Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was asked yesterday whether he would support a Muslim for president. His answer may have been one of the most important teaching moments of the long and difficult campaign season.
Speaker Gingrich responding by saying it depends on whether the candidate was “a modern person who happens to worship Allah.” Or “a person who belonged to any kind of belief in sharia, any kind of effort to impose that on the rest of us.” He rightly concluded by saying that the former would not be a threat while the latter would be a “mortal threat.”
Newt is absolutely right in making such a distinction. The danger we currently face from the so-called Muslim world arises not from the fact that people are Muslim, but from the extent to which they adhere to the totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine of sharia.
Gingrich also repeated his earlier call for federal legislation to ensure that sharia is not practiced in U.S. courts. An appellate-court ruling last week in connection with an amendment to the Oklahoma state constitution would seem to preclude such an initiative.
In fact, legislation that would prevent any foreign laws — including sharia — from being practiced in state courts if they conflict with U.S. constitutional rights or state pubic policy has been enacted in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arizona. In none of the three cases has the constitutionality of this statute, known as American Laws for American Courts (ALAC), been challenged. ALAC is under consideration in roughly another 20 state legislatures.
Some have argued that there is no need for such legislation. There is. A Center for Security Policy study of a microcosm of American jurisprudence — 50 state appellate-level cases — established that there have been at least 27 cases in 23 states where sharia law was applied. A pro-sharia group, ShariaInAmerica.com, found many more such cases.
Unfortunately, those seeking to insinuate sharia into this country are doing so not just in our courts, but it is being promoted in schools, mosques.
Sharia has become an increasingly significant force in American capitalism, thanks to the embrace by Wall Street and the U.S. government of so-called Sharia-Compliant Finance. Indeed, this country’s taxpayers now own the largest purveyor of sharia-compliant insurance products in the world: AIG.
Sharia is the impetus behind multinational diplomatic efforts to accommodate sharia blasphemy prohibitions on expression that offends Muslims.
Newt Gingrich has rendered a real public service not shying away from this issue on the campaign trail.
— Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy.
Yeah, we definitely don't want some kooky religious nut who's gonna try to make it illegal to buy condoms or have sex before marriage. So that's a "no" on Muslims or Santorum, I guess.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNice red herring. BTW, was it Roman Catholics who flew the jets on 9/11? Get over your obession with sex.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI sooooo wish we could push you out of the armored limo in downtown Jeddah and revisit your notions about Sharia in a week's time. If you survive.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Gingrich also repeated his earlier call for federal legislation to ensure that sharia is not practiced in U.S. courts. An appellate-court ruling last week in connection with an amendment to the Oklahoma state constitution would seem to preclude such an initiative."
And if you want to watch our lawmakers dash for cover, just raise the issue. I would love to see how Mitt Romney would spin it. There are 3 groups that give our lawmakers nightmares:
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse1)The Feminists (but that seems to be waning in recent years);2) the Gay Lobby; and Muslims. There has been an alliance of sorts in recent years between the 3; thier target of course are Christians and thier institutions. But, I would say that between Gays and Feminists, and Muslims, it is Muslims that most politicians fear most.
Probably for good reason. Members from two of the three groups will just lob a pie or condom at you. Members of the third will try to kill you.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseExactly! You cannot negotiate with people who think they received their marching orders from Allah! They will kill in an instant and not even think about it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt isn't just politicians, it is academia, non-Muslim religious leaders and preachers, the media, and even average everyday citizens and voters. Our entire society has been brainwashed into absurd liberal multiculturalism, tolerance is the new religion. Expressing uncomplimentary though true facts about Islam is a "sin" to the modern liberal (and that includes conservatives.) Some people are sadly too stupid to learn the truth themself, others are simply too wimpy to speak the truth even if they do know it, others actually believe that there is no problem with Islam and that it is just another way to God no different than any other religion including Christianity. Any Christian who believes that is truly a pathetic creature, and one that God Himself will NOT forgive in this regard. Islam rejects Christ and everything the Bible stands for in ways even the most ardent Satanist could never dream of. The West is already lost, it will take, literally, a miracle from the God of the Bible to save America and the West.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHis answer may have been one of the most important teaching moments of the long and difficult campaign season.
Well, perhaps... but only if you are a person living in a world that bears only a passing resemblance to what the rest of us call "reality."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSt. Andeol, I have heard absolutely nothing from any Republican campaign to suggest that presidents would work outside of the legislative branch to enact laws. *That* is the difference between efforts at Sharia law and what the candidates advocate.
One can be both (say) against abortion and willing to work with Congress. That others would presume to impose a layer of law both on top of and contrary to an established legislature is the threat, not the contents of the layer. If others don't understand that, it's because of a dangerous naivete or willful ignorance or both. Neither standpoint is appealing in the least.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHe got a tough question, and gave a softball answer.
By dividing the possible Muslim candidates into only 2 groups, he ignores the fact that both named categories contain an element of subjective interpretation.'
“a modern person who happens to worship Allah.”
And we know this because he says so?
There are literally thousands of Muslim individuals, foundations, committees, etc. that simply LIE about their intentions.
Will he begin his dialogue with one of these by asking "Are you an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood", when the answer will invariably be "no" regardless of the truth of the statement?
“a person who belonged to any kind of belief in sharia, any kind of effort to impose that on the rest of us.”
With Iran's current maniac an obvious exception, very few Islamists introduce themselves with "Hello, convert to Islam or die". What threshold should we set to mark the boundary between moderate and radical? This will, of course, be done with the assistance of CAIR, rendering the entire effort worse than useless: we still don't know who they are, but they know what we're doing.
How does Mr. Gingrich propose to deal with a self-identified moderate who in fact has an agenda antithetical to our way of life?
In short, he didn't answer the question at all.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think the real question here is whether parties to private contracts can agree in advance to adhere to arbitration principles of their own choosing, and write those arbitration principles into their contracts.
That's the only context in which "sharia law in the US oh noes!" could arise.
Those Tennessee, Louisiana and Arizona statutes will eventually run into significant 14th and 1st Amendment issues if they permit private parties to refer disputes to arbitration UNLESS that arbitration is based on foreign or religious law. If they've done away with private arbitration entirely, they may pass constitutional muster - but they're atrociously oppressive laws all on their own, then.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseElecting a Shariah totalitarian as president of the United State of America is as much a "mortal threat" as electing a cyborg with a nuclear bomb for a heart. But you don't hear politicians stoke fears about the latter happening, because there is no public undercurrent of anti-cyborg bigotry to tap into.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou never know with professor Gasbag. He gets to riffing and out pop the funniest lines. I think he's really a deadpan comic, but not everyone gets it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe really funny thing is that if you made that comparison to holy pious Muslims in a land they control, even the wonderful holy Arabia, they would kill you. So in a sense, the joke is on you. Reality trumps your own bigotry borne of ignorance.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDoesn't Newt's response parse to this: " I wouldn't support a good Muslim, only a very bad Muslim."
That is, a very un-Muslim Muslim?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe amount of condescension people exhibit when dealing with Muslims is vast. Sure, any Muslim quote unquote, who doesn't really believe in Islam, who doesn't actually follow the example of Muhammad, who doesn't want what the Koran wants and demands, who disregards vast portions of the Koran and Hadith, is AOK super duper fine by us! Well then you are dealing with someone who is too stupid to even know what their religion demands, what it has done through history, what it did long ago to their own non-Muslim ancestors, or if they do know the truth about Islam they are lying to you claiming they don't follow it either to confuse you and fool you with Islam sanctioned lying - taqiya, or they are too much of a wimp to leave Islam because they are afraid their own family and friends quote unquote would kill them for leaving Islam as is required by the holy pious religion of Islam. People need to cut the crap already, Muslims aren't even allowed to speak out against or about Islam! And now even non-Muslims in the West are being forced like dhimmis into similar free speech restrictions.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI missed where Santorum said he wanted to outlaw contraceptives and pre-marital sex. It's hard to believe he would do that.
No, really, it's hard to believe.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is hard to believe, since the President lacks the authority to do that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe day before yesterday, a group of muslims disrupted a planned talk on Shariah at Queen Mary U. by filming the audience and threatening to kill everyone there. The talk was cancelled (unlike a similar incident about a month ago in Belgium involving Irshad Manji in which the speakers refused to leave despite the death threats) The forum in which the confrontation was planned offers some interesting insights:
External Link
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAgain, I differ with this notion of Gaffney and Gingrich in that although the shariah is a set of quasi legal rules incompatible with or even hostile to western secular law principles ..
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse... but the Quran itself is also abject in that it names Christians and Jews .. leaving no other conclusion that this islamic supreme being is hateful ...
Furthermore it is not the "ambition" to establish a worldwide Caliphate with the only point of reference being the shariah ... but all the hatred in the Quran that mobilizes violence in Egypt against Kopts, and bombing attacks against black Christians in Nigeria etc etc.
I furthermore differ with James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney and Robert Zubrin on their position how to become independent from islam oil as far as I understand them ...
... and I differ on this point regarding islam for I think islam world wide must by iron curtained ...