15,000 Gather To Apply Shariah In U.S.
Shariah law is famous for making headlines in the West over its penalties, such as beheadings and amputations; its treatment of women and the violence that is allowed, and its relegation to those who follow other faiths to a subservient status.
Now, it seems, there’s a new move to expand its influence in the United States, with a weekend conference in Hartford, Conn., on “Understanding Shariah” and “how to apply Shariah in a society where most people are not of the same faith.”
The conference is being assembled by the Islamic Circle of North America, which earlier was revealed through a campaign by Stop Islamization of Nations, to be trying to “mainstream Shariah.”
Officials say they expect some 15,000 to attend the events at the 37th annual ICNA convention.
“Muslims need to be educated about Shariah,” said Naeem Baig, the organization’s vice president for public affairs, in announcing the events.
“There’s a need for the community to better understand what Shariah means to us, and how to apply Shariah in a society where most people are not of the same faith,” he said.
The conflict between Shariah and Western justice, which was outlined nearly a millennium ago in the Magna Carta and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, has been on the rise recently.
The result has been a move among states, including Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri, South Dakota, Tennessee and Kansas, to make statements that would prevent American jurisprudence from taking a back seat to the dictates of the Islamic religious law in American courts.
Baig called the concern “a deep-down hatred of Muslims” and said, “They don’t want to see Muslims in America.”
ICNA said many of the convention programs focus on educating Muslims about Shariah, and the “myths” about Shariah.
But the Stop Islamization of Nations campaign is buying ad space for a billboard calling on Americans to learn the dark side of Islamic law.
The effort’s leader, Pamela Geller, says her group has one real purpose – to counter the impact of the pro-Shariah billboard campaign of the Islamic Circle of North America, an alleged Muslim Brotherhood front organization.
Geller pointed out that captured internal documents indicated ICNA is a Muslim Brotherhood group.
“Muslim Brotherhood groups in America are trying to … mainstream Shariah,” Geller warned.
The billboard will lead people to the Refuge from Islam site.
“The Muslim Brotherhood group ICNA needs to lie to Americans about Shariah and advance a false narrative about the most extreme and radical ideology on the face of the earth. Period,” Geller said.
“They don’t want Americans to know the truth that the gendercide of honor killings, the clitorectomies, the stonings, and the 1,400 years of cultural annihilations and enslavements (that) are all Shariah-mandated,” Geller said.
“We need to counter this campaign publicly. We must educate America and arm freedom lovers with facts,” Geller said.
Geller said Muslims have to take a bold step to truly become Americans.
“The U.S. should be calling upon Muslim groups in America to renounce and reject Shariah if they want to be American citizens,” Geller said.
It was ICNA’s Kansas City pro-Shariah billboard that suggested the response. The Shariah promotion says,”Shariah: Got questions? Get answers? Call 1-855-Shariah.”
Jihad Watch publisher and Islam analyst Robert Spencer said the ICNA campaign is an effort to muddy the waters on Islam.
“ICNA is trying to whitewash Shariah, to hoodwink Americans into thinking that concerns about it are all due to ‘misconceptions’ that can easily be cleared up,” Spencer said.
Spencer added that any inquiries about Shariah’s darker side will receive soft replies.
“I expect that if any inquirers asked about stonings, amputations, the denial of the freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for women and non-Muslims, they’ll be told that none of that is really part of Shariah,” Spencer said.
“ICNA’s goal is to foster complacency and ignorance about Shariah on the part of Americans,” Spencer said.
The very idea of Shariah is antithetical to the freedoms on which America was based, many have concluded. WND columnist Diana West was writing about a new book, “Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me.”
For that book, Geert Wilders unearthed some statements revealing the Founding Fathers’ perspective on Islam. She wrote:
“In 1916, Roosevelt observed: ‘Wherever the Mohammedans have had a complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared.’
“Roosevelt rejected as ‘naïve’ the notion that ‘all religions are the same.’ Some religions, he explained, ‘give a higher value to each human life, and some religions and belief systems give a lower value.’”
And, she noted,
“John Quincy Adams wrote that Muhammad ‘poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war as part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST; TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.’”
Explained West, “The capital letters are Adams’, by the way, and the source Wilders draws from is ‘The American Annual Register of 1827-28-29,’ where Adams published unsigned essays in 1830 (listed in Lynn H. Parsons’ annotated bibliography of Adams’ works) in between his tenure as president and his return to Congress.”
