Department of Offense

There are no ideal options in Egypt, but there is the worst option—a sharia government controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood

Clueless in Washington

NPR, Juan Williams, and Sharia Law
by Brigitte Gabriel and Guy Rodgers
11/07/2010

NPR’s sacking of Juan Williams was more than the politically correct act du jour. It was the latest in a series of media and political capitulations to Sharia law.

A central provision of Sharia law is its prohibition against speech that can be construed as “defaming” Islam or the prophet Mohammed. Where Sharia is practiced and enforced, such “defamation” is a criminal offense that can be punished by death.

In other words, what we in America take for granted as free speech is a capital crime in some areas of the Muslim world.

Islamists around the world are seeking to impose Sharia’s muzzling of free speech on free societies. The Organization of the Islamic Conference, composed of 56 Islamic states, has won passage of a United Nations resolution calling on countries to criminalize speech that “defames” religion—clearly referring to Islam. After all, does anyone really expect countries like Saudi Arabia to criminalize speech that “defames” Judaism?

Criminalizing speech that is deemed “defamation” of Islam is tantamount to a backdoor enactment of Sharia law. The law may have a different name or description, such as prohibiting “hate speech,” but the effect on speech is the same as if Sharia law were in place.

The Netherlands and Austria are two countries where such de facto “Sharia-compliant” laws are in effect. Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders is currently on trial for publicly criticizing Islam. Austrian Parliamentarian Susanne Winter was convicted of a similar “crime” in early 2009. And just last week we were informed that Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, an Austrian who is an ACT! for America member and chapter leader in our expanding international program, will go on trial there for allegedly transgressing the same law.

When newspapers around the world, including most in America, refused to publish the satirical Mohammed cartoons, capitulation to de facto Sharia law occurred. The ostensible reason was to avoid “offending” or “inflaming” the Muslim world. The practical effect was a widespread media self-censorship that was every bit as much a compliance with Sharia law as if Sharia law were the actual law of the land.

Some Muslims and Islamic organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) argue that such self-censorship is necessary because without it “Islamophobia” will continue to rise. But there is more here than meets the eye.

Immediately after Juan Williams’ appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, CAIR swung into action and demanded that NPR “address” what Juan Williams said.

Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR spokesman, appeared on Megyn Kelly’s program on Fox News to defend CAIR’s actions. Tellingly, he failed to reiterate his comment made in a 1993 article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, in which he said, “I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.”

CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad expressed a similar sentiment in 1998 when he was quoted in two California newspapers maintaining that “the Koran should be the highest authority in America.”

In other words, he wants Sharia law, not the Constitution, to be the supreme law of the land.

Contrast Hooper’s statement with one recently made by moderate and reformist Muslim Dr. Tawfik Hamid:

“Organizations like ACT! for America have come into existence because of the very real threat posed to free people everywhere by what some call “radical Islam” or “Islamism.” Sadly, the response I see from too many in the Muslim world is to reflexively label such efforts as “Islamophobic” rather than [to] conduct a serious evaluation of Islam that asks why so many non-Muslims harbor legitimate fears and concerns. I believe [that] the Muslim world needs to provide a peaceful understanding of the religion that unambiguously rejects the current mainstream teachings in Islam that promote hatred, discrimination, and violence. It is the responsibility of Islamic scholars to provide such alternative teaching to Muslims before asking the world to stop engaging in so-called “Islamophobia.”

Hamid’s reference to the harboring of “legitimate fears” by non-Muslims speaks directly to what Juan Williams was expressing. Don’t shut down free speech. Instead, we should encourage more speech that candidly addresses the threat of radical Islam and what that threat means to Americans, whether they are Muslim or non-Muslims.

It’s clear that NPR decided to make an example of Juan Williams for crossing a line into the Forbidden Zone of political correctness when he spoke out on the “sensitive” issue of Islam. But NPR’s action transcends the boundaries of political correctness. As newspapers did when they self-censored cartoon renderings of the prophet Mohammed, NPR sent an unmistakable message to Islamists worldwide that Sharia law, even when not formally the law of the land, trumps our First Amendment.

The organization shares the same goals as al Qaeda, but some experts believe — as a long-term threat to American security — the Brotherhood is more dangerous than Osama bin Laden’s followers.

Watch as former FBI special agent John Guandolo, ex-CIA officer Brian Fairchild and leading investigative journalist Patrick Poole break down the Brotherhood’s history, goals and its infiltration of leading U.S. government and educational institutions.

Also, stay with CBNNews.com for part two of their discussion on the Oct. 4 edition of Stakelbeck on Terror. The panel will give recommendations on how America can fight back against the Muslim Brotherhood’s threat.

Go to any playground in America and you’ll find children engaging in typical childish “conflict management.” They try to shout each other down. They call names, “you’re a poopy!” They put their hands over their ears and scream “I can’t hear you!”

And it’s exactly the kind of behavior we see regularly on display from the politically correct enablers of radical Islam.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson has unveiled the latest, and predictable, name-calling tactic intended to put us in our place—we’re all supposedly engaging in “McCarthyism.”

In a September 21st column, Robinson belittled Newt Gingrich for painting “Islam as the new Red Menace.” He dismissed any concern about a “stealthy insinuation of sharia into America’s legal system because no such thing is happening.”

And the kicker: “The ‘stealth jihadis,’ I suppose, must be like the ‘known communists’ on the list in Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s hand.”

Robinson claims there is only one example of sharia here in America, the case of the New Jersey judge who ruled that a Muslim man committed no crime while beating and raping his wife, because he was acting consistent with his Islamic “practices.”

Robinson’s arrogance is exceeded only by his ignorance.
• Sharia has penetrated our financial system, in the form of sharia-compliant financial instruments offered by the likes of Citi Group and AIG. In an example of government accommodating sharia, Minnesota offers sharia-compliant mortgages for Muslims.
• Muslim prison employees, law enforcement officials, and even a Disneyland employee, have sued for the right to wear the hijab as part of their uniforms.
• Muslim parents in New Jersey are demanding private prayer rooms for their children in the PUBLIC elementary schools.
• According to a National Public Radio report in 2007, as many as 100,000 Muslims are living in polygamous marriages here in America.
• Harvard provided women-only gym hours to accommodate the demands of Muslims.
Of course, I could go on and on.

The Ground Zero Mosque imam was touted by politically correct elites as a paragon of interfaith tolerance. Now America knows Imam Rauf believes any government that does not practice sharia law is “unjust.”

Twenty years ago, those in the UK who spoke out against the coming of sharia were also ridiculed. Today there are some 85 sharia courts in the UK.

The playground antics of enablers like Robinson, who insist on calling names, conjuring up the demon of McCarthyism, and engaging in a foolish “see no sharia, hear no sharia, speak no sharia” will not change these facts nor diminish the threat.

But every time they launch into their sanctimonious condemnations of anyone who dares to expose the threat of stealth jihad, Islamists laugh at them behind their backs for being such dupes.

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