Two of the talking points used by apologists and supporters of Sharia law are:
That media darling, the "moderate" imam Faisal Rauf, sticks mainly to the first talking point: in the video below he says that Sharia is just like the US Constitution -- at least 90% of it is...
I set out here just how little like the customs of the west Sharia is ("The Threat of Sharia").
On the second point, though, he's more of a "let's-have-a-little-bit-of-Sharia" kind of guy. Let's implement it, but just a bit, mind.
That's the line he ran in his interview a few days ago in Scotland, which is reported here. Note that none -- as in 0% -- of the commenters are having a bar of his line (read them, they're good). His line is:
- One: That Sharia is not really all that different from western or US law, so nothing to worry about.
- Two: In an case, there's no movement to have it implemented in the west.
That media darling, the "moderate" imam Faisal Rauf, sticks mainly to the first talking point: in the video below he says that Sharia is just like the US Constitution -- at least 90% of it is...
I set out here just how little like the customs of the west Sharia is ("The Threat of Sharia").
On the second point, though, he's more of a "let's-have-a-little-bit-of-Sharia" kind of guy. Let's implement it, but just a bit, mind.
That's the line he ran in his interview a few days ago in Scotland, which is reported here. Note that none -- as in 0% -- of the commenters are having a bar of his line (read them, they're good). His line is:
An essential element of this interweaving of cultures, he [Rauf] says, will have to be the incorporation of Sharia law into the legal systems of Europe and the US. In this, he is in agreement with the Archbishop of Canterbury who said that the adoption of some aspects of Sharia law “seems to be unavoidable”.
Rauf points out that “the only truly clashing area is the penal code, and no Muslim has the intention of introducing that to America. The penal code is the area that people in the Western world are worried about – but these are things that aren’t even observed today in most of the Muslim world. Apart from the Taliban and a few places like that, where do you see this happening?”.
Note that this is the guy that has previously -- in relation to the Ground Zero Mosque of which he was the original proponent -- that there was no move to have Sharia in the US. But here he is openly and brazenly pushing for it. He says that "the only truly clashing area is the penal code" which need not be implemented. But you can't have a "bit" of Sharia any more than you can be a "bit" pregnant.
As for his ludicrous claim "where to you see this happening?", well try, just for starters: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, southern Nigeria, increasingly in parts of Malaysia and Indonesia, even in the Maldives.
His own duplicity -- in proposing we can pick and choose which bits of Sharia to take -- is revealed by the statement in his earlier book, Islam, a Sacred Law, where he says:
As for his ludicrous claim "where to you see this happening?", well try, just for starters: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, southern Nigeria, increasingly in parts of Malaysia and Indonesia, even in the Maldives.
His own duplicity -- in proposing we can pick and choose which bits of Sharia to take -- is revealed by the statement in his earlier book, Islam, a Sacred Law, where he says:
And since a Shari'ah is understood as a law with God at its center, it is not possible in principle to limit the Shari'ah to some aspects of human life and leave out others.
And finally to sum it all up, the wonderful Michael Cohen (h/t bcf). Coren is knowledgeable, succinct and eloquent:
Update: a "little bit of Sharia", globally, with the forthcoming vote to ban the criticism of Islam.... (any criticism will be "defamation", you wait and see)...
.... The Lobby then used Durban II, held in 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland, to propose a declaration to impose Islamic censorship on the West by prohibiting the defamation of Islam. In Durban III, to be held at the UN on the 10th anniversary of Durban I, the Muslim cabal now seeks to achieve its real goal—a UN General Assembly (UNGA) vote to approve the two earlier declarations.
