Sharia-phobia
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August 25, 2010
This month the Fox News website ran an article under the headline, “Advocates of Anti-Shariah Measures Alarmed by Judge’s Ruling.” It concerned a decision by a New Jersey family court judge earlier this year denying a restraining order to a woman who was sexually abused by her then husband, a Moroccan Muslim. Judge Joseph Charles ruled that her ex-husband did not have “criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault” her. Rather, he was exercising his prerogatives as the man understood them under Islamic law, or Sharia.
The article quotes only one “advocate” of anti-Sharia measures — representing a website called JihadWatch.com — but they are legion. Search “Sharia New Jersey” and you’ll find hundreds of blogs about the “Islamization” of the American judicial system, with headlines like “New Jersey: the new hotspot of Sharia” and “Sharia judge in NJ gets lifetime appointment.”
The idea that America is this close to having the Constitution replaced by the Koran used to be a fringe notion, but has inched closer to the mainstream thanks to “Islamist watchdog” bloggers like Daniel Pipes and Pamela Geller and was given a huge boost by Newt Gingrich. “The fight against shariah and the maddrassas and mosques which teach hatred and fanaticism is the heart of the enemy movement from which the terrorists spring forth,” Gingrich told the American Enterprise Institute, where he is a senior fellow. “One of the things I am going to suggest today is a federal law which says no court anywhere in the United States under any circumstance is allowed to consider shariah as a replacement for American law.”
Conservative think-tanker Frank Gaffney declares that “Americans across this country are struggling to understand the true nature of the threat we face from shariah. They are entitled to straight talk about the extent to which it is being insinuated, promoted, and legitimated not only in mosques but by banks, academic institutions, and government agencies.”
Charles’ ruling seems like the very kind of thing Gingrich and Gaffney are worried about. But there are two things worth considering here, especially if you are a member of a religious group whose special interests often collide with American jurisprudence — a group like, I don’t know, the Jews.
As David Kopel, a contributor to the conservative National Review, has pointed out, “American courts are governed by American law, but American law has long provided that parties to contracts can provide for alternative dispute resolution mechanisms (such as arbitration).”
Among those alternative mechanisms is the beit din, or rabbinic law court. Every day Jews go before batei din to arbitrate real estate deals, nasty divorces, and business disputes. In fact, according to the Beth Din of America, Jewish law does not allow a Jew to be a plaintiff in a secular court without first obtaining permission from a Jewish court.
Permitting people to settle their disputes in their own religious courts is not a “replacement” of American law, but a time-honored expression of religious freedom and accommodation.
But didn’t Judge Charles accept an unacceptable action in the name of “religious freedom”? Here’s another thing worth considering: Although you wouldn’t know it from the headline, the Fox article eventually points out that Charles’ ruling was overturned in July by New Jersey’s Appellate Court. The court ruled that the husband’s religious beliefs were irrelevant and that Judge Charles “was mistaken.”
In other words, the system worked. What’s striking about Gingrich and the other Sharia-phobes is their lack of faith in the Constitution, the American legal system, and the American people themselves.
Never mind that the Muslim world itself has hardly reached consensus on the nature of Sharia, which is less a legal code than a religious way of living. As Rabbi Alan Brill, a professor at Seton Hall University and an expert in interfaith relations, told me, it is the distinction between “Halacha,” the rabbinic law code, and “Torah,” a way of life rooted in Jewish wisdom. According to Lauren Vriens of the Council on Foreign Relations, “Many majority Muslim countries have a dual system in which the government is secular but Muslims can choose to bring familial and financial disputes to shariah courts.” Meanwhile, most Muslim countries do not enforce the traditional and often gruesome punishments prescribed in the Koran.
But let’s say there is some cohesive network or organization of Muslims intent on transforming our legal system and reducing the rest of us to second-class status. How are they going to pull it off? As Lee Smith put it in an important article in Tablet last week, “When Gingrich argues that ‘radical Islamists want to impose Shariah on all of us,’ I can’t imagine how he sees that happening, short of the largest land invasion in human history of foreign Muslim soldiers, administrators, and religious scholars with the connivance of millions of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and pagan American collaborators.”
Gaffney’s version, of a “soft” takeover of our banks, universities, and government agencies, is similarly preposterous. It singles out Islam as the one religion that cannot be accommodated in any of these institutions. It is based on the scare-mongering notion that once a court allows an insurance company to offer Sharia-compliant financing, it’s not long before an imam will be allowed to sentence an adulteress to death by stoning.
And it assumes, based on statements from the most radical imams (and willful ignorance of an American Muslim mainstream that rejects their extremism) that Muslim citizens are a fifth column, undermining America from within.
When did the war on global Islamist terror become a war on American Muslims? When did our faith in the American way morph into fantasies of American weakness and Muslim invincibility? And why would any Jew, whose people were once reviled in this country and pushed to the margins of its banks, academic institutions, and government agencies, buy into this bigotry?
An American patriot once said, “America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect.”
That patriot was George W. Bush. He said it on Sept. 17, 2001. Now, nearly 10 years later, Newt Gingrich probably considers him a radical.
Andrew Silow-Carroll is Editor-in-Chief of the New Jersey Jewish News. Between columns you can read his writing at the JustASC blog.
Comments
Mordechai
August 25, 2010
Mr. Silow Carroll glosses over too many facts. Ask Mrs.Muzzamil Hassan in Buffalo, NY. He can’t - she was beheaded by her husband, in an honor killing because she wanted a divorce. The fact of the matter is the Jews who divorce and obtain a Get, also have to obtain a divorce in court for it to have standing in the US. You can’t just get a Get and be divorced.
Mr. Silow Carroll should read the book While Europe Slept. It describes in painstaking detail what the Muslim communities in Europe are doing, including implementing Sharia law. The inconvenient truth is that the author Mr. Bawer is not a right wing Conservative, but a homosexual liberal! Does Mr. Silow Carroll know how much of the stimulus money was used for Sharia compliant financing? It is over $10 billion dollars that is known.
The hyprocracy of the position is outstanding. If this were not a Muslim, Mr. Silow Carroll and the feminist movement would be screaming bloody murder, and how could the legal system fail to protect this poor woman. And every rights group would be jumping to her cause. But because Islam is involved, well it must be justified. What the judge actually found was first the woman sexually assaulted, BUT he would not issue a restraining order because man did it thinking he could abuse his wife if she misbehaved and refused his sexually demands per Islamic law. Nor does Mr. Silow Carroll mention that this case had to be appealed to have this finding thrown out. Does Mr. Silow Carroll agree with this finding? It sure sounds like it from his editorial.
I find it difficult to believe that the liberal Jewish community can abide with this kind of ruling, or does its new cause, the Islamic movement trump the feminist movement.
In my humble opinion, I would say that editors like Mr. Silow Carroll are not doing any service to their readers either by their editorial content or their presenting only SOME of the facts, and steadfastly refusing to print facts that weaken their arguements. Like the Minneapolis Jewish News endorsing the most anti Semitic man in Congress, Mr. Keith Ellison, the mouthpiece of CAIR. The Jewish community deserves better.
Mordechai
August 25, 2010
Follow up to my earlier post. Mr. Silow Carroll correctly points out that the decision of the court was overturned, and that the system worked. This is flawed thinking. The role of the judiciary is to INTERPRET the laws. Not put the judges own philosphies on it. If the system worked, the judge would have granted the order of protection and not come up with the cocamamy rational denying it. How many times could this man have raped his wife until the appeals process played out. The system broke down, because the judge ruled in accordance with his own opinion and not the law. The truth that editors like Mr. Silow Carroll do not see is that NO JUDGE should have considered Sharia law because it has no place in a UNITED STATES COURT.
One final point. This case was not civil law it was CRIMINAL LAW. We are talking about RAPE, not contract dispute, divorce, or other simple matter. I also find it interesting that it takes this position here, but if it were a Jewish woman whose husband would refuse to grant a Get, would he be making this point? Or would he be reporting how awful it is that the woman has no rights in Orthodox law. In recent editions of the Jewish News, I noticed that a lot of negative coverage was given to the continuing practice of having the ultra Orthodox rabbis in Israel being the sole arbiters of conversion. Enough said?
Harvey S. Cohen
August 25, 2010
The calm level-headedness and sheer decency of Andrew Silow-Carroll is a breath of fresh air in any overheated discussion.
Queen Esther
August 26, 2010
You can’t compare Shariah law with our Bet Din. Shariah law espouses suicide bombing, the subjugation of women, stoning adulteresses, killing the infidel (anyone who is not Muslim) etc. If it was as innocent as our batei din, there would be no problem with it.
I am sure there are many countries where Muslims can not choose to bring familial and financial disputes to Shariah courts. They are forced to bring them there. If a woman would like a secular court and her husband chooses a Shariah court, you can imagine where the “arbitration” would occur.
By the way, the outcry against the Mosque at Ground Zero is not because of Islamo-phobia. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is not an innocent Muslim trying to promote brotherhood. Please click on the link below and find out who he truly is.
http://www.actforamerica.org/index.php/learn/email-archives/2052-exposing-the-real-imam-feisal-abdul-rauf
laura z. schlesinger
August 26, 2010
To go out of one’s way to pick a fight with one out of every 5 human beings on this planet - 20% of the world’s population is Muslim-
is CERTIFIABLY INSANE!
But then what do you expect from Mordecai, an apologist for Israel’s haredi Taliban!
ben yaacov
August 27, 2010
When was the last time a Bet Din ordered a stoning or a lashing? The Beit Din doesn’t impose criminal punishments.
Sharia law is a problem and needs to be addressed, the shrill and hyperbolic comments of the far right not withstanding. The OIC, Cairo Declaration on ‘Human Rights’ has excepted Muslims from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stating Human Rights are subordinate to Islamic Sharia. So while Islamic states may argue over it’s exact interpretation they aren’t disputing Sharia as the authority.
Sharia courts in Islamic countries routinely hand out criminal penalties, that can be imprisonment, the execution by stonings such as in Saudi Arabia or Iran or the canings and lashings in Malaysia (you know the moderate Muslim state).
The Beit Din is irrelevant to the subject, and a deflection. The Beit Din only deals with issues where the parties have agreed to their jurisdiction. This contrasts with what occurs in places such as France and other EU communities where there is a concentration of Muslims, where girls and couples have been surreptitiously punished by gangs (who see themselves as local versions of religious police which is usual in a Muslim country) for failing to wear head coverings, public displays of affection or violations of proximity laws.
Steven
September 01, 2010
The problem is not that we currently don’t see a way for sharia to become a part of our law. But that slowly over insidious time it can happen. 30 years ago we were told that homosexuals getting married was not possible to have happen. Well that changed. The frog boiled slowly in the pot. Sharia can slowly and insidiouly become a part of our system.
leciat
October 24, 2010
sharia is already a part of our system not only did this judge charles implement sharia in his ruling but when you have the president of the united states publicly condemning the burning of the koran but silent on the painting of jesus having oral sex what you have is sharia…. which is designed to protect islam from all criticism but allows for persecution of other faiths…oh and btw pointing out the jews do it too does not justify it…jewish courts should not be allowed either, i think the only reason they are tolerated is because a jewish court would never tell a woman that her husband has the right to beat and rape her.
Jez
November 19, 2010
“You can’t compare Shariah law with our Bet Din. Shariah law espouses suicide bombing, the subjugation of women, stoning adulteresses, killing the infidel (anyone who is not Muslim) etc. If it was as innocent as our batei din, there would be no problem with it.”
Well, with Queen Ether’s knowledge on shariah law, I really do hope that she doesn’t do any comparing.
I’d like to see any respected source (and the sources are many and differed) of Islamic Jurisprudence (Shariah law) that condones those things as she has presented.
I bet the Queen doesn’t even have a clue where to look. The best I expect is to be referenced to some islamophobic right wing evangelical website with a copy, cut and paste writing style. I can do that too:
“So woe be onto those who pray!” (al-Qur’an 107:4)
See! See how evil those mOzlems are?
Anyway, thanks Mr. Silow-Carrol for a sober sermon amidst the drunken witch-hunt
Jez
November 19, 2010
I suggest that those interested in hearing the other side should check this out:
http://saudilife.net/component/content/article/276.html
David
January 20, 2011
Mr. Silow-Carrol: take your head out of the sand.