20 Feb 2012 By Juan Cole Last month, a bill intended to combat the
nearly non-existent problem of courts citing Sharia
law was cruising to passage in the Virginia House of
Delegates. For the moment, however, the bill appears
to be dead after numerous business groups stepped
forward to oppose it: One bill, HB825 from Republican Del. Bob Marshall
of Prince William County, would have prohibited
judges and state administrators from using any legal
code established outside the United States to make
decisions. [...] But when legislators started hearing from
business groups concerned about how the proposal
could affect their dealings abroad and foreign
companies located here, they sent the bill back to
committee. "I had some business concerns," said Del. Terry
Kilgore, R-Scott County, after making the motion
Thursday to kick back the bill. "It's just something
that needs some work." It's unfortunate, if far from unexpected, that
similar protests from religious groups, both Islamic
and otherwise, were not enough to kill the bill.
Nevertheless, the emergence of business opposition to
these sorts of bills is a very important development. The first wave of anti-Islamic bills introduced in
state legislatures specifically named "Sharia" or
Islamic law as off limits to state court judges. Such
laws are unambiguously unconstitutional, as the First
Amendment forbids any law that exists for the sole
purpose of lashing out at a particular faith. Del.
Marshall's bill short circuits this constitutional
limit because it does not expressly call out something
unique to a particular faith. Instead, it paints with
a broad brush by forbidding citations to any legal
code that's not established in the United States. The problem with this tactic, however, is that
there are all kinds of legitimate reasons why a judge
may need to rely on foreign legal sources in order to
render a decision. Most significantly, contracts
between U.S. and foreign companies frequently require
any disputes between them to be resolved under a
foreign nation's law. Needless to say, business don't
like it when lawmakers take away an important tool
that they need to conduct international business just
to push back against some baseless fantasy about
judges lining up to replace the Constitution with
Islamic law. So the punchline is that anti-Islamic lawmakers are
now in a bind. They can either push a narrow law
targeting Islam, and have that law be struck down in
the courts, or they can broaden the law, and wind up
pushing something with spillover effects that will
greatly annoy powerful interest groups. Or, alternatively, they could simply abandon their
anti-Islamic crusade altogether, and devote their
attention solving problems that actually exist. Written by Ian Millhiser Brigitte Gabriel: Liberals and Muslims Doing
"Exactly What Hitler Did" Right-wing Christianity's favorite self-hating
racist, Hanan Tudor, a.k.a Brigitte Gabriel has been
making a killing through her anti-Islam
organization "ACT! For America," also better known
as Hate! for America. Not too long ago she was at the Cornerstone
Church in Nashville, Tennessee, (yes, the
same church that hosted European fascist Geert
Wilders) participating in the "anti-Shariah
Conference." You can watch the video yourself here. As you can see Gabriel is up to her usual gimmick,
fear-mongering about the deadly and dire "Islamization
of the USA," which is supposedly happening right under
the patriotic noses of: good, wholesome, real Americans!
According to her the Muslims are being aided in this
anti-American endeavor by the liberals who wish
nothing more than to see America destroyed! She says at the 6:00 minute mark about the
"Liberal-Islamic axis of evil": They're doing exactly what Hitler did. What did
Hitler say, what did Hitler do? "Give me the
children and I'll change society in ten years." Really? The Hitler card? Isn't that played out by
now? Cornerstone Church has a history of giving a
platform to this sort of anti-Islam and anti-Muslim
propaganda. I won't be surprised if one of its
congregants believes he/she has to take out the
Muslims before they take over, or perhaps a la cultural-Christian-Templar-Knight-Terrorist Anders
Breivik, take out the liberals who are facilitating
the so-called "demise of the USA." ********************* While Brigitte Gabriel's reputation has been
severely discredited and she is unable to get the kind
of access that she was accustomed to in the past she
is still able to weasel her way at times into the
mainstream. Such was the case recently in an article written
by Frida Ghatis for McClatchy
Newspapers and which was picked up by the Miami
Herald, Sacramento Bee and several other papers.
Ghatis' article was titled, Truly Revolutionary: Arabs
Speaking Well of Israel. The piece is pro-Israel propaganda
through-and-through and while maintaining a veneer of
objectivity it degrades the successes of the Arab
Spring and revolves around the not-so-hidden thesis
that a real revolution in the Arab world would be one
in which Arabs "speak well of Israel." No explanation
is given of why many Arabs are anti-Israel (i.e.
occupation, apartheid, discrimination, war crimes, the
bombing of Arab countries, etc.). Instead the focus is: will Arabs finally love
Israel and say nice things about it. All pretense to
objectivity is dropped when we come to this sentence: Pro-Israel Arabs, Muslims, and former Muslims who
use their real names are usually people living
safely in the West, such as Lebanon's Brigitte
Gabriel, Somalia's Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Egypt's Tawfik
Hamid, or Canada's Irshad Manji. We have covered all of the loons mentioned above by
Ghatis. If Ghatis was willing to do a basic search on
Gabriel she would realize that Gabriel doesn't even
consider herself an Arab! In fact,Gabriel believes
Arabs have no soul!: The difference, my friends, between Israel and
the Arab world is the difference between
civilization and barbarism. It's the difference
between good and evil [applause]…. this is what
we're witnessing in the Arabic world, They
have no SOUL!, they are dead set on killing
and destruction. And in the name of something they
call "Allah" which is very different from the God we
believe….[applause] because our God is the God of
love. One can see why Ghatis would be so enthusiastic
about Gabriel, she really speaks so "well" of
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