The decision from a federal judge who suggested $153 million of U.S. taxpayer money spent supporting Islamic Shariah really isn’t anything worth mentioning has been appealed to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and oral arguments have been scheduled April 20 in Cincinnati.
The case was filed against Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and others and is over the nation’s bailout with taxpayer money of AIG insurance, which operates multiple companies promoting Shariah-complaint insurance products, the same Shariah that serves as Islamic religious law and calls for cutting hands off thieves and execution for leaving Islam.
The specific lawsuit was filed on behalf of taxpayer Kevin J. Murray over the bailout, which has involved billions of taxpayer dollars. It’s being handled by Robert Muise and David Yerushalmi of the American Freedom Law Center.
At the district court level, the case was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Lawrence Zatkoff, who ruled that the case needed yet to prove that “the diverted funds were not de minimus in relation to the total amount…"
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines de minimus as “so minor as to merit disregard,” but the plaintiffs attorneys noted in their appeal brief that “even the district court had to concede that after cash-strapped AIG received billions of dollars in taxpayer money … it provided two of its SCF [Shariah-compliant} subsidiaries with at least $153 million.”
The lawsuit alleges that the U.S. government’s takeover and financial bailout of AIG was in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
According to the legal team, “Specifically, at the time of the government bailout (beginning in September 2008 and continuing to the present), AIG was (and still is) the world leader in promoting Shariah-compliant insurance products. Shariah is Islamic law, and it is the identical legal doctrine that demands capital punishment for apostasy and blasphemy and provides the legal and political mandates for global jihad followed religiously by the world’s Muslim terrorists.”
The legal team is arguing that, “By propping up AIG with taxpayer funds, the U.S. government is directly and indirectly promoting Islam and, more troubling, Shariah.”
“What makes this case all the more egregious is that this doctrine – Shariah – also happens to be the underlying legal and military doctrine animating jihad against the West by Muslims from the Middle East, Asia, Russia, Africa, and even right here at home, as evidenced by the tragic Fort Hood massacre,” the lawyers argue. “Each and every one of the domestic and foreign jihad terrorists has proclaimed allegiance to Shariah and its call for ‘jihad against apostates and infidels.’”
According to American Freedom Law Center’s investigation, AIG has five subsidiaries that promote and practice Shariah in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Bahrain and the United States.
Those companies hire Muslims to tell them how to meet the demands of Shariah, and the U.S. government has placed no controls over the billions of dollars in taxpayer money delivered to AIG.
Further, the case reports that the U.S. Treasury Department has created and staffed a position called the Islamic Finance Scholar-in-Residence, published presentations by senior Treasury Department officials praising Shariah-compliant finance and stated explicitly that the U.S. government ‘places significant importance on promoting … Islamic finance’ and has ‘recently deepened our engagement in Islamic finance in a number of ways,’ including a ‘call for harmonization of Shariah standards at the national and international levels’”
It was after the AIG bailout when the Treasury Department held a half-day conference called “Islamic Finance 101″ for governmental policy makers which was in effect a cheerleading program to promote Shariah and Shariah-compliant finance.
“It is one thing that our government felt compelled to bail out AIG after its fortunes were destroyed due to the company’s own recklessness and bad acts. It is quite another thing to use U.S. taxpayer dollars to promote and support AIG’s Shariah businesses – all of which don’t just sell Shariah products to the Muslim world, but actively promote Shariah as the best, most ethical way of life. Indeed, the Shariah authorities relied upon by AIG’s Shariah Supervisory Committees actively promote violent jihad,” Yerushalmi said.
After discovery in the case, which revealed the details of AIG’s Islamic promotion, the government argued – and the judge eventually agreed – that the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars used for the purpose simply didn’t matter.
In the lawsuit Murray, a veteran of the U.S. military, alleges he is being forced to contribute to the propagation of Islamic beliefs and practices predicated upon Islamic law, which he says is hostile to his Christian religion.
In the appeal brief, Muise and Yerushalmi argue that the government has claimed that Shariah-compliant financing “has absolutely nothing to do with religion, and on the other hand, they claim that it only involves the study about religion.”
“They continued, “The inescapable fact is that SCF is all about religious indoctrination .The record is clear and undisputed: SCF is an activity … that is strictly guided by Shariah, which AIG itself describes as ‘Islamic law based on Quran (sic) and the teachings of the Prophet (PBUH)’ (‘PBUH’ is an acronym for ‘Peace Be Upon Him’ – a religious expression used by some Muslims (notably, Shariah-adherent Muslims) to refer to Mohammed, their prophet.”
They said that defendants already had conceded that AIG is “fully engaged in religious indoctrination…"
“The federal government’s use of taxpayer funds to endorse and promote SCF and its entwinement, symbiotic relationship, and excessive entanglement with the very company (AIG) that is publicly known as the market leader in SCF constitute activity that is ‘sufficiently likely to be perceived’ by a reasonable taxpayer as a violation of the Establishment Clause.”
The law team continued, “This is particularly true, when, as here, the federal government owns and controls AIG and yet refuses to place any safeguards on the expenditure of federal tax funds to ensure compliances with the Constitution, knowing that AIG and its subsidiaries, which rely on funding from AIG, engage in this religious indoctrination.”
They pointed out that James Madison, the principal author of the First Amendment, once objected to “three pence” being used by the government to promote religion.”