PrintAugust 7, 2010
The Manhattan Mosque and Women
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the ACLU, and the go-along-to get-along throng who support building a massive mosque at Ground Zero need to explain why they're okay with a Shariah version of Jim Crow laws for women in America. Are they ignorant or just indifferent to backers of the mosque who promote Shariah law as compatible with U.S. law?
Is their support of a thirteen-story, $100-million mosque about two hundred feet from where the World Trade Center collapsed and nearly three thousand innocents died at the hands of Islamic terrorists based on the inane appeasement theory that if we build it, they won't come back?
While we're at it, NOW and its feminist allies need to explain their deafening silence. Are they placated by the assumption that gals might join men in the pool at an Islamic center "guided by Islamic values"? Is the National Council of Women's Organizations still too busy trying to crack the membership glass ceiling at Augusta National Golf Club to get teed off about industrial-strength inequality of women?
Imam Faisal Abdur Rauf is the man behind the mosque project. The imam says that Shariah law is compatible with American law. According to his blog on Huffington Post, "What Shariah law is all about," it's not the stuff that makes us "cringe":
We hear a lot about "firebrand" Muslim clerics calling for the installation of Shariah law. It conjures images of women being stoned and forced into hiding behind burkas and denied educations. We think of beheadings and amputations as a form of justice. And we cringe.
We cringe, too, and then some. Andrew McCarthy's exposé of Rauf reveals his connections to terrorist organizations and Shariah law. And we cringe some more.
Are Bloomberg et al so enamored of Rauf and the smiling female face of Shariah Law on Rauf's website that they refuse to investigate his "mission" and his financial backers? Bloomberg says it would be "un-American" to do so, according to the Huffington Post.
Have they missed the noseless female face of Shariah law on Time Magazine?
Rauf calls his mosque project the "Cordoba Initiative." Cordoba is a city in Spain where a victorious Muslim army built a mosque in place of a church in the 8th century. Are we feeling tolerance yet?
The imam says it's about "bringing back the atmosphere of interfaith tolerance and respect that we have longed for since Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in harmony and prosperity eight hundred years ago." He reminds us cheerfully that it's the time when "Jews and Christians living under Muslim rule simply had to pay a tax to finance their protection by their Muslim overlords."
Sounds like the forerunner of "ObamaCare." Or Chicago's mobs. But I digress.
The imam's website states:
[T]here is a close similarity between the values expressed in American secular documents and those characterizing Islamic Law. We all know that the Declaration of Independence champions Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness as "inalienable" rights -- but how many of us know that Islamic Law is built upon the "God-given" rights to life, human dignity, religious freedom, family cohesion, mental health and property? This should not be a surprise: after all, both value systems emanate from the Abrahamic Ethic.
Are you kidding me? The United States of America doesn't need another system of laws "not that far from" our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. We're quite content with the real thing.
Rauf insists that "[r]ather than fear Shariah law, we should understand what it actually is. Then we can encourage Muslim countries to make the changes that achieve the essence of fairness and justice that are at the root of Islam."
Who really thinks that bin Laden and the Taliban are primed to receive an education in Islam from "the Great Satan"?
If Rauf is so captivated by America's system of laws, he should take his education act on the road to the Islamic-controlled nations and terrorist states whose barbaric practices make him "cringe." If he's serious about "[a]dvocating for human rights, including higher standards for the treatment of women," as he claims, he should open his mosque where women actually need "higher standards" of treatment. Take for example Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran -- please.
Instead of wasting critical time "educating" Americans on the true teaching and values of Islam, he should educate those Muslims who he says have "hijacked" its meaning in the name of terrorism and human rights abuses. How about focusing his efforts on those who are committing "honor" killings, which they believe is their duty under Islam?
How about Rauf having a face-to-face seminar for the Taliban wing of Shariah, educating them that sawing off a woman's nose and ears is an extremist distortion of Islam? The face on Time is the face of Afghan women who fear that the U.S. with its Judeo-Christian based laws will abandon them.
And then there's Iran, where Ashraf Kalhori has been imprisoned for two years, awaiting burial up to her neck and stoning to death for the preposterous crime of committing adultery all by herself. There's no mention of the suffering of Kalhori on the imam's website, much less any effort by him to help her.
Here's a thought. Rauf could turn his fleet of lawyers loose from litigating on behalf of his Manhattan mosque to file a brief on behalf of Kalhori in the Iranian court. The last time we checked, there aren't any American women or girls about to be stoned by Americans.
While he's at it, he could implore our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to have the State Department do a tad more than just urge Iran to change its method of executing innocent women. Surely America's self-proclaimed champion of women's rights can take time from transporting the legalized slaughter of unborn women to other nations.
Since Rauf uses Jesus Christ to support the roots of "true" Islam, he ought to study the Master in action when He stopped a mob intent on stoning a woman allegedly "taken in adultery." He did so by confronting them with the Mosaic Law they were perverting in their craven effort to trap Christ between a stone and a hard place. Christ stepped between the helpless woman and the mob. He didn't waste His time and her life educating people far removed from the practice of stoning.
As a rejoinder to those who will no doubt point to non-Muslim men in America who've killed or maimed their wives and daughters, consider: The evil cowards may try to hide behind an insanity defense, but American law does not allow them to hide behind "honor" in the name of our God.
Jan LaRue is senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union.
