Reform Islamic Law

We are very late coming to the game that Islamists in America have been winning since 9/11. They started their accusations of racism and bigotry early on and have not let up. It is well past time for us to stop playing defense and start playing offense. Full court press.

There certainly were inexcusable and criminal bigoted attacks on innocent Muslims after 9/11. I hope the perpetrators of these attacks are still in prison. I propose to criticize Islam. Criticism is not bigotry. I disagree with some of the ideas that are part of the ideology of Islam. In our society, religious ideas can be criticized because we do not place them above reason.

Criticism is not racism. Racism is disrespect for a person’s unchangeable physical traits. People deserve respect for who they are. They can’t change their race. Ideas should always be criticized. That’s how good ideas advance and bad ones are discarded.

America has been accused of declaring war on Islam. We have not declared war on Islam. We declared war on terror, which is the same as no declaration at all. It is time we declared that there is something wrong with Islam. Something that we intend to fight.

Islamic law needs to be reformed. It condones the use of violence to remove all barriers to the spread of Islam. This is the doctrine of jihadism, and we cannot allow it in America.
An Islam purged of the jihad imperative is no threat to us or anyone.

Muslims Against Sharia have shown one way it can be done. Mahmoud Taha of Sudan pointed to a different path to reform. They have in common the removal of the jihad imperative from the Koran, by different means.

I am not persuaded by Westernized Muslims who have denied that Medieval, Middle Eastern Islamic law has any relevance to modern Islam in the West. As if it is no longer in force. But it is, and why haven’t they joined the reform movement demanding reinterpretation? These Muslims live in the West because they do not want to live under unreformed Islamic law, but most of them see no reason to take a risk and join the reformers.

Our job is to keep the heat on them until reform happens.

Inside America, we need imprisonment for those who work toward imposition of Islamic law. They are committing the crime of sedition. This re-orienting the focus of our law enforcement efforts will give domestic Islamic reformers the safety they need to move from their present defensive position to offense. Our foreign policy should reflect the same goal. Aid those who resist the imposition of unreformed Islamic law, attack those who try to impose it. Europeans will have to decide which side they want to join, if they ever vacate that comfortable seat on the fence. There are signs that they are ready to move.

We have been so tentative, trying to find some way to express our sense that something is wrong with Islam. The events of 9/11 and the Middle Eastern reaction to them shouted that message to us. We have been living with a sense of foreboding as we tried to find the handle. We really didn’t want to look very hard at the realities of Islam, we wanted to be convinced that Islam is just another religion.

We wanted to be convinced that the problem lay only with Islamists--or al Qaeda, mujahidin, militants, radicals, jihadists, Hizballah, HAMAS, fundamentalists, Wahhabis, the Muslim Brotherhood, Iranian Mullahs, the Taliban, Salafis or extremists. We pointed to any splinter group that we could blame for the continuing mayhem being committed by Muslims around the world, much of this mayhem victimizing other Muslims.

Many Americans accepted with relief the Islamist claim that our foreign policy was to blame. Some Americans are ashamed to see how successful our businesses and our political style and pop culture and technology are around the world. They see our successes as confirmation of Edward Said’s cynical, Occidentalist view of the West as imperialist.

But all the above were avoidance strategies. The foreboding was justified. The problem was not found on the fringes of Islam, but at its heart, in Islamic law. In traditional Islam. Unlike Christianity and Judaism, it has not found a way to realign its dogma to the realities of modern human rights. The residents of the fringes of Islam are the reformers-- the few who have been allowed to remain alive—not the traditionalists.

So that is where we have been. How do we get into the game? No more playing defense. No more apologies. Let’s get our hands in Islamist faces and keep them there.

Originally posted on 5/7/09