Part 1 of this essay discussed the analysis of Islam presented by Nonie Darwish in Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law. Darwish defines Islam as “less a religion and more a totalitarian system of government by terror,” and she claims that “To be a Muslim is to have a relationship not with Allah but with the Sharia-run State.”
Sharia is a “fundamental religious concept of Islam” that combines ethics and law on the principle that both express the will of Allah. In Sharia the first step in deciding an ethical or a legal question is to consult the Qur’an and the Sunnah, the sayings and teachings of Mohammed. Western law differs in that it concerns only people’s legal responsibilities and not their moral/religious responsibilities. In other words, where Western law keeps church and state separate, Sharia combines them.
Nonie Darwish notes that the system of government provided by Sharia enabled Islam to survive over the centuries, especially in conquered lands. In the process, she writes, “Islam now has become Sharia, and Sharia has become Islam.” This conjoining of Islamic theology and Sharia law explains why Muslim culture makes no distinction between public and private life, or between crime and sin. All behavior is governed by Sharia law.
If Sharia law came to a city or state in America, here are just a few of the changes that would occur, depending on the form of Sharia. (Some of the examples are from The Daily Mail):
The penalty for “criticizing, or defaming Islam and the Prophet [Mohammed]” is death. (Darwish claims Mohammed originated this rule and it has survived in every form of Sharia.)The penalty for leaving Islam for another religious faith is death.
The penalty for drinking alcohol is 80 lashes.
The penalty for theft which is a part of “banditry” is amputation of the right hand and left leg.
The penalty for homosexual behavior is death.
The penalty for fornication (for unmarried girls) is flogging.
The penalty for adultery (for women) is death by stoning.
The prohibition of blasphemy explains the issuance of “fatwas” (death sentences) against people who have created insulting drawings of Mohammed or denounced Islam.
In the U.S., of course, this prohibition would challenge the rights of free speech and freedom of the press. Likewise, the prohibition of conversion to another faith from Islam would challenge the right of religious freedom. Such challenges to America’s value system lead Darwish to conclude that bringing Sharia to the West “will be the beginning of the end of true Western democracy.”
Supporters of Sharia law, of course, say that its prohibitions wouldn’t apply to non-Muslims but only to Muslims. But it is highly unlikely that two separate and conflicting legal systems could coexist in America. The most obvious reason is that human interactions occur between as well as within cultures. Where one person was Muslim and the other was not, who would decide which legal system would apply?
It is pointless to speak of coexistence, in Darwish’s view, because Islam is fundamentally opposed to equality of treatment. This is evident wherever Islam is dominant. In those countries, non-Muslims are forbidden to build churches, wear religious medals, carry Bibles, teach their faiths in universities, or proselytize. (Non-Muslim women are also expected to modify their dress and follow restrictions concerning other matters, for example driving a car.) In contrast, where Muslims are not dominant, they expect and in some cases demand all the things Sharia denies to non-Muslims.
Darwish says this double standard becomes understandable when we realize that Islam’s “ultimate goal is, in her words, “not simply to convert people to follow the religion of Islam [but . . .] to establish Sharia law over the entire world. It is . . . about totalitarian power and the subjugation of humanity.”
There are other double standards and internal contradictions in Islamic/Sharia culture, Darwish claims, among them these:
The average Muslim man is permitted only four wives, but leaders are allowed more, as was Mohammed.
One hadith (saying of the Prophet) declares that divorce is “detestable to Allah,” yet Sharia makes it easy for men to obtain a divorce.
A woman’s consent is said to be required for marriage, yet men are allowed to marry young girls who are presumably too young to give genuine consent.
Under Sharia, abortion and slavery have never been forbidden but adoption is forbidden.
Women are stoned for adultery but men are not for rape. (Darwish offers this explanation: “It is not the sex act per se that Muslims are upset about, but the notion of giving women freedom to have or not have sex.”)
Muslims often condemn colonialist imperialists for imposing their cultures on other countries, yet Darwish notes that British colonialists were much kinder to Egyptians than were Muslims. For example, they “never imposed their religion and culture under penalty of death.”
Darwish has heard Muslims deny that Islam permits honor killing, yet has “never heard a Friday sermon prohibiting it and quoting scriptures that condemn it.”
She claims that Muslims tell the media that Islam is a “religion of peace,” and then say among themselves “God bless the Magnificent Nineteen,” referring to those responsible for Nine-Eleven.
She says, too, that Muslim nations claim to “want to help [Palestinians in] their suffering,” but then, instead of financing improvements of the West Bank and Gaza, they fund terrorism.
Among the questions Darwish often receives are these: If Islamic/Sharia culture has all the internal inconsistencies she describes, why don’t more Muslims rebel? Why don’t more women challenge the laws that deny them equality? And why don’t men who are familiar with the concept of human rights resist jihad?
She offers a number of answers. First is the simple and often overlooked fact that the average Muslim is denied knowledge of the more embarrassing rules such as those involving sex with children. Secondly, though most Muslims do not engage in terrorism, they “paradoxically hold [such messages] dear as Allah’s commands.” That is why most of them are “silent, confused, defensive, and in denial.”
Thirdly, Islam encourages repetition of formulas rather than thinking for oneself as the path to heaven: “I am right, and [others] are wrong; I am superior and [others] are inferior; Islam and the Arab culture is the only way, and [others are] evil.” Such formulaic repetition rather than reflecting on everyday experience and ideas accounts, in her view, for modern Islam’s remarkable absence of achievement in every field from athletics to science.
If Muslims grew up being encouraged to think for themselves, Darwish says, they would ask, “Why do we hate? Why must we be intolerant of other religions? Why do we have to take the life of others simply on the basis of religion?” “How can I achieve my marital and sexual rights right here on earth?” “Why should I sacrifice myself for a system that oppresses me, my wife, and my family?”
A much more obvious reason for the Muslim masses’ refusal to engage even in rebellious thoughts is fear. And the fear is definitely not irrational. They know all too well the consequences of rebelliousness, including being ostracized from their religious community, beaten, flogged, and even executed.
Yet another reason Darwish offers for men’s failure to rebel is psychological. In Muslim society men are raised solely by women until age seven. For much of their childhood they therefore not only see women’s subjugation and humiliation but also identify with women’s sense of shame and feelings of inferiority. To one who has internalized such feelings, she reasons, the promise of honor and unimaginable sexual pleasure in the next world is a powerful inducement to martyrdom for jihad in this one.
Given the understanding of Islam shared by Nonie Darwish and summarized in Parts 1 and 2 of this essay, it is undeniable that Islam/Sharia pose a clear and serious threat to the inheritors of Western civilization and its culture—specifically, Europe, the British Isles, Canada and the United States. Europe and the British Isles are already acutely aware of the threat. Americans should also be aware because, Darwish says, reporters stationed in the Middle East must have heard the “cries of cursing and incitement” to kill infidels. The only reason they do not report what they have heard is that, in her judgment, they “have allowed foreign governments to muzzle them.”
So what should the United States do or avoid doing to protect its people? Darwish offers a number of suggestions, but in doing so makes clear that “our problem . . . is not and should not be with law-abiding Muslims but with Muslim scriptures themselves, which command them to kill non-Muslims as a guarantee to go to heaven.” [Emphasis added]
Her suggestions include the following:
The government should declare that in not allowing personal choice in religion, killing apostates, and denying basic human rights, Islam does not meet the criteria for a religion and thus should not receive a religious tax exemption.
The government should “order the removal of all commandments, verses, and statements to kill from Muslim scriptures and from any other religion that commands its followers to kill those who do not believe in it.”
The media should stop calling terrorist acts “criminal acts.”
The schools should stop downplaying Western culture and instead acknowledge that it has produced “the most humane, fair, and equal system of government and most prosperous society ever in the history of man.” They should acknowledge, too, “the centrality of Judeo-Christian identify in Western society.”
Sharia should be made illegal and classified as “a dangerous totalitarian ideology.”
The government should “Control immigration from the Muslim world” and make clear that “the goal of immigration is assimilation into democratic society.”
The government should “stop issuing religious visas to Muslim clerics imported from Muslim countries” because they tend to be educated solely in Islam and Sharia.
“Ban mosques and Muslim organizations that use religion to promote incitement to kill and hate speech against people of other faiths or atheists.”
Muslims should not be allowed to build their places of worship and proselytize in our country unless we are allowed to do so in theirs. Similarly, Muslims should not be allowed to have Islamic studies departments in U.S. colleges when Christian or Jewish ones are forbidden in Muslim countries.
Copyright © 2017 by Vincent Ryan Ruggiero. All rights reserved
