How Shariah ‘Blasphemy’ Laws are Being Imposed On Us

Posted by Team B Sep 25th 2010 at 9:01 am

Part 7 of a serialization of Shariah – The Threat to America, the report of Team B II of the Center for Security Policy.

Shariah blasphemy doctrine matters to free societies because of followers who seek to impose that doctrine in civilized countries.

The United States and its allies are accustomed to confronting external threats. Democracies are generally uncomfortable about facing internal threats. The Muslim Brotherhood and others are exploiting our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms to demand tolerance of its medieval religious practices and to repress free speech where it gives offense to them. In this sense, they are effectively imposing shariah blasphemy laws in America, Canada, Europe, Australia and elsewhere.

Shariah is fundamentally about power – the enforcement of a body of law, not faith. Therefore it is a political force, not a religious one. In the words of Muslim Brotherhood theoretician Sayyid Qutb, “Whenever an Islamic community exists which is a concrete example of the Divinely-ordained system of life, it has a God-given right to step forward and control the political authority so that it may establish the divine system on earth. . . .”

Part 6 of this series examined how followers of shariah denounce as “slander” anything that offends them. Similarly, shariah proponents apply Islamic blasphemy laws as part of their civilization jihad to force those with whom they disagree to submit to their will.

For non-believers (including modern Muslims), the corollary to the Islamic rule against disclosing anything disadvantageous to Islam is shariah’s prohibition against blasphemy. This requires that infidels refrain from engaging in discussions about Islam that extend beyond what is permitted of them or would give offense to Muslims.

Such suppression of information is invaluable to the shariah enterprise because a straightforward reading of Islamic doctrine lends credence to claims by its adherents to be in the mainstream and orthodox. The current approach enshrined in U.S. national intelligence and security policy, which conforms to shariah blasphemy dictates, has the effect of removing these facts from discovery.

This submission to shariah is evident in the failure of US government agencies accurately to describe the enemy and his threat doctrine described elsewhere in the Team B report. It is also reflected in other, less obvious but highly insidious ways. These include gaps in the professional education of senior civilian and military personnel and in possible biases based on such failures inherent in the promotion process for federal employees across the governmental bureaucracy.

Such policies are systematically corroding the US government’s situational awareness by effectively imposing – via implicit or explicit gag orders – a system of self-censorship. The practical effect is that the truth about shariah and its adherents is suppressed, as is informed deliberation about the appropriate responses to the threats it poses. This amounts to a collective act of submission to shariah by the national leadership of the US that emboldens our enemies even as it disables our defenses against them.

By contrast to current US government policy about the shariah threat that avoids facts as unwanted disclosures, an effective analytic process could be tailored specifically to answer questions concerning the enemy’s doctrine by direct reference to those same facts. There can be no successful intelligence analysis – or appropriate national security strategy – where the underlying facts are barred.

We also see submission to shariah blasphemy dikitats in civil society, outside the government and military.

On campuses across the country, Muslim Brotherhood fronts like the Muslim Students Association (MSA) promotes aggressive political influence and intimidation operations – not merely to discredit Israel and promote the Muslim Palestinian cause as many MSA chapters do, but to serve as focal points for efforts to impose shariah blasphemy rules or otherwise control speech.

To this end, MSA members frequently engage in disruptive actions aimed at preventing speakers from exposing students to information about shariah Islam, jihad and their targets that would be deemed “offensive” or otherwise contrary to the ambitions of the Muslim Brotherhood.

(Not mentioned in the Team B report, but relevant to the discussion, are the following examples: Newspapers, magazines, websites and television channels are censoring their writers and themselves in order to comply with shariah blasphemy demands, lest they lend offense or suffer violent consequences. The Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed are a case in point. Comedy Central has banned its own artists from depicting Mohammed, even though it allows ridicule of Jesus Christ. As of this writing, a young Seattle woman who was behind a good-natured, satirical campaign to draw pictures of the prophet Mohammed in protest of the censorship has faced death threats and was forced into hiding, under a new identity, at the urging of the FBI.)

Charges of “religious defamation,” “racism,” “bigotry” and “blasphemy” have become, like Pavlovian gongs, instant conversation-enders. The aggressiveness of the allegations – and the confusion or timidity of those on the receiving end – has allowed Islam in the west to become increasingly insulated not just from criticism, but also from the poking and prodding of analysis. Islam in the West is becoming insulated from reality itself.

This may be precisely the kind of “protection” from secular “blasphemy” (read, criticism) that shariah has long maintained it requires.

In the next section of this serialization of the Team B report, Part 8, we will look at the Muslim Brotherhood itself: The threat doctrine operationalized.