What about sharia?

(Note: two days after posting this entry, I serendipitously found out that an organization devoted to watching sharia, sort of, already exists.)

We don’t know enough about sharia. We know the famous stuff, the cutting off of hands for theft, the stoning to death for sexual misbehaviors. More recently we know about the public calls for prayer and the five times a day foot washing, which American institutions have been accommodating. We know something about Muslim marriage and divorce laws. But what we don’t know about is the complete sharia system for the direction of society—the system that Muslims are commanded to put in place as soon as they are in political control of a country, the system that between 30 and 60 percent of Muslims in the West say they want to inaugurate. And it is sharia, not jihad, that is the real threat Islam presents to us, since even “peaceful” Muslims seek sharia. Our focus has been on terrorism and jihad. But sharia is the law that mandates jihad, which is but an instrument for the imposition of sharia on non-Muslims. Sharia is the practical substance of Islam, and the goal of Islam is the rule of Islam—meaning the rule of sharia—over the whole earth.

Robert Spencer has Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch. What he needs is a new website called Sharia Watch.

Of course that’s just intended as a helpful suggestion, though Spencer will no doubt think it’s part of my campaign to take over the West.

- end of initial entry -

Adela G. writes:

Jihad leaps, sharia creeps. Leaps are newsworthy. Creeping is barely noticed. This is why I bookmarked Dhimmi Watch but not Jihad Watch. I figured the former charts the course of sharia pretty accurately.

I’d like to see a website devoted to legal ways we can resist sharia here in the West. For example, I’d like an accurate list of companies owned by Muslims or Muslims businesses so that I can boycott them. I’m sure some people would like to know which schools and universities are “accommodating diverse sensibilities” (appeasing Muslims) so they can donate elsewhere. Etc. In other words, not just reporting on the advance of sharia but advocating and facilitating resistance to this ideological kudzu.

LA replies:

Your real point is, it may be time to do away with the trope of “____ Watch” altogether. “Watch” implies mere passive observing.

It’s like a “terrorism wastch list.” We always hear that “so-and-so was on the FBI’s terrorism watch list.” The news media constantly mention this list, but not once have they ever told us what it means. It sounds as though it means that we watch the terrorists as they enter the U.S. “Yep, we’ve got them on that watch list, all right.”

Adela G. writes:

You write:

Your real point is, it may be time to do away with the trope of “__ Watch” altogether. “Watch” implies mere passive observing.

Yes, thank you for clarifying.

You write: “We don’t know enough about sharia.”

True. But we know that it is inimical to the West. And we know that nothing further we learn about it will persuade us that it is not inimical to the West.

So now what we need to know is how to oppose it. Of course, given the liberal rot throughout the West, what this really means is that we need to thwart left-wing efforts to accommodate it or else we need to convince the left to abandon efforts to accommodate it. That’s “convince,” not “persuade.” Persuasion will never work with the left, anymore than it will work with Muslims.

LA replies:

If we are to win this battle, we need to know enough about sharia to inform and persuade the people who are capable of being informed and persuaded that sharia—not terrorism, and not jihad—is in fact the ultimate threat.

Adela G. writes:

You write: “If we are to win this battle, we need to know enough about sharia to inform and persuade the people who are capable of being informed and persuaded that sharia—not terrorism, and not jihad—is in fact the ultimate threat.”

Yes, but what then? Certainly you don’t mean our politicians, our educators, our policymakes, our media. They are all left-wing or sufficiently influenced by the left that they will not of their own accord take steps to discourage or thwart sharia creep, they will actively enable it.

So you mean ordinary Americans. A public outcry last year may have stopped the treacherous “shamnesty” legislation temporarily but the desire of policymakers to defy the very vocally expressed will of the people remains intact. (After some cursory courting of conservatives, that arch-cad McCain recently referred approvingly to “comprehensive immigration reform.”) I think the same dynamic will operate with any attempt by Americans to oppose sharia.

Somehow the left will have to be made to stop altering our laws, society and culture so as to allow sharia to take root. So far, the left has been supremely clever about getting its agenda legislated, funded and, if not socially approved, at least managing to stigmatize its critics as one or more of the usual suspects (racists, homophobes, Islamophobes, sexists, etc.)

So, I ask, once those who can be persuaded that sharia is the threat are persuaded of that fact, what then?

Given the direness of the situation, I am surprised Mr. Spencer is not doing his part to establish Austerism over the West. I guess he’s too busy “watching.”

LA replies:

“So, I ask, once those who can be persuaded that sharia is the threat are persuaded of that fact, what then?”

Then it will have been established that Islam itself is the problem, that Islam is a mortal threat to our society and does not belong in significant numbers in any Western society. And this will provide the basis for a political movement to reverse the Islamization of the West.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 14, 2008 03:21 PM | Send