An Assault On Religious Freedom

[rug]

In recent years a movement has swelled across our nation, one that identifies Islam and the application of Islamic law as a threat to America and the Constitution. Two dozen states have introduced legislation prohibiting courts from considering or applying Islamic law in adjudicating decisions. Four states have passed legislation. An earlier iteration of a Tennessee law would effectively criminalize the practice of Islam, punishing those individuals with up to 15 years in prison.

This meteoric fear of Islam and Islamic law did not happen in a vacuum. Preying upon people's fears, certain individuals, organizations, and politicians are profiteering both politically and financially from promoting hysteria. As the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center have noted, the principal proponents include David Yerushalmi, Brigitte Gabriel, and Frank Gaffney. Yerushalmi, under the aegis of American Laws for American Courts has persuaded state legislatures to introduce his model legislation. He has a history of making racist and incendiary statements against blacks, liberal Jews, and of course Muslims. According to Yerushalmi, liberal Jews have destroyed "their host nations like a fatal parasite" and are "divorced from reality" Meanwhile, with regards to Muslims he said, "this should be a war against Islam and all Muslim faithful...at a practical level, this means that Sharia and Islamic law are immediately outlawed." He continues that observant Muslims should not be allowed to immigrate to the US and those here must be deported.

Gaffney, the head of the Center for Security Policy recently testified in support of lawsuit challenging the construction of a mosque and community center Murfeesboro, TN. Although he acknowledged under oath that he is not an expert on Sharia, Gaffney confidently asserted: "What is going on in Murfreesboro ... fits into the profile of the stealth jihad that is being waged by the Muslim Brotherhood. It's a mega-mosque that's clearly disproportionate to the community that it's intended to serve. It has the purpose of demonstrating a kind of triumphalist agenda." Yet despite his lack of qualification, he was invited to testify before the New York State Senate's Homeland Security Committee following Congressman Peter King, where Gaffney announced that Sharia is the "enemy threat-doctrine we face today" and that those who support it are committing "sedition and treason.

A number of Republican Presidential candidates have signed pledges banning Islamic law. Newt Gingrich would seek a federal ban because according to him, Sharia is "a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States." In addition to banning Sharia, Hermain Cain would not appoint a Muslim and has explicitly stated that communities can ban the construction of mosques. According to Rick Santorum "creeping Sharia is a huge issue" and represents an "existential threat to America."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/senator-kevin-s-parker/religious-freedom_b_935364.html

[Thats my opinion]

1. How right you are

And I have a column in a couple of weeks suggesting that the real threat to America is not Sharia law but Biblical law.

[struggle4progress]

2. The Man Behind the Anti-Shariah Movement

By ANDREA ELLIOTT
Published: July 30, 2011

NASHVILLE — Tennessee’s latest woes include high unemployment, continuing foreclosures and a battle over collective-bargaining rights for teachers. But when a Republican representative took the Statehouse floor during a recent hearing, he warned of a new threat to his constituents’ way of life: Islamic law ...

Voters in Oklahoma overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment last November that bans the use of Islamic law in court. And in June, Tennessee passed an antiterrorism law that, in its original iteration, would have empowered the attorney general to designate Islamic groups suspected of terror activity as “Shariah organizations" ...

In fact, it is the product of an orchestrated drive that began five years ago in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in the office of a little-known lawyer, David Yerushalmi, a 56-year-old Hasidic Jew with a history of controversial statements about race, immigration and Islam. Despite his lack of formal training in Islamic law, Mr. Yerushalmi has come to exercise a striking influence over American public discourse about Shariah.

Working with a cadre of conservative public-policy institutes and former military and intelligence officials, Mr. Yerushalmi has written privately financed reports, filed lawsuits against the government and drafted the model legislation that recently swept through the country — all with the effect of casting Shariah as one of the greatest threats to American freedom since the cold war ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/us/31shariah.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

[struggle4progress]

3. Drawing U.S. Crowds With Anti-Islam Message

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: March 7, 2011

FORT WORTH — Brigitte Gabriel bounced to the stage at a Tea Party convention last fall. She greeted the crowd with a loud Texas “Yee-HAW,” then launched into the same gripping personal story she has told in hundreds of churches, synagogues and conference rooms across the United States:

As a child growing up a Maronite Christian in war-torn southern Lebanon in the 1970s, Ms. Gabriel said, she had been left lying injured in rubble after Muslims mercilessly bombed her village. She found refuge in Israel and then moved to the United States, only to find that the Islamic radicals who had terrorized her in Lebanon, she said, were now bent on taking over America ...

Ms. Gabriel, 46, who uses a pseudonym, casts her organization as a nonpartisan, nonreligious national security group. Yet the organization draws on three rather religious and partisan streams in American politics: evangelical Christian conservatives, hard-line defenders of Israel (both Jews and Christians) and Tea Party Republicans ...

Ms. Gabriel is only one voice in a growing circuit that includes counter-Islam speakers like Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Walid Shoebat. What distinguishes Ms. Gabriel from her counterparts is that she has built a national grass-roots organization in the last three years that has already engaged in dozens of battles over the place of Islam in the United States. ACT! for America claims 155,000 members in 500 chapters across the country. To build her organization, Ms. Gabriel has enlisted Mr. Rodgers, who had worked behind the scenes for the Christian Coalition’s leaders, Ralph Reed and the television evangelist Pat Robertson. (Ms. Gabriel herself was once an anchor for Mr. Robertson’s Christian television network in the Middle East) ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/us/08gabriel.html?pagewanted=all

[Name removed]

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[struggle4progress]

4. Frank Gaffney

Gaffney frequently makes outlandish claims about the purported intentions of “enemies”—both foreign and domestic—which, despite their patent absurdity, help bring him public attention. A case in point was a February 24, 2010 article titled “Can This Possibly Be True? New Obama Missile Defense Logo Includes A Crescent.” In the article, Gaffney claims that the Barack Obama administration’s new logo for the Missile Defense Agency, which features a crescent-type shape, might signify that Obama is preparing to “submit” to Islam.<1>

Commented Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, “Frank Gaffney has never been a stranger to the crazy. I remember the first time I saw him was on a panel about ten years ago talking about Chinese plans to take over the Panama Canal. But this one really breaks new ground. Frank has discovered that Obama has used the Pentagon's new logo for national missile defense to send a secret coded message about his plans to submit America to Islam and the rule of Sharia law. To quote the man: ‘Team Obama's anti-anti-missile initiatives are not simply acts of unilateral disarmament of the sort to be expected from an Alinsky acolyte. They seem to fit an increasingly obvious and worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter's authorities call Shariah.’”

Despite his bizarre views, Gaffney is frequently cited in the press as an "expert" on U.S. foreign policy, appearing regularly on the BBC and other radio and TV broadcasts. He is also a prolific writer, having published in most major media outlets and opinion journals, including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New Republic, Washington Post, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, National Review, Newsday, and Commentary magazine ...

http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Gaffney_Frank



Frank Gaffney’s Latest Conspiracy: Herman Cain Actually Met With A ‘Prominent Muslim Brotherhood’ Group
By Scott Keyes on Aug 2, 2011 at 11:31 am

Last week, Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain met with Muslim leaders outside Washington, DC in a laudable attempt to make amends for the Islamophobic positions that had come to characterize his candidacy. Cain had previously declared he will not appoint Muslims in his administration — he later backtracked and said he would only require a special loyalty oath from Muslim appointees — and argued that Americans have the right to ban mosques.

However, not everyone was pleased with the former pizza executive’s recent move.

Last weekend, ThinkProgress spoke with Frank Gaffney, a conservative conspiracy theorist who nevertheless enjoys outsized influence on the right. The Center for Security Policy president had a unique take on the matter: Herman Cain had actually been meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood ...

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/08/02/284104/frank-gaffney-herman-cain-muslim-brotherhood/

[Deep13]

5. Don't expect to see this from me too often...

...but you're right about this. I'm no fan of Islam and if there was any real chance of Sharia law being established in this country, I would be vocally against it. But there is no chance. It's a boogyman issue and intentionally so based entirely in bigotry, ignorance and paranoia. The state has no basis discriminating against any one religion. Frankly, I'm far more concerned about the influence of evangelicals, the RC Church and the Mormon church.


Alsalam Alikum السلام عليكم

[Name removed]

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