http://www.townhall .com/Columnists/ FrankJGaffneyJr/ 2008/03/17/ the_new_dhimmi
_times
The New Dhimmi Times
By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Totalitarians have an uncanny appreciation for the subversive effect of
foreign propagandists. The Nazis had Lord Haw-Haw, Imperial Japan its Tokyo
Rose, the Soviets the World Council of Churches (among many others) and the
North Vietnamese Jane Fonda. Now, our time’s totalitarian ideologues – the
Islamofascists – have the New York Times.
This may not seem to be exactly a news flash. After all, the Times has been
rendering invaluable service to the enemy’s information operations and
military campaigns for years. To cite but a few examples: In December 2005,
the paper disclosed a highly classified program for monitoring suspected
terrorists’ communications on this war’s global battlefield. In June 2006,
it revealed another enormously sensitive surveillance effort concerning
movement of funds around the world. And practically every day, what passes
for its news pages and editorials run down the Nation’s leadership, military
and progress in defeating our foes.
The New York Times marked a deplorable new milestone this weekend, however –
a true nadir in collaborating with the enemy in the War of Ideas. Its Sunday
magazine featured an article by Harvard law professor Noah Feldman entitled
“Why Shariah? Millions of Muslims think Shariah means the rule of law. Could
they be right?” According to the Times’ Mr. Feldman, the answer is a
resounding “Yes.”
The disinforming character of this essay is evident to the trained eye from
the opening paragraph. Feldman depicts sympathetically the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who “gave a nuanced, scholarly lecture” recently
in London. Dr. Williams we are told offered “the tentative suggestion.that,
subject to the agreement of all parties and the strict requirement of
protecting equal rights for women, it might be a good idea to consider
allowing Islamic and Orthodox Jewish courts to handle marriage and divorce.”
Then, it seems through no fault of his own, “all hell broke loose” on the
poor, thoughtful clergyman.
Actually, what the head of the Church of England declared on the BBC was
that it was “unavoidable” that Shariah law – a theo-political- legal code
that the Islamofascists seek to impose on Muslims and non-Muslims alike in
all of its barbaric, intolerant, totalitarian and misogynistic glory – will
be observed in the United Kingdom. The man now derided as “the Grand Mufti
of Canterbury” was exhibiting the classic symptoms of an unbeliever who
chooses to submit to the rule of Islam, rather than accept the other choice
under Shariah, namely being put to death. The former is known as a dhimmi.
In an article that can only be described charitably as selective in its
rendering of the facts, Feldman paints a portrait of Shariah that would earn
admiration from the inventor of the Big Lie, Adolf Hitler. In fact, the text
could have been written by the Muslim Brotherhood – an Islamofascist
movement that is, by its own documents, charged with “destroying [the United
States] from within” and “by its own hands.” Actually, it is no exaggeration
to say that the Times’ Magazine has provided a six-page advertisement for
the Brotherhood, effectively portraying it as a force for democracy and the
rule of law that would make Thomas Jefferson swoon.
The Harvard professor, who helped write the new Iraqi constitution with its
requirement that all laws must conform to Shariah, seems open to the
Islamofascists’ determination to have the same apply elsewhere. He concludes
with this rhapsody: “.With all its risks and dangers, the Islamists’
aspiration to renew old ideas of the rule of law while coming to terms with
contemporary circumstances is bold and noble – and may represent a path to
just and legitimate government in much of the Muslim world.”
Let’s call this what it is: a paean to dhimmitude. The people who are
actually going to have to “come to terms with contemporary circumstances”
are not the Islamists. They are hewing to the immutable traditions of
Shariah going back to the 9th Century, as interpreted by the consensus of
the faith’s “authorities, ” the only figures allowed to speak for Islam.
It is the cruelest of delusions to contend that such Shariah law will
produce “just and legitimate governments” anywhere. Feldman struggles to
explain why it isn’t so in two of the four places ruled by Shariah today –
Iran and Saudi Arabia; he doesn’t even try to do so with respect to Sudan or
Gaza, let alone the nightmare that formerly was Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
Sunday’s New York Times article could be chalked up to another travesty by a
paper that has long since lost its way, but for one fact: It comes at a
moment when the Islamofascists are poised to make a potentially decisive
breakthrough. Unless action is taken swiftly, they will achieve a strategic
penetration of Wall Street in the form of “Shariah-Compliant Finance” (SCF).
Confusion, let alone deliberate disinformation, about the true nature of
Shariah, constitutes an invitation to disaster.
After all, the calamitous credit crisis is vaporizing such pillars of
American capitalism as Bear Sterns. Other investment houses and commercial
banks are desperate for cash. Islamist Sovereign Wealth Funds (more
accurately described as Dictators Slush Funds) and other champions of SCF
are offering to recycle trillions of dollars here – if only Wall Street will
allow Muslim Brothers and other Islamofascists to call the shots, dictating
who gets capital and credit on the basis of Shariah adherence. Archbishop
Williams judged Shariah law unavoidable in Britain in part because the UK
has already embraced Shariah-Compliant Finance.
If we fall for this deadly Trojan horse and the seditious Shariah agenda
that animates it, the New Dhimmi Times and Professor Feldman will deserve no
small portion of the blame.
Frank Gaffney Jr. is the founder and president of the Center for Security
Policy and author of War
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