J. Matt Barber
Mainstreaming radical Islam
By J. Matt Barber
The term "useful idiot" is believed to have been coined by Vladimir Lenin. It originally described liberal Communist sympathizers in Western nations who, as the Soviet leader explained, would "sell us (Soviet Russia) the rope with which we will hang them (the West)."
Today's useful idiots are a swath from that same politically correct cloth. They comprise: secular "progressives" (to include the liberal media); pinko anarchists and other Berkeley-types; President Obama and his motley stable of cracked czars and policy advisors; and the majority of Democrats in Congress.
Only the role of "international-villain-bent-on-world-domination" has changed. We've gone from the Soviet hammer and sickle to the Islamic crescent moon and star.
Abraham Lincoln once said: "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
I submit that our own useful idiots on the American left represent every bit the threat to both this great Republic and her unalienable freedoms as do the Muslim extremists with whom they play footsy. Liberals are the naïve, codependent enablers of a global Islamofascist movement bent on taking-down the "Great Satan" and his "Zionist" ally, Israel.
Although their long-term goals differ significantly, militant "progressives" and radical Islamists have a common mid-range vision: The left seeks to "repeal and replace," if you will, our Constitutional Republic with a Euro-style secular-socialist utopia. Hard-line Islamists seek to destroy us outright and supplant our government with a global Islamic State.
Exhibit A, of course, is the "Muslim Brotherhood" — a worldwide Islamofascist organization heartily embraced in recent weeks by the mainstream media and the larger "progressive" movement. The Brotherhood, in its own words, seeks to "destroy" our "Western civilization from within...so that it is eliminated and God's religion (Islam) is made victorious over all other religions."
Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy explains the group's objective concisely: "The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928. Its express purpose was two-fold: (1) to implement Shariah worldwide, and (2) to re-establish the global Islamic State (caliphate)."
Although the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations certainly represent a sizeable menace, I think there remains a more subtle, yet equally ominous threat to our way of life.
I recently received an email from the National Muslim Law Students Association promoting an upcoming conference at Penn Law on February 26. As I began to read, my jaw dropped.
The conference is titled: "Constructive Roles for Islamic Law in Western Society."
"Constructive roles?" I thought. "For Shariah law?" I read further. As it turns out, Asifa Quraishi, a University of Wisconsin law professor and founding member of the National Association of Muslim Lawyers, is to speak.
Among other things, Quraishi has advocated incorporating Shariah law, through "local Muslim tribunals," into the US judiciary.
In a paper headlined: "No Altars: A Survey of Islamic Family Law in the United States," she wrote: "The attitude of the US courts to the rise of these tribunals is yet unknown, but there is indication that some judges would welcome the existence of reliable arbiters of Islamic family law issues, and may even be undertaking their own consultation from Muslim authorities in the interim."
This begs the question: Which parts of Shariah do we incorporate? The provision that renders women chattel to be beaten or killed with impunity? Or how about the death penalty for homosexuals? What about the part offering the choice between conversion to Islam, enslavement or death?
Keep in mind, Quraishi is no fly-by-night radical. She was actually tapped by the Obama administration to accompany Hillary Clinton at last year's U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.
This is frog in the pot kind of stuff. Whereas violent Islamic terrorists might prefer to take-out toady with a suicide bomber, more "moderate" Islamists appear to favor bringing down Western civilization from within by turning up the heat ever-so-slowly. And they're using liberal academia and our own constitutional freedoms to do it.
This mainstreaming of radical Islam, to include Shariah law, has prompted lawmakers in Oklahoma to pass — and 13 other states to introduce — laws blocking consideration of Shariah by judges on the bench. Not a bad idea when you consider that five of nine US Supreme Court Justices have admitted weighing international law while ruling on cases.
Yes, the useful idiots will, no doubt, call me an intolerant "Islamophobe" for questioning the irrefutable desire, shared by Muslims of many stripes, to impose global caliphate upon the international "infidel" collective.
That's because they're idiots.
Indeed, if the American left has its way, we may just "tolerate" ourselves right out of existence.
© J. Matt Barber
February 23, 2011
The term "useful idiot" is believed to have been coined by Vladimir Lenin. It originally described liberal Communist sympathizers in Western nations who, as the Soviet leader explained, would "sell us (Soviet Russia) the rope with which we will hang them (the West)."
Today's useful idiots are a swath from that same politically correct cloth. They comprise: secular "progressives" (to include the liberal media); pinko anarchists and other Berkeley-types; President Obama and his motley stable of cracked czars and policy advisors; and the majority of Democrats in Congress.
Only the role of "international-villain-bent-on-world-domination" has changed. We've gone from the Soviet hammer and sickle to the Islamic crescent moon and star.
Abraham Lincoln once said: "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
I submit that our own useful idiots on the American left represent every bit the threat to both this great Republic and her unalienable freedoms as do the Muslim extremists with whom they play footsy. Liberals are the naïve, codependent enablers of a global Islamofascist movement bent on taking-down the "Great Satan" and his "Zionist" ally, Israel.
Although their long-term goals differ significantly, militant "progressives" and radical Islamists have a common mid-range vision: The left seeks to "repeal and replace," if you will, our Constitutional Republic with a Euro-style secular-socialist utopia. Hard-line Islamists seek to destroy us outright and supplant our government with a global Islamic State.
Exhibit A, of course, is the "Muslim Brotherhood" — a worldwide Islamofascist organization heartily embraced in recent weeks by the mainstream media and the larger "progressive" movement. The Brotherhood, in its own words, seeks to "destroy" our "Western civilization from within...so that it is eliminated and God's religion (Islam) is made victorious over all other religions."
Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy explains the group's objective concisely: "The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928. Its express purpose was two-fold: (1) to implement Shariah worldwide, and (2) to re-establish the global Islamic State (caliphate)."
Although the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations certainly represent a sizeable menace, I think there remains a more subtle, yet equally ominous threat to our way of life.
I recently received an email from the National Muslim Law Students Association promoting an upcoming conference at Penn Law on February 26. As I began to read, my jaw dropped.
The conference is titled: "Constructive Roles for Islamic Law in Western Society."
"Constructive roles?" I thought. "For Shariah law?" I read further. As it turns out, Asifa Quraishi, a University of Wisconsin law professor and founding member of the National Association of Muslim Lawyers, is to speak.
Among other things, Quraishi has advocated incorporating Shariah law, through "local Muslim tribunals," into the US judiciary.
In a paper headlined: "No Altars: A Survey of Islamic Family Law in the United States," she wrote: "The attitude of the US courts to the rise of these tribunals is yet unknown, but there is indication that some judges would welcome the existence of reliable arbiters of Islamic family law issues, and may even be undertaking their own consultation from Muslim authorities in the interim."
This begs the question: Which parts of Shariah do we incorporate? The provision that renders women chattel to be beaten or killed with impunity? Or how about the death penalty for homosexuals? What about the part offering the choice between conversion to Islam, enslavement or death?
Keep in mind, Quraishi is no fly-by-night radical. She was actually tapped by the Obama administration to accompany Hillary Clinton at last year's U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.
This is frog in the pot kind of stuff. Whereas violent Islamic terrorists might prefer to take-out toady with a suicide bomber, more "moderate" Islamists appear to favor bringing down Western civilization from within by turning up the heat ever-so-slowly. And they're using liberal academia and our own constitutional freedoms to do it.
This mainstreaming of radical Islam, to include Shariah law, has prompted lawmakers in Oklahoma to pass — and 13 other states to introduce — laws blocking consideration of Shariah by judges on the bench. Not a bad idea when you consider that five of nine US Supreme Court Justices have admitted weighing international law while ruling on cases.
Yes, the useful idiots will, no doubt, call me an intolerant "Islamophobe" for questioning the irrefutable desire, shared by Muslims of many stripes, to impose global caliphate upon the international "infidel" collective.
That's because they're idiots.
Indeed, if the American left has its way, we may just "tolerate" ourselves right out of existence.
© J. Matt Barber
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
