Sharia Deceptions

As Oklahoma has now voted to ban Sharia, and an openly pro-Sharia Imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is going ahead with plans to build a triumphal mega-mosque at Ground Zero, Sharia is more in the public consciousness than ever -- and so Islamic supremacists such as Reza Aslan are working harder than ever to confuse the American people about what Sharia is, so as to defuse opposition to it.

Aslan, although considered to be a moderate exponent of a modern Islam, is actually a Board member of the National Iranian American Council, a group that is widely regarded as an apologetic vehicle for the Islamic Republic of Iran. He has called on the U.S. Government to negotiate not only with Ahmadinejad but with Hamas -- that is, with some of the most barbaric and genocidally-inclined adherents of Sharia. And so it should come as no surprise that on this Australian television show, “Fear of Islam,” from SBS Insight, November 2, he retails some of the most common talking points that Islamic supremacists are circulating these days in order to deceive people as to the nature of Sharia and belittle resistance to the spread of elements of it in the United States and in Western countries in general. (The transcript is full of errors, some slightly amusing -- “idea logs” -- but is clear enough.)

The program, predictably enough, is focused not on the manifest increase in jihad activity, but on the alleged increase of “anti-Islamic sentiment":

No kidding, really?

There are many things Reza Aslan is not, and one of them is an original thinker. He is in this retailing talking points that we saw just recently coming from Rashad Hussain, Obama’s Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference: that the bad economy has people looking for a scapegoat, and that they’ve fastened upon Muslims.

I don’t know who originated this theme, but it is a brazen attempt to divert attention away from the sole and obvious cause of any actual suspicion of Muslims or Islam in the U.S.: the ever-increasing number of terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims who explain and justify their actions by reference to Islamic texts and teachings. That Aslan did not lead with that as his answer to the question about why “anti-Islamic sentiment” is supposedly rising is the clearest indication that he is not intending to clarify matters or deal with this problem honestly.

Aslan continues:

I don’t know by what method of calculation Aslan determined that 31% (which is the actual number of surveyed Republicans saying they thought Obama was a Muslim) was “almost 40%,” but hey, they invented algebra. Anyway, Aslan here is apparently saying that “anti-Islamic sentiment” is rising because people think Obama is a Muslim, and they don’t like Obama’s policies, and so they blame Islam for them. Once again, he is insulting the intelligence of the American people. If large numbers of people believe Obama is a Muslim, it is because of his hostility (unprecedented in a president of the United States) toward Israel, his unwillingness to do anything effective about Iran’s nuclear program, and his indefatigable dedication to coddling and appeasing the Dar al-Islam, even to the point of absurdity, as when he told NASA’s chief that one of his primary responsibilities would be -- not space exploration! -- making Muslims feel good about the alleged scientific achievements of the Islamic world.

And if there is any actual rise in “anti-Islamic sentiment,” it is not because befuddled American yahoos think that nationalizing health care and the banking and auto industries are Muslim policies implemented by a Muslim president, but because Islamic jihadists just in the last few days sent bombs via UPS to synagogues in Chicago and stormed a church in Baghdad, murdering 58 people. Then there was the Fort Hood jihad shooting, the Arkansas recruiting center jihad shooting, the Christmas underwear bomb jihad attempt, the Times Square jihad car bomb attempt, the Fort Dix jihad plot, the North Carolina jihad plot, the Seattle jihad shooting, the JFK Airport jihad plot, and on and on. But Reza Aslan, not surprisingly, doesn’t mention any of that.

Here again, Aslan is not engaging in any real analysis or actual thought; he is just repeating talking points that we have heard before from the likes of Muslim Brotherhood-linked Congressman Keith Ellison and Nicholas Kristof, among many others. Christopher Hitchens ably took apart the central claim being made here: “‘Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s,’ Imam Abdullah Antepli, Muslim chaplain at Duke University, told the New York Times. Yes, we all recall the Jewish suicide bombers of that period, as we recall the Jewish yells for holy war, the Jewish demands for the veiling of women and the stoning of homosexuals, and the Jewish burning of newspapers that published cartoons they did not like.”

And as for Aslan’s assertion that “in the next generation” Americans will “very likely look back on this sort of anti-Muslim sentiment” with “shame and derision and with a healthy dose of mockery,” that’s all he has besides borrowed talking points originated by others. Aslan, as I will eventually demonstrate definitively when I publish his emails to me, cannot and will not deal on the level of facts and discuss matters rationally, but instead works consistently from the gutter. It is the only refuge he has given his manifest and abject intellectual vacuity.

Anyway, then the Australian TV show goes on to Nonie Darwish, who states some truths about the Qur’an, which are then contradicted by Muslim spokesmen. The problem with such discussions is that they deal in generalities; there is no time in such a setting for any extended examination of the contents of the Qur’an, and so the discussion amounts essentially to one person’s word against another’s. And so to Reza Aslan’s response:

Aslan ignores, and probably hopes that his audience doesn’t know about, the mainstream Islamic theological idea that the chapters of the Qur’an that date from the Medinan period, which contain virtually all of the Qur’an’s directives to wage war against and subjugate unbelievers, take precedence over the chapters from the Meccan period, which teach a kind of grudging tolerance, and that offensive warfare against unbelievers is the Qur’an’s final and binding word on jihad. See here for an Islamic explication of that idea, which dates as far back as the eighth century, when it was enunciated by Muhammad’s first biographer, Ibn Ishaq. Another thing Aslan seems not to want you to know is that it is those Islamic exegetes who are the “idea logs” and “bigots,” as it is they who are focusing on one part of the Qur’an at the expense of other parts (although actually the Qur’an’s material about tolerance is rather thin). The problem is not with people like Nonie Darwish, who merely report on mainstream Muslim understandings of the Qur’an.

Aslan further, whether because of his abysmal lack of analytical abilities or from a deliberate intent to deceive, claims that the Torah “commands the Jews to enact genocide upon every non-believer of Yaway [sic],” which is patently false, and belied in any case by Jewish law and tradition, which have never understood anything in the Torah as commanding any such thing. Aslan likewise misrepresents the Christian tradition, trying to give the impression that Jesus’ saying that he had not come to bring peace, but a sword, was somehow equivalent to the Qur’an’s exhortations to jihad -- despite the fact that although Christians have waged holy wars in the past, no mainstream sect of Christianity has ever had a doctrine of warfare comparable to that which is universal among mainstream Islamic sects.

Later the conversation turns to Sharia, at pretty much where it left Aslan -- claiming that the Bible is essentially as violent and capable of inciting its adherents to violence as the Qur’an:

The claim that Sharia is “not one monolithic Continuum” is yet another borrowed talking point that Aslan trots out on this show. Islamic apologists in the West routinely insist that Sharia is so multifarious and complex that it is impossible to say definitively what it says about any particular issue. They say this when non-Muslims bring up uncomfortable matters such as stonings and amputations. In reality, the schools of Islamic jurisprudence (madhahib) agree on about 75% of all questions (including those uncomfortable bits about jihad, dhimmitude, the death penalty for apostates, stonings, amputations, etc.), so it is not at all illegitimate to speak of Sharia rules -- as Reza Aslan well knows.

Also, Aslan concentrates in his response largely on the aspects of Sharia that make it appear commonplace and non-threatening -- marriage, divorce, inheritance laws. He knows, of course, that those aren’t the aspects of Sharia that make people concerned about it (although polygamy and divorce by a single word at the whim of the husband are indeed matters of concern, or should be, for feminists and everyone concerned about human rights). Then he introduces still another set of borrowed talking points:

Here Aslan echoes the oft-repeated idea that Sharia courts in the West are equivalent to Jewish courts. David Yerushalmi ably dismantled that idea two years ago, here. Above all, Jewish courts (and Catholic courts) deal exclusively with private matters among believers, while Islamic law asserts jurisdiction in the political sphere and over non-believers. But you will never hear about that from Reza Aslan.

Nonie asserted that Sharia allows Muslims to lie to further the Islamic cause, mandates a death penalty for apostates, and calls for jihad warfare against unbelievers. Aslan, in response, claims that all that is “factually incorrect.” For lying, see here, re Qur’an 3:28. For the death penalty for apostates, see here. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, whom John Esposito classes as a “reformist,” says that “the Muslim jurists are unanimous that apostates must be punished, yet they differ as to determining the kind of punishment to be inflicted upon them. The majority of them, including the four main schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali) as well as the other four schools of jurisprudence (the four Shiite schools of Az-Zaidiyyah, Al-Ithna-'ashriyyah, Al-Ja’fariyyah, and Az-Zaheriyyah) agree that apostates must be executed.” Does Reza Aslan dispute Qaradawi’s contention about the schools of Islamic jurisprudence?

And for jihad warfare, see here. Can Reza Aslan produce one recognized school of Islamic jurisprudence (as opposed to an individual innovative scholar) who teaches against lying to unbelievers when under pressure, the death penalty for apostates, and jihad warfare against unbelievers? No, he can’t, because such a school of Islamic jurisprudence does not exist.

Later, back to Reza:

So because no Muslim is calling for Sharia, which is not established as a certainty, we need not make any provision against it. The problem with this is that everywhere Muslims have ever been in significant numbers, they have ultimately called for imposition of the political aspects of Sharia. Why should the U.S. be different? Reza Aslan doesn’t say. He would rather you simply assume, in defiance of a mountain of historical evidence, that this time it will be different. But it won’t. And he, with all his oily deceptions, detours, and half-truths, is one of the reasons why.