Creeping Sharia

During the height of the Cold War there emerged the phenomenon of anti-anti-communism. That is, Western intellectuals banded together to challenge those who warned about the dangers of communism. They were either willing propagandists of communism, or just useful idiots.

Today we have a similar situation emerging. Today we have anti-anti-Islamism. There are all sorts of Westerners who seem to have no problem at all with radical Islam, but they do have a problem with anyone who seeks to sound the alarm about Islamism.

Again, they could be either deluded – but well-meaning – dolts, or those who are actively seeking to implement the Islamist agenda by stealth. But to stand against totalitarian Islamism today is viewed by many as being as bad as those who stood against totalitarian communism not so long ago.

I wrote about this situation earlier today, where two champions of freedom have been vilified and abused by the MSM and the Labor Party. See my write-up about this appalling situation here.

But we have every right to be concerned about creeping sharia and stealth jihad. The use of terror is not the only means by which the Islamists are seeking to subjugate the entire world to sharia law and complete submission to Allah.

Many people mistakenly believe that the difference between radical and moderate Muslims has to do with whether violence and terror are utilised. But as Robert Spencer argues, the real difference lies elsewhere: “between Muslims who believe that Islamic law is the perfect system for human society and who are working by whatever means to impose that Islamic law, and those Muslims who support Western pluralistic governments and seek to live with non-Muslims as equals, under secular rule, on an indefinite basis.”

So what is sharia and why should it concern us? Given that entire libraries have been written on this topic, I can only offer the briefest of comments here. The word itself is Arabic of course and means “right path” or “straight path” (eg Sura 45:18).

It is essentially Islamic law applied to every area of life. The four sources of it (in order of importance) are the Koran, the Sunna (the example of Muhammad), the ijma (scholarly consensus), and the qiyas (deductive reasoning). While there are different major schools of Islamic law, there is a large amount of agreement amongst them.

Sharia law, or Islamic law, refers to how life is meant to be lived in every area. One Islamic publication says that Sharia law “is much wider than a code of law. It is a comprehensive code of Islamic life which Allah revealed for mankind. . . . It is permanent for all people all the time, and it does not change with time and conditions.”

Or as the authors of an important study produced by the Center for Security Policy in the US put it, the “sharia system is totalitarian. It imposes itself on all aspects of civil society and human life, both public and private.”

Two truths emerge here: 1) Sharia law is incompatible with, and looks down upon, Western democratic law. It insists that all political and legal systems be subsumed under and submit to, sharia. Islam after all means submission. 2) All real, devout Muslims must embrace and support the promotion of sharia law.

This takes us back to the distinction Spencer mentioned above. The moderate Muslim (or the Muslim who is not fully committed to his faith) does not take sharia seriously, or mistakenly believes that sharia and Western democracy can somehow co-exist. The radical, or true believing, Muslim, knows that sharia and democracy cannot co-exist, and that all western laws must be done away with and replaced with sharia law.

That is the struggle we are in. The violent jihadists are simply seeking the same goals as are those pushing sharia law through non-violent means. Both groups want exactly the same result: the entire world ruled by a universal caliphate with everyone in submission to Islamic law.

That is why we rightly speak of creeping sharia, or stealth jihad. The push to extend sharia law in the Western world is simply the stealth version, the non-violent version, of what the suicide bombers and airplane hijackers are doing. Both are committed to absolutely the same end.

English-based expert on Islam Patrick Sookhdeo cites a number of current Islamic leaders and jurists who speak of a “world revolution” of Islam, and then summarises the situation this way: “This then is the ultimate goal of Islam: a worldwide Islamic government based on sharia.”

The leading catalyst in all this is of course the Muslim Brotherhood. Established in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, the MB seeks to establish an Islamic state in every nation of the world. It refers to the establishment of Islamic supremacy by non-violent means as “civilisation jihad”. But recall of course that groups like Hamas sprang from the MB.

Operating in over 80 countries, the MB has this as its creed: “God is our objective; the Koran is our law; the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”

So both peaceful and violent means are being utilised to achieve the same goal: the universal rule of Islam with everyone in complete submission to Allah via sharia law. The two types of jihad differ only in tactics and timing. Both seek to restore an Islamic caliphate based on sharia.

I have documented countless examples of this in Australia and other Western nations on this site. Whether it is sharia finance, or sharia family law, or halal foods, or other means of sharia compliance, this is jihad by stealth. And things are moving along very nicely for the Islamists. There are plenty of Western stooges too ignorant or too foolish to not see the threat, and they are happily going along with all this.

But we are already seeing some ugly examples of what sharia rule looks like in the West. Let me offer just one example, as reported in the Center for Security Policy study: “Evidence of the extent to which shariah is being insinuated into the fabric of American society abounds, if one is willing to see it. A particularly egregious example was the 2009 case of a Muslim woman whose request for a restraining order against her Moroccan husband who had serially tortured and raped her was denied by New Jersey family court Judge Joseph Charles. The judge ruled on the grounds that the abusive husband had acted according to his Muslim (shariah) beliefs, and thus not with criminal intent.”

All over the Western world the democratic rule of law is slowly but surely being replaced by Islamic law. While no nation can exist with a two-tiered or multi-pronged legal system, this is not the end of the story. This is just a temporary phase until there is enough critical mass to see sharia enforced on the entire land, over every citizen.

And we know that the infidel has only one of three choices when living under Islamic rule: convert, die, or become enslaved in dhimmitude. We are not at that place yet, but we are certainly heading there. We must wake up, become aware of the threat that we face, and take action. If not, we will lose it all, and have only ourselves to blame.