Misdirection

A friend recently sent a video with clips of Obama that support the idea that he is a Muslim.

Whether or not he is a Muslim, and I doubt it, that is the wrong part of him to be concerned about. A good magician will get his audience to look at what he wants them to see while he does what he must to make the trick work. That’s misdirection.

In the Cold War, some Americans, who were not members of the Communist Party, were called fellow-travelers. They condemned the worst actions of Communist Russia but supported the idea of Communism as a worthy addition to the American political scene.

This is what Obama is doing. He sends drones to kill Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but supports the idea of Islamic law as a worthy addition to American jurisprudence. Three examples of this support:

-- legitimizing the burqa and niqab,

--legitimizing the use of Islamic charity contributions to support jihad

--legitimizing the use of Sharia compliant finance instruments in AIG, a company in which the US Government holds a majority share.

He is approving the legal jihad while ostentatiously opposing the open warfare of jihad. Which of those two things is more dangerous for America?

It is clear to me that the Muslim Brotherhood organizations in America and the Organization of the Islamic Conference are a much greater threat to America than bin Laden, Zawahiri and Ahmadinejad combined. This is not an argument to stop killing jihad warriors, but to at least get started in fighting back in the ideological part of this war.

That is the battlefield on which this war will be won or lost. At present, we are losing.

Incompatibility

Islamic law of the Shafi school of jurisprudence (according to Reliance of the Traveller, pp. 607-09) describes the conditions which non-Muslim subjects of the Islamic state (AHL AL-DHIMMA) must accept:

--Pay the Jizya (non-Muslim poll tax); 4.235 grams of gold per person per year
--Wear special identifying clothing
--They are not greeted with the traditional greeting accorded Muslims—“as-Salamu alaykum”
--They must keep to the side of the street when passing a Muslim
--Must not build as high as or higher than Muslim buildings
--Do not publicly celebrate their religions, display pork or wine, ring church bells or display crosses
--Do not build new churches
--Do not live in the areas around Mecca, Medina or Yamama

If the non-Muslim violates any of the following five rules, he is then considered a prisoner of war:
--Marries or commits adultery with a Muslim woman
--Conceals spies of hostile forces
--Leads a Muslim away from Islam
--Kills a Muslim
--Mentions something impermissible about Allah, the Prophet or Islam

Given that many American Muslims have expressed their desire for Islamic law to be the highest law of the land, the question is this—what should the attitude of American non-Muslims be toward Muslims who support this traditional Islamic law?

-- Reciprocity—dhimmitude for Muslims, a taste of their own medicine? (No—we have already tried having a society with second class citizens and we don’t like it. We do not aspire to become Saudi Arabia.)
--Expulsion on the grounds of irreconcilable differences?
--Imprisonment for sedition or incitement to violence?

The list of options is short and unappealing.

The least painful option is for moderate Muslims who have no desire to live under Islamic law to get serious about reforming it.

This sort of Islamic law will not take root in the West. At some point, American Muslims will have to choose between American and Islamic law. The Danish and South Park cartoons, the rights of former Muslims, the loyalty of Muslim soldiers and the rights of Muslim women are only the tips of an iceberg of incompatibility between Islamic law and Western human rights and responsibilities.

Muslims still have time to avoid a bloody collision, but right now the proponents of Islamic law are twisting the tiger’s tail—treating Americans as if they were living in an Islamic state subject to Islamic law.

Why Iraq cannot be an American ally

A STRATFOR piece on Iraq starts:

The United States invaded Iraq on the assumption that it could quickly defeat and dismantle the Iraqi government and armed forces and replace them with a cohesive and effective pro-American government and armed forces, thereby restoring the balance of power.

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100419_baghdad_politics_and_usiranian_balance?utm_source=GWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100420&utm_content=readmore&elq=482d22c5cb5a46ea9e49aa20d10199be

The first assumption was correct--the Iraqi military never stood a chance in a direct confrontation with us. The Arab world was shocked at how quickly we destroyed the second best Muslim military force in the world.

It was the second assumption that was false. This is where the wheels came off the bus.

There is no element (Sunni, Shia, even Kurd) in the Muslim world that is or could be a long term ally of America. This has always been true and will continue to be true until the coming confrontation between Islam and the West is settled. Iraq turned into a quagmire because we identified the enemy in the war on terror incorrectly.

To the exact extent any Muslim country honors its commitment to Islamic law, it cannot be a long term ally of any infidel country. We Westerners will continue to flounder in this war until we accept the truth of that statement and act on it.

The Saudis proved that point in the first Iraq war. They used us to repel Saddam, but immediately turned against us in the second Iraq war. Long term, their interests and ours will never coincide because their world view and ours are competitors.

The exact historical parallel is that we fought with the Soviets to repel Hitler, but we were never long term allies of the Soviets, and we could never be--because of our competing ideologies.

Refah v. Turkey

Refah v. Turkey

The opinion that sharia (Islamic law) is incompatible with democracy and advocates the forcible overthrow of democratic governments has been confirmed by rulings of the Turkish Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights. In 1998, the Turkish court banned the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) because the rules of sharia promoted by Refah “were incompatible with the democratic regime …Democracy is the antithesis of sharia.” The European Court of Human Rights agreed on appeal in 2001 and 2003.

Noting that the Welfare Party had pledged to set up a regime based on sharia law, the Court found that sharia was incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy as set forth in the Convention. It considered that sharia, which faithfully reflects the dogmas and divine rules laid down by religion, is stable and invariable. Principles such as pluralism in the political sphere or the constant evolution of public freedoms have no place in it.
According to the Court, it was difficult to declare one’s respect for democracy and human rights while at the same time supporting a regime based on sharia, which clearly diverged from Convention values, particularly with regard to its criminal law and criminal procedure, its rules on the legal status of women and the way it intervened in all spheres of private and public life in accordance with religious precepts.
Luzius Wildhaber, President, European Court of Human Rights

http://www.echr.coe.int/NR/rdonlyres/29AC6DBD-C3F8-411C-9B97-B42BE466EE7A/0/2004__Wildhaber_Cancado_Trindade_BIL__opening_legal_year.pdf

The convention referred to in Wildhaber’s remarks is the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights has heard nine cases on banning Turkish political parties. Refah is the only one it has banned. The presently ruling party, AKP, is the Refah party-- renamed and pushing the same Islamist agenda.

The Court’s judgment included the following observations:

• The Refah claim of freedom of association does not overcome the State’s rights to protect its institutions.
• The means to change the State’s institutions must be legal in every respect.
• The final goal of the party must be compatible with fundamental democratic principles.
• Sharia does not exclude the use of force in order to implement its policies.

Sedition is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as “conduct or language inciting to rebellion against the authority of the state.”

In American criminal law, the Smith Act of 1940, 18 U.S.C. paragraph 2385, says that it is a criminal offense for anyone to “knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the duty, necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force of violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association.”

Those who advocate for Islamic law advocate for discrimination against women, gays, non-Muslims, secular government and freedom of conscience. Our freedom of speech makes such advocacy legal. But Islamic law specifically endorses the use of force to implement its goals. As the European Court of Human Rights ruled, the means to change the State’s institutions must be legal in every respect.

The 1940 version of the Smith Act has been revised to allow speech advocating forcible overthrow and to punish only those actions that are taken to implement the overthrow. Those actions must be shown to be clearly connected to an imminent threat to the nation. This revision should be stripped from the law. The possibility of prosecuting those who act to implement Islamic law on charges of incitement to violence is being explored.

Civil Wars

Some American Christians, reading the Bible, came to the conclusion that slavery was allowed. Other Christians came to the opposite conclusion after reading the same book.

A Civil War resulted.

Some Muslims, reading the Koran, believe that Islamic law, the body of man made jurisprudence that has grown out of the Koran over many centuries, is the correct interpretation. Other Muslims believe that Islamic law is stuck in the 11th century and needs deep reform, especially those doctrines about using jihad to achieve the imposition of Islamic law.

Those Muslims who believe that Islamic law is essentially correct as it stands are attempting, by means legal and illegal, to impose Islamic law on Muslims and non-Muslims wherever they can. The most violent among them intimidate and murder would-be reformers by declaring them apostate.

Proponents of Islamic law have correctly identified Western Civilization, with its regime of individual and human rights that conflict with those of Islamic law, as the most pressing threat to the spread of Islam. So the West has been drawn into the civil war within Islam.

Islam and Islamism

Daniel Pipes' position:

During the question and answer session, Mr. Pipes pointed out that those who argue that Islam itself is the problem leave the West with no solutions, adding that, to truly reform Islam, Western governments must begin to empower genuine moderates.

Wafa Sultan, Hugh Fitzgerald:

Ms. Sultan began her argument by quoting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who says that there is no "moderate or immoderate Islam. There is Islam; that is it." She contends that terms like "radical Islam" conceal the true nature of Islam itself--a political ideology. She adds that the aim of Islam is to subdue the entire world under Shari'a.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/03/fitzgerald-islam-and-islamism-or-leaving-the-west-with-no-solutions.html#more

According to the Koran, ahadith and Sira, Ms. Sultan and Mr. Erdoğan are correct. Islam is what its legally binding texts say it is.

But Mr. Pipes’ strategy is superior. Rather than a head-on attack on the whole religion, he advocates separating those Muslims who wish to live under Islamic law from those who do not. The success of this strategy depends on the West creating political space for those Muslims who do not wish to live under Islamic law.

Muslims can reinterpret Islamic law to invalidate the doctrine of supremacy through jihad in the same manner that acceptance of the practice of slavery has been edited out of the Abrahamic religions.

Mr. Pipes is wrong about the West not having a solution if the problem is defined as Islam as a whole. Islamic law has many elements that are illegal in the West, and attempts to install it in the West should be identified and prosecuted. This might encourage Muslims who disagree with Islamists to identify themselves.

The supremacy of Islamic law is the issue in the civil war within Islam. We should encourage Western Muslims to defend the rights derived from citizenship in the West from the restrictions of Islamic law. Those Muslims who side with us against the illegal parts of Islamic law are our allies in this war on the West.

Krauthammer's Error

Speaking of Geert Wilders, Charles Krauthammer says:


What he says is extreme, radical, and wrong. He basically is arguing that Islam is the same as Islamism. Islamism is an ideology of a small minority which holds that the essence of Islam is jihad, conquest, forcing people into accepting a certain very narrow interpretation [of Islam].

The untruth of that is obvious. If you look at the United States , the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the U.S. are not Islamists. So, it's simply incorrect. Now, in Europe, there is probably a slightly larger minority but, nonetheless, the overwhelming majority are not.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTA0YWU2NjQzZTM3YjRmNDA4ZDk2NWNjNzQyYjlmYTY=

Thus the premier American political analyst mistakes the tail (European and American Muslims) for the dog (mainstream Middle Eastern traditional Islam). Definitive authority in Islam comes from the Middle East, not America and Europe.

What does it mean if a majority of European and American Muslims are not Islamists? Not all Germans were Nazis and not all Russians were Communists, but the ideologues drove the agenda. Islamism is mainstream traditional Islamic law adapted to modern political realities--Qtub’s In the Shade of the Qur’an has no new Islamic theology. Islamists are Muslims who take seriously the political implications of Islamic law and reject any Western-inspired innovations and compromises that have crept into the law. Those in the West who call themselves Muslims while trying to paper over the demands of Islamic law (instead of calling for deep reform) will never win an argument with a well informed Islamist.

Even the most superficial acquaintance with the Koran, ahadith and Sira will convince any fair-minded reader that “the essence of Islam is jihad, conquest, forcing people into accepting a certain very narrow interpretation [of Islam].”

This is why Wilders and many Europeans see Muslims in Europe as colonists, not immigrants.

Krauthammer knows that the tail does not wag the dog. When I see such a heavy hitter swinging at a wild pitch, I start looking for explanations that have nothing to do with talent or intelligence.