The Case for Banning Sharia Law in America
The incompatibility of Islamic sharia law with secular courts stems from the underpinning of Islamism -- the unyielding union of the laws and punishments of the Qu'ran and Hadiths with the country's legal and political system. Sharia law is the legislation of these religious and criminal rules, which rejects America's constitutional secularism and legal penalties.
The Qu'ran commands Muslims to change secular laws to conform to sharia, eventually establishing Islamic law worldwide. Islamic courts want their fatwas to supersede the civil and criminal laws, untying Muslims from civil secular courts.
The facts reveal that in 2008, when the first sharia court was recognized in the U.K., within one year, over 85 recognized sharia courts were established within the U.K.'s Tribunal Court system. The problem with this rapidly spreading dogma is that several of these courts have issued some fatwas that are completely incompatible with British and European law.
As Islam is a male-dominated ideology, the laws of the Qu'ran make half of its devotees, its female population, second-class citizens. This inequality has drawn recent attention to the need for additional British legislation to rein in these courts so they abide by British law.
It appears that once any legal system opens its doors to Islamic law, that door will be hard to close...and eventually, the only thing missing will be a parallel Islamic government.
But even with this reality in front of Americans, there are still many who insist that our laws will prevent such circumstances from ever occurring in the U.S. And because of this nonchalant attitude, there are numbers of people, both Muslim and non-Muslim, who believe that sharia law is not a threat to non-Muslim Americans or to the Western liberal democratic rule of law.
Sharia Law Is in the U.S.
The possibility that Muslim-only towns and urban enclaves could be created in the U.S. seems unimaginable to most Americans, but it already is a reality. Just travel 150 mile northwest of New York City to the woods of the western Catskills, and you will find Islamberg, a private Muslim community founded in 1980 by Sheikh Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani. Sheikh Gilani is said to be one of the founders of Jamaat al-Fuqra, a terrorist organization believed to be responsible for dozens of bombings and murders in the U.S. and abroad.
Islamberg is only one of twenty to thirty Muslim-only communities and training compounds that this Pakistani group supports through Muslim affiliates in America. This radical group has purchased land in isolated areas close to city networks and infrastructure. Jamaat al-Fuqra now has sites in Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Pennsylvania, California, Washington, Colorado, Michigan, and Illinois, as well as Canada, Venezuela, and Trinidad.
The sharia debate in the U.S. is heating up as more and more Americans are reacting to lawyers requesting rulings based on sharia law, and local judges agreeing to make them. This has happened in a New Jersey divorce case, a Maryland child custody case, and most recently in a Florida property case. These cases are now a precedent for other American-Muslim communities. In addition, according to the Center for Security Policy study that was published in May 2011, there are actually over fifty Appellate Court cases from 23 states that all involve conflicts between sharia law and American state law.
There are numbers of Muslim community leaders challenging the delicate line between religious freedom and the laws against state religion by petitioning in favor of living under sharia law. The moment one court allows the establishment of an independently ruled enclave, others courts in liberal cities across the nation will petition for the same opportunity.
Another example of efforts to usurp the Constitution are the actions of the global Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), whose main agenda is to have "hate speech" laws enforced against anyone who criticizes Islam. And, unfortunately, there are those determined to enforce sharia on their own who attack and murder any nearby dissenters. The Qu'ran justifies and protects these people's violence by declaring that it is blasphemous to mock or degrade any component of Islam. According to sharia law, such activity is punishable by death.
It is this ongoing effort to shut down public criticism of Islam that presents the gravest danger to America -- one that the Muslim Brotherhood and its Salafist organizations regard as key to limiting individual rights over the rights of the community. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), along with other Islamic activist groups, continues to push back, often with demonization of character and follow-up lawsuits. Recently, intimidation and character assassination have been used against U.S. politicians who question Islamism or want hearings on issues relating to radical Islamic terrorism, along with those Congressmen who introduce state legislation to ban all foreign law.
Preventing Sharia through Legislation
The Court of Appeals is the system used to review lower court decisions and believed by some to be the stopgap against foreign law, including sharia, from entering our legal system. However, some Islamic cases that have reached the Appellate Court for review have retained the sharia rulings even in the face of sharia's contradiction to American civil law.
The U.S. is heading towards dangerous territory if its citizens buy into the twisting of constitutional amendments. Indeed, what everyone really needs is the interpretations of the laws as they are written in order to prevent the encroachment of Islamism into the court system.
The establishment of sharia courts within the arbitration laws is a leading objective of every peace-loving, kindhearted, moderate male Muslim. I have asked several male American Muslims whom I know, some living very happily in my community and in the U.S., what their one greatest wish is. The answer is always the same: "Everyone should be a Muslim."
The line must be drawn in states' legislatures, not in the courts. It is imperative that we recognize the differences between the religion of Islam and the ideology of Islamism. Political correctness is leading to interpretations of the Constitution and its amendments that are pushing America across that line.
If non-Muslim Americans do not recognize how close they are to the precipice, then they are beyond a shadow of a doubt going to fall victims to an Islamic conquest. Time is running out.