Going Islamisant on Marriage
We have previously argued that President Obama’s policies in foreign policy are Islamisant (iss-lam-i-ZONT). That is, we do not say he is Islamic, or Islamist, to be sure. What we argue instead is the effect of his policies is to favor Islam.
He will not brook any criticism of Muslim majority lands. He will not allow anyone in his administration to link jihadist violence with its Muslim roots. His viewpoint has been effectively rebutted by the serious article “What ISIS really wants” by Graeme Wood in the Atlantic.
Government policy is not unlike a maneuvering board familiar to navigators. If you halt one or two or three vessels but you permit the fourth vessel to proceed at its regular speed, you greatly increase the fourth vessel’s speed, proportionately. This is called Speed of Relative Motion.
President Obama’s stated goal is to “fundamentally transform this country [the United States].” Here at home he is doing so with astonishing speed. His administration is the most anti-Israel, the most anti-Catholic, the most anti-Evangelical, the most anti-Lutheran in U.S. history.
Never before has Israel been so endangered by any administration’s foreign policy. Never before have Catholics, Evangelicals, and Lutherans had to appeal to federal courts, desperately seeking protections from an intrusive and oppressive administration.
This is a radical change from all previous U.S. history. He is realizing his hope. We are suffering the change.
So, how might overturning marriage in America not simply advance a radical homosexual agenda, but also serve an Islamisant goal?
The legal standing of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is one of the greatest barrier to Muslim Shariah law in this country. It is the greatest obstacle to mainstreaming Muslim practice of plural marriage.
If anyone thinks these issues are not connected, he should think again. Prof. Jonathan Turley of George Washington University is the leading intellectual advocate of polygamy. He told an overflow crowd at the Newseum in Washington in 2008 that the opponents of allowing same-sex couples to marry were right to say that it would lead to polygamy. “And I’m for that!”
Turley was wildly cheered for his boldness in openly embracing polygamy. His audience consisted mostly of journalists, liberal congressional staffers, court clerks, and graduate students. These elite representatives have long since sought to end natural marriage in America. This is the Obama constituency.
As soon as the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Windsor, striking down key portions of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, Prof. Turley hastened to Utah, where he succeeded in prompting a federal district court to overturn that state’s criminal law against polygamy. That law had been demanded of Utah Territory by the Congress in the 1890s as a condition of that predominantly Mormon state’s entry into the Union.
Where are we headed with this? Several years ago, Anglican Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali spoke to the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington. Bishop Nazir-Ali, born in Pakistan and a convert to Christianity, described the plight of British women who are forced into nonconsensual marriages and threatened with violence if they object. When these British women appeal to the police for protection, they are handed over to local Muslim councils that govern marriage issues under Shariah.
Bishop Nazir Ali has received numerous death threats for his outspoken opposition to Islamisant policies of the British government. He forthrightly argues that British identity was formed by British law and the Christian religion. This identity is being surrendered daily to the politically correct demands of bureaucracies whose rule is Islamisant.
Once again, and we emphasize this, Islamisant direction does not mean that President Obama’s administration is de jure Islamic, or that it favors Islamist rule. What we are saying is that the tendency of his Islamisant policies is to advance Islam to the detriment of other religious communities.
And we are saying that the overturn of marriage sought by this evolving administration is a key agenda item in the achievement of the “fundamental transformation” of America that President Obama has pledged to achieve.
Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison are senior fellows at the Family Research in Washington, D.C.