You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me

Four months of Trump and the idiots are out in force.

Marches against Islamic law were planned Saturday in more than two dozen cities across the United States, but scholars and others say the protesters are stoking unfounded fears and promoting a distorted and prejudiced view of the religion.

[...]

A march had been planned for Portland, but an organizer moved it to Seattle after Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler called on the federal government to deny a permit. Wheeler said the rally would exacerbate tensions after two men were stabbed to death in May on a commuter train while protecting two teenage girls from a man casting anti-Muslim slurs.

[...]

The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon scolded Wheeler, saying trying to deny a permit without imminent threat of violence amounted to unconstitutional government censorship.

[...]

The group organizing the rallies, ACT for America, claims Shariah “is incompatible with Western democracy and the freedoms it affords.”

  TPM

Do they honestly think they are in danger of the US coming under Sharia law?

Two far-right groups, the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, are to provide security at some of the anti-Shariah demonstrations, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups.

Who the hell do they think is going to harrass them?

On Saturday counter-demonstrations were planned by opponents who called the events anti-Muslim.

Oh, lord. There will be trouble.

Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Louisiana, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Tennessee have enacted laws prohibiting the use of foreign law in state courts, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Doomed we are.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Them's Fightin' Words!

But, good one, Susan of Texas.

American Mullah

The American right wing (or far right; how could you tell anymore?) has tried to substitute “sharia” for the Communist Manifesto, attempting to configure it as radical or inherently un-American.

[...]

Newt Gingrich suggested late last week on cable tv that Muslim Americans should be asked if they believe in “sharia” and if they answer yes, they should be deported. You can’t deport US citizens, so the whole remark was ridiculous.

Sharia for Muslims is the equivalent of Canon Law for Catholics, Halakhah for Jews, and I guess the entire Bible for some fundamentalists (though there are laws in Deuteronomy that it is hard to imagine anyone actually practicing). All religions have laws. Sharia is the Muslim one. But it is fluid and an arena of contention within Islam. It forbids murder, theft, adultery, and drinking. You’d think people would be happy about all that. In any case, observant Muslims would all say they believe in sharia, just as observant Jews would say that the believe in Halakhah or observant Catholics would say they believe in canon law.

Although most interpretations of sharia frown on same-sex marriage, American Muslims are more likely to support it than are US evangelicals.

  Juan Cole

That would just be another reason Trump supporters would want them deported.

It is only for fringe extremists that vigilanteism is allowed, and that is true in all religions.

One of the alleged grounds on which people like Gingrich attack Muslim religious law is that they say they fear the 1% of Americans who are Muslims will try to impose it on everyone else. That allegation is also ridiculous.

If you're old enough, you will remember that the same rationale was trotted out for keeping John Kennedy from gaining the White House: He's Catholic. He could enact a law that we all have to become Catholic.

But there is a religious law that poses such a danger to secular and liberal traditions in the United States and that is the evangelical sharia, to which Trump running mate Mike Pence is devoted.

Pence is welcome to his own private beliefs. But he wants to impose Evangelical beliefs on all Americans.

1. Pence wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned and abortion made illegal. He holds this position because of an unprovable, unscientific belief that the human person begins at conception (not something held by traditional Christianity). Pence wants to take control of 150 million women’s bodies in the United States and to inscribe his Christian sharia on them. And he wants to do this in the teeth of settled secular law. [...] He actually signed a law requiring burial or cremation for aborted fetuses.

2. Pence’s personal and narrow theology has to be imposed on the rest of us even at the level of foreign policy. He said at an AIPAC conference, ““Let me say emphatically, like the overwhelming majority of my constituents, my Christian faith compels me to cherish the state of Israel.” If he had said that his Christian faith requires him to cherish the state of Argentina or Thailand or North Korea, we’d want to know why his weird doctrines should shape US foreign policy.

[...]

3. Pence pushed for a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage. There are no secular grounds for opposing this simple human right.

[...]

Pence and other people of faith are welcome to believe and practice as they will in the United States– that’s one of the purposes of the United States. I personally admire people of strong faith and conviction. But they are not welcome to Establish an official religion here and impose that religion’s laws on everybody; preventing that kind of thing is also one of the purposes of the United States.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Sharia Law

“In essence, if we are ever ordered by a government authority to personally violate and sin — violate God’s law and sin — if we’re ordered to stop preaching the Gospel, if we’re ordered to perform a same-sex marriage as someone presiding over it, we are called to ignore that,” Rubio said in an interview with CBN on Tuesday.

“So when those two come into conflict, God’s rules always win,” he added.

  The Hill

Sounds a bit treasonous to me.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Aasif Mandvi Goes to Alabama

Alabama recently hilariously overwhelming voted to pass a law prohibiting the state from ever coming under Sharia law.  So it was only fitting that Aasif Mandvi file a report.

The Daily Show
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And, as regards Jon Stewart's surprise that Fox News has apologized for anything, this is probably the reason:



h/t Bill Moyers

All Americans Are the Same

So what do you expect? So says a Talib official.

A stony-faced Taliban official burst into laughter at the mention of the Petraeus affair during an interview with AFP in northwest Pakistan this week.

“What a bastard! But all Americans are the same, it’s nothing new,” the official said, who did not want to be named.

The Islamists dealt harshly with adulterers during their brutal 1996-2001 rule in Afghanistan, dishing out public floggings for offenders.

The traditional moral code of the Pashtuns, the main ethnic group the Taliban draw their members from, also demands severe punishment for adulterers.

“From a Pashtun point of view, Petraeus should be shot by relatives from his mistress’s family,” the Taliban official explained.

“From a sharia point of view, he should be stoned to death.”

  Raw Story

Really? How come all we ever see in reports of adulterers in those countries is that the woman was stoned to death?  In fact, I've even seen reports of women suffering brutal punishments for being raped.  I have never seen a report of the man being punished. Are they just not reporting it?   Did I miss that the floggings were dealt out to the men as well?  Must have.

Sharia Law?

Even as Mitt Romney sought to quash the furor surrounding Todd Akin’s “legitimate” rape comments, the Republican platform committee here approved an abortion plank that includes no exemptions for rape, incest or even to save the life of the mother.

[...]

The full platform committee also voted to reinstate support for abstinence-only education, after a subcommittee had removed it Monday.
  Politico

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.