so they don't want to integrate. They view Europeans as being on the way out.
Muslims wouldn't dare try half the crap they get away with in Europe because they know that Americans won't stand for it. Ironically, the potential for violence and the heavy handedness in which Americans demand quick assimilation is probably what will ensure Muslim integration and assimilation in the U.S.
Tournante is a sport in France, Google it.
Telling people "Don't panic, it can never happen here" is the first warning shot that it certainly CAN happen here - and someone is actively working to make it so.
Muslims don't like it when they get a little bit of the pain and suffereing they visit on others thrown right back in their faces, do they?
Looks like you prefer Dhimmi, but you pissed off well armed Infidels. We'll have peace when Muslims learn to leave non-Muslims alone.
In particular, the Dutch Government bankrolled Muslim religious schools, in keeping with their policy of supporting Catholic and Protestant schools for their more established religious minorities. As it proved, a closer examination of the Muslim school curricula would have been in order....
Dutch law enforcement was also slow to recognize their need to monitor some patterns of Muslim culture than ran afoul of Dutch legal codes, in particular the practices of spousal abuse (rape and beatings), honor killings, and FGM.
The Dutch are sensible folk, and they have started to work through these problems, but problems they have been!
With that said, US history and legal practice is very different that that of the Netherlands; in particular, US legal codes already forbid US support of religious schools. (An object of annual angry sermons by our Parish Priest when I was a lad!) And, the US has a very long record of absorbing and assimilating disparate ethnic groups, more so than the Dutch; I think it very likely that we will survive an influx of Sons and Daughters of the Prophet!
Islam is a huge group of countries, but the Arab culture is a bully culture. They fear the strong and attack the weak. North African and Pakistani Muslims seem to have adopted that as well. They view Europeans as weak (due to demographic changes, embrace of multiculturalism, liberal social policies and the freedom women have) and so they don't want to integrate. They view Europeans as being on the way out.
Muslims wouldn't dare try half the crap they get away with in Europe because they know that Americans won't stand for it. Ironically, the potential for violence and the heavy handedness in which Americans demand quick assimilation is probably what will ensure Muslim integration and assimilation in the U.S.
Fear is a great tool to rally a political base to put one in power (though it tends to make for terrible government policies and practices when one get there), and fearful ignorance and its twin, misinformed fear, make an even better tool to attack one's political opponents and get them out of power (and fighting that also tends to make for terrible government policies and practices as one tries to stay there).
Your ignorance is the phobe's bliss, as it gives them an entrance point. Truly, the only way to fight those who are trying to drag the US into the same territory that Germany was in in the 1920's is to fight your own and other's ignorance. The 'herds of independant journalists' are not going to do that, because there really is no upside, and a lot of downside, to being the lone, isolated voice crying the truth while all around are labelling it falsehood, so you'll have to find other sources. Here is one (run jointly by Gallup and a group dedicated to getting accurate information into people's hands http://www.muslimwestfacts.com/MWFHOMEPAGE/home.aspx
(You might also want to watch it to see why the politics of today are nothing like the politics of the 40s and 50s)
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
Help me out. Do I understand you to say that the Republican right and the Islamic terrorists resemble one another to a degree that rises above, say the resemblance of the liberal left to Islamic terrorists, and further, the GOP right and the terrorists have been "pretty close" for a surprising long time?
Per the Constitution: The government can not make any laws based on religion, about religion or for religion.
Courts can only apply what is written in law to the cases they try.
Therefore: Courts cannot not use sharia principles as valid reasoning for judgement in courts.
I swear this is getting soooooo old.
Westboro Baptists threaten no one even as they disgust everyone. Their public activity is the very thing that insures they will never become anything other than a fringe group. Sharia law supporters are not really hate groups in the sense that the Westboro Baptists are. The Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim American Society are just two of the politcal action groups that have grown out of a religion that teaches Islam governs or controls all human activity, including, specifically, secular activity (hence the origin and purpose of sharia law). Its proponents dwarf the threat of home grown fringe groups because 1. they have a world class ideology (Islam) with 2. a worldwide amen chorus (local Muslim religious and secular leaders who lobby at the leadership level, while the Muslim ranks pour into the streets to demonstrate and riot) and 3. Middle East oil money to draw on. Sharia law has a 1400-year history. As history has shown, sharia advocates almost completely dominate the Muslim world. In the West, they can afford unlimited patience while they probe for weak points in societies where they have a significant Muslim enclave. Great Britain is an alarming example of a Western country where sharia law has made inroads into a legal system with a distinguished history. Check the links below that show the impact of sharia law.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4749183.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4749183.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4749183.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4749183.ece
You are a literalist to be sure. Sharia law is already in effect in the US. In Minnesota, where Somali immigrants are very active in the Minneapolis area, junior colleges have constructed foot baths in the student restrooms so Muslims can wash their feet as a part of the Islamic prayer ritual. Have you heard of the parable of allowing the camel to put his nose under the tent wall and into the tent? Here are a couple of links to the Minneapolis Star Tribune revealing how Muslims used public school funds to build a religious school under the guise of a charter school.
http://www.startribune.com/16404541.html
http://www.startribune.com/16404541.html
Do not expect advocates of sharia to give up. They have existed for centuries and they are as intelligent, nuanced, patient and creative as any other political movent. However they may be unique in one respect. They are rooted in and motivated by their religion, Islam. In the West, that will be one of their strengths, as well as an obvious weakness. One thing, I think your turning to the Constitution is indicative of where the sharia people will eventually fail.
Charter schools, by their nature, are private schools with at-least partial public funding. There are plenty across the country that are religiously-affiliated. Again, this is not indicative of our entire judicial system being usurped and replaced by Sharia.
IMO, codifying ANY religion into law is a prescription for disaster. Remember the Terry Schiavo fiasco. I'm not keen on being subject to Islamic terrorists, but I don't want to be subject to Thumper terrorists either.
"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth." -- CAIR cofounder and longtime Board chairman Omar Ahmad, 1998
"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." -- CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, 1993
"If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate." -- prominent American Muslim leader Siraj Wahhaj, 2002
Hear. Hear.
Why? I thought that the jihadists were just a Tiny Minority of Extremists. But anyway, the idea that defending ourselves against jihadists will intensify anger against us in the Islamic world shows the hollowness of any argument predicated on the idea that we should change our behavior in any way so as to appease Muslim anger. Obama and Petraeus wanted Terry Jones to call off the Qur'an-burning because Muslims would be angry; now the U.S. should have let off a murderous jihadist, Aafia Siddiqui, because Muslims will be angry. At a certain point we have to say that we're going to be who we are, and exercise our freedoms, and defend ourselves, no matter who it angers.