Kansas passes foreign law ban aimed at Shariah
Well, I’m glad they won’t be stoning women to death in Kansas anymore. They’ll just let her die with a coat hanger in her uterus.
"The concept of pre-emptive prosecution mocks domestic law as egregiously as pre-emptive war mocks the foundations of international law."
-Christ Hedges: First They Come For the Muslims. Hedges interviews Stephen F. Downs, a lawyer who has methodically documented the mendacious charges used to incarcerate many Muslim activists as terrorists.
The government lawyers must know these pre-emptive cases are fake,” he said. “They must know they’re prosecuting people before a crime has been committed based on what they think the defendant might do in the future. They defend what they are doing by saying that they are protecting the nation from people who might want to do it harm. I’m sure they’ve been co-opted at least to believe that. But I think they also know that they are twisting the legal concepts, they are stretching them beyond what the framework of the law can tolerate. They have convinced themselves that it is OK to convict many innocent people as long as they prevent a few people from committing crimes in the future. They are creating an internal culture within the Justice Department where there is contempt for the law and for the foundational principle that it is better for one guilty person to go free than that one innocent person is convicted. They must know they do not do justice, and that they serve only ideological ends.
"One constantly hears in American political discourse that Pakistan is so terribly un-democratic because the shadowy, omnipotent ISI functions with no accountability or transparency. Yet here they are being ordered by that nation’s highest court to account for serious detainee abuse (this, despite the fact that Pakistan’s problems with Terrorism are, at the very least, as pressing as those faced by the U.S.). Yet this type of accountability just brought to Pakistan’s intelligence service is simply inconceivable in the United States. It is virtually impossible to imagine the U.S. Supreme Court ordering the CIA to disclose documents about its treatment of detainees or, even more unrealistically, to permit the victims of CIA abuse to have their grievances heard in court. Anyone who doubts that can simply review the past decade of full-scale immunity bestowed by the Justice Department and subservient American federal courts on all executive agencies in the War on Terror. We should think about that the next time some American pundit, politician, or media figure righteously holds forth on how undemocratic and oppressive is Pakistan as opposed to the U.S."
-Glenn Greenwald, in U.S. v. Pakistan on transparency and accountability. Great read.In other words, you’re saying: “I don’t take these statistics as fact because they don’t conform to MY narrow understanding of Islam.”
The article’s “generalizations” were the result of a study conducted by a professor of law. It’s completely legitimate to criticize its methods, but to dismiss its results with no rebuttal is simply denial.
As for your qualms with American Muslims who are content with a secular system, let me ask you this. Why would Muslims want to establish a codified system of Islamic law in a non-Islamic country?
I think Imam Abdul Feisal Rauf puts it best in his book “What’s Right with Islam is What’s Right with America”:
Many American Muslims regard America as a better “Muslim” country than their native homelands. This may sound surprising if not absurd to many Americans, and Muslims outside America, but it is founded on the argument that the American Constitution and system of governance uphold the core principles of Islamic law.
Muslim legal scholars have defined five areas of life that Islamic law must protect and further. These are life, mind (that is, mental well-being or sanity), religion, property (or wealth), and family (or lineage and progeny). Any system of rule that upholds, protects, and furthers these rights is therefore legally “Islamic,” or Shariah compliant, in its substance. Because these rights are God-given, they are inalienable and cannot be deprived of any man or woman without depriving them of their essential humanity.
What I am demonstrating is that the American political structure is Shariah compliant, for “a state inhabited predominantly by Muslims neither defines nor makes it synonymous with an Islamic state. It can become truly Islamic only by virtue of a conscious application of the sociopolitical tenets of Islam to the life of the nation, and by an incorporation of those tenets in the basic constitution of the country.” By the same token, a state that does incorporate such sociopolitical tenets has become de facto an Islamic state even if there are no Muslims in name living there, for it expresses the ideals of the good society according to Islamic principles.
You, by taking it upon yourself to determine who is and isn’t a “true” Muslim, have assumed you have authority on this matter. The United States is home to an estimated six million Muslims, many of whom are devout and would never consider themselves secular. And by dismissing all of them, you’re also dismissing hundreds of imams who have been certified by the highest institutions of Islamic learning in the world, people who live in America yet have no desire to impliment Sharia because they feel that current systems of law present no conflict with living as a devout Muslim.
As for my response about “freedom” and “jihad,” my commentary was entirely sarcastic; its context may have been lost on you if you’re not American. I was mocking the anti-Muslim right in America who often claims, without reason, that Muslims are trying to politically infiltrate America through a philosophical jihad of sorts.
American Muslims Don't Want Shariah, According To Study
(RNS) North American Muslims are more than satisfied with the secular legal system and do not want a set of parallel courts for Islamic law, according to a new study of U.S. and Canadian Muslims by a Washington-based think tank.
The study, by University of Windsor law professor Judy Macfarlane for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, would seem to refute critics’ claims that American Muslims want to impose Shariah, or Islamic law.
In fact, the study indicates that Muslims are just as unwilling to accept Islamic law as non-Muslims.
Can you believe this, tumblr? The sort of lies the left is willing to spread in the name of “facts” or “reality” never fails to amaze me.
STAND UP FOR YOUR FREEDOMS BEFORE THE ISLAMOFASCISTS COMPLETE THEIR STEALTH JIHAD ON AMERICA.
"Unsatisfying as it seems, a democratic outcome is exactly what we got. In an authoritarian society — probably even in today’s post-Saddam Iraq — governments will happily sentence citizens to jail to slake the public thirst for justice. In a liberal democracy, however, we put a very high burden on the state in taking away the liberty of a citizen accused of a crime."
-Why We Should Be Glad the Haditha Massacre Marine Got No Jail Time
It’s sickening that someone could actually suggest we should be “glad” that a man, having murdered 24 civilians (including a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair and six children huddled in a room), will not spend a single day in jail for his crimes. Iraqi survivors were so fearful for their safety that they declined to testify; what does that say about our idea of justice?
Of course, most of this article made me rage, but I literally snorted at the last line. Yes, a liberal democracy should put a very high burden on the state in taking away liberties. Unfortunately, I actually find it unbelievable that anyone would think that we live up to those ideals. We have a justice system in which people are detained indefinitely due to unproven associations, where people are put to death based on faulty evidence, and as I wrote earlier today, where people are lured into fake plots created by their own government. If not for the public thirst for “justice” in the form of visible action by the government combatting a perceived threat, then for what?
