Steal a loaf of bread and one or both of your upper extremities will be hacked off at the wrist. Get caught holding hands with your same—sex fiancé and the only thing the two of you will ever share again is a slow, painful, death.  Are you a married woman who's just suffered the brutality of gang—rape?  Well, you'll find either four males your attackers were stupid enough to allow to bear witness to the crime, or find yourself guilty of adultery —— a fate far worse than anything you suffered during the actual assault. Adulterers, and others deemed accountable for acts 'incompatible with chastity,' are wrapped head—to—toe mummy style, buried in sand up to their chests, and slowly and brutally stoned to death by their neighbors.

Welcome to the merciless world of Islamic Sharia Law, where religious 'scholars' sit as judges and juries.  This medieval system of 'justice' oversees countless stonings (video),  beheadings, crucifixions, and often—fatal floggings in Islamic theocracies each year. But the system is not confined to those lands only.

A growing number of countries with Muslim majorities are, while maintaining secular constitutions and penal codes, imposing religious law for family and civil matters.  Less harsh than complete Sharia, indeed; yet this bifurcation creates what amounts to an Unequal Rights Amendment to the law.  Women are treated as property, existing under the total command of, and fear of legal beatings from, their typically polygamous husbands or fathers. In divorce settlements, females living within this sexual apartheid rarely receive half that of men in property and wealth distribution and generally lose custody of their children —— particularly boys.

To be sure, the greatest direct threat to western civilization emanates from the fanatical Muslims we currently face in the war on terror.  These Islamo—Fascists make no pretense. Their openly—proclaimed  goal is to subjugate the globe to their harshest ideological and penal precepts.  Yet, of equal or, perhaps, greater, menace are growing attempts by so—called 'moderate' Muslim leaders to create dichotomous legal systems within non—Muslim countries.

Nowhere is this more rampant than Europe, where an expanding Muslim population is led by those who would like nothing better than to establish a caliphate government beholding to Sharia Law.

How do you keep a wave upon the sand?

During the course of the past 30 years, Islamic populations and culture have expanded throughout Europe at a rate which can only be described as alarming. Oriana Fallaci's last work (she died  today and will be sorely missed) was the book The Force of Reason, which described the situation Europe faces. (Se this review  for an overview.) Some of the remarkable facts that have come to be in a mere generation:

 an estimated 20 million Muslims now live in Europe; 

 the most popular name for a baby boy in Brussels is Mohammed;

 Muslims plan to build a mosque in London that will hold 40,000 people;

 Dutch cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam are close to having Muslim majorities.

Europe's Left have turned a blind—eye to reality in favor of the furtherance of their quixotic social—engineering experiment — multiculturalism. For these misguided appeasers, sharing a ferocious antipathy toward the U.S, Israel, and capitalism with most Muslims has, unfortunately, obscured the fact that Islamic core tenets are vehemently and diametrically opposed to those of their own.  This has created a dangerously bi—cultural environment —— the perfect breeding ground for political extortion. 

Sharia's not an asset to the Abbey

According to a very disturbing February 2006 ICM opinion poll, 40% of British Muslims want Sharia law introduced into parts of the country.  The dread of 'home—grown' terrorism originating from their own soil last month provided Muslim leaders a unique blackmail opportunity to further those wishes.

Following the recently defused airline bomb terror plot, Dr. Syed Aziz Pasha, the Secretary General of the Union of Muslim Organizations in the UK and Ireland met with British government officials.  During the talks, the Muslim leader had the gall to suggest that the introduction of Sharia Law, together with special bank holidays for Muslim religious festivals, would help to 'combat terror' in Britain.  The Daily Mail reported  his extortive reasoning on August 15, 2006,

'... if you give us religious rights, we will be in a better position to convince young people that they are being treated equally along with other citizens.'

Thankfully, a week later, according to BBC News, Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly stated that

'the government was opposed to any form of law contrary to British civil law, such as Sharia law.' 

The Secretary added that

'our ideas and policies should not be based on special treatment for minority or faith communities;'

then went on to suggest that

'Islamic schools that promote 'solationism'and extremism should be closed down.'

Earlier this year, Australia was faced with similar demands from radical Islamic clerics.  During a February national television interview,  Treasurer Peter Costello said that Muslims who want to live under Sharia law have no place in Australia.  He went on to suggest that those not willing to adhere to parliamentary law should simply find a better place to live.

'If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Shariah law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you. If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Shariah law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option.'

How do you find a word that means Sharia?

Score one for our Anglosphere allies in the British Commonwealth. But this was merely a single battle in the global war. How are other countries responding when put to similar tests?  How many will stand up to the threat of terrorism or denouncement as 'racist' or 'Islamophobic?'   Will they recognize the coerced acceptance of Sharia Family Law for what it really is? To commit a compound metaphor, it is a foot in the door for those who, when offered a finger, might literally take a hand.

To the leaders of those nations, here are but a few recent reminders of what Sharia has meant to civilized society:

 In Bangladesh, seven Islamic members of the Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) were sentenced to death last year for the murder of 2 judges.  On August 31, 2006, BBC News reported that 'more than 100 cases have been filed against alleged members of the JMB in connection with a series of bombings which specifically targeted 'judges and court rooms.'  One of the militants, Abdur Rahman, the head of this banned Islamic group, whose goal is the introduction of Sharia law into the country, stated that the murders were carried out 'on the instructions of God.'

 The imposition of Sharia Law in 1983 in Sudan, where 70% of the population is Muslim, is regarded as a strong catalyst for the 20 year—long civil war which is at the heart of the current genocide in Darfur.

 In Mogadishu, fighters loyal to Somalia's Islamic courts, once considered militia, will soon be uniformed to formally enforce strict Sharia law upon the entire land. Earlier this year these same militiamen killed two people at the screening of a World Cup soccer broadcast banned because it violated their strict interpretation of Islamic law.

 At the Amsterdam trial of Mohammed Bouyeri, the killer of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, the defendant told the court that Sharia law commanded that he 'cut off the head of anyone who insults Allah and his prophet.'  Bouyeri has also refused to acknowledge the Dutch court's jurisdiction in the matter, as it is not Islamic.

 The furor over the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed originally published last September invoked worldwide rioting, boycotts, property destruction, death threats, and, ultimately, over 100 deaths. Publishers across the globe obediently accepted the censorship and intolerance of Sharia — most pulled or refused to print the cartoons.

How do you catch a shroud and pin it down?

Meanwhile, the Italian Alps aren't that republic's only slippery slopes. Riccione on the Adriatic Riviera has closed off a section of its famed beach to men in order to allow Muslim women an area in which to swim. The feckless resort caved to pressure to respect Sharia's injunctions against mixed bathing and women displaying their bodies to members of the opposite sex.  More recently, and even closer to home, in Canada, there has been intense public sparring over proposals to permit Sharia religious arbitration in civil disputes.

And, although Muslim immigrants to the U.S are perhaps better assimilated than anywhere else on the planet, one can't ignore the words attributed to Council on American—Islamic Relations (CAIR) founder Omar M. Ahmad by the San Ramon Valley Herald on July 4, 1988,

'Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.'

Portentous declarations, indeed, particularly when coming from the chairman of one of the nation's most influential Islamic civic organizations.   Nevertheless, while we do battle with 'radical' Muslim 'extremists' abroad, and prepare to do the same at home, we continue to completely ignore the tangential threat imposed by their 'moderate' confidantes. 

Also from Fallaci's last book:

'In 1974 [Algerian President] Houari Boumedienne, the man who ousted Ben Bella three years after Algerian independence, spoke before the General Assembly of the United Nations. And without circumlocutions he said:

'One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst into the northern one. But not as friends. Because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer by populating it with their children. Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.''

We were certainly forewarned over 30 years ago.  Clearly, no one was listening then.  Perhaps it's only a matter of time before the U.S 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upholds the release of Muslim men charged with beating their wives as a matter of their 1st Amendment right to freedom of religion.  Today, the horrifying warning is this: the objective of spreading Islam and Sharia law throughout the world is by no means the sole dominion of those who would pilot airliners into our buildings or strap explosives onto their brainwashed children. 

Are today's ears open any wider?

Marc Sheppard is a regular contributor to American Thinker and other publications. He welcomes your feedback.