On
the Moral and Legal Status of Islam in the United States, By Jason D. Hill,
6/14/19, American Thinker.
Last
week, Hungarian leader Viktor Orban and Canada’s leading intellectual, Jordan
Peterson, met to lambast illegal immigration and political
correctness which they believe make sensible public discussions impossible.
Peterson also made a noteworthy claim worth thinking about. He said that Islam
is not compatible with democracy and that this issue has been barred from
public discussion.
I
believe Peterson is correct. Islam is not only incompatible with democracy. It
is inimical to America’s fundamental values and principles. More important, it
is in violation of the United States Constitution. It is time for the United
States to take a pre-emptive strike against a moral and political ideology
whose stated goal is the abolition of our political system.
When
we examine the application of Sharia law in the West, most particularly in
Europe where it is gaining ascendancy, people will come to see a few
fundamental tenets about Islam. Its foundation and governing principle is that
Sharia law regulates the personal and public behavior of all Muslims and
non-Muslims under its governance. When we think of Islam mainly as a
religion, we cannot disambiguate it from Sharia law which, when examined,
allows us to see that the legal, cultural and political aspects of the religion
supersede the purely private religious aspects of it. World Islam, above all,
has become a political ideology.
Sharia
law is a weaponized political tool supervening the public sphere that violates
every sacred tenet of American life.
The
institution of slavery remains lawful under Sharia law. Those who repudiate
their faith in Islam directly or indirectly are guilty of capital offenses
punishable by death. It, therefore, conflicts with our constitutional human
right of freedom of conscience and religion. The Sharia law of apostasy
restricts other human rights, such as freedom of expression and association.
Sharia law does not guarantee equal rights for men and women.
This
past April, the nation of Brunei, in a four-page
document addressed to the European
Parliament, defended its new Sharia law implementation by insisting that
stoning to death for adultery, extra-marital sex, or amputation for offenses
such as sodomy and theft and the death penalty for homosexuality be regarded as
permissible because it comes from Allah.
In
2011, a Muslim group in Denmark in a “Call to Islam” campaigned vigorously to make parts of Copenhagen and
other Danish cities into “Sharia Law Zones” that would function as autonomous
“enclaves” ruled by Islamic law.
Salafism,
a sect within Islam, calls for the destruction of Western democracy, and
demands that it be replaced by a Universal Islamic Caliphate, and world-wide
Islamic theocracy ruled by Islamic law. So does the charter of Hamas. The
statement referred to man-made laws and rules as obstacles to be destroyed by
all Muslims and to rid the world of the great evil of democracy.
Islamic
courts are also operating in many of Germany’s big cities. In Britain a Muslim
group called “Muslims Against the Crusades” has called for the application of Sharia and
championed turning twelve cities including a renamed London called
“Londonistan” into Independent Islamic states. Ruled by Sharia law, the states
within Britain would operate completely outside of British Jurisprudence.
The
“parallel justice system” is not only compromising secular law in Germany,
Denmark, the Netherlands and France where Islamic law is displacing French law
in parts of suburban Paris, but also right here in the United States of
America.
Let
us never forget the 2008 case of a Moroccan man and his 17-year-old wife who
immigrated to America. A short while after migrating to the United States, she
filed a restraining order claiming that her husband was repeatedly raping her.
The husband did not deny that the were non-consensual; he simply told the Judge
that in his religion the wife was required to submit to and obey all his
desires. The New Jersey judge stated that, given his understanding of
Islam, the man did not intend to commit a crime and was therefore innocent. The
judge denied the restraining order. It was, fortunately overturned by a higher
court.
There
have been other cases in the United States where judges allowing Islamic law
and customs to supersede inalienable constitutional rights have simply been
seen as nothing more than being guilty of committing a legal error.
Just
as problematic is the extent to which a number of American financial
institutions have started taking steps to become Sharia compliant. This is in order to both attract and
manage Muslim wealth.
In
2017 the Quran was used for the first time to swear in a new US Congressman, Keith
Ellison. He was a former spokesperson for the Nation of Islam and became the
second highest leader of the Democratic National Committee. Representative
Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) followed in January of 2019 by wearing a traditional
Palestinian robe and took the oath on Thomas Jefferson’s translated version of
the Quran.
A
number of US public schools are commemorating Muslim holidays and holding
Islamic prayers towards Mecca. Rocky Mountain High school in Colorado in
2011 became the first school in the United States to recite the Pledge of
Allegiance in Arabic, replacing “One Nation Under God” with “One Nation Under
Allah”. Revolutions of the deepest kinds always begin with our children.
It
was, indeed, our late great President, Abraham Lincoln who declared: “The
philosophy of the classroom today will be the philosophy of the government of
tomorrow.”
That
government is arriving soon, armed with a philosophy few of us as American will
survive.
Jason D. Hill is professor of philosophy at DePaul
University in Chicago. His areas of specialization include ethics, social and
political philosophy, American foreign policy, cosmopolitanism and race theory.
He is the author of several books, including “We Have
Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People” (Bombardier
Books/Post Hill Press). Follow him on Twitter @JasonDhill6..
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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