By Andrew Bostom:

Reports  (at “Live”  wire , repeated at Salon)  are quoting Kansas Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach to the effect that  the GOP platform has adopted an amendment which addresses Sharia encroachment.  Kobach stated,

We  see it from the top where the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly quoted  foreign law in interpreting our U.S. constitution and it’s actually coming in at  the bottom as well, it’s being raised as an argument in courts around the  country. We actually put a provision affecting Kansas statute this year and I  think it’s important for us to say foreign sources of law should not be used as  part of common law decisions or statutory interpretations by judges in the lower  state courts as well.

…I’m  not aware of any court that’s accepted the argument, but in cases involving  either spousal abuse or assault or other crimes against persons, sometimes  defenses are raised that are based in Sharia law

Despite  the predictable sneering and distressing ignorance which frames these reports by  two agitprop  “journalists,”  and Kobach’s own noble, if incomplete assessment of the profundity of the  problem, this is very welcome news.

Kobach  referred to Kansas’s recently passed law-a version of American Laws for American  Courts (ALAC) legislation-which should remind us all that the earliest of these  laws (now also passed in Tennessee, Arizona, and Louisiana) have been in effect  for several years without being challenged, let alone overturned. David  Yerushalmi recently provided a very clear, didactic example of the need for  ALAC-style laws, which corrects Kobach’s assessment about courts not having  accepted Sharia-based arguments.

Yersuhlami  described in brief an appellate court decision from Maryland, cited in a Center for Security  Policy Study, where

…the  court enforced a Pakistani Sharia court’s judgment of custody  in favor of the father even though the mother had argued that she was not  provided due process because had she gone to Pakistan to contest the case, she could have been subject to capital  punishment for having a new relationship with a man not sanctioned by sharia.

The  salient facts of the case,  and appellate court ruling, were summarized by  Yerushalmi as follows:

The  Maryland appellate court ruled that since the woman could not prove she’d be  executed had she gone to Pakistan to litigate custody in the Pakistan Sharia  Court, which is a national-state court in Pakistan, her failure to go to  Pakistan and take the risk of execution precluded her from making the void as  against public policy argument. ALAC  would have provided the Maryland appellate court the legislative clarity to have  reversed the lower court’s outrageous  decision.

Here  are the Maryland appellate court’s own words, cited by Yerushalmi:

Additionally,  appellant [the mother] asserts that the Pakistani custody orders were founded on  principles of law repugnant to Maryland public policy because the Pakistani  courts allegedly “penalized the mother for not appearing without considering the  affect of her admission to adultery on her ability to return to Pakistan.” In  this regard, appellant points out that if convicted under Pakistani criminal law, her penalty could be public whipping or death  by stoning. Although Dr. Malik [the expert] opined that appellant would be arrested for adultery if she returned to  Pakistan for the custody proceedings, he also conceded that punishment for  adultery was extremely unlikely and that proving the crime was extremely  difficult. Given this testimony, the circuit court was not clearly erroneous in  not considering the effect of whether appellant’s admission to adultery [under  sharia] was “repugnant” to Maryland public policy in its failure to find that  the Pakistani courts punished her for not appearing.”}

Let  me summarize for the (hope against hope) edification of  the “Live”  wire , and Salon,  agitprop journalists, the liberty-crushing, dehumanizing nature of Sharia:  open-ended jihadism to subjugate the world to a totalitarian Islamic order;  rejection of bedrock Western liberties-including freedom of conscience and  speech-enforced by imprisonment, beating, or death; discriminatory relegation of  non-Muslims to outcast, vulnerable pariahs, and even Muslim women to subservient  chattel; and barbaric punishments which violate human dignity, such as  amputation for theft, stoning for adultery, and lashing for alcohol  consumption.

I  would also point out how the two agitpropjournalists  steadfastly ignore: ominous polling data from US  Muslims; jihad funding trial  revelations and the content of more banal Muslim litigation  proceedings; mosque  surveillance reports; analyses  of Islamic education institutions and their Muslim schoolchildren’s textbooks;  the issuance of obscurantist “fatwas” (Islamic legal rulings) by the respected,  mainstream Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America; and an open declaration by  one of America’s largest mainstream Muslim organizations, the Islamic Circle of  North America (ICNA), in its 2010 ICNA Member’s  Hand Book, which calls for the (re-)creation of a global Muslim Caliphate,  and the imposition of Sharia in America.

Notwithstanding  the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America’s (AMJA’s) mainstream acceptance,  including uncritical  endorsement of its seventh annual American conference in Houston (October  15-18, 2010) to train American imams, AMJA  has issued rulings which sanction the killing of apostates (here),  “blasphemers” (including non-Muslims guilty of this “crime”; here),  or adulterers (by stoning to death, here),  and condone  marital rape. Even more ominously, another Arabic-language fatwa from AMJA’s Dr.  Salah Al-Sawy leaves open the possibility for offensive jihad against America  and the West, as soon as Muslims are strong enough to do so. When asked whether  “the Islamic missionary effort in the West … [was] to the point where it could  take advantage of offensive jihad,” Al-Sawy ruled:

The  Islamic community does not possess the strength to engage in offensive jihad at  this time. With our current capabilities, we are aspiring toward defensive  jihad, and to improve our position with regards to jurisprudence at this stage.  But there is a different discussion for each situation. Allah Almighty knows  best.

Just  six months ago (3/14/12), Translating  Jihad put what one might wish to deem as these circumscribed, “purely  Islamic” rulings, in a more disturbing-and entirely unacceptable, seditious  context. AMJA’s own  words make plain the organization’s long term commitment to superseding the  US legal code with its antithesis, a Sharia-based system.

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