The Maldives: No debate on Sharia punishments, because “there is nothing to debate about in a matter clearly stated in the religion of Islam”

Protesters called for the arrest of the UN human rights chief for criticizing and calling for debate on flogging for extra-marital sex, as is called for in Qur’an 24:2: “The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication,- flog each of them with a hundred stripes: Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day: and let a party of the Believers witness their punishment.”

Such debates have been branded “anti-Islamic issues,” and the implication is clear that to challenge Sharia is to challenge Allah, which could conceivably bring its own set of charges (Qur’an 5:33) at some point in the Maldives’ gallop toward full Sharia.

The phenomenon on display here is also the major obstacle to reforms in Islamic countries where human rights in general, and the rights of non-believers and women are concerned. “Maldives won’t allow debates on anti-Islamic issues: Foreign Minister,” by Ahmed Hamdhoon for Haveeru News Service, November 26 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

The government will not allow debates to be held in the Maldives on issues that are against the fundamentals of Islam, Foreign Minister Ahmed Naseem said today.

The minister’s comments come two days after the UN human rights chief called for a public debate in the Maldives on the practice of flogging women found guilty of extra-marital sex.

Minister Naseem told Haveeru that the government would not open a basic Islamic principle such as flogging for public debate in the Maldives despite requests to do so.

“What’s there to discuss about flogging? There is nothing to debate about in a matter clearly stated in the religion of Islam. No one can argue with God,” he said.

“Our foreign ministry will not allow that to happen.”

Naseem stressed that the government will not act against the views expressed by Islamic Minister Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari on Navi Pillay’s comments.

“The government will follow the recommendations given by the Islamic Ministry on religious issues. The government will not stand up against the views expressed by Bari, which is the view of the government [regarding Pillay’s remarks],” he said.

“Maldives is a 100 percent Muslim country.”

During her four-day visit to the country, Pillay told parliamentarians on Thursday that flogging women convicted of extra-marital sex is one of the most inhumane and degrading forms of violence against women.

“I strongly believe that a public debate is needed in Maldives on this issue of major concern,” she said.

Pillay later told reporters that she held discussions with President Mohamed Nasheed, ministers and the judiciary on how to end the practice of flogging in the Maldives.

“At the very least, pending more permanent changes in the law, it should be possible for the government and the judiciary to engineer a practical moratorium on flogging,” she proposed.

She also called on Maldivian authorities to remove the “discriminatory” constitutional provision that requires every citizen to be a Muslim.

“I would again urge a debate on that to open up the benefits of the constitution to all and to remove that discriminatory provision,” she said.

Meanwhile, the UN human rights chief’s comments sparked protests in capital Male with some calling for her arrest.

Protestors surrounded the UN Building yesterday, condemning Pillay’s remarks and demanding an apology from the UN and parliamentarians.

Pillay’s visit was the first such visit to the Maldives by a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

From Jihadwatch

Islam vs. Islamism: The Truth about Islam

November 1, 2011 4:00 A.M.

National Review

The Truth about Islam
Taking on Andy McCarthy’s column “Islam or Islamist?”
Last Friday, a Bosnian Muslim named Mevlid Jasarevic walked up to the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo with a rifle and opened fire, terrorizing the city center until he was wounded by a police sharpshooter. Media reports identified him as a “radical Islamist.” What made him an “Islamist”? The fact that he shot up the embassy. On Thursday, Mevlid Jasarevic was simply a Muslim. He became an Islamist with the first shot from his Kalashnikov.

To be sure, the media have also identified Jasarevic as a Wahhabi — but that signifier likewise offered no clue before Friday as to what he was going to do on that day. After all, Wahhabi Islam is the official religion of Saudi Arabia, and no one thinks that every last Saudi citizen is likely one day to start firing at infidel embassies.

My point is that while my friend Andy McCarthy is quite right that there are some Muslims who are interested in implementing Islam’s supremacist political program and some who are not, the “Islam/Islamism” distinction is worthless to distinguish one group from the other. This is precisely because, as Andy quotes me as saying before, the distinction is artificial and imposed from without. There are not, in other words, Islamist mosques and non-Islamist mosques, distinguishable from one another by the sign outside each, like Baptist and Methodist churches. On the contrary, “Islamists” move among non-political, non-supremacist Muslims with no difficulty; no Islamic authorities are putting them out of mosques, or setting up separate institutions to distinguish themselves from the “Islamists.” Mevlid Jasarevic could and did visit mosques in Austria, Serbia, and Bosnia without impediment before he started shooting on Friday; no one stopped him from entering because he was an “Islamist.”

So if Muslims do not generally make this distinction among themselves, should non-Muslim analysts make it? The problem I see with doing so is that for all too many it is a way of implying that Islam itself has no political or supremacist elements, and that those Muslims who do hold political and supremacist aspirations constitute a tiny minority of extremists who have twisted and hijacked the religion. This is not only false, but misleading; it can and does make for wrongheaded and foolish policies that have wasted American lives, money, and matériel, and led us into numerous alliances and agreements with entities we would have been wiser about, had our analysis of Islam been more realistic and accurate.

All too often, American analysts have assumed that Muslim individuals and groups who have no open involvement with terrorism fully accept pluralism, constitutional values, and Western notions of human rights, including the freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for women. And all too often, they have been wrong in that assessment, often disastrously so. The billions that the U.S. has given to a duplicitous Pakistani government is a large-scale example; the tour of security procedures at O’Hare Airport given a few years ago to the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a smaller one. In these and many other cases, however, the foolishness of the authorities in question stemmed from their assumption that the people they were dealing with were not “Islamists,” and hence were natural allies.

We have been fooled by too many because of our haste to make this distinction where it cannot be legitimately made. We assume that Muslims who aren’t in al-Qaeda reject the al-Qaeda program, and certainly many do. But for some, the rejection is of al-Qaeda’s tactics, not of its goal.

Contrary to Andy’s characterization of my views, I am not saying that no distinctions can or should be made among Muslims. I am observing that Muslims themselves don’t make this one, and that no good comes from non-Muslims’ making it. It is important, as Andy puts it, to denominate “supremacist Muslims striving to impose on societies a classical, rigid construction of Islamic law, distinguishing them from authentic Muslim moderates who elevate reason, embrace pluralism, and take sharia as spiritual guidance rather than the mandatory law for civil society,” just as it was important to distinguish the 1,347 delegates who voted for Richard Nixon from the one who voted for Pete McCloskey at the Republican National Convention in 1972 (and the proportions are similar). But in doing so, we should be careful not to deceive ourselves about the foundations that the latter group has in Islamic texts and theology, or about its relative strength and influence within the Islamic world. Using the term “Islamist” for the dominant, mainstream, and traditional understanding of Islam, as if it were the non-traditional minority offshoot, deceives in precisely that way.

Andy says: “I think we have to separate Islamists from Islam.” Certainly we have to separate the people Andy calls Islamists (i.e., proponents of political Islam, even if spread by peaceful means) from our allies. We have to separate them from societal influence. But it is not up to us to separate them from Islam. That is up to the sincere Muslim moderates upon whom Andy places so much hope, but whose power, influence, and numbers are actually so sparsely in evidence.

Meanwhile, some of Andy’s critique is simply out of focus. He asserts that I say that “there is and can be but a single authentic form of Islam.” In reality, I have never claimed such a thing. I don’t think there can be a single authentic form of Islam. The false assumption Andy makes here is that if one rejects the Islam/Islamism distinction, one therefore believes there is only one authentic form of Islam. Actually there are many authentic forms of Islam, but one of the things they all agree on is that Islamic law should rightly be the law of society and that Islam should have a political manifestation. Sunnis, Shi’ites, and even Sufis (who were for a considerable period the leaders of the jihad in Chechnya against the Russians) hold to this idea.

Likewise out of focus is Andy’s denial that the “imposition of sharia” is an “inseparable part” of Islam. And why does he say that it isn’t? Because “there are too many non-supremacist Muslims to write off Islam.” However, the nature of Islam is found in the recognized authorities that define Islam, not in the dispositions of its various adherents. In other words, to find out what is or is not an “inseparable part” of Islam, one must consult the Qur’an and Sunnah as they have always been interpreted by Islamic authorities — and even Andy admits that when one does that, one sees that a political, supremacist aspect is deeply embedded in the thing itself. The mandate to impose sharia has always been understood by mainstream Islamic authorities as being intrinsic to Islam. That doesn’t mean every Muslim is out to implement that program, any more than every Christian is busy loving his enemies and turning the other cheek.

When he comes to naming Muslim reformers, Andy comes up with three: Zuhdi Jasser, Abdullah Saeed, and Abdurrahman Wahid. This in itself demonstrates the scope of the problem we face. Saeed offers an exegesis of the Qur’an that challenges the traditional Muslim interpretation without ever explaining why his is a minority, non-traditional understanding of the text. And I’d like to see Andy or anyone else produce a list of ten genuine Muslim reformers without including Jasser or Wahid — not to deny them their due, but just to see if it could be done. Jasser, meanwhile, leads a tiny group with no more than a few hundred Muslim members, despite getting massive and regular media exposure from conservatives like Andy who are avid to find moderate Muslims at all costs, as if our fight to defend human rights against Islamic supremacism and jihad is somehow less legitimate without Muslim spokesmen. As for Wahid, in his native Indonesia today his vision of Islam is in retreat before an aggressive and violent form of political and supremacist Islam that challenges Wahid’s views precisely on Islamic grounds.

Andy says of the Muslims who “sincerely believe Islam does not require a political dimension” that “I don’t believe it is our place to tell them they are wrong.” Indeed not. But it is also not our place to tell them they are right, or to misrepresent or magnify their place in Islamic tradition, theology, and present-day reality. Such groups are everywhere in retreat before supremacists who portray themselves as the exponents of authentic Islam. Those supremacists have not been effectively challenged within the Islamic world.

Andy asks: “Can it really be that Islam is the only doctrine in the history of the world that is immune from even the possibility of alteration and evolution?” But that is not at issue here. I never said that Islam couldn’t be altered or evolve. I am just trying not to pretend that it is other than what it is now, or other than what it always has been. Andy sees hopeful signs in Afghanistan’s dropping apostasy prosecutions after international pressure, Iran’s delaying stoning an adulteress, and the Saudis’ outlawing slavery. He sees the latter as evidence that “sharia can be changed.” But in reality, that ban doesn’t change sharia. It changes Saudi adherence to it. Sharia is still the same; there is still no madhhab (school of Islamic jurisprudence) that teaches that in the Islamic state slavery may not legitimately be practiced. Nor does Afghanistan’s reversal change Islamic apostasy law. It just shows that the Afghans are susceptible to world opinion. While that is welcome news, it is not Islamic reform, and does not offer a different version of Islam.

Andy is wrong in his claim that I have ever said that any form of Islam is “the only Islam,” but the fact is that throughout its history, and in all its theological, legal, and sectarian manifestations, Islam has always been supremacist and political. Acknowledging that is simply acknowledging reality. Pro-Western Muslim reformers have to start there. In Christian history, the Protestant reformers did not pretend that Church doctrine was other than what it was. They confronted and refuted portions of that doctrine. But Andy seems to expect contemporary Islamic reformers to succeed by pretending that Islam is not what its authoritative texts teach and what it always has been historically. He says that he does not see “what purpose is served” by telling Islamic reformers that “Islam is incorrigibly supremacist and political.” But if it is supremacist and political, whether “incorrigibly” or not, then sincere reformers have to start there in order to fix it. Wishful thinking and self-deception are not reform. Ultimately those doctrines can be combatted only by actually combatting them.

We do indeed, as Andy says, want Muslims as our allies, provided they sincerely reject Islam’s political and supremacist aspects. But it does them no service, and non-Muslims no service, to purvey comforting fictions about Islamic doctrine.

— Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth about Muhammad.

Sharia über Alles versus Western Justice

October 23, 2011

By Andrew G. Bostom

How is it that intelligent people cannot see the lesson of history when sharia enters a non-Islamic society, step by step?  Yale Assistant Professor of religious studies Eliyahu Stern’s 9/2/11 NY Times op-ed (“Don’t Fear Islamic Law in America”) vilifies those who seek fair, rational legislative remedies to the encroachment of Islamic law (Sharia) in America as “stigmatizing Islamic life”¹.  Stern’s vitriol is directed specifically at SB 1028, a bill which was recently passed by the Tennessee General Assembly, and includes this straightforward language regarding sharia²:

 

This bill defines “sharia” as the set of rules, precepts, instructions, or edicts which are said to emanate directly or indirectly from the god of Allah or the prophet Mohammed and which include directly or indirectly the encouragement of any person to support the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the United States or Tennessee Constitutions, or the destruction of the national existence of the United States or the sovereignty of this state, and which includes among other methods to achieve these ends, the likely use of imminent violence. Under this bill, any rule, precept, instruction, or edict arising directly from the extant rulings of any of the authoritative schools of Islamic jurisprudence of Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali, Ja’afariya, or Salafi, as those terms are used by sharia adherents, is prima facie sharia without any further evidentiary showing.

 

Michael Nazir Ali was the first bishop of Raiwand in Pakistan’s West Punjab (1984-1986), who emigrated to become the initial non-white diocesan bishop in the Church of England.  During September 2009, he gave up his English bishopric to work full-time in defense of beleaguered Christian minorities, particularly within Islamdom.  Nazir Ali has authored Islam: A Christian Perspective (1984), Frontiers in Muslim-Christian Encounters (2006), and From Everywhere To Everywhere (2009)³.

 

Contra Stern’s distressingly uninformed polemics⁴, Nazir Ali offered these scholarly and experience-based observations from his adopted Britain (8/7/11) — observations which support Tennessee’s eminently reasonable legislative solution⁵.

 

To understand the impact of Sharia law you have to look at other [i.e., Islamic] countries. At its heart it has basic inequalities between Muslims and non-Muslims, and between men and women. The problem with Sharia law being used in tribunals [in Britain] is that it compromises the tradition of equality for all under the law. It threatens the fundamental values that underpin our society.

 

Karl Binswanger was a German scholar renowned for his pioneering 1977 study of the discriminatory and degrading conditions imposed upon non-Muslim “dhimmis” — predominantly Christians — subjugated under Ottoman Turkish sharia in the 16^th century⁶.  Binswanger describes the key role played by the creation of Muslim “satellite” colonies during the Islamization of these vanquished Christian societies^6a:

 

Geographic integrity is shattered by implanting Islamic nuclei.; The sectarian reference point of Dhimmi communities is removed, and further sectarian pruning occurs according to Islamic standards.; The autonomy of Dhimmis is reduced to an insubstantial thing… They are driven out the moment that Islamic nuclei appear in the area.; Dhimmis’ possession of their churches is granted.  These are closed or razed as soon as a mosque is established in their neighborhood…Regulations in the social area…demoralize the individual: [they] are consciously instituted for their degradation.; The social environment of the Dhimmis is characterized by fear, uncertainty and degradation.

 

During 1990, Binswanger published three remarkably prescient essays on the (primarily Turkish) Muslim immigrant community of Germany^6b.  Binswanger opens his 1990 essay, “Islamic Fundamentalism in the German Federal Republic: Development, Inventory, Prospects,” with this ominous illustration^6c:

 

“We reject reform and modernization.  We will keep fighting until a godly order is established!”  This quotation is not from Cemalettin Kaplan, the “Khomeini of Cologne”, but rather from Kadir Baran, the West German national vice-chairman of the “Idealist Associations” [“Idealistenvereine”], in other words, from a ‘Grey Wolf”.. [u]ntil the Autumn of 1987 the federation’s ideology was purely nationalistic, chauvinistically Turkish.  This is symptomatic of a development that one can observe among Turks in the Federal Republic of Germany, too, since Khomeini’s victory over the Shah:  Islamic fundamentalism is on the march…

 

He then demonstrates how the strident re-affirmation of Islamic identity within Germany’s Turkish immigrant population engendered^6d “an increasingly intense demonization of the culture, legal and social order of the host society: the image of Germans as enemies.”

 

Central to this disturbing process was the inculcation of validating Islamic (i.e., Koranic) motifs which promote hostility to non-Muslims^6e:

 

In this regard all the unions [i.e., the alphabet soup of Turkish Muslim organizations in Germany] exhibit an astounding congruence in their ideology, which ultimately is derived from the Qur’an.  The centerpiece of its preaching about the distance to be maintained from the “unbelievers” consists of three verses from the Qur’an, variations on which appear in publications, addresses and on the banners of all unions, either literally or in paraphrases and allusions.  The significant thing is that in all the unions these verses are always central to the discussion about models of integration.  Sura 5, verse 51 of the Qur’an prescribes:  “You believers!  Do not take Jews and Christians as friends.  They are friends with each other (but not with you).  When one of you joins them, he belongs to them (and no longer to the community of believers).”  “To join them” is interpreted today, however, as external adaptation to the European way of life (including New Year’s celebrations) and any form of integration/assimilation. Besides this purely normative prohibition of amicable dealings with “unbelievers”, two other Qur’an verses are frequently cited, which give a reason for keeping one’s distance (and therefore in the case of Turkish migrant workers:  self-isolation: “Jews and Christians will not be happy with you as long as you do not follow their profession of faith” (Sura 2, verse 120).  “You believers!  Do not take as your confidants and intimate friends people who are outside your community.  They never tire of causing disorder among you, and would like affliction to befall you.  Their own statements make their hatred plain enough, but the hatred and wickedness that they secretly harbor within them are much worse” (Sura 3, verse 118).

 

Arguably the most accomplished (and easily the most unapologetic) scholar of how the Ottoman Turks progressively imposed the sharia on non-Muslims, Binswanger became alarmed by the obvious modern parallels to that phenomenon he observed in the behaviors of their contemporary Turkish descendants in Germany.  Thus, he concluded in 1990^6f:

 

A clearly hostile image of German society is developing and is being preached to more and more Turkish migrant workers.  Simultaneously, however, all the umbrella groups reinforce the desire to stay permanently in the Federal Republic of Germany;  this then is possible only if the resident Turkish populace walls itself off from the Germans to a great extent — otherwise it would run into a conflict of faith.  The more they reduce their contact with the Germans, the more the Turks have to set up their own system — this explains the ever wider spectrum of union activities, whose declared goal is the “preservation of identity”.  Through the spread of fundamentalism the recreational clubs of the past have moved into the self-isolation of an all-encompassing “parallel society”.  It is a long way from the recreational clubs of the former bachelors, via the plain mosque unions when they began to bring a wife and a child later, to a closed society after politics took them under its care and the “Khomeini factor” reminded them that Islam is more than quiet prayer in your little room:  namely an all-encompassing rule of life willed by God that forbids any adaptation to, any friendly or trusting relations with “infidels” on an equal footing.  The expression of this change of consciousness (or new self-awareness) and of this heightened sense of worth is their self-isolation today, which for the religiously reawakened is a more authentic home than secularist Turkey.  Yet this is only a transitional stage, admittedly a necessary one, in order to reach the final goal of Islamic fundamentalism:  finally to create for oneself a homeland in which one can accomplish Allah’s will.  This is evident in the final examination of a four-year AMGT [i.e., The “National View Organization in Europe” founded by Necmettin Erbakan’s National Welfare Party as an offshoot of the youth organization “Akincilar” (roughly: “Blitzkrieg warriors”)]  course on the Qur’an and the “right” answer to it:  “Q. What day in the future would be in your opinion the holiest day?”  “Answer:  Our happiest day would be the day on which the Islamic State is founded and the Muslims get their Caliph again.”

 

Twenty-one years later, author and veteran television journalist Joachim Wagner has just published his analysis of the parallel sharia-based Islamic “legal” system burgeoning in Germany, entitled Richter ohne Gesetz (“Judges without Laws”).  Consistent with Nazir Ali’s assessment of the deleterious impact of Britain’s Muslim “tribunals,” Wagner’s alarming investigation — summarized in English during a two-part Der Spiegel series — elucidates how what he terms “Islamic shadow justice” undermines Germany’s Western constitutional legal system, ultimately abrogating even German criminal law^6g.

 

The parallel, indeed superseding application of sharia within Germany’s Muslim community is a widespread, dangerous phenomenon according to Wagner’s research⁷.

 

As far as I know, very prevalent. There are no reliable statistics, since these mediations take place almost exclusively in secret. But criminal investigators who specialize in organized crime and violence within Muslim immigrant families have confirmed for me that in nearly every conflict in this milieu, the first attempt is to find a solution outside the German justice system.

These arbitrators try to resolve conflicts according to Islamic law and to sideline German criminal law. We see witness testimony withdrawn (from German courts) and accusations trivialized to the point where an entire case runs aground. The justice system is “powerless,” partly because it hasn’t tackled the problem vigorously enough.

 

Sheikh Abu Adam, wife-battering⁸, polygamist⁹ imam of the Darul Quran Mosque in Munich, illustrates the tragic, dangerous perversity of Germany’s tacit acceptance of sharia as a “communal” alternative legal system.

 

A Munich-based arbitrator, Sheik Adam maintains that it is a religious duty to mediate among the Muslim faithful.  The imam, who lives with three women, and, in accord with classical Islamic understanding¹⁰, believes that Islam is an all-encompassing theo-political ideology, described to Der Spiegel how he applies his sharia-based legal method¹¹.

 

He invites both parties to visit him at the mosque, listens to both sides, and ultimately has them sign a peace treaty. The important thing, he says, is not who’s right and wrong, and evidence is no particular help — the important thing is to find a compromise. In nine out of 10 cases, the people respect his decision, he says.

 

Adam added unabashedly, despite ignoring accusations of running a shadow justice system¹²:

 

My judgment is fairer than the government’s. I tell my people, don’t go to the police. ‘We’ll take care of this conflict among ourselves.’ I’m making less work for the police.

 

Sheikh Adam gave a lecture at Munich’s Catholic University entitled “An Islam which distances itself from violence,” shortly before being arrested (12/10/10) for allegedly assaulting his spouse so violently that she suffered a broken nose and shoulder and numerous cuts and bruises.  Media reports claimed that the woman, who has borne one of his ten children, wanted to live a more “Western” lifestyle, and was allegedly attacked by him after expressing this wish to her husband.  An icon of Germany’s Islamic parallel Islamic “justice” system, Sheikh Adam purportedly shouted Koran 4:34 at his wife as he beat her¹³.

 

(E.g., Shakir translation¹⁴: “Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great[.]”)

 

Sheik Adam’s abusive (if Koran-sanctioned) misogyny (and polygamy; see Koran 4:3¹⁵) notwithstanding, there is no debating that his defiant rejection of Western evidentiary methods for establishing legal truth (and right versus wrong) reflects mainstream sharia-based jurisprudence.  Joseph Schacht (d. 1969), arguably the pre-eminent 20^th-century Western scholar of Islamic law, made these salient observations about evidence and legal proof according to the sharia in his classic “An Introduction to Islamic Law”¹⁶:

 

The emphasis of the Islamic law of procedure lies not so much on arriving at the truth as on applying certain formal rules…If both parties produce evidence, the number of the witnesses produced by each, beyond their minimum number, is irrelevant. There is no examination of the witnesses, or the likelihood of their testimony being true…[I]n cases concerning hadd punishments (i.e., defined by the Muslim prophet Muhammad either in the Koran, or the hadith  included¹⁷: (lethal) stoning for adultery; death for apostasy; death for highway robbery, when accompanied by murder of the robbery victim; for simple highway robbery, the loss of hands and feet; for simple theft, cutting off of the right hand; for “fornication,” a hundred lashes; for drinking wine, eighty lashes) the evidence of women is not admitted, and in the case of zina (“fornication”) four male witnesses are required (notably. if a woman claims to have been raped!)…the dhimmi (non-Muslims vanquished by jihad, and living under Sharia jurisdiction) cannot be a witness, except in matters concerning other dhimmis…

 

N.T. Coulson, another renowned 20^th-century scholar of the sharia, elaborated further on “matters of procedure” under Islamic law antithetical to Western conceptions of the rule of law^17a.  Coulson reaffirmed the flimsy nature of sharia-based “evidentiary proof” while elucidating, under the sharia doctrine of “siyasa” (“government,” or “administration”), which grants wide latitude to the ruling elites, how arbitrary threats, beatings, and imprisonments of defendants were permissible to extract “confessions,” particularly from “dubious” suspects.  Moreover, plaintiffs too could be subjected to bizarre, and equally arbitrary and painful, procedural methods for ascertaining “legal truth”^17b.

 

[T]he strict Sharia rules of evidence, which in general terms limit legal proof to the oral testimony of two witnesses possessing the quality of adala (probity) and, failing such proof, give effect to the defendant’s oath of denial, are scarcely suited to the effective maintenance of law and order. Recognizing the need for these rules to be supplemented, particularly in criminal matters…the jurists admit the power of the ruler to employ such methods as the use of threats or the extortion of confessions by corporal punishment and imprisonment, finding the necessary authority in the practice of the early Islamic rulers. The Caliph Ali, it is alleged, in order to discover the truth of the plaintiff’s claim that he had been rendered dumb as the result of an assault, ordered that his tongue be pierced with a needle; if red blood appeared the plaintiff was lying, but if the blood was black he was indeed dumb. All such stratagems are, according to [the classical Muslim jurist] Ibn Farhun^17c [d. 1397], “good siyasa.”…Particularly harsh treatment is recommended for the individual of reputedly bad character whose guilt is suspected but cannot be proved in orthodox fashion. He should be subjected to rigorous examination, with beating and imprisonment if necessary, for [quoting Ibn Farhun] “were we simply to subject each suspect to the oath and then free him, in spite of our knowledge of his notoriety in crime, saying: ‘We cannot convict him without two adl witnesses [witnesses of probity]’, that would be contrary to siyasa Sharia.” Nor, in the event of the subsequent release of the suspect, is there any question of a remedy for malicious prosecution or false imprisonment. It is only where no proof is forthcoming and the person charged is of such high repute that none would normally suspect him of the alleged offense that the accuser will be punished…[I]dealing with defamatory statements other than the false accusations of unchastity or illegitimacy which entail a hadd penalty, certain jurists would prescribe twenty-five lashes for calling a person “a criminal” or “a wrongdoer,” ten lashes for calling a Muslim “a Jew,” and ten, fifteen, or twenty-five lashes for a false imputation of theft.

 

Clearly, Sharia “standards” which do not even seek evidentiary legal truth, and allow threats, imprisonment, and beatings of defendants to extract “confessions,” while sanctioning explicit, blatant legal discrimination against women and non-Muslims, are intellectually and morally inferior to the antithetical concepts which underpin Western law.

 

The late Kirsten Heisig, a juvenile court judge in Germany, underscored a year ago the inevitable consequences of relegating legal decisions to Muslim arbitrators such as Sheikh Adam¹⁸:

 

The law is slipping out of our hands. It’s moving to the streets, or into a parallel system where an imam or another representative of the Koran determines what must be done.

 

Moreover, Joachim Wagner’s “Judges without Laws” documents judges’ and prosecutors’ recollections of threats toward public officials and systematic interference with witnesses.  For example, Stephan Kuperion, a juvenile court judge in Berlin, noted, “We know we’re being given a performance, but the courts are powerless.”  And federal public prosecutor Jörn Hauschild provided this ominous warning: “It would be a terrible development if serious criminal offenses in these circles could no longer be resolved. The legal system would be reduced to collecting victims”¹⁹.

 

Wagner himself made this astute diagnosis of the current predicament to Der Spiegel, and proffered an uncompromising interim resolution²⁰:

 

They’re [German public prosecutors and judges]  overwhelmed, because they don’t know how to react. They’re in the middle of a legal case, and suddenly there’s no evidence. Eighty-seven percent of the cases I researched either were dismissed or ended with an acquittal when Islamic arbitrators were involved.

Prosecutors need to investigate Islamic arbitrators more intensively. If they had done so sooner, the arbitrators would have been convicted of obstruction of justice long ago. And certain lawyers need to stop behaving as if they were mere servants to a parallel justice system. They allow themselves to be directed by their clients’ desires, regardless of truth and justice. And finally, my plea would be for judges to hear witnesses earlier, which would reduce the arbitrators’ influence.

 

But Wagner is keenly aware of the more profound, fundamental incompatibility of Western law and sharia, the latter being²¹:

 

Very foreign, and for a German lawyer, completely incomprehensible at first. It follows its own rules. The Islamic arbitrators aren’t interested in evidence when they deliver a judgment, and unlike in German criminal law, the question of who is at fault doesn’t play much of a role.

 

Nearly six decades earlier, Robert H. Jackson, an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court (1941-1954), who also served as the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, made these more expansive, complementary observations in his foreword to a treatise on Islamic law²²:

 

In any broad sense, Islamic Law offers the American lawyer a study in dramatic contrasts. Even casual acquaintance and superficial knowledge — all that most of us at bench or bar will be able to acquire — reveal that its striking features relative to our law are not likenesses but inconsistencies, not similarities but contrarieties. In its source, its scope and its sanctions, the law [i.e., Islamic Law, Sharia] of the Middle East is the antithesis of Western Law…Islamic law, on the contrary, finds its chief source in the will of Allah as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. It contemplates one community of the faithful, though they may be of various tribes and in widely separated locations. Religion, not nationalism or geography, is the proper cohesive force. The state itself is subordinate to the Qur’an, which leaves little room for additional legislation, none for criticism or dissent. This world is viewed as but the vestibule to another and a better one for the faithful, and the Qur’an lays down rules of behavior towards others and toward society to assure a safe transition. It is not possible to separate political or juristic theories from the teachings of the Prophet, which establish rules of conduct concerning religious, domestic, social, and political life. This results in a law of duties, rather than rights…

 

Joachim Wagner’s modern study has led him to conclude that even the ostensibly limited application of sharia arbitration within Germany’s Muslim community nullifies the state’s Western conception of legal justice²³.

 

The problem starts when the arbitrators force the justice system out of the picture, especially in the case of criminal offenses. At that point they undermine the state… Islamic conflict resolution in particular, as I’ve experienced it, is often achieved through violence and threats. It’s often a dictate of power on the part of the stronger family.

 

Past as prologue to the present, application of the sharia has had obviously negative societal repercussions, for both Muslims and non-Muslims.  How this undeniable truth somehow escapes the mental and moral calculus of Western sharia apologists such as Yale’s Eliyahu Stern ²⁴ is astonishing and reveals the frightening, delusively self-righteous cultural relativist mindset of the American academy.  If Stern was truly desirous of protecting the unique Western freedoms many Muslim immigrants to the U.S. cherish in common with non-Muslim Americans, he would applaud the Tennessee state legislature’s bill SB 1028²⁵ instead of condemning it.*

 

(*POSTSCRIPT: It is perhaps an ironic footnote that the language about sharia which Professor Stern fulminated against was actually pruned out of the final Tennessee bill (House Bill No. 1353) when state legislators came under intense pressure from local Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated “advocacy” groups.  House Bill No. 1353 never mentions the words “sharia,” “Muslim,” “Islam,” or “Islamic law.”  Sharia dictates that non-Muslims in particular have no right to criticize this divine, perfect, and immutable “law”²⁶.)

 

---

¹ Eliyahu Stern. “Don’t Fear Islamic Law in America”, The New York Times, September 2, 2011

(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/opinion/dont-fear-islamic-law-in-america.html?_r=1&ref=global)

² SB 1028

(http://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/billinfo/BillSummaryArchive.aspx?BillNumber=SB1028&ga=107)

³ For a mini-biography of Michael Nazir Ali, see, Sharia in the West, edited by R. Ahdar, N. Aroney, Oxford, 2010, p. xi.

⁴ Stern, “Don’t Fear Islamic Law in America”

⁵ Jonathan Wynne-Jones. “Sharia: A Law Unto Itself”, The Telegraph (London), August 7, 2011

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8686504/Sharia-a-law-unto-itself.html)

6 Karl Binswanger. Untersuchungen zum Status der Nichtmuslime im Osmanischen Reich des 16. Jahrhunderts : mit einer Neudefinition des Begriffes “Dimma”, München: R. Trofenik, 1977. Beiträge zur Kenntnis Südosteuropas und des Nahen Orients, 2. (Investigations on the Status of Non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire  of the 16^th Century, With a New Definition of the Concept “Dhimma”)

^6a Ibid, pp. 327-328 (English translation by James Hodge)

^6b “Islamischer Fundamentalismus in der Bundesrepublik. Entwicklung-Bestandsaufnahme-Ausblick” [“Islamic Fundamentalism in the German Federal Republic: Development, Inventory, Prospects”], pp. 38-54;   “Ökonomische Basis der Fundamentalisten”, pp. 81-93;  “Fundamentalisten-Filz-Getrennt marschieren-vereint schlagen”, pp. 129-148. All three essays were published in Im Namen Allahs. Islamische Gruppen und der Fundamentalismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Koln, 1990

^6c Binswanger, “Islamic Fundamentalism in the German Federal Republic: Development, Inventory, Prospects,”, p. 38. (English translation by Michael J. Miller)

^6d Ibid, p. 41

^6e Ibid, pp. 50ff

^6f Ibid, p. 53

^6g Part 1. “Islamic Justice in Europe” — ‘It’s Often a Dictate of Power’ “, Spiegel Online, 09/01/2011

(http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,783843,00.html);

Part 2. Maximilian Popp. “Parallel Justice — Islamic ‘Arbitrators’ Shadow German Law”,  Spiegel Online, 09/01/2011

(http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,783361,00.html)

⁷ “Islamic Justice in Europe”

⁸ Allan Hall. “Muslim imam who lectures on non-violence in Germany is arrested for beating up his wife”, The Daily Mail, December 2, 2010

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1335024/Muslim-imam-Sheikh-Adam-lectures-non-violence-arrested-wife-beating.html)

⁹ Popp, “Parallel Justice”

¹⁰ Joseph Schacht. “Sharia”, in H.A. R. Gibb, J.H. Kramers, The Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam,  1953/2008, p. 743 ff.; G-H. Bousquet. L’éthique sexuelle de l’Islam. [The Sexual Ethic of Islam] Paris,  Maisonneuve 1966/1990, pp. 10-11.

¹¹ Popp, “Parallel Justice”

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Hall, “Muslim imam who lectures on non-violence in Germany is arrested for beating up his wife”

¹⁴ Shakir Koranic translation of verse 4:34 at:

(http://www.quranbrowser.com/cgi/bin/get.cgi?version=shakir&layout=auto&searchstring=004:034)

¹⁵ Shakir Koranic translation of verse 4:3 at:

(http://www.quranbrowser.com/cgi/bin/get.cgi?version=shakir&layout=auto&searchstring=004:003)

¹⁶ Joseph Schacht. An Introduction to Islamic Law, New York, 1982, pp. 195,198,132.

¹⁷ Thomas Patrick Hughes. A Dictionary of Islam, London, 1885, p. 153.

^17a N.J. Coulson. “The State and the Individual in Islamic Law”, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 1957, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 49-60.

^17b Ibid, pp. 57-58

^17c Born about 760/1358 into a scholarly Medinan family of Andalusian origin, after travels to Egypt and Syria Ibn Farhun became a jurist in Medina in 793/1390 and is claimed to have revived the Maliki (one of the four Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence) rite there.  He died in 799/1397.  His Tabsirat al-hukkam fi usul al-akdiya wa-manahid̲j̲ al-ahkam is a sort of manual for qadis containing details of procedure, rules of evidence, etc. (See, J.F.P. Hopkins. “Ibn Farhun”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Edited by: P. Bearman; Th. Bianquis; C.E. Bosworth; E. van Donzel; and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2011. Brill Online. Brown University. 30 September 2011 [http://www.brillonline.nl/subscriber/entry?entry=islam_SIM-3160].)

¹⁸ “Islamic Justice in Europe”

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Robert H. Jackson. Foreword to Law in the Middle East. Edited by Majid Khadduri, Herbert J. Liebesny. Washington, D.C., 1955, pp. vi-vii.

²³ “Islamic Justice in Europe”

²⁴ Stern, “Don’t Fear Islamic Law in America”

²⁵ SB 1028 (http://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/billinfo/BillSummaryArchive.aspx?BillNumber=SB1028&ga=107)

²⁶ State of Tennessee, Public Chapter No. 497, House Bill No. 1353

(http://state.tn.us/sos/acts/107/pub/pc0497.pdf)

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/10/sharia_uber_alles_versus_western_justice.html at October 23, 2011 – 11:21:31 AM CDT

Maldives: Catholic arrested for having a Bible and rosary in his home

thanks to Jihadwatch

One will recall the massive economic boycott and sanctions leveled against South Africa for the institution of apartheid there. The countries that practice Sharia’s own, centuries-older version of apartheid, denying freedom of conscience, religion, worship, and equal status and rights, should not get a pass.

“Indian Catholic jailed in the Maldives over a Bible and a rosary,” by Nirmala Carvalho for Asia News, October 7:

Mumbai (AsiaNews) – Shijo Kokkattu, an Indian Catholic from Kerala, has been languishing in a Maldives prison for more than a week because he had a Bible and a rosary at his home. Both items are banned on the archipelago.

“The lack of justice and the degree of religious intolerance” on the islands “are reflected by the actions of the Maldives government,” said Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC). “This is the worst form of religious persecution. The Indian government should demand an apology for the shabby treatment inflicted on one of its citizens.”

Islam is state religion in the Maldives. There is no freedom of worship. In 2008, a constitutional amendment denied non-Muslims the right to obtain Maldivian citizenship.

Shijo, 30, has taught at Raafainu School on Raa Atoll for the past two years. Recently, whilst transferring some data from his pen drive to the school laptop, he accidentally copied Marian songs and a picture of Mother Mary into the system. Some teachers reported the matter to the police who raided his home and found a Bible and a rosary in his possession.

Shijo Kokkattu’s case shows the paradox of the Maldives, a nation that “claims to be a major tourist destination, yet arrests innocent people,” George said. “This shows its intolerance and discrimination towards non-Muslims as well as its restrictions on freedom of conscience and religion.”

“Religious freedom remains a taboo on the archipelago,” the GCIC president explained. “Muslims refuse all other forms of worship other than the one approved by the state. Doing the opposite means arrest. Kneeling, folding one’s hands or using religious symbols like crosses, candles, pictures or statues can lead to government action.”

For George, “All this is a clear violation of universal human rights. If Muslims living in non-Muslim countries can enjoy religious rights, the spirit of reciprocity should apply to countries like the Maldives and Saudi Arabia.”

Maldives criminalizes preaching of any religion other than Islam

Enjoy your next vacation!

From: Jihadwatch

This is the other side of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s ongoing efforts to compel the West to criminalize “defamation of religion” — that is, realistic and truthful portrayals of Islam. Once the foolish kuffar has done that, then this other shoe will eventually drop.

Islamic Tolerance Alert: “Religious Unity Regulation prohibits preaching a religion except Islam,” from Haveeru Online, September 17 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

MALE, September 17 (HNS) – President’s Office has gazetted the controversial Religious Unity Regulation, declaring it an offence to preach a religion except Islam in the Maldives.The 12-clause regulation makes it mandatory for preachers of Islam, both locals and foreigners, to have a first degree in a field of Islamic education from a ministry-approved college, university or centre….

The regulation, which instructs scholars to consider the social harmony, states practices that should be avoided in preaching Islam in the Maldives, including the practice of making comments in contradiction with prophetic traditions and majority view of the scholars….

The regulation also prohibits comments of hatred towards people of other religions, spreading a religion other than Islam and using an object that resembles a sign of a religion other than Islam.

A person who violates the regulation will be sentenced to 2-5 years in prison, banishment or house arrest.

Prof. Bernard Lewis on Islam’s Inherent Totalitarianism

From the essay “Communism and Islam” in International Affairs, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Jan., 1954), pp. 1-12, here is Bernard Lewis on Islam’s inherent totalitarianism:

I turn now from the accidental to the essential factors, to those deriving from the very nature of Islamic society, tradition, and thought. The first of these is the authoritarianism, perhaps we may even say the totalitarianism, of the Islamic political tradition…Many attempts have been made to show that Islam and democracy are identical — attempts usually based on a misunderstanding of Islam or democracy or both…In point of fact, except for the early caliphate, when the anarchic individualism of tribal Arabia was still effective, the political history of Islam is one of almost unrelieved autocracy…[I]t was authoritarian, often arbitrary, sometimes tyrannical. There are no parliaments or representative assemblies of any kind, no councils or communes, no chambers of nobility or estates, no municipalities in the history of Islam; nothing but the sovereign power, to which the subject owed complete and unwavering obedience as a religious duty imposed by the Holy Law. In the great days of classical Islam this duty was only owed to the lawfully appointed caliph, as God’s vicegerent on earth and head of the theocratic community, and then only for as long as he upheld the law; but with the decline of the caliphate and the growth of military dictatorship, Muslim jurists and theologians accommodated their teachings to the changed situation and extended the religious duty of obedience to any effective authority, however impious, however barbarous. For the last thousand years, the political thinking of Islam has been dominated by such maxims as “tyranny is better than anarchy” and “whose power is established, obedience to him is incumbent.”
…Quite obviously, the Ulama of Islam are very different from the Communist Party. Nevertheless, on closer examination, we find certain uncomfortable resemblances. Both groups profess a totalitarian doctrine, with complete and final answers to all questions on heaven and earth; the answers are different in every respect, alike only in their finality and completeness, and in the contrast they offer with the eternal questioning of Western man. Both groups offer to their members and followers the agreeable sensation of belonging to a community of believers, who are always right, as against an outer world of unbelievers, who are always wrong. Both offer an exhilarating feeling of mission, of purpose, of being engaged in a collective adventure to accelerate the historically inevitable victory of the true faith over the infidel evil-doers. The traditional Islamic division of the world into the House of Islam and the House of War, two necessarily opposed groups, of which- the first has the collective obligation of perpetual struggle against the second, also has obvious parallels in the Communist view of world affairs. There again, the content of belief is utterly different, but the aggressive fanaticism of the believer is the same. The humorist who summed up the Communist creed as “There is no God and Karl Marx is his Prophet!” was laying his finger on a real affinity. The call to a Communist Jihad, a Holy War for the faith — a new faith, but against the self-same Western Christian enemy — might well strike a responsive note.

Shaykh Muhammad Hassan: There is no compulsion in religion, but…

Egyptian Shaykh Muhammad Hassan, who is one of the most popular and well-known Islamic clerics in Egypt and even throughout the Islamic world (there is even a campaign in Egypt to try to get him to run for president), emphasizes in this video that apostates from Islam must be killed. He argues, interestingly, that this does not conflict with the principle of no compulsion in religion, because no one is forced to enter Islam (or so he says). However, after they choose to enter Islam, they cannot be allowed to leave it. He contends that this is akin to treason, and every country in the world punishes treason by death. This is a very common argument from Islamic clerics and others who try to defend the killing of apostates, and take on the impossible task of reconciling this with the Western ideas of freedom of religion and conscience.
This video was originally aired on the Egyptian satellite station al-Nas, on Muhammad Hassan’s program entitled “Ahadith an-nihaya,” (Sayings of the End). I don’t know the original air date that this clip was taken from, but it appears to have been some time in 2008. The YouTube clip I pulled it from was posted 28 July 2010. My English transcript follows:

The Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said: “It is not permissible (to shed) the blood of a Muslim who witnesses that there is no god but Allah and that I am the Messenger of Allah, except for one of the following three conditions: (First), the life for the life…” This means the killer is killed. But you are not the one who kills him, and neither am I the one who kills him. But the competent legal authority is the one who is responsible for this. Otherwise, Muslim society would descend into chaos, with everyone killing whomever he wanted whenever he wanted. No—blood is sacred; blood is sacred. “It is not permissible (to shed) the blood of a Muslim who witnesses that there is no god but Allah and that I am the Messenger of Allah, except under three conditions: (First), the life for the life…” The Almighty said: “In the law of equality there is (saving of) life to you, o ye men of understanding” (Qur’an 2:179). “In the law of equality there is (saving of) life to you, o ye men of understanding.” “The life for the life”—the killer is killed. The punishment of Almighty Allah is carried out upon him.

“(Second), the married person who commits adultery”—I will return to him (later) Allah-willing, in another of the signs.

“(Third), the one who abandons his religion, and separates himself from the community.” The hadith is in both of the Sahihs (i.e. Bukhari and Muslim). “The one who abandons his religion, and separates himself from the community.” Islam does not compel anyone to enter it. This (concept) needs to be firmly established. Islam does not compel anyone to enter it. No. There is no compulsion in religion. But rather we preach (Islam) in truth, mercy, propriety, and humility. Whoever says after the preaching—whoever says after (receiving) the preaching and the call (to Islam), “No, I will not enter this religion.” We say to him, “There is no compulsion in religion.” Truth stands out clear from error. We recite the saying of Almighty Allah, “Let him who will believe, and let him who will disbelieve” (Qur’an 18:29). We recite the saying of Allah Almighty, “You have your religion and I have my religion” (Qur’an 109:6). Beautiful. This is after the preaching and the call (to Islam).

But if he enters Islam of his own free will and choice, he does not have the right to leave the religion of Allah whenever he wants, to shake the foundations of Muslim society. No, he does not have the right. Absolutely not. But he does have the right, after having (Islam) preached to him, to say, “I will enter” or “I will not enter this religion.” But to enter it just to leave it whenever he wants? No. This is something which is unacceptable in the religion of Almighty Allah. Show me a constitution anywhere on earth which grants this for its citizens. But rather whoever comes out against the constitution of any nation is accused of treason. Everyone familiar with treason knows that the penalty is death. So what do you think about the one who betrays the religion of Allah Almighty, the one who betrays Allah and His Messenger? “O ye who believe! Do not betray Allah and His Messenger, nor knowingly betray your trusts” (Qur’an 8:27).

A Message to All You MSM-Journalists:

Wafa Sultan on “The problem that is Islam”

The Norway Massacre and Europe’s War on Free Speech

by Soeren Kern
July 28, 2011

Media outlets in Europe and the United States are accusing Western critics of Islam and multiculturalism of complicity in the mass killing of more than 70 people in Norway. The attempt to exploit this crime for political gain is not just a case of malicious opportunism. It also represents the latest and most unsavoury salvo in the long-running war on free speech in Europe.

Anders Behring Breivik, a deranged Norwegian accused of bombing government buildings in Oslo and then killing scores of young people during a 90-minute shooting rampage on a nearby camping island called Utoya, published a 1,500-page manifesto in which he vents his anger at the direction in which mostly leftwing elites in Norway and elsewhere in Europe are leading his country and the continent as a whole.

As it turns out, parts of the manifesto include cut-and-pasted blog posts from European and American analysts and writers who for years have been educating the general public about the destructive effects of multiculturalism and runaway Muslim immigration. By dint of duplicitous logic, these analysts and writers are now the victims of a smear campaign: multiculturalists are accusing them of inciting Breivik to murder.

These same analysts have, of course, been a constant bane on an unaccountable European elite determined to foist its post-modern, post-nationalist and post-Christian multicultural agenda on a sceptical European citizenry.

Unwilling to countenance opposition, these self-appointed guardians of European political correctness have laboured to silence public discussion about issues such as the rise of Islam in Europe and/or the failure of millions of Muslim immigrants to integrate into European society.

The primary weapon in this war on free speech has been lawfare: the malicious use of European courts to criminalize criticism of Islam.

Prosecutions of so-called anti-Islam hate speech are now commonplace in Europe. Some of the more well-known efforts to silence debate about Islam in Europe have involved high-profile individuals like Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, and Brigitte Bardot, a French animal rights activist.

Other recent assaults on free speech in Europe include the show trials of: Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a housewife in Austria, Susanne Winter, a politician in Austria, Lars Hedegaard, a journalist in Denmark, Jesper Langballe, a politician in Denmark, Jussi Kristian Halla-aho, a politician in Finland, Michel Houellebecq, a novelist in France, Gregorius Nekschot, the pseudonym of a cartoonist in the Netherlands, and the late Oriana Fallaci, a journalist and author in Italy.

In other cases, physical violence has been the preferred method of silencing contrary views of Islam in Europe. In 2002, for example, Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated for his views on Muslim immigration, and in 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was stabbed to death for producing a movie that criticized Islam. In 2010, Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard narrowly escaped being assassinated by an axe-wielding Muslim extremist in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city.

Many theories attempt to explain the rise of multiculturalism in Europe. Among these is the idea that European elites, determined to prevent a repeat of the carnage of the Second World War, embraced multiculturalism as a tool to try to dilute or even eliminate the national ethnic, religious and or/cultural identities that contributed to centuries of violence in Europe.

But in recent years, the secular purveyors of European multiculturalism have moved far beyond their initial objective of creating an American-style “melting pot.” European socialists now view multiculturalism as a means to eliminate the entire Judeo-Christian worldview. This is certainly the case in Spain, where socialists have joined arms with Islam in a “Red-Green Alliance” to confront a common enemy, Christianity, as represented, in this case, by the Roman Catholic Church.

To be sure, decades of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration have already transformed Europe in ways unimaginable only a few decades ago. In Britain, for example, Muslims currently are campaigning to turn twelve British cities — including what they call “Londonistan” — into independent Islamic states. The so-called Islamic Emirates would function as autonomous enclaves ruled by Islamic Sharia law and operate entirely outside British jurisprudence. More than 80 Sharia courts are already operating in the country. At the same time, Mohammed is now the most common name for baby boys.

In France, large swaths of Muslim neighbourhoods are now considered “no-go” zones by French police. At last count, there are 751 Sensitive Urban Zones (Zones Urbaines Sensibles, ZUS), as they are euphemistically called. An estimated 5 million Muslims live in the ZUS, parts of France over which the French state has lost control.

In Germany, anti-Semitism (which is often disguised as anti-Zionism), has reached levels not seen since the Second World War. An April 2011 report, for example, found that 47.7% of Germans believe “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians,” and nearly 50% of Germans believe “Jews try to take advantage of having been victims of the Nazi era.”

In Norway, large sections of Oslo are being turned into Muslim enclaves subject to Sharia law and to the dictates of local imams. The citizens of Oslo are also struggling to cope with an epidemic of rapes. According to recent statistics, 100% of aggravated sexual assaults which resulted in rapes over the past three years were carried out by Muslim immigrants. Norwegians are now trying to deal with the large-scale torching of automobiles, which, as in France, is being attributed to Muslim youth.

In a Wall Street Journal essay titled “Inside the Mind of the Oslo Murderer,” Bruce Bawer, an American analyst who lives in Oslo, writes: “Norway, like the rest of Europe, is in serious trouble. Millions of European Muslims live in rigidly patriarchal families in rapidly growing enclaves where women are second-class citizens, and where non-Muslims dare not venture. Surveys show that an unsettling percentage of Muslims in Europe reject Western values, despise the countries they live in, support the execution of homosexuals, and want to replace democracy with Sharia law. (According to a poll conducted by the Telegraph, 40% of British Muslims want Sharia implemented in predominantly Muslim parts of the United Kingdom.)”

Bawer describes Norway as a country that stands out for its refusal to confront any of the real dangers posed by Islamic radicalism. He also says the failure of mainstream political leaders to responsibly address the challenges posed by Muslim immigration has contributed to the emergence of extremists like Breivik. Pressure cookers without a safety valve eventually will explode.

Bawer writes: “In bombing those government buildings and hunting down those campers, Breivik was not taking out people randomly. He considered the Labour Party, Norway’s dominant party since World War II, responsible for policies that are leading to the Islamization of Europe — and thus guilty of treason. The Oslo bombing was intended to be an execution of the party’s current leaders. The massacre at the camp — where young would-be politicians gathered to hear speeches by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and former Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland — was meant to destroy its next generation of leaders.”

The question remains: in the aftermath of the attack, will the Norwegian left rethink its non-interventionist approach to Islam and Muslim immigration? In a number of other European countries, governments on the center-right have been doing an about-face on multiculturalism.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have all declared in recent months that multiculturalism has failed. In June, the Dutch government announced it would abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that has encouraged Muslim immigrants to create a parallel society within the Netherlands. In Spain, the conservative Popular Party, which is widely expected to win the next general election, has promised to enact new measures that will require all immigrants to learn the Spanish language to obtain residency permits.

Some analysts say these measures are too little too late. But one thing seems clear: European multiculturalists are feeling some unfamiliar political heat. After decades of high-handed stifling of debate, the gradual unravelling of multiculturalism in Europe explains the obsessive zeal with which many are exploiting the Norwegian tragedy.

By falsely accusing conservatives of complicity in a crime in which they had no part, multiculturalists are seeking to delegitimize and silence criticism of their social re-engineering scheme. But they are unlikely to succeed as the consequences of their worldview are becoming clear for all to see.

Hudson NY