NY Times Op-Ed Defends Sharia Law … in America

Islam is the Political Structure for the STATE for Moslems ...... one cannot separate the two

Outrageous: NY Times Op-Ed Defends Sharia Law … in America

Behold the bemusing readiness to betray the very best of the West in order to placate the very worst in Islam.


In recent years the New York Times has published more than its share of slippery apologias for Islam, but the op-ed it ran on September 2 in defense of sharia law was not only slippery but curiously feeble as well. Eliyahu Stern, an assistant professor of religious studies and history at Yale, harshly criticized the attempts currently underway in over a dozen U.S. states to pass legislation prohibiting the introduction in those jurisdictions of sharia courts. “Some of these efforts,” Stern lamented, “would curtail Muslims from settling disputes over dietary laws and marriage through religious arbitration….”

What to say about this? First, let’s be clear that even a sharia court whose authority was strictly confined to dietary and marital questions would be a matter for concern. Take marriage, for example. Under sharia, marriage is a very lopsided affair, rights-wise. A man can divorce his wife at will — all it takes is saying the words. (One sharia judge recently ruled that a brief text message from husband to wife is sufficient to end a marriage.) By contrast, a woman who wishes to split from her husband must submit to a lengthy and often very expensive process of litigation that may very well end with her being turned down and forced to return home. Under sharia, she has no automatic right to a divorce. (Indeed, under sharia she hardly has any right to anything.)

That said, however, to pretend that sharia law is concerned only with such relatively innocuous matters as dietary laws and marital quarrels is disingenuous in the extreme. Yes, some of those who are trying to introduce sharia courts in the U.S. indeed insist that they wish only to employ sharia to resolve disagreements in these and other harmless-sounding areas. But don’t fool yourself — once the door is open, the sky’s the limit. The whole premise of sharia, after all, is that it applies to everything in life — not just food and domestic quarrels. The notion of separating the state from religion is utterly alien to the spirit and the letter of sharia, which, as most readers of this site are already well aware, prescribes the death penalty for apostates, homosexuals, and adulteresses — and that’s just for starters.

Just take a glance at these excerpts from the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, ratified in 1990 by representatives of most of the world’s Muslim nations. They make it clear that, in Islam, sharia is all — its authority is universal and eternal, and it trumps any non-Islamic notion of human rights:

* Safety from bodily harm is a guaranteed right. It is the duty of the state to safeguard it, and it is prohibited to breach it without a Shari’ah-prescribed reason.
* Every man shall have the right, within the framework of the Shari’ah, to free movement….
* Everyone shall have the right to enjoy the fruits of his scientific, literary, artistic or technical labour of which he is the author; and he shall have the right to the protection of his moral and material interests stemming therefrom, provided it is not contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah.
* There shall be no crime or punishment except as provided for in the Shari’ah.
* Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah.
* All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari’ah.
* The Islamic Shari’ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of any of the articles of this Declaration.

The Cairo Declaration, it should be noted, was a response to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Muslim countries rejected because it was inconsistent with sharia law. If Muslim leaders acknowledge that sharia is incompatible with Western concepts of human rights, why can’t Professor Stern acknowledge it, too?


Anti-sharia laws, claimed Stern, would “stigmatiz[e] Islamic life.” No, they would recognize the reality of sharia law. Stern dismissed Newt Gingrich’s description of sharia as “a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States,” claiming that “[t]he crusade against Shariah undermines American democracy, ignores our country’s successful history of religious tolerance and assimilation, and creates a dangerous divide between America and its fastest-growing religious minority.” But how does a crusade against a blindingly un-democratic system of law undermine democracy? How can banning a law built on intolerance and religious separatism constitute a blow to tolerance and assimilation? One object of sharia is to reinforce the “divide” between Muslims and infidels — how would prohibiting it create “a dangerous divide”? Every one of Stern’s arguments is precisely 180 degrees away from the truth.

the followup to the facebook debate are telling ...........

Stern’s article, as it happens, came a day after the website of the Norwegian journal Minerva reported on a debate about Islam and secular society that had taken place on Facebook and been reposted on the website of IslamNet, Norway’s largest Muslim organization. The debate began with a posting by one Mohamed Abdishazan to the effect that much of sharia “belongs to a specific time in our history (during the prophet’s life)” and that today there is a need to separate “religion and politics” and to “reform” Islam’s approach to human rights.

This brought a furious reply from Fahad Qureshi, head of IslamNet: “so you think that Allah (PBUH)’s religion in its original form does not possess human rights? You know that this is kufr [infidel thinking]…and if this is so then you are a kafir [infidel] according the ijma of Ahlus Sunnah wal Jama’ah [i.e. according to Muslim scholars].”

Qureshi was far from alone in being enraged at Abdishazan. Somebody calling himself Al Suhaymin rejected the idea of a country not ruled by sharia; Fatima Al-Noor warned that “one can NOT deny Allah’s laws just because we do not see the wisdom behind these laws, or perhaps because these laws don’t suit a kuffar [infidel] society. Allah’s laws are meant for all time….to say that I am against them and want a change is KUFR!”

For good measure, Qureshi cited a fatwa in which the Saudi Arabian salafist Shaykh Ul Islam Abdulazeez ibn Baaz (1910-99) had written that sharia laws “may not be rejected by anyone, nor may they be altered…whoever claims that something else is better is a disbeliever, as is the one who claims that it is permissible to act in defiance to it…it is a duty of those placed in authority to order him to turn to Allah in repentance if he is a Muslim; he either does so or he should be killed as a disbelieving apostate from Islam.” Ibn Baaz’s fatwa quoted from the hadith (sayings of Muhammed): “Whoever changes his religion, kill him.” That’s sharia in a nutshell, folks.

[bcp (Premo)]

Whole bunch of religions out there that used, or use marijuana in their meditations, or services. Its even been suggested that in the Christian religion, that annointing oils contained the oil from the marijuana plant.

If we have to bend for the Sharia law due to its being part of a religious sect, then I see no alternative to make it legal to once again pass the communion bong during any church service for any religion that wishes to do so.
I would go as far to say that it might be ok to go ahead and allow it for private meditation and prayer outside of the church building.

As much as I am against the legalization of any recreational drug, I am more against the freedom to worship as you choose being taken away. So I must put my signature on this most holy high.