The Worldwide Jihad: The Truth About Islamic Terrorism (6 page)

This is a lesson that official Washington should have learned again and again, since every jihadist speaks the way Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab does, belying the non-Islamic explanations for jihad that pour endlessly out of Washington’s think tanks. But it won’t be learned this time, either.

Become a Hyperink reader. Get a
special surprise
.

Like the book? Support our author and leave a
comment
!

III.

  Sharia  

The Necessity of Anti-Sharia Laws

Louisiana, Arizona, and Tennessee have already passed legislation restricting the use of foreign law in state courtrooms, and twenty-one other states are considering similar laws. These statutes are designed to halt the use of Islamic law, sharia, by American judges—a measure that many see as necessary, since sharia has already been involved in cases in 23 states. Many see this as an alarming encroachment upon First Amendment protection of religion; however, anti-sharia laws do not actually infringe upon religious freedom at all, and they become more urgently needed by the day.

In the
March issue of
“
First Things
”
, law professor Robert K. Vischer equates anti-sharia laws with recent intrusions upon the religious freedom of Christians, such as laws that now require "pro-life pharmacists to dispense the morning-after pill" and "Christian adoption agencies to place children with same-sex couples, and religious entities to pay for their employees' contraceptives." He asserts that "[t]he recent spate of 'anti-Sharia' initiatives is just the most politically popular example of such threats" to religious freedom.

This is a widespread misapprehension. The Associated Press
recently noted
 that critics of anti-sharia laws view the drive to pass them as an "unwarranted campaign driven by fear of Muslims." In criticizing an anti-sharia amendment to the Oklahoma state constitution that gained seventy percent of the vote in a state referendum but was later struck down, Daniel Mach, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief,
said
:

“This amendment did nothing more than target one faith for official condemnation. Even the state admits that there has never been any problem with Oklahoma courts wrongly applying religious law. The so-called 'Save Our State Amendment' was a solution in search of a problem, and a blatantly discriminatory solution at that."

Ryan Kiesel of the ACLU's Oklahoma branch
declared
: "No one in Oklahoma deserves to be treated like a second-class citizen. This proposed amendment was an affront to the Constitution and everything it stands for." The Muslim writer Reza Aslan hysterically and inaccurately charged that "two-thirds of Americans don't think Muslims should have the same rights or civil liberties as non-Muslims.”

In reality, the properly formulated anti-sharia laws neither infringe upon Muslims' civil liberties or religious freedom nor address a nonexistent problem. Vischer correctly states some of reasons why Americans are concerned about sharia when he says that "proponents of this legislation tend to focus on manifestations of Sharia overseas: the stoning of adulterers, cutting off of the hands of thieves, and the denial of basic freedoms for women in some Islamic countries," and that "there are many schools of interpretation among Islamic legal scholars, and some interpretations stand in tension with the rights that we have come to take for granted in liberal democracies, including the rights of women, homosexual persons, religious minorities, and religious converts."

Vischer clearly means to imply that Muslims in America have no intention, now or ever, of bringing "the stoning of adulterers, cutting off of the hands of thieves, and the denial of basic freedoms for women" to America, and that there are schools of interpretation among Islamic legal scholars that do not "stand in tension with the rights that we have come to take for granted in liberal democracies." In reality, however, there is no school of Islamic jurisprudence among either Sunnis or Shi'tes that does not mandate stoning for adultery, amputation of the hand for theft, and the subjugation of women. Stoning adulterers is in accord with the words and example of Muhammad, whom the Quran holds up as the supreme example of conduct for believers (33:21); amputation of the hand for theft is mandated in the Quran itself (5:38); and the oppression of women in numerous ways is amply attested by the words of both the Quran and the prophet of Islam.

And while there are individual Islamic legal scholars who have crafted interpretations of the Quran and Sunnah that are more compatible with Western pluralism and liberal democracy than is sharia in its classic formulations, these have never gained any significant traction among Muslims. Wherever Sharia has been the law of the land, throughout Islamic history and in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other areas of the Islamic world today, it has had largely the same character—one that has never resembled liberal democracy by any stretch of the imagination. Sharia polities throughout history and today have denied the freedom of speech and the freedom of conscience, and they have mandated discrimination against women and non-Muslims.

Vischer says that "fears about the most extreme applications of Sharia need not prompt a categorical ban on Sharia," but the world has never seen a form of sharia that has not been "extreme." Many non-Muslims mistakenly believe that relatively free and Westernized majority-Muslim states—principally Turkey, as well as, up until recently, Tunisia and Egypt—demonstrate the compatibility of sharia with understandings of human rights that are otherwise universally accepted. This is, however, a fundamental misapprehension: Turkey and other relatively Westernized Muslim countries have been governed by sharia not at all, but instead by legal codes imported from the West. In fact, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk established the modern-day Turkish republic as a defiant rejection of sharia and an explicit determination to establish a Western-style state, free from the strictures of Islamic law. Such states don't have a different, more expansive version of sharia; they don't have sharia at all (and today their freedoms are rapidly eroding, as the "Arab Spring" is bringing sharia back in force).

Sharia is also political and supremacist, mandating a society in which non-Muslims do not enjoy equality of rights with Muslims. And that is the focus of anti-sharia laws: to prevent this authoritarian and oppressive political and social system from eroding the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. It is plainly disingenuous to claim that anti-sharia laws would infringe upon Muslims' First Amendment rights to practice their religion. As Thomas Jefferson said, it doesn't matter whether my neighbor believes in one god or seventeen; it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. It is only when my neighbor believes that his god commands him to pick my pocket or break my leg that his beliefs become a matter of concern for those who do not share them. No one wants to restrict individual Muslim religious practice, or even cares about it. The purpose of anti-sharia laws is not to stop Muslims from getting married in Islamic religious ceremonies and the like, but to stop the political and supremacist aspects of Islam that infringe upon the rights and freedoms of non-Muslims.

The Islamic state, as delineated by sharia, encroaches on the basic rights of non-Muslims. It would be a sad irony for non-Muslims to oppose anti-sharia and thereby abet their own subjugation.

Stoning of Soraya M Actress Spreads Comforting Falsehoods

Does stoning really have "nothing to do with Islam"?

The Stoning of Soraya M. is a great film; I attended an advance screening of it last year in Los Angeles, and strongly recommend that you see it. It is a powerfully moving indictment of the Islamic practice of stoning adulterers, and indirectly of the Sharia in general—however, those connected with the film are doing their level best to avoid giving the impression that the film has anything to do with Islam at all. The latest to do this, but by no means the only one, is actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, who portrays the victim's close friend. This is understandable in today's politically correct Obamoid climate, but it is unfortunate for the Muslim women who are victimized by this barbaric practice: they will never get justice as long as the world is busy making excuses for what victimizes them, instead of calling to account those who are responsible.

Anyway, Aghdashloo makes a number of factually false statements in an interview she gave Thursday to Todd Hill of the Staten Island Advance—not just false, but misleading, and ultimately enabling those who perpetuate the practice of stoning. In it, she said that stoning has "been happening since the Stone Age, in Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Other nations and religions have gotten rid of it, and all of a sudden, after 2,000 years of monarchy we're facing it in Iran. What makes me feel devastated is the fact that it's happening there, the cradle of civilization."

"It's been happening since the Stone Age, in Judaism, Christianity, Islam." In fact, no. The Hebrew Scriptures mandate stoning but it has not been carried out in Judaism since the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., or before that. Islamic tradition contains stories of Muhammad confronting Jewish rabbis who try to conceal the fact that the Torah teaches stoning—they seem to know that Muhammad was a brutal flat-footed literalist who would demand they carry out these teachings literally, when they understood them in a quite different way.

As for Christianity, stoning has never been practiced except among those strange Christians one encounters only in TV dramas. Jesus famously raised the bar for stoning beyond human reach when he said to a crowd that was poised to stone an adulteress, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7).

Aghdashloo also, according to Hill, "stressed that stoning isn't mentioned in the Koran." She said: "It has nothing to do with Islam. It's under the category of superstitions and traditions, but obviously those who have hijacked Islam are manipulating people and using this as an Islamic law. It is not, really."

Stoning has everything to do with Islam and Islamic law. The caliph Umar, one of Muhammad's closest companions, even maintained that it was originally in the Qur'an:

‘Umar said, "I am afraid that after a long time has passed, people may say, "We do not find the Verses of the Rajam (stoning to death) in the Holy Book," and consequently they may go astray by leaving an obligation that Allah has revealed. Lo! I confirm that the penalty of Rajam be inflicted on him who commits illegal sexual intercourse, if he is already married and the crime is proved by witnesses or pregnancy or confession." Sufyan added, "I have memorized this narration in this way." ‘Umar added, "Surely Allah's Apostle carried out the penalty of Rajam, and so did we after him." (Bukhari, vol. 8, bk. 82, no. 816)

"Allah's Apostle" is, of course, Muhammad, who did indeed carry out stonings. Here is the hadith in which he challenges the rabbis about stoning, and in which there is amidst the barbarism and brutality a final act of love and compassion:

The Jews came to Allah's Apostle and told him that a man and a woman from amongst them had committed illegal sexual intercourse. Allah's Apostle said to them, "What do you find in the Torah (old Testament) about the legal punishment of Ar-Rajm (stoning)?" They replied, (But) we announce their crime and lash them." Abdullah bin Salam said, "You are telling a lie; Torah contains the order of Rajm." They brought and opened the Torah and one of them solaced his hand on the Verse of Rajm and read the verses preceding and following it. Abdullah bin Salam said to him, "Lift your hand." When he lifted his hand, the Verse of Rajm was written there. They said, "Muhammad has told the truth; the Torah has the Verse of Rajm. The Prophet then gave the order that both of them should be stoned to death. (‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar said, "I saw the man leaning over the woman to shelter her from the stones." (Bukhari, vol. 4, bk. 56, no. 829)

Even the monkeys practiced stoning, according to another hadith:

During the pre-lslamic period of ignorance I saw a she-monkey surrounded by a number of monkeys. They were all stoning it, because it had committed illegal sexual intercourse. I too, stoned it along with them (Bukhari, vol. 5, bk. 58, no. 188).

Muhammad's example is, of course, normative for Islamic behavior, since "verily in the messenger of Allah ye have a good example for him who looketh unto Allah and the Last Day, and remembereth Allah much" (Qur'an 33:21).

And so Islamic law does indeed mandate stoning for adultery. ‘Umdat al-Salik, a manual of Islamic law endorsed by Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the most influential institution in the world of Sunni Islam, says this about the penalty for adultery:

If the offender is someone with the capacity to remain chaste, then he or she is stoned to death…, someone with the capacity to remain chaste meaning anyone who has had sexual intercourse (A: at least once) with their spouse in a valid marriage, and is free, of age, and sane….

If the penalty is stoning, the offender is stoned even in severe heat or cold, and even if he has an illness from which he is expected to recover. A pregnant woman is not stoned until she gives birth and the child can suffice with the milk of another. (‘Umdat al-Salik o12.2, o12.6)

The film is great, and depicts the truth. It is a pity that the film's actors and producers feel compelled to deny and downplay the real cause of this crime against humanity. By doing so, they only ensure that it will keep happening.

Egypt: A New Dark Age Begins

December 14, 2012

Eight people have been killed and hundreds wounded, but the latest bloody chapter in Egypt’s unhappy recent history is about to draw to a close: this Sunday a referendum will be held on the proposed new constitution, and that, presumably, will be the end of that. And what it will most likely herald is the end of the brief era of any meaningful voting in Egypt, and of any hope on the part of women and Egyptian Christians for equality of rights before the law.