Multiculturalism Run Amok, More European sharia nonsense.

[American Patriot]

Multiculturalism Run Amok, More European sharia nonsense.
The Daily Standard ^ | July 9 | Stephen Schwartz

THE INCOHERENT DEBATE over sharia, or Islamic law, continues in Britain. The main culprit: multicultural confusion among non-Muslim leaders. In February, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams argued that the introduction of sharia as a separate legal system for British Muslims is "unavoidable" (see this article). Williams's comments produced widespread alarm and condemnation, so Britain's Lord Chief Justice, Baron Phillips of Worth Matravers then stepped in. (He's the rough equivalent of our Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, but with more latitude for public tomfoolery.)

Phillips declared early this month that family and business disputes can be submitted to sharia mediation in Britain. He was careful to specify that "hudud" punishments for moral and criminal charges, such as flogging, stoning of adulterers, cutting off the hands of thieves, and capital sentences should not be imposed under sharia in Britain. But even his language regarding marital and commercial matters was off the mark.

At first glance, letting religious courts handle family and business disputes through voluntary mediation might seem harmless, and radical Muslim advocates of using sharia in Western countries often cite the precedent under which a Jewish religious court, or beth din, will settle such disputes between commmunity members who agree to have them so settled. But this assumes a lack of coercion and free recourse to the civil justice system as an alternative, conditions that don't prevail when dealing with some powerful and well-funded radical Islamic clerics.

In Britain, for instance, the problems of Islamic family relations have already spawned a "Muslim marriage mafia." Because numerous British Muslim women are wed in Pakistan or India in a religious ceremony, and their nuptials left unregistered in Britain, they cannot obtain divorces in British civil courts. They are therefore drawn to notorious sharia courts operating in East London under the domination of adherents of the fundamentalist Deobandi interpretation of Islam, which produced the Taliban. The clerics running the East London divorce racket extort thousands of pounds from poor Muslim women to grant them divorces. Their decisions are guided only by personal whim, so long as money is handed over.

Submitting financial disagreements to sharia tribunals in Britain would probably produce a similar dominance by radical clerics. Worse, it would support a growing sense of segregation between the broader, non-Muslim country and the Muslim minority. Although it may seem counter-intuitive to Westerners, many British Muslims immigrated because of Britain's superior legal and social systems, and they are not inclined to give up their access to these in the name of alleged Islamic purity. Indeed, traditional sharia calls on Muslims immigrating to non-Muslim countries to accept the laws and customs in place in their new homes. After the Williams outburst, several local Muslim leaders in Britain noted to me that the demand for sharia tends to be an ideological slogan to mobilize young Muslims. Often, the targeted audience has no idea what sharia is. In a visit to a mosque in Bolton, England, I was surprised when a discussion of Williams elicited a simple question from a young man who had just finished his prayer: "What is sharia?" The young Muslim's bafflement was unfeigned. The fixation on sharia is more common, in my observation, among members of the British Muslim elite than among ordinary worshippers. Sharia agitation has become a prominent topic among Muslim medical students in Britain, some of who now refuse to attend classes on alcoholism, sexually transmitted diseases, and other problems produced by practices banned in Islam. Some even refuse to wash up with alcohol--the use of which for cleaning purposes was never prohibited by sharia.

Jurists like Lord Phillips, no less than his clerical counterpart, Archbishop Williams, should heed the voices of the many British Muslims who reject sharia and other Islamist penetration into their community life. In the name of sensitivity, non-Muslim advocates for sharia are only making things worse for both Muslims and non-Muslims on this island.

Meanwhile, German authorities are going down the same misguided path. They have announced that a new marriage law, to take effect at the beginning of next year, will permit religious weddings to be solemnized without civil registration. But marriages in churches and mosques, if not registered civilly, will exclude the parties from recourse to the courts for divorce, rights of inheritance, and other civil remedies. A young German Muslim of Moroccan background, interviewed at the Islamic Center of Aachen, once considered a vanguard of the Muslim Brotherhood but now apparently a fortress of moderation, warned that such changes in marriage law, and encouragement of mosque-only weddings, would obviously open up Germany to the same iniquities seen in Britain today. German Muslim women married only in religious ceremonies who seek divorce would be forced into sharia courts, for divorces subject to the whims and financial shakedowns of clerics.

Worst of all, the young man said, "Nobody asked the Muslims if we wanted this change in the law. Nobody consulted with us. They simply did it, and now we are trying to figure out how to respond. We don't want such problems in our community." The treatment of European Muslims as subjects who should be pleased to be handed sharia measures for which they never asked is emerging as an abusive pattern across the continent.

[American Patriot]

Multiculturalism: Jihad By Other Means
The Stiletto Blog ^ | July 9, 2008 | The Stiletto Writing in Human Events, Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer observes that, “[t]hree years after the July 7, 2005, jihad terror attacks in London, the jihad in Britain is stronger than ever. It is not proceeding by means of more terrorism, but by stealth and by the preemptive surrender of all too many British officials.� He explains:

The stealth jihad is a deeply-rooted, well-funded and wide-ranging effort to impose Islamic law, Sharia, upon the non-Muslim populations of Western countries. In England, and in America, it sometimes takes the form of an effort to win acceptance for Sharia law by portraying it as a matter of “civil rights� and multicultural “diversity.�

This effort got a tremendous shot in the arm in Britain last Thursday, when the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, said in an address at the London Muslim Centre that … “There is no reason why principles of sharia, or any other religious code, should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution.� …


In his address Lord Phillips praised the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who famously said last February that it was “inevitable� that Sharia would come to Britain.

Daily Mail (London) columnist Melanie Phillips calls these developments “sleepwalking into Islamisation�:

Britain still doesn't grasp that it is facing a pincer attack from both terrorism and cultural infiltration and usurpation.The former is understood; the latter is generally not acknowledged or is even denied, and those who call attention to it are pilloried as either ' Islamophobes' or alarmists who have taken up residence on Planet Paranoia.

Certainly, the police and security service have been foiling plot after plot and are bringing to court a steady stream of Islamist radicals - an improvement without doubt from two years ago. And so, particularly within the British elite, people think that things are broadly under control.

They fail to realise that the attempt to take over our culture is even more deadly to this society than terrorism. They are simply blind to the ruthless way in which the Islamists are exploiting our chronic muddle of well-meaning tolerance and political correctness (backed up by the threat of more violence) to put Islam on a special - indeed, unique - footing within Britain.
As a result, the steady Islamisation of British public life is either being ignored or even tacitly encouraged by a political, security and judicial establishment that is failing to identify the stealthy and mind-bending game that is being played. …

Islamism will be repulsed only if Britain once again regains the confidence of its own culture, heritage and traditions. And these are based on Christianity. …

The Islamists launched their jihad against the West because they perceived it was so weak and confused it would not possess the wherewithal to defend itself. When it comes to Britain, they never spoke a truer word.

Three recent examples of what Phillips is railing against:â€* American evangelists Arthur Cunningham and Joseph Abraham, who were handing out Bible tracts in Birmingham, were stopped by a Muslim Police Community Support Officer – a government employee – and threatened with arrest and violence to their persons:

“He said we were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message,� one of the preachers said. “He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station.� The officer threatened, “If you come back here and get beaten up, well you have been warned.�

Keep in mind that England has an official church - the Church of England – meaning that Christianity is the established faith of the land. Well, now there are Muslim pockets throughout the nation – “no-go areas� – where spreading the gospel is apparently a “hate crime.�

â€* A gang of Muslim thugsbeating up a vicar while screaming “F*****g priest!â€� and smashing the windows of an East London church while shouting “This should not be a church. This should be a mosqueâ€� is not a hate crime.


â€* Two school students at Alsager High School, near Stoke-on-Trent, given detention for refusing to kneel and pray to Allah during a religious studies class – the class had already been shown an educational film on how Muslims pray. Outraged parents complained that “forcing their children to take part in the exercise … was a breach of their human rights,â€� reports the Daily Mail:

One parent, Sharon Luinen, said: "This isn't right, it's taking things too far.

"I understand that they have to learn about other religions. I can live with that but it is taking it a step too far to be punished because they wouldn't join in Muslim prayer.
"Making them pray to Allah, who isn't who they worship, is wrong and what got me is that they were told they were being disrespectful.� …

The grandfather of one of the pupils in the class said: “[I]f Muslims were asked to go to church on Sunday and take Holy Communion there would be war.�

For his part, the school’s headmaster David Black released a statement: “Educating children in the beliefs of different faith is part of the diversity curriculum on the basis that knowledge is essential to understanding. We accept that such teaching is to be conducted with some sense of sensitivity.�

The question is, sensitivity to whom?

Matthew Parris, a columnist for The Times (London) warns:

Unless we face up honestly to the incompatibilities between aspects of the ways of life of some (not all) Muslim groups in Britain, and the British mainstream culture, we shall find ourselves babbling about racism when the issue has less to do with race than with culture. …

The key paragraph in Lord Phillips's speech is this: “A point that the Archbishop was making was that it was possible for individuals voluntarily to conduct their lives in accordance with Sharia principles without this being in conflict with the rights guaranteed by our law. …

It is by no means certain that a group of individuals may voluntarily conduct themselves according to Sharia without breaking English law. It depends what Sharia says. … Without a clear account of what Sharia demands, Lord Phillips cannot know.

Decoded, Dr Williams is saying that in a multicultural society it is fine for people within a culture to agree not to exercise certain rights, even if English law would allow them to. …
Neither the Archbishop nor Lord Phillips do any service to public policy by seeming to encourage a recourse to religious rulebooks that runs against the modern British grain.

Parris notes that Lord Phillips began his speech by describing how his maternal grandparents - Sephardic Jews - eloped in 1903 and fled Alexandria, Egypt, for Britain where they could “enjoy freedom,� adding: “How fortunate that the attitudes they were escaping did not pursue them here with ‘voluntary’ codes.�

In Spencer’s opinion, Lord Phillips, Archbishop Williams, the religious instruction teacher and others of their ilk are “useful idiots� in the “stealth jihad agenda to implement Sharia� who “have no idea of the larger implications of their actions.�

Lest anyone on this side of the Big Pond feel smug after reading example after example of how the British are willingly imposing dhimmitude on themselves, consider that in May an American soldier in Baghdad who used a Koran for target practice was not only disciplined, but senior officer Major General Jeffery Hammond groveled before tribal leaders:

“I come before you here seeking your forgiveness. In the most humble manner, I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers.�The commander also read a letter of apology by the shooter, and another military official kissed a Koran and presented it to the tribal leaders, according to CNN.

Naturally, the Association of Muslim Scholars wasted no time condemning the shooting of the Koran as “a hideous act against the book of almighty God and the Constitution of the nation and the source of its glory and dignity.� But The Stiletto does not recall this or any other Muslim group protesting when pages from the Holy Bible were used as toilet paper during the 40-day siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002 by Palestinian gunmen.

Columnist Diana West, for one, is aghast. Not at the “desecration� of the Koran – but at the “submission to the Koran … even at the expense of the soldier's Constitutional rights.� for which she blames our Commander-in-Chief, George (“we are not at war with Islam�) Bush:

Last time I looked, kissing Korans wasn't a Yankee custom - unless dhimmitude now counts as one. …

Imagine if, during the Allied occupation of post-Nazi Germany, a GI had been discovered using "Mein Kampf" for target practice. Would Gen. George S. Patton have kissed a new copy of the Nazi bible as he presented it to a cadre of former Nazis? …

Not likely. Difference is, of course, the anti-Semitism and imperialistic supremacism contained within "Mein Kampf" were recognized and treated as an existential threat to the rest of the Western world. In the so-called war on terror, however, our primary strategy is directed at masking or ignoring the overall anti-infidelism and imperialistic supremacism contained within the Koran.

And columnist Suzanne Fields frets that the politically correct, multicultural textbooks used in schools from coast to coast may have created an entire generation of young voters who are “incapable of identifying the terrorists, or understanding the radical theology driving them to kill innocents in the name of Allah�:

The textbooks make no distinctions between societies with law founded on separation of church and state and Muslim governments founded on primitive theology. There's no understanding of the differences between Sharia, or a religious code, and Western law derived from the consent of the governed. Distinctions between democracy and the totalitarian regimes of most Islamic countries go unremarked and unappreciated. …

The American Textbook Council, an independent research organization, examined the errors and political biases in American history textbooks for public junior high and high schools, and published a report called "Islam in the Classroom." The results are terrifying. It demonstrates how editors and teachers are duped by Islamist organizations that persuaded publishers to weave misinformation - and disinformation - into the textbooks, exploiting ignorance, naivete and bias in the name of diversity and political correctness. Many of these texts spin an uncritical view of radical Islam, spiced with anti-Western criticism.

“In the case of Islamic activism, theological aims are often concealed in familiar, appealing civic language," the council reports. "Few publishers or editors understand history textbooks for what they are: instruments of civic education that have among their responsibilities the obligation to alert the young to threats to American ideals and security.�

Spencer thinks it may already be too late for England to save itself from “shariacreep.� The hour grows late for America as well.By the way: An op-ed published by The Times explores the obverse question – when shouldn’t Islamofascists be accorded the same rights as citizens:

Does one betray or does one defend Western values by allowing those committed to destroying them to be exposed to practices that are anti-Western? In other words, is there a place for Sharia in Western jurisprudence? Or for torture, bugging, rendition and military tribunals for extremists or even for both British human rights and anti-terror legislation, whose provisions appear to be in conflict? …
John Wadham, legal director of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, was quoted in these pages last October as saying that everyone has a claim to protection under the UK’s human rights laws. Apparently abolishing more than 1,000 years of English common law and the Roman civil law that obtains in Scotland - both of which sharply distinguish between the rights of natives and of strangers - Wadham implied that, regardless of whether British citizens or not, and regardless of agenda or behaviour, every human being must be allowed to enforce an access to British rights. …
Contrary to the fashionable and prevailing view, it can be also be argued that excluding Muslim suspects from Western rights (say at Guantanamo Bay) does not per se compromise Western standards of legality. Western legalism and liberalism were formulated in a different world, and experience has proved (especially in Britain) that attempts to integrate minority cultures into our rights-based system create clashes.

Author Harry Cummins thinks there is nothing wrong with Western governments insisting on Western laws and mores in some situations but not in others. That’s the same game the jihadists are playing: They want to exert control wherever they live via Sharia law, regardless of its precepts and practices being at odds with their host country’s laws, but also want to be accorded full constitutional rights whenever it suits them. And in the U.K., the U.S. and too many other Western countries, they are winning this game in a shutout.Note: The Stiletto writes about politics and other stuff at The Stiletto Blog, chosen an Official Honoree in the Political Blogs category by the judges of the 12th Annual Webby Awards (the Oscars of the online universe) along with CNN Political Ticker, Swampland (Time magazine) and The Caucus (The New York Times).

[American Patriot]

Report: Father Labeled a 'Pervert' for Taking Pictures of Own Children in Park
FOXNews.com ^ | 7/15/08 | unknown, via Daily Mail An outraged father of three enjoying a day out with his young sons in a U.K. park was branded a "pervert" by other parkgoers after he snapped photos of his own kids, the Daily Mail reported Tuesday.
(snip)


"What is the world coming to when anybody seen with a camera is assumed to be doing things that they should not?" Crutchley asked in an interview with the Daily Mail. "This parental paranoia is getting completely out of hand. I was so shocked."


(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...

[American Patriot]

Sniffer dogs to wear ‘Muslim’ bootees
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ ^

Police sniffer dogs will have to wear bootees when searching the homes of Muslims so as not to cause offence. Guidelines being drawn up by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) urge awareness of religious sensitivities when using dogs to search for drugs and explosives.

The guidelines, to be published this year, were designed to cover mosques but have been extended to include other buildings. Where Muslims object, officers will be obliged to use sniffer dogs only in exceptional cases.

Where dogs are used, they will have to wear bootees with rubber soles. “We are trying to ensure that police forces are aware of sensitivities that people can have with the dogs to make sure they are not going against any religious or cultural element within people’s homes.

It is being addressed and forces are working towards doing it,� Acpo said. Related Links It's the apology that's offensive, not the dog Anger over the arrest of reformed jihadist Problems faced by the use of sniffer dogs were highlighted last week when Tayside police were forced to apologise for a crime prevention poster featuring a german shepherd puppy, in response to a complaint by a Muslim councillor.

Islamic injunctions warn Muslims against contact with dogs, which are regarded as “unclean�. Police dogs at present are issued with footwear only at scenes of explosions to prevent them injuring their paws on broken glass. Ibrahim Mogra, one of Britain’s leading imams, said the measures were unnecessary: “In Islamic law the dog is not regarded as impure, only its saliva is. .�

(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...

[American Patriot]

Are Muslim Defendants Getting Special Treatment in Court?

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/are-mus...ment-in-court/
Legal threats against police are being used to get criminal charges dropped against Muslims.
July 16, 2008 - by Patrick Poole An otherwise unremarkable hearing in the Fairfax County, Virginia, general district court last Thursday marked an ominous trend with respect to the cherished American judicial principles of the rule of law and equality before the law. The hearing on four misdemeanor charges against

Mustafa Ahmed Abbasi[/url] featured all of the usual players — judge, bailiff, clerks, prosecutors, police officers, criminal attorneys, and defendant — but with one notable addition to the judicial drama, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).


CAIR’s intervention in the Abbasi case is a manifestation of a larger campaign against law enforcement to use political alliances and legal threats to intimidate police in cases involving Muslim defendants and to establish separate and preferable treatment for Muslims in the American legal system.


The circumstances concerning the charges against Dr. Abbasi are as unremarkable as last Thursday’s hearing. On February 9, Abassi committed an improper turn which prompted a traffic stop by Fairfax County police. After consent for a search of the vehicle was given, police discovered loose pills, needles, and prescriptions written to other individuals in the trunk of the car, violations of Virginia law. Dr. Abbasi admitted that he treated members of his mosque out of his vehicle, also a violation of Virginia medical rules (it should be noted that he is also a U.S. Customs and Immigration Service-approved immigration doctor).


Abbasi received a summons for unlawfully prescribing drugs and three others for possession of controlled substances, and was allowed to leave the scene on his own recognizance.


More than two months later, a letter was sent from CAIR national legal counsel Nadhira Al-Khalili to Colonel David Rohrer, chief of the Fairfax County Police Department, claiming that the traffic stop was made on the basis of profiling and that Dr. Abassi’s consent to the vehicle search was never given. She also claimed that Abbasi’s arrest was part of a pattern of “religious discrimination� by the department.


The CAIR letter made a series of demands, including an internal affairs investigation of the incident, a reprimand for the officer who made the stop, a written apology for Dr. Abbasi, a dash-cam video of the traffic stop, audio of the related police radio transmissions, and the institution of CAIR’s workplace sensitivity and diversity training for the entire Fairfax County Police.


An important fact to note is that CAIR’s narrative was derived entirely from Dr. Abbasi’s own self-serving account. Al-Khalili’s letter admitted that they had not even attempted to review any factual evidence that might exist in the case (dash-cam video and police radio transmissions), which could have been easily obtained through an open records request before making their accusations of religious discrimination. Before then, she had not asked for any evidence. It seems that CAIR’s demands were clearly aimed at having their “diversity� training instituted by the police department, as there was no indication that Al-Khalili was acting as counsel for Abbasi (she did not appear at last week’s hearing), but was rather acting in CAIR’s own organizational interests.


CAIR’s hysterical claims in this case — Al-Khalili’s letter raises the specter of “the Fairfax County Police Department’s repeated and relentless attacks on American Muslims� — are belied when reviewing the special relationship between CAIR and Fairfax County officials, including the chief of police, Col. David Rohrer, and the County Board of Supervisors chairman, Gerry Connelly.

[American Patriot]

Be Tolerant, Muslims told
Nigerian Tribune ^ | 7/11/08 | Adebayo Waheed

THE Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), has called on Muslims to remain committed to Islamic principles of religious tolerance and peaceful co-existence.

Apparently reacting to reports of growing religious tension in some parts of the country, especially in Lagos, Ibadan and Osogbo, MURIC in a statement in Lagos charged Muslims to resist the temptation to revenge, remain calm and ignore all forms of provocation.

According to MURIC, the reports were related to preaching, singing and clapping inside public vehicles particularly the BRT buses recently introduced by the Lagos State government.

It observed that Muslims who ride the BRT and other public buses within cities and on highways had complained of great discomfort as they had been disturbed by Christian evangelists on board who hijacked the buses and held the innocent commuters to ransom with their preaching.

“The preachers are often joined by fellow Christians on board who sing and clap throughout the trip,� it added. While noting that the Muslims inside such buses were being provoked, MURIC warned that religious rivalry was being carried to extremity. “The urge to win souls is assuming a dangerous dimension.

Freedom of religion is being abused. We all agree that there should be freedom of religion but there must be decorum,� it said. It, therefore, called on the state governments of Lagos, Oyo and Osun to wade into this calculated attempt to create confusion.