Shariah "expert" Sarah Palin
Juan Cole, professor at the University of Michigan, rips into Sarah Palin’s comments about Islamic law taking over America as well as her comments on Iran. It seems like Palin has been reading Jihad Watch or Atlas Shrugs to educate herself on Islamic Law. What else could explain her crazy assertion that shariah is somehow a threat to become the law of the United States.
Palin Fear-Mongers on Iran, Sharia (Informed Comment)
Republican gadfly Sarah Palin said in an interview with Newsmax Tuesday that Russia should be warned against helping Iran because if Iran got a nuclear weapon it would bring about Armageddon.
She also warned against the imposition of what she called Muslim sharia law on Americans and said they would never put up with it.
Give me a break. No one is working harder to impose a religious law code on Americans than Palin herself. Palin is one of those people who says she would like to forbid abortion even in cases of rape or danger to the mother’s life. Palin’s hostility to pro-choice positions derives from her belief in the supremacy of Christian law, which she wants to impose on all Americans. For more see my classic Salon essay on how many of Palin’s stances track with sharia or actually are more rigid.
Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, and says it does not want one and would not accept one. There is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly certified that no nuclear material is being diverted to military purposes from Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment facilities in Natanz near Isfahan.
In contrast, the United States and Russia each has thousands of nuclear warheads, and smaller nuclear arsenals are possessed by Britain, France, China, and Israel.
It is difficult to see how Iran, a poor weak state with virtually no air force to speak of, and which is defenseless against a nuclear-armed superpower, could possibly cause an ‘Armageddon’ or show-down battle ushering in the Last Days
As for sharia, this allegation that Muslims are conspiring to impose their religious law on the United States is just propaganda from an American right wing that has destroyed the US economy and weakened the constitution, and has no one to blame for it but themselves. So they have nothing to run on but fear. They tried making Americans afraid of Latinos, but there are so many Latino voters that the tactic caused them to crash and burn. They needed a small group to position as threatening to middle America. They really miss the Communists. You could always run against the Communists, and there were hardly any in the US, so there was no down side.
So now they are coming after the some 6 million American Muslims.
Sharia does not have a fixed meaning. It is the living tradition of Muslim religious law. It is analogous to Roman Catholic canon law. What Palin is doing is similar to raising an alarm that the country’s 80 million Catholics have a secret plan to make canon law the law of the land and impose it on clueless Protestant Americans.
Ooops. The one place where attempts are being made to make the US conform to canon law is law around abortion, which is forbidden in Roman Catholic law but allowed in American law.
And guess what. Sarah Palin agrees with the imposition of canon law in that area of forbidding abortions.
US law already overlaps with Muslim sharia in the essentials. Sharia law forbids murder. It forbids theft. Etc.
Most of the elements of sharia to which Americans might object are traditional and are being reformed by Muslims themselves. Thus, sharia traditionally allowed a man to take up to four wives. But in many Muslim countries that practice has been curtailed. Or people think about harsh punishments such as stoning for adultery. But the Qur’an does not mention stoning anyone, and stoning adulterers is actually a feature of Jewish law or halakha that was probably brought into Islam by rabbi converts in the 8th or 9th century. Egypt has made the age of marriage 18, even though Muslim legal tradition allowed marriage at a much earlier age. But then Roman Catholic canon law in the medieval era set the marriage age at 12, as did Jewish religious law. All religious systems of law in the medieval period tended to allow marriage with the onset of puberty. Americans who get all high and mighty about sharia should remember that 18th century British law prescribed hanging for minor theft.
There is no mechanism whereby Muslim religious law could be imposed on Americans (it would have to be legislated by Congress, which is much more likely to make us live by Leviticus). The US Supreme Court has ruled that a law may not be passed if it does not have a secular purpose (that is why we can work on Sundays now; blue laws don’t have a secular purpose.
But since the United States has an Anglo-Saxon, common law legal system that privileges custom as a source of law, it is inevitable that judges will occasionally have to take sharia into account when adjudicating disputes among American Muslims. US judges can take precedents from anywhere, and have occasionally cited rulings of, e.g., the Indian Supreme Court. The only way to avoid this situation would be to adopt the Napoleonic code and give up on custom and precedent as contributors to law. That would be a much bigger break with American legal traditions than merely occasionally citing Muslim legal practice in settling disputes among Muslims.
October 14th, 2010 at 2:18 am
People can debate on Iranian weapons or not, but other than that, an excellent article
October 14th, 2010 at 3:05 am
“Republican gadfly Sarah Palin”-lol!
October 14th, 2010 at 6:00 am
good article. about Iranian weapons, what people fail to understand is
1.In hundred last years history Iran never once initiated a war against any other country but America, Britain and Israel did and all have nuclear weapons.
2. You cannot tell some other country you cannot have something while you have chunks and chunks of the same thing. so y dont the uncle sam and co strip themself of nuclear weapons and then mourn that Iran may built one.
3. Iran has signed nuclear non proliferation treaty but Israel never did and have ots of nuclear reactors by violating all internatinal laws.
4. Iran has admitted UN inspectors while Isreal denied access for any.
October 14th, 2010 at 7:04 am
I second Mohammed’s points, why aren’t people shouting at Israel who not only probably have nukes and all the points mentioned above, but if they have them then they also have submarine launch capability. Oh, and a question I always ask people who think Iran is this, how the heck is Iran going to get these magic nukes? First of all, you have to get the uranium which they probably could do. But then what? How do they make the warheads? Do people realize how damn complex those things are?! And the tech needed? It needs some very specialist equipment and if Iran suddenly starts buying this stuff then you *will* notice it as there is no way it can make that stuff in house. And who will teach them how to make it? Pakistan? Uff, no way, North Korea then? Possibly, but NK’s nukes are probably about the size of family cars and certainly no where near the stage they’d be of any tactical use (unless you can see a way to fit a car sized and very fragile warhead onto a missile (to big) or into a plane (to fragile)). Oh, and you have to test these things at some stage of production and you will *defiantly* know when that starts happening! Brains people!
October 14th, 2010 at 7:26 am
Palin is a cartoon character. Only loons take her seriously.
October 14th, 2010 at 8:21 am
@Mohammed Sameel
“1.In hundred last years history Iran never once initiated a war against any other country but America, Britain and Israel did and all have nuclear weapons.”
True, but Iran nearly did go to war against Afghanistan since the Taliban took over Mazar-i-Sharif and slaughtered 9 Iranian diplomats in August 1998. Iran massed tens of thousand of troops on the Afghan border as a result. Personally, I wished Iran would have done everyone a favor and took out the Taliban since they were (and still) a big threat to them.
If Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, it might not be solely due to Israel, but the due to the fact that their neighbor to the east has a long history of anti-Shi’a prejudice and violence. Just look at what goes on in Parachinar and you’ll understand what Iran has to fear from Sunni extremists taking over Pakistan, because the minute they take over who do you think they are going to direct the nukes at? Israel? Yeah right, they’d rather go after the “dirty Raafidhis” to the west of them.
And as for Palin, I could not also help to note at the irony of her whining about Shariah when she isn’t much different from the fundamentalists in the Middle East to begin with. Denial of fertility rights to women is a common trait between the Christian Right and the Islamic fundamentalists.
October 14th, 2010 at 9:31 am
Khusboo
“Palin is a cartoon character. Only loons take her seriously.”
You’re right, but unfortunately thee are many loons in America. The Christian Right who want her in power number millions, and it’s not a threat we can ignore.
Remember McCain was forced to bring here in as his VP because the Christian Right whom he was left with as a voting block but who didn’t like him, had to be wooed. She did the trick then, she did mobilise them to support him.
This is not a threat we can afford to ignore.
October 14th, 2010 at 10:45 am
I think it’s hypocritical that a country would bitch about another country (allegedly) having nuclear weapons, when they themselves have enough to blow up the entire world 4 times over.
October 14th, 2010 at 11:02 am
Sara Palin! What a goon!
October 14th, 2010 at 11:32 am
MRFF, yes but McCain did lose because of her. She’s one of the people dumbing down America but luckily the majority of us are still sane.
October 14th, 2010 at 11:52 am
South Carolina mosque defaced with bacon
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/13/south-carolina-mosque-defaced-with-bacon/?hpt=T2
October 14th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Did McCain lose becuase of Palin? He already had little chance of winning the election, because he had a formidable opponent in the very popular Obama.
October 14th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
No matter how we feel about these nuclear weapons, they are totally forbidden in Islam.
These horrid things only exist to terrorise innocent people…they absolutly have no other use.
October 14th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
People like Palin ACTUALLY want a war with Islam. Muslims need to form a solid voting minority so that the politicians could come to us for our votes!
October 14th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
I don’t think Sarah Palin “wants a war with Islam”. I think she’s like Bill O’Reilly, simply following the party.
I have to admit though, the GOP has been coming out with some pretty loony members lately–Sharron Angle, Carl Paladino, the witch lady, etc.
October 14th, 2010 at 11:10 pm
Either no nukes or everyone can have nukes. Israel and the US have no credibility in accusing Iran.
October 15th, 2010 at 2:36 am
I dont blame Iran in wanting to have nukes. Just think who is on their borders .
Iraq ,previous ruler dropped chemical weapons on them .
Pakistan ,already has the bomb history of military:semi religious rulers ,many think Shia apostates.
Afganistan ,taliban no friends of Shia Iran
Isreal agressive defence (ironey ) already has the bomb becoming dominated more by religious parties
October 15th, 2010 at 9:03 am
Let’s be fair now. Either every country can have nukes or no one should have nukes. Who are we to tell others who can have them and who can’t?! We can’t be hypocrites.
October 21st, 2010 at 10:07 am
“Or people think about harsh punishments such as stoning for adultery. But the Qur’an does not mention stoning anyone, and stoning adulterers is actually a feature of Jewish law or halakha that was probably brought into Islam by rabbi converts in the 8th or 9th century.”
actually, that is not true at all, stoning for adultery is in fact an islamic law, it happened during the time of prophet Mohamed, we do not need to lie about our religion to polish it or to make it more likable to others. Please check such info before posting it.