Sharia is Here

The following is an excerpt from an article by Phyllis Chesler entitled, Forced Marriages in Our Own Backyard:

On February 22, 2011, Jessie Bender, a 13-year-old southern California girl, ran away from home. No, Jessie was not into “sex, drugs, or rock n’ roll.” On the contrary. Jessie was terrified that her American-born mother, Melissa, a convert to Islam, and her mother’s Pakistani boyfriend and acting stepfather Mohammed “Mo” Khan, had decided to send her to Pakistan to be married against her will. Had Jessie gone, her mother and “Mo” would have received $3000.00.

Europe is plagued by many more such cases of forced child marriage. According to the BBC, the police in South Wales have dealt with 49 cases of forced marriage in the past year (2010) alone.

Child marriage is opposed by the Convention Against All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It is a toothless document. The United Nations does not enforce individual rights over the objections of its member nation states.

Child marriage is an abomination. Think of the girls you know who are 10, 12, 14 years old. Can you imagine how a forced, arranged marriage to a much older stranger, probably one who believes it is his absolute right to rape and beat his wife, would psychologically cripple them for life, stunt all growth, demoralize them forevermore?

We should not want to consign young American girls, Muslim and non-Muslim, to such cruel fates.

Crimes Against Women in Muslim Countries

Some horrifying crimes are routinely committed against women in many Muslim countries. These crimes include normalized daughter- and wife-battering, forced veiling, female genital mutilation, polygamy, purdah, (the segregation or sequestration of women), arranged marriage, child marriage, first cousin marriage, acid attacks, public stonings, hangings, and beheading, and the further victimization of rape victims who are jailed, tortured, and executed.

The above is quoted from an article entitled, A Feminist Duty.

Sharia Law Has Come to America

In Tampa, Florida, a dispute arose over who controls the funds a mosque received in 2008 from an eminent domain proceeding. Former trustees of the mosque are claiming in court they have the right to the funds. Current mosque leaders are disputing that claim.

The current mosque leaders want the case decided according to secular, Florida civil law, and their attorney has been vigorously arguing the case accordingly. The former trustees of the mosque want the case decided according to sharia law.

Here’s the kicker.

The judge recently ruled “This case will proceed under Ecclesiastical Islamic law,” (Sharia law), “pursuant to the Qur’an.”

You can read the judge’s ruling here (it's a PDF document).

Now it’s not unusual for a dispute to arise within a religious institution and for a court to order a mediation or arbitration, in order to resolve this without the court having to render its own judgment.

But what makes this case unusual, and highly troubling, is that a group of Muslim leaders — the CURRENT mosque leaders — who do NOT want to be subject to Sharia law, are being compelled to do so by an American judge!

This is reminiscent of the 2009 New Jersey case, where a Muslim woman sought a restraining order, in civil court, against her Muslim husband, who was raping her several times a day. The judge denied the restraining order because, in his opinion, the husband did not commit a crime because he was following his Islamic beliefs.

In the New Jersey case, and now in this recent case in Tampa, Muslims found themselves being subjected to Sharia law against their will in America.

Last October, ACT! for America aired a radio ad across Oklahoma in support of the referendum preventing Oklahoma judges from using Sharia law in their decisions. The referendum won with 70% support.

The point we made then, which now bears repeating, is that such legislation protects non-Muslims AND Muslims alike from being subjected to Sharia law.

When someone claims that opposition to Sharia law in America is “anti-Muslim,” make sure you tell them about the New Jersey woman and the mosque leaders in Tampa.

The above article was a message from Act for America to its members.

Open Fuel Standard Act of 2011

Each manufacturer's fleet of covered vehicles for a particular model year shall be comprised of:

(1) not less than 50 percent qualified vehicles beginning in model year 2014;

(2) not less than 80 percent qualified vehicles beginning in model year 2016; and

(3) not less than 95 percent qualified vehicles beginning in model year 2017 and each subsequent year.

"Qualified vehicle" means a covered vehicle that:

(A) has been warranted by its manufacturer to operate solely on natural gas, hydrogen, or biodiesel;

(B) is a flexible fuel vehicle;

(C) is a plug-in electric drive vehicle;

(D) is propelled solely by fuel cell that produces power without the use of petroleum or a petroleum-based fuel; or

(E) is propelled solely by something other than an internal combustion engine, and produces power without the use of petroleum or a petroleum-based fuel;

The term `flexible fuel vehicle' means a vehicle that has been warranted by its manufacturer to operate on gasoline, E85, and M85.

The term `E85' means a fuel mixture containing 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline by volume;

The term `M85' means a fuel mixture containing 85 percent methanol and 15 percent gasoline by volume;

The term `biodiesel' means diesel fuel which has been produced from a non-petroleum feedstock and which meets the standards of ASTM D6751-03.

The Muslim World is Behind Because of the Way it Treats its Women

An an interview with Bernard Lewis, he said:

The case has been made, and I think there is some force in it, that the main reason for the relative backwardness of the Islamic world compared to the West is the treatment of women. As far as I know, it was first made by a Turkish writer called Namik Kemal in about 1880. At that time an agonizing debate had been going on for more than a century: What went wrong? Why did we fall behind the West?

He said, “The answer is very clear. We fell behind the West because of the way we treat our women. By the way we treat our women we deprive ourselves of the talents and services of half the population. And we submit the early education of the other half to ignorant and downtrodden mothers.”

It goes further than that. A child who grows up in a traditional Muslim household is accustomed to authoritarian, autocratic rule from the start. I think the position of women is of crucial importance.

That is why I am looking with great interest at Tunisia. Tunisia is the one Arab country that has really done something about women. In Tunisia there is compulsory education for girls, from primary school, right through. In Tunisia, women are to be found in the professions. There are doctors, lawyers, journalists, politicians and so on. Women play a significant part in public life in Tunisia. I think that is going to have an enormous impact. It’s already having this in Tunisia and you can see that in various ways. But this will certainly spread to other parts of the world.

Elsewhere, the question of women and the role of the women is of crucial importance for the future of the Muslim world in general.

Exports From the Arab World

An an interview with Bernard Lewis, he said something remarkable:

"Remember that according to their own statistics, the total exports of the entire Arab world other than fossil fuels amount to less than those of Finland, one small European country."

Making Sure You See the Facebook Posts You Want to See

I just got the following message from the Worldwide Defense League and thought I'd pass it on to the rest of us:

The "New Facebook" has a newsfeed setting that by default is automatically set to show ONLY posts from people who you've recently interacted with or interacted the most with (which would be limited to the couple of weeks just before people started switching to the new profile).

So in other words, for both business and personal pages, unless your friends/fans commented on one of your posts within those few weeks or vice versa, you are now invisible to them and they are invisible to you!

HERE'S THE FIX: On the homepage click the "Most Recent" title on the right of the Newsfeed, then click the drop down arrow and select "Edit Options." Click on "Show Posts From" and change the setting to "All Of Your Friends and Pages" (you can also access the "Edit Options" link at the very bottom of the facebook homepage on the right).

Simply posting an update about it won't do any good because lots of your friends/fans already can't see your posts by default. You'll have to send out a message to everyone on your list or post it through a group like this one.