One way or another, Islam is sharia

In my discussion with David Yerushalmi about his proposal to destroy by military force all sharia regimes, by which I initially thought he meant all sharia regimes, but which he later clarified to mean only ?complete? sharia regimes, I replied that there were very few such ?complete? sharia regimes, which meant that his proposal was not as extreme as I had believed. However, even if only a handful of the 57 Islamic-majority countries have complete sharia law, here is something that comes as a disturbing surprise. According to Nonie Darwish in an interview at FrontPage Magazine last December, all Islamic-majority countries, even in the absence of criminal sharia law (hand-chopping for theft, death for conversion, etc.), have family sharia law, which institutes, among other things, polygamy and the sanctified inferiority of women.

The point is that there are degrees of sharia, and wherever Muslims have the ability to do so, they immediately put some forms of sharia into place. Thus in some Muslim-dominated areas in European cities aspects of sharia have come into practical effect. Thus Muslims in Canada are seeking to get official recognition of family sharia law. As reader Maureen C. puts it, the Darwish interview tells ?what Islam?s sanctification of lust does to women?s hearts and men?s souls.?

Therefore, as I have said before, it is not enough to make a Muslim individual?s subscription to jihad the criterion for his exclusion from the United States. All Muslim immigration must stop, and all Muslim immigrants already in the West who believe in sharia, in any form, must be made to leave. If they are naturalized citizens, their belief in sharia is incompatible with their oath of citizenship, which therefore should be abrogated. For example, the hero of the supposed conservatives, the supposed Islam-critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, recently transplanted from the Dutch parliament to the American Enterprise Institute, has said that she has no problem with Muslims seeking to institute sharia in the West, so long as they do it peacefully. (Here is the quotation and source on this.) Thus, even though Ali opposes jihad, she is a Muslim immigrant who at least passively supports sharia, and on that basis she should be removed from the United States.

Either we are serious about protecting our society from this totally alien Islamic law, which represents the complete destruction of our own customs, institutions, and freedoms, or we are not. The only way to be serious about it is to stop and reverse Muslim immigration.

A further note: Apart from the question of Islam and sharia, I believe that any person who believes, as Hirsi Ali believes, that the majority religion of the United States is the moral equivalent of Nazism, i.e., the moral equivalent of absolute evil, is self-evidently hostile to the majority culture and traditions of this country and should not be allowed to immigrate here. True, Ali did not equate Christianity per se with Nazism, but Catholicism. However, based on her previous statements, it is evident that her target is not just the Catholic Church but any genuine form of Christianity. And even if she only meant that Catholicism is the moral equivalent of Nazism, a person who shows such hostility to the founding religion of Western society should not be allowed to immigrate into the West. Let her go back to Somalia and try to undermine its customs, rather than come here and undermine our customs.

Another note: In my focusing so much on the problem of Muslim immigration, there is a danger of losing focus on the problem of non-Western and Third-World immigration as a totality, and especially Mexican and Hispanic immigration, which forms the great mass of immigration to the U.S. What I say needs to be done about Muslim immigration also applies, mutatis mutandis, to Hispanic immigration. It needs to be stopped and reversed.

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Vivek G. writing from India has some further astonishing information for us about sharia (there is still so much to learn):

There are many ?non-Muslim? regimes as well, where Muslims are ruled by sharia. INDIA is one of them. India, despite being a ?secular? country (as per its constitution), has different civil-code for different peoples. Muslims are governed by ?Muslim Personal Law? which is sharia (polygamy, husband divorcing a wife by merely saying ?I divorce you? three times, and so on.)

The prime-minister and the finance-minister of India ask Western countries to invest more and more, even as (inside India) they (the prime-minister is on record on this) contemplate ?affirmative? action favouring Muslims. For example, they are also contemplating mandating reservation for Muslims in jobs in privately held companies including Western companies.

So, in the civilizational conflict, these things will also have to be taken into account. I think as a first step: all World Bank and International Monetary Fund and Western aid/loan/investment should be subject to the condition that the recipient country does not allow any form of sharia in its constitution.

This brings me to my oft-repeated point that as a group of civilized nations, we need to evolve a ?constitution of constitutions.? We need to realize that not ALL constitutions are consistent with our view of civilized society. Granting various nations admission into international bodies in a non-discriminatory manner (as has been and is being practised) is certainly a short-sighted practice if not a wrong one. International community of civilized countries should not let those countries enter their guild unless these aspiring countries (with respect to their constitution) pass certain admissibility criteria. As a person, will you allow me in your club/company if I am a wife-basher and a child-molester? If not, how can you admit those ?countries? to your club which constitutionally allow evil things?

LA replies:

Vivek?s last paragraph raises a point I?ve referenced briefly from time to time. If Separationism (i.e., the Rollback, Isolation, Containment, and Policing of Islam) is to work, it is not enough for America alone or the West alone to do it. All non-Islamic countries must ultimately carry out their own parallel and perhaps coordinated efforts to roll back Islam from the non-Muslim world and contain it within the historic Islamic lands. So, yes, in principle I am in favor of such a alliance as Vivek proposes, on the condition that the West is not forming this alliance with non-Muslim non-Western civilizations for the purpose of forming a global community or a world government, but only for the limited purpose of protecting ourselves and all non-Muslim societies from Islam.

Maureen C. writes:

Bravo, Lawrence. Excellent exposition of the implications for the West of importing this completely alien aggressive culture.

There is a ?Sixth Pillar? of Islam?the Sanctification of Lust through polygamy.

N. Darwish?s specific examples in the interview you link make the suffering of women under Islam quite clear.

Vivek G. writes:

You say: ? … on the condition that the West is not forming this alliance with non-Muslim non-Western civilizations for the purpose of forming a global community or a world government … ?

Surely even within the West there are sufficient differences that a concept like ?union of the West? will be as flaky as ?EU? is. So, the alliance that I mention is not to be a ?world government? at all. It is to be like a guild of individuals who are capable and agree on certain principles without forefeiting their individuality.

The ?universal? (rather civilizational universal alliance) that we may form is NOT the universal which comes with (or after) the death of the particular but that universal which is the ?fulfilment? of the particular. As family is fulfilemnt of the individual, society the fulfilment of family etc. As families unite to form societies so that they may defend all constituent families. Sounds like the ?transcendental reality? that you write about. May be you could comment further.

LA replies:

I am for international and inter-civilizational alliances for specific, delimited purposes, such as defending non-Muslim countries from Islam. I am in favor of friendship, trade, visits, and exchanges of various kinds between ourselves and members of other civilizations. I am in favor of individuals experiencing their essential oneness as human beings in God?s world across civilizational differences. But I am totally opposed to any notion of a politically incarnated universalism, because that must mean and can only mean a move toward global government and the elimination of the individuality and sovereignty of the respective societies. Therefore I do not look to the respective societies forming a ?larger society,? as Vivek seems to envision. Such a ?larger society? can only be some version of the UN, or something far worse.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 11, 2007 09:56 AM | Send