Sooners Scared of Sharia

It’s just about the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen. Oklahoma voters overwhelmingly approved a measure to ban courts in the state from considering Islamic sharia law when considering cases. It also forbids courts to look to the legal precepts of other nations or consider international law when deciding cases.  Each of these provisions is so idiotic that I don’t even know where to start.

State Question 755 (ominously called the Save Our State Amendment) added this to the Oklahoma Constitution (italics mine):

The Courts…when exercising their judicial authority, shall uphold and adhere to the law as provided in the United States Constitution, the Oklahoma Constitution, the United States Code, federal regulations promulgated pursuant thereto, established common law, the Oklahoma Statutes and rules promulgated pursuant thereto, and if necessary the law of another state of the United States provided the law of the other state does not include Sharia Law, in making judicial decisions. The courts shall not look to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures. Specifically, the courts shall not consider international or Sharia Law. The provisions of this subsection shall apply to all cases before the respective courts including, but not limited to, cases of first impression.

This whole thing started because an Oklahoma state representative heard about a case in New Jersey where a trial judge ruled against a woman seeking a restraining order because her husband was acting on his religious beliefs. The trial judge was promptly reversed by an appellate court, but the matter did not even involved sharia. In the New Jersey case, the trial judge did not say that since sharia allows the husband to force himself on his wife, he is entitled to do so. The trial judge said that the man’s sincere religious belief prevented him from forming the necessary mens rea to constitute marital rape. The judge was wrong and justice prevailed.

Another sponsor of the measure fretted because England has embraced 85 sharia courts, “while Oklahoma is still able to defend itself against this sort of hideous invasion, we should do so.” The only problem is that England has not embraced 85 sharia courts. England has 85 sharia courts (or at least the Daily Mail tells us so), but that’s like saying Oklahoma has 111 Rotary Clubs. Has Oklahoma embraced the Rotary Clubs?  Are Oklahoma courts bound to consider the decisions of Rotary Clubs which have hideously invaded the state, unless a constitutional amendment is passed?

People can voluntarily be a part of any organization. The only thing the sharia courts offer that is different is a forum for alternative dispute resolution. ADR is an increasingly popular thing. The idea is that litigants can chose a mediator or arbitrator to help them settle their differences. This saves the courts time and the parties money. Often lots of money. If both of the litigants are Muslims, there is no reason they cannot choose to have a dispute abitrated by other Muslims. If it is a matter which requires court approval, they can then enter a consent order with the court. As long as the agreement between the parties is consistent with the law, the court will usually approve the order. That is what some courts in England have done with sharia court decisions.

But this is nothing new. Courts in both England and the United States have often approved consent orders that are the results of beth din rulings. A beth din is the equivalent of a sharia court for Orthodox Jews. If both parties are Orthodox Jews and want to have their dispute settled in accordance with Jewish law, they come before the beth din judges following accepted rules of legal procedure and the judges decide the case, which is then submitted to the state court, particularly in family law cases. Perhaps someone needs to amend the Oklahoma amendment to forbid the consideration of Jewish law, in case there is an invasion of Orthodox Jews into the Sooner State.

But here’s the kicker. Muslims who submit their disputes to a sharia court and Jews who submit their disputes to a beth din are only doing what Christians should have been doing. Most Christians ignore the first half of I Corinthians chapter 6. I’ll just quote the first verse to refresh your memory and you can go read the rest: “Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints?”

But what about this “The courts shall not look to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures” bit? This is very interesting. Let’s look at it in reverse order. What is another culture? Clearly for the authors of the proposal, it is any culture where Islam is the dominant religion. But that’s not what the amendment says. And what constitutes a “legal precept” of that culture?

But it’s that “other nations” bit that will cause an interesting problem. The whole idea of the common law and the rules by which it operates did not originate in the United States. They come from England, which is, according to my red passport, another nation. Having lived within it for over a decade, I can assure you that it is another culture as well. It is fortunate that Oklahoma, unlike its neighbors Texas and New Mexico, is not a community property state, because it would then be looking to the legal precepts of Spanish law as well. Nonetheless, it appears that the authors (and is must be said, 70% of Oklahoma voters) imagine that American law just sprang up sua sponte.

And finally there is that bit about international law. This is bizarre because regardless of the amendment, Oklahoma courts will have to consider international law. Treaties to which the United States is a party are the supreme law of the land. So says Article VI Section 1 of the US Constitution. Treaties to which the United States is not a party are irrelevant and would never be considered by a court in Oklahoma. The relevance of international law is a federal matter, because only the federal government has any legal interaction with other countries.

State Question 755 was written by ignorant people to be voted upon by ignorant people.  Somehow a lot of people see the words “Islam” or  “Muslim” and their brain function just shuts off. Muslims are bad, so if something is against Muslims it must be good. It doesn’t have to be good law or even make logical sense. It will probably do something to help stop the great Muslims invasion (they must be massed at Fort Smith and Siloam Springs just waiting to pour over the border) and that’s all that matters.

Lord, save us from ourselves.

Christians Charged for Knowing Too Much Islamic History

Here we go again. Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang were sharing their faith with one of the guests in the hotel they run, the Bounty House Hotel in Liverpool. The guest was a Muslim woman. Seems they didn’t agree about Jesus or Muhammad. The guest was offended that they insisted Jesus is the Son of God and not a prophet of Islam.

In the course of the conversation, Ben Vogelenzang said that Muhammad was a warload. I teach about Islam for a living – been doing for six years – and I’d have to say that’s a reasonable observation based on the historical facts. It has nothing to do with whether or not he was a prophet. The story of Islam from the time of the Hijra until at least the conquest of Makkah (Mecca) by Muhammad’s army is one of battles fought and tribal groups subdued and the Arabian peninsula Islamified at the point of the sword. It is a legacy that Muhammad bequeathed to his successors as the spent the next 120 years doing the same thing through Northern Africa and the Middle East.

Clearly the Vogelenzangs’ guest was not well versed in Islamic history. Either that or the word “warlord” was not reverential enough for the false Prophet.

It didn’t help that Sharon Vogelenzang said that traditional Muslims dress for women is a form of bondage. This was just too much for their guest. Neither the guest nor the Merseyside Police think Sharon is entitled to express this opinion. It constitutes either harassment, alarm or distress in the wording of the statute. So does Ben’s enlightening the guest regarding her ignorance of history.

The Vogelenzangs were interrogated twice by police before being charged. They have appeared in court and are now awaiting trial.

Swine Flu and the Persecution of Christians

There are 300,000 pigs in Egypt. According to the UN, they are in no danger of catching swine flu. There has been no reported case of the virus in Egypt. Nonetheless, the Egyptian government wants to slaughter all of the pigs in Egypt just in case. It just happens that the pigs in Egypt are all owned by Christians. After all, Muslims don’t eat pork.

Christian farmers have clashed with police in Cairo, but this hasn’t stopped the cull so far. If the swine flu runs its course without affecting Egypt it won’t matter, because authorities have said it is also a general public health issue. That would be a public health issue that hasn’t actually affected public health, of course. It will affect the livelihood of lots of Christians, but that’s just the price of being a Coptic Christian in Egypt.

Episcopal Priestess Finally Defrocked for Being a Muslim

It appears that at least one Episcopal bishop has decided that a priest or priestess cannot be a Muslim.  It took her two years to defrock the priestess, but she finally acted. Bishopette Geralyn Wolf of the Diocese of Rhode Island found out in June of 2007 that Ann Holmes Redding had declared the Shahadah – that Allah is the one non-trinitarian God that Muhammad is his messenger.

Wolf has now defrocked Redding. Redding now lives in Seattle, but she never moved her canonical residence, giving Wolf jurisdiction, though her decision was backed by the Greg Rickel, bishop of Olympia.

Admittedly it takes a lot for the Episcopal Church to surprise me, but how did this take nearly two years? It is baffling enough that Ms Redding believes the two religions are compatible and feels compelled to practice both. How does someone believe in Tawhid – a doctrine created specifically to deny the Trinity- and the eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

How can someone recite the Shahadah and the Creed?  While it is certainly possible to say that Islam and Christianity share some ideas in common, as do Judaism and Christianity and Sikhism and Christianity, etc., at their core they are incompatible. The Qur’an denies that Jesus is God.

Says a lot for I Timothy 2:12-14.

More Terrorism in London

I was going to blog about the Christians that beat up an imam, stole his copy of the Qur’an and laptop, and threatened to break his legs if he ever went back into the studio after the imam had an argument with Christians who called into his live TV show. Except of course that it didn’t happen. The only thing is that not surprisingly it happened the other way around, and it wasn’t in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Egypt or Turkey, it was in west London.

Rev. Noble Samuel of Asian Gospel Ministries International hosts the Asian Gospel Show on a satellite channel broadcast from Wembley. Several Muslim callers rang into the show in recent weeks trying to argue with him. He wouldn’t take the bait and said, “Those are your views and these are my views.” The callers got very aggressive.

It seems verbal aggression wasn’t enough for them. A car pulled in front of him and a man got out to ask directions in Urdu.  Rev. Samuel described what happened when he rolled down his window, “He put his hand into my window, which was half open, and grabbed my hair and opened the door. He started slapping my face and punching my neck. He was trying to smash my head on the steering wheel. Then he grabbed my cross and pulled it off and it fell on the floor. He was swearing. The other two men came from the car and took my laptop and Bible.” Then they warned him, “If you go back to the studio, we’ll break your legs.”

Rev. Samuel and his family are now in fear for their safety. The thugs that attacked him may not have blown up buildings or killed any one (that we know of) they are still terrorists.

Beating an Old Woman, Saudi Style

It’s time for another segment of “All Religions are Equal”.  In another case of moral outrage, two young men delivered bread to a 75-year-old woman. The Saudi religious police, ever eagle-eyed, spotted the men at the woman’s house and arrested her. Because the men are unrelated to her, she’s been sentences to 40 lashes, 4 months imprisonment, and then deportation, because she’s a Syrian citizen.

Khamisa Mohammed Sawadi tried to argue that one of the men, Fahd, was her son according to Islam because she had breast-fed him, but the court wasn’t buying it. I’m not sure I buy it either, as the man is 24 and she would have been a 50-year-old wet nurse.  But don’t worry, Fahd’s not getting off lightly. He’s getting 40 lashes and four months as well. His friend Hadian has fared even worse. He’s getting six months in prison to heal from 60 lashes.

That’s the Wahhabist approach to Sharia. These are the Muslims that are our allies.

It’s not like everyone in Saudi Arabia is happy about this. “It’s made everybody angry because this is like a grandmother,” Saudi women’s rights activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider told CNN. “Forty lashes — how can she handle that pain? You cannot justify it.” That’s women’s rights activism in Saudi Arabia. It’ s not that Khamisa shouldn’t be beaten, but 40 lashes is too much. And as for the imprisonment, don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. Or I suppose in her case it should be “don’t take the bread if you can’t be locked up til you’re dead.”

But hey, they’ve got oil and we need it. And they are the good Muslims that are on our side, right? Who are we to say anything? We can’t make value judgements about their culture, after all.

Honest Hate

At least he’s honest. Anjem Choudary has been telling Muslims they shouldn’t be celebrating Christmas. “How can a Muslim possibly approve or participate in such a practice that bases itself on the notion Allah has an offspring? The very concept of Christmas contradicts and conflicts with the foundation of Islam.”

He sees that all this bunkum about worshipping the same God is as offensive to Islam as it is to Christianity. Either Jesus is the Son of God, the incarnation of Allah, or He is not. To say that the Babe in the manger is the Most Holy One is direct contradiction to the very essence of Islam.

So I don’t see why it is such big news that he is saying this. He’s just being a good Muslim.

Why didn’t it make bigger news when Choudary, who is the chairman of the Society of Muslim Lawyers, praised the Mumbai attacks? Nobody seemed to notice when he called for the assassination of the Pope.  It is almost forgotten that he organised the demonstrations over the Muhammad cartoons, which included incitement to murder.

And why it is only mentioned in passing that his family is not supported by his legal work and he apparently isn’t well paid as Principal Lecturer at the London School of Shari’ah.  Perhaps he doesn’t have time for that with all of his preaching since he has to fill in for his mentor Omar Bakri Mohammed, who has been exiled from the UK. I’m just guessing that’s why they receive  £25,000 a year in state benefits.

It’s like, sure he is bigging up the deaths of 163 people in the name of Islam, but now he hates Christmas, too? Good grief. Why not actually expose that we are supporting the work of a domestic terrorist who doesn’t just hate Christmas. He hates us.

New Martyr Gayle Williams

Gayle Williams was working with handicapped children in Afghanistan. She was working there because she is a Christian. She wasn’t there to preach the Gospel – just to live it.

That was enough for Taliban leaders to order her murder. In the cowardly way of Islamist terrorists, two of them drove by on a motorcycle and shot her.

It is very unlikely that her murderers will be prosecuted. After all, preaching the Gospel is illegal in Afghanistan. Converting to Christianity can result in the death penalty. And this is from the regime that the US, UK and assorted allies put into power.

I have long suggested that the Western powers that are propping up the Karzi regime should refuse to support it until Afghanistan legalises and protects Christianity.

May the memory of the martyr Gayle be eternal.

At Least They Admit It

The BBC admits that they treat Islam different than Christianity. The Director General of Britain’s public broacaster says that it is because they are a religious minority. What he means is that it is because if you were to make jokes about imams like the Beeb makes jokes about vicars, every one of the corporations executives and public figures would have to live in fear of their lives.

Can you imagine what would happen if they allowed a production about Muhammad like the live broadcast on BBC2 of Jerry Springer – the Opera, in which Jesus is part of a dysfunctional family, dresses as a baby and poos himself? The BBC Television Centre would be levelled.  The 2001 IRA bombing of the building would look completely amateur in comparison. This eggshell approach just another example of how terrorism is effective.

Mark Thompson has said that programmes criticising Islam would be broadcast if they of a good enough quality. It’s a shame the same standard doesn’t apply to Christianity.

Iran Codifies the Death Penalty for Christians

Even though it has been ignored by almost all of the mainstream media, The Daily Telegraph has an article about the new Iranian law that codifies the death penalty for any male who converts from Islam to another faith. Women who dare to commit such a heinous crime are lucky. They will only get life in prison.

The article focuses on Rashin Soodmand, the daughter of pastor Hossein Soodmand, the last man to be hanged for converting to Christianity. She now lives in the UK. Her brother Ramtin is still in Iran and now in jail. Even though he was never a Muslim, he may be one of the first to die under the new law.

Read this article.

Justice for the Uighurs – The Least They Can Do

A number of readers who can imagine that I do anything other than support any Republican policy will be happy to know that I have long been very troubled by use of Guantanamo Bay for holding prisoners. Beyond the problems I have with using Gitmo because it serves a useful loophole purpose by keeping prisoners of the Administration off of American soil, I have trouble with the policy of completely ignoring the power of judiciary. On top of that, I have a big problem with the extreme reluctance to release prisoners even if they pose no threat to the United States.

This is an extraodinary abuse of Executive power. Like most of the expansion of the Executive in the past seven years, no one has dared to attempt to check it, because it is shielded in the patriotism and fear of the War on Terror.

I was particularly disturbed to read about the 17 Uighur prisonser who were taken captive on the basis bounty money offered in Pakistan. I’m not suggesting that all Pakistanis will sell out their mothers for the right price, but some were willing to sell out Uighur refugees from China for $5,000 each.

They were sent to Guantanamo six years ago. It took the military two years to recognise that they posed no threat whatsoever. What happened to the other four years? Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter, since they don’t look like us and talk like us, and after all, they are Muslims. That seems to be the reason they are sitting in prison. I can’t imagine a government lawyer would like to give up six years of his own life for no reason in a foreign country – or actually a military outpost because the laws of that foreign country would not allow him to be held without trial. (That’s why I’ve always said it was 95% of lawyers who gave the rest of us a bad name.)

But then again that government lawyer wouldn’t be there because he didn’t have to flee his own country which had been taken over by another ethnic group who treated him as a second class and suspect citizen because of the way he looks and his religion. And that lawyer didn’t have to flee to the country of other ethnic groups who had no particular sympathy for him and who were willing to sell him out for cash.

But even though the Supreme Court has ruled that judges can release prisoners (not exactly a novel idea) and the Court of Appeal has ruled that there is no basis for holding Huzaifa Parhat, one of the Uighurs, the Administration will not let them go.

The problem seems to be that no country will take them, except for China of course. Chinese officials already have 17 bullets ready, with stamped envelopes addressed to their families ready for the spent cartridges. The one thing the government can’t bear to do is allow them to settle in the United States. Sure they settled them on US-leased land in Cuba for six years, but that doesn’t count. There are 20 churches in Tallahassee willing to help re-home them, amongst other religious and social groups.

The unbelievable and virtually admitted injustice that has been imposed upon these refugees is payment enough to bump them to the head of the queue for a Green Card. In addition to their immediate release, I hope U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina will further order the Department of Homeland Security to do just that.

Imposing Beliefs

It seems like any time anyone stands up for their religious beliefs or acts in some way based upon them, it makes the national news in this country. This in and of itself is a sad indictment on a theoretically Christian country.

Ruth Johnson went to her local Tesco store in Cleethorpes to get the morning-after baby killing pill. Unfortunately for Miss Johnson, the pharmacist was a Muslim and refused to dispense it. That’s right, Miss Johnson inability to get Levonelle made the local newspaper, the Daily Mail, and The Daily Telegraph.

She was not a happy camper. She told the press, “I appreciate we live in a multi-cultural society but what gives him the right to impose his beliefs onto me?” I know, it’s remarkable. She doesn’t recognise it’s actually the other way around. He’s not forcing her to do anything. Her choice of actions are based upon her own desire to kill any child that might have begun to grow in her womb. She believes this is morally acceptable choice. But while we live in a multi-cultural society, what give her the right to impose her beliefs on him? Why should he have to be complicit in the murder of her child?

Tesco stood behind the pharmacist. Well, sort of.  “We do apologise to Miss Johnson for the inconvenience caused. However, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s code of ethics allows pharmacists the right to refuse.” In other words, “We can’t make a pharmacist do this, but we apoligise that this means she has go somewhere else to procure an abortifacient.” They even told her where else she might go to get it. My own five minutes of research indicates that there are at least 26 dispensing pharmacies with four miles of the Tesco in Hewitts Circle.

Miss Johnson claims she is not motivated by her own selfishness. No, she is worried that if pharmacists can refuse to dispense abortifacients because of their religious beliefs, this will deter teenage girls from acquiring them. She is worried there won’t be enough teen mothers aborting their children, especially if they have to walk up the street to another chemist.

The Latest Excuse for Terrorism

I think anyone would have to admit it was a mild response, by radical Islamic standards. The house and office of Martin Rynja, the UK publisher of The Jewel of Medina has been firebombed. The book, which has already been pulled by Random House in the US, tells the story of Muhammad and Aisha. Aisha was the wife he married when she was nine years old.

Of course there have been the usual fatwas calling for the death of the author, in this case Sherry Jones, but these seem to apply to anyone connected with publishing the book as well. It’s a good excuse to authorise the killing of as many infidels as possible. London-based radical cleric Anjem Choudhary is promising more attacks if the publication of the book goes ahead.

I’m not saying I support the publication of the book. Publishing any literature describing the sexual relationship between a nine-year-old and anyone should be in violation of all sorts of obscenity laws. But that’s not the problem for radical Muslim clerics. The forced marriage of pre-pubescent girls is not uncommon in the countries and cultures in which they were born. No, it’s that whole insult to Muhammad thing.

It’s not insulting to say that he had sex with a nine-year-old – that’s history. It seems it’s just insulting for an non-Muslim to write about him or for someone to novelise him. Apparently the book even tries to put a positive spin on this love story. You’d think the clerics would love that.

How to Treat a Lady

I don’t like to fly. So after three flights in 24 hours, I am visiting my parents. We couldn’t afford for the Unnamed family to travel as well, so I am here on my own.

On the way across the Atlantic, I sat next to a elderly British lady who had been in New Jersey on 9/11. She told me about how she had a difficult time getting back to the UK. Once she got a flight, she was sitting next to what appeared to be a Muslim man. After she described his gross-out eating habits, she described how he wanted to stretch out so he told her to go get another seat toward the back of the plane.

She told a stewardess that the man had told her to move. The stewardess told the man off, though he is not appear to be in any way ashamed of his behaviour. A few minutes later the stewardess came back and told the man she was moving the lady. The man said, “Thank you!” The stewardess replied, “I’m not moving her for your sake – I’m moving her for her sake.” She moved the lady to First Class.

Fatwa Rules Paedophilia Preferable to Christianity

Following up on the the previous story, I was looking to see what other WordPress bloggers might have said about the kidnapping, forced conversion and forced marriage of the Younis sisters. That’s where I found Blogging for a free world referring to information from Minorities Concern of Pakistan.

Even though the legal marriage age in Pakistan is 16 for females, this was negated by a fatwa – a decree issued by religious leaders – which justified it. It was worth it to them that the girls be kidnapped, sold as property, and then sexually abused in order to effect their conversion to Islam.

Reports indicate exactly what has happened to Saba Younis, the elder sister. After Muhammad Arif Bajwa kidnapped the girls at gunpoint, he sold them to Falak Sher Gill. Gill then gave Saba to his son, Muhammad Amjid. To whom Anila has been given seems to be unknown at this point.

In contravention of the statutory law, a Pakistani court has previously approved of the marriage of a 12-year-old because it ruled that Islam allows a female to marry if she has reached puberty. However, in that case it appears that the girl wanted to marry. Of course in that case, both parties were Muslim.

It now appears that special rules apply if the girl is a Christian and doesn’t consent. Puberty need not be an issue.

Remember to file this under “All religions and cultures are equal.”

Pre-teen Christian Girls Forced to Convert and Marry

Another one for the all religions and all cultures are equal file . . .

Saba and Anila Younis, sisters from a Christian family. They are 12 and 10 years old respectively. They were kidnapped on June 26 on their way to their uncle’s house in the Punjab province of Pakistan. When their father went to the police to complain about the kidnapping, he was threatened. By the 28th, their kidnappers had married them and filed with the police for custody of them. Their husbands declared that the girls had converted to Islam.

Apparently in Pakistan if a man finds a 10-year-old that he just can’t resist, he kidnaps her. If she’s not Muslim, he wants her converted, because even though it is legal for a Muslim man to marry a non-Muslim woman, there’s no reason he should have to have a kafir as one of his wives. I’m not sure if a man has to file for custody of any of his wives in Pakistan, or if it is just for those under 13.

As reported by Ecumenical News International, a court has agreed that the forced conversion was pefectly legal. There appears to have been to no challenge to the legality of the forced marriage.

This is by no means a unique situation. In a blog describing the hundreds of forced conversions to Islam in Pakistan, there is a quote from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telling President Musharraf at a 2005 meeting that Pakistan is “a model country for the Muslim world”.

The Cost of Multicultural Accommodation

Any Muslims dealing in either drugs or explosives will not have to worry about being sniffed out by police canine units. There will have to be exceptional circumstances – apparently above those that normally justify sniffer dogs – to search the property of a Muslim if the owner objects. That’s because not only do the police have to bend over backwards to avoid offending terrorists, but also because it takes a lot of effort to put special bootees on the dog.

That’s right. Dogs used in searching Muslim premises will now have to wear bootees so the dog itself does not touch anything belonging to a Muslim police suspect. This would obviously include their bombs. This does make sense if you think about it. After all, the bombs are being used for religious purposes. What will Allah think if they have been touched by a dog? Could this reduce the number of virgins to be enjoyed by the suicide bomber if he allows defiled bombs to blow up infidels?

But you want to really upset the Muslim community? Do what Tayside Police have done, and feature a puppy on a postcard. Because there is a puppy sitting on a police hat in an advertisement about the Scottish force’s new non-emergency phone number, Dundee shopkeepers of that religious persuasion (and there would seem to be a significant number) are refusing to display it.

There is no actual dog present on the postcard to touch the actual property of an Muslim, so there is no chance of actually defiling anything. I think there is a lesson in this for the BBC, ITV, and other broadcasters. They will need to avoid any programmes that feature dogs. It’s a good thing they haven’t been showing sheepdog trials and they will need to cut coverage of Crufts. I don’t know how Birmingham City Council, which governs one of the largest Muslims communities in Britain, has allowed the world’s largest dog show on it’s property (it’s one of the two shareholders of the NEC Arena) without Muslims staging a protest, picketing and threatening to kill everyone inside.

This is not absurd. The question is where do you draw the line of multiculturalism? Where is the limit of accommodation? For the Government of the Day, it is clearly more important than the protection of the realm. As I noted yesterday, for the Cheshire education authority, it is important enough to force children into idolatrous worship.

Today’s absurdities become tomorrow’s realities. We have seen this over and over.

I haven’t yet touched on this week’s statement by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, that aspects of Sharia law should be adopted in Britain. This follows the advice of the Archbishop of Canterbury earlier this year. Some people will say that since Beth Din courts are allowed by Orthodox Jews, why shouldn’t Sharia courts be allowed. Well, Sharia courts are already allowed – just not enforceable under English law. Orthodox Jews also have no agenda of bringing all of Britain under the 613 mitzvahs.

With all this accommodation, you would think that Muslims make up a significant minority in this country. Is it right that everything should be changed for 2%-3% of the population and that we should live in fear of whether or not we keep them happy? But it’s not even 2% of the population that are the issue. It is a much smaller minority – a minority within the minority. As reported in the Telegraph:

Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar and a practising Muslim, said that allowing sharia in parts of the UK would be divisive.

He said: “This would create a two-tier society. It is highly retrograde. It will segregate and alienate the Muslim community from the rest of British society.

“The majority of British Muslims want to live only under British law and they would reject anything that means they are treated differently.

So why are we toeing a line continually re-drawn by radical Muslims? Have they already won the war on terrorism and we are afraid to challenge them? Are we really ruled by a bunch of lily-livered liberal multiculturalist sycophants? Do I even need to ask these rhetorical questions?

Punished for Refusing to Pray to Allah

In my first teaching position, I was at loggerheads with my head of department because she insisted that pupils be taught to put “(PBUH)” – abbreviation for the traditional Muslim blessing “Peace be Upon Him” – after writing the name of the false prophet Muhammad. She was not a Muslim and the handful of Muslim pupils in the school couldn’t have cared less whether anyone did it. Not surprisingly, I would not speak a blessing upon a false, Incarnation-denying, Trinity-denying prophet, nor could I, in good conscience, and in light James 3:1, encourage my pupils to do so.

Sadly, it is all too common practice in teaching Religious Education to teach the rituals of other religions in a kinaesthetic way. For most students there is no conscience issue. They would be just as happy offering incense to Caesar and saying it is nothing and it is meaningless. They wouldn’t know and honestly probably wouldn’t care that many Christians have died for just as much. That former head of department never understood how this violated my conscience and frankly didn’t care.

So why do I mention these things from the shrinking past? Because for some people they are the things of the present. An RE teacher at Alsager School in Cheshire (whose identity is unavailable as Alsager School does not publish staff names on its website or in its prospectus, but who news reports indicate is Welsh) gave detentions to two boys who refused to pray in Allah in Arabic following the Salah ritual motions. They were punished for being “disrespectful to the prophet.”

This was after the teacher had a child produce a bottle of drinking water and began washing her feet with it. The pupils had to wear the relevant headgear. One girl who did participate (though her mother was not happy to learn of it) was told off for not doing it right. Apparently enough of them didn’t do it right, because in addition to the detention given to the two boys, the whole class missed breaktime.

The grandfather of one pupil noted, “But if Muslims were asked to go to church on Sunday and take Holy Communion, there would be war.” This is a bit of an overreaction. We know from a number of recent incidents that there would only be protests in the streets threatening to kill anyone involved, and a significant number of Christians in third world countries would be attacked and killed by local Muslim mobs. Okay, and maybe a few churches would be burned down. Oh yeah, and there would be the official threats against the United Kingdom and any of its allies from various Islamist governments around the world. And admittedly this would be serious enough to warrant a terrorist attack or two.  But honestly, there probably wouldn’t be an actual war.

Police Enforce No-Go Area for Christians

I was on the verge of writing about how Robert Mugabe has banned open-air prayer meetings in the run-up to the run-off election in Zimbabwe. Then I came across something closer to home – about 60 miles from my home.

Arthur Cunningham and Joseph Abraham were handing out tracts in Birmingham. Abraham is pastor of Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Saltley. Cunningham is also in full-time ministry. They were sharing the Gospel with four young Muslims. That’s when the trouble started – not with the young people, but with a police community support officer. PCSOs are not sworn cops, but wear uniforms and work for the local police forces. They interrupted the conversation and began berating the preachers.

When the PCSO realised that Cunningham was an American ex-pat, he started on at them about Bush and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The Telegraph and BBC say that both are American, but according to his church website, Abraham is Egyptian and Muslim by birth.) If it had ended there, we would just have a case of extreme unprofessionalism from a member of West Midlands Police. But, of course it didn’t.

When the preachers didn’t take his bait, the PCSO got even more aggressive. According to Cunningham, “He said we were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station.” He didn’t. PCSOs don’t have powers of arrest. Of course he knew that. He was just harrassing them.

But he wasn’t done. He decided to try and scare them away. “You have been warned. If you come back here and get beaten up, well you have been warned”. Now if the only person who was aggressive and abusive to them was the PCSO, who was threatening to beat them up? Was he going to do it? Did he have people who would?

West Midlands Police have refused to apologise to Cunningham and Abraham. Their spokeswoman said, “The investigation concluded that the PCSO acted with the best of intentions when he intervened to diffuse a heated argument between two groups of men.” She said the unnamed PCSO had been offered “guidance around what constitutes a hate crime as well as his communication style”.

So in other words, West Midlands Police acknowledges that their employee wrongly accused the preachers of a hate crime. Their investigation obviously also concluded that PCSO did not communicate in an appropriate manner. Nonetheless, they refuse to apologise.

Another Religiously Motivated Attack

A couple of months ago, I mentioned the incident of a Anglican vicar being attacked on the grounds of his church in Wapping, East London by Muslim youths.

It’s happened again, this time in Bethnal Green. Rev Kevin Scully was attacked on Tuesday afternoon. He’d been taunted with religious abuse before. He took their football last Saturday when they had been hurling it against the church cross. They came back, fueled under age by the alcohol forbidden by the Qur’an and beat him up.

He ended up with two black eyes, cuts and bruises. He told the East London Advertiser, “One of them was instigating the violence. I thought the other two were going to stop it, but in the end they joined in. Even a passer-by who saw what was going on and tried to intervene got a kicking too. I was punched twice in the face, hard, hit again, and kicked from behind. I crouched down to ward off the blows before running to the Rectory and calling police.”

The Price of Honour

This is the face of Islam. She’s dead. Daddy did it.

Rand Abdel-Qader was 17. She had a crush on a British soldier. She met him when she was a volunteer on a project. There was no actual relationship between the two of them. She hadn’t even seen him since January, but her dad found out in mid-March that she had been seen talking to him. One of her friends told him.

No doubt feeling fatherly concern, he asked her if it was true that she had met the soldier. Then, as fathers do (at least in certain cultures that are, of course, equal to all other cultures) he began to beat her savagely. But sometimes a good beating just isn’t enough.

With the help of her brothers (like father, like sons) he held her down with his foot on her throat until she stopped breathing. What a nice daddy. He didn’t want her to feel the pain as he then began to cut at her body with a knife. It’s hard to say what actually killed her – whether it was being stamped on, suffocated, or stabbed repeatedly all over her body.

And it’s not like there was a post-mortem. She was wrapped up and tossed in a grave without any mourning, because she had brought shame on the family. It was a family funeral. Her uncles showed up to spit on her body before it was covered with dirt.

Daddy was arrested. He was released after two hours because it was an honour killing. Sgt Ali Jabbar of Basra police said: “Not much can be done when we have an ‘honour killing’. You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws.”

It would be terrible enough if this were an exceptional story. The only reason it is news is because it is the first case known to involve a British soldier in Iraq (if “involve” is even the right word). There were 47 honour killings just in Basra last year. That’s 47 other girls, just like Rand, just in one city, just in one year.

Council-sponsored Muslim-only No-go Area

And they said there were no no-go areas.

In January, when Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali suggested in The Sunday Telegraph that some areas had become no-go zones for non-Muslims, he was excoriated on all sides. His fellow Anglican bishops distanced themselves from him. From Muslims he received death threats.

Clissold Leisure Centre in Stoke Newington has Muslim-only swimming on Sunday mornings. Actually, it is Muslim males-only swimming. I don’t have any problem with separate sessions for men. After all, leisure pools have long had some of their facilities set apart at times for women. And as long as there is equal access, I got no problem with that.

But Clissold Leisure Centre owned by Hackney Borough Council in north London doesn’t have a Christians-only swimming session.

So have Muslims created this no-go area? No. The Muslims don’t mind swimming with Christians. It’s the leisure centre employees who have done it. After David Toube and his son we refused admission, even by a manager, they went back several days later to speak to another leisure centre employee, who confirmed the Muslims-only policy.

Since this hit the news, the leisure centre’s tune has changed. Seems they don’t want to openly discriminate in the face of media exposure. The sessions may still be for Muslim men, but they now say that staff cannot ask about someone’s religion or refuse them entry if they don’t appear to be Muslim.

Why Five-Year-Olds Need Section 28

Some Muslim parents have complained about a couple of story books used at two Bristol primary schools. As a result the books have been pulled. So is this some sort of anti-Muslim rant? Far from it.

The books are characterised by the school as part of their “anti-homophobia” curriculum for five-year-olds.  One is a fairytale about a prince who turns down three princesses. He marries the brother of one of them. The other is set in a New York zoo, where two male penguins who fall in love.  Bristol City Council says they were intended to help prevent homophobic bullying.

What five-year-olds are engaged in homophobic bullying? What five-year-olds are holding themselves out as homosexual?

This is exactly the reason it was wrong to repeal Section 28. The use of these books is clearly about promoting not only homosexuality, but homosexual marriage equivalents.  Parents complained that children were coming home asking questions about same-sex relationships when there had never even been discussion about heterosexual relationships.

The schools in question are 60%-70% Muslim. Perhaps because Muslims are unacceptably unaccepting of homosexual behaviour, the school and the local council have felt the needed to force the issue on the children at such a young age. Parents complained so much the council has temporarily removed the books from the curriculum, which just goes to prove the council’s point.

The sad thing is that it is only Muslim parents that can get this done. If it were Christian parents, the council would have simply ignored them.

Terrorism in the East End

I may get regular verbal abuse and heckling in my own classroom for being a Christian, but at least I’m not a vicar getting attacked on the grounds of my own church. There is a constant campaign of vandalism against St George-in-the-East in Wapping. The attitude is typified by shouts of “This should not be a church, this should be a mosque.”

In addition to being yet another example of teen yobbish behaviour – an epidemic throughout this country – it is also a low-grade example of Islamic terrorism. Besides being just downright nasty, these pustules of society are using their faith as an excuse for causing harm and destruction. They have also been fed on a diet of ideas (whether a home or at the mosque or both) that they should be able to settle in an area and Islamify it, driving out the Church.

All Change

I think Barak Obama has the best chance of being elected President of the United States.

I’d actually rather see Hillary Clinton elected. If you know me, you know that is not an easy thing to say. I’d rather see almost anyone elected rather than Hillary. But at least with Hillary you know what you are getting. All you have with Obama is the most liberal voting record in the Senate combined with the endless chant of “Change! Change! Change!”

Obama has not been around on the national scene long enough to have built up a lot of negative feeling. Clinton would be defeatable in November because so may people have an attitude of “anyone but Hillary”. Once in office, Obama will push for an agenda that most Americans will not like. It will be too late.

Obama will work with a Democratic Congress, in the first such tandem between Capitol Hill and the White House since the first half of Bill Clinton’s first term. That’s when we got the FACE Act, the Brady Law, don’t ask dont’ tell, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer. We also got the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. That created 50 new federal offenses, banned semi-automatic “assault” rifles, and eliminated higher education opportunities for prisoners.

The big differences between 1993 and 2009 are that Obama is much more liberal than Bill Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is both more legislatively aggressive and more liberal than was Tom Foley. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Steven is 87. Scalia, Kennedy, and Ginsburg are in their 70’s.

Then there is foreign policy. Obama will be much happier for the UN to decide that. He’s going to pull the troops out of Iraq. That sounds good, but unfortunately the US invasion created a bit of a mess and a subsequent direct withdrawal will result in a complete breakdown of civil order. Any Christians who are left in Iraq had better get out, because it will just be a matter of which Islamist extremists can kill the most people. Also expect something close to full-scale war between Iraq and Turkey.

So yes, all in all, you can expect change, change, change from an Obama presidency and you can expect an Obama presidency in January.