Foehammer’s Anvil

Here is an excellent editorial by Joel Himelfarb of Family Security Matters, which strongly reiterates many of the points I have made here on the Anvil in recent months, especially about the dire domestic threats to the United States from Islamist political moves and incursions into our educational institutions, as well as the unwitting alliance between moonbat journalists and Muslims (thanks to Sheila):

In the early days of Communism in the Soviet Union, V.I. Lenin coined the term “useful idiots” to describe people nominally hostile to Marxism who could be tricked into engaging in commercial or other activities (like promoting disinformation through the media) that help the Communist side.

With the Cold War over, today’s useful idiots include elite journalists who can be relied upon to launch hysterical attacks against law-abiding Americans for no legitimate reason, while ignoring the real dangers Americans face. When it comes to our current existential struggle against Islamist radicalism, I would have to nominate Chris Hedges, a former New York Times reporter and former Middle East bureau chief for the paper, for this dubious honor. Currently, Hedges is promoting his new book about what he views as the “real” religion-based threat to America’s survival, and in his view it isn’t posed by al Qaeda, Iranian-backed Shi’ite terrorists or any other Muslim. Instead, it’s –get ready — the rise of “Christian fascism” in America.

Hedges wrote an article published March 2 by the Website www.popmatters.com in which he likens the appeal of Christian conservatives as represented by groups like Eagle Forum and the “Family Resource [sic] Council” to the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s. Hedges suggests that these American Christians, who have done such sinister things as buying television stations and sending their children to Christian schools, might try to seize control of the United States like Hitler and the Nazis did in Germany roughly 70 years ago. Hedges calls these Christians “the most dangerous mass movement in American history,” adding: “The unchecked rape of America, which continues with the blessing of both political parties, heralds not only the empowerment of this American oligarchy, but the eventual death of the democratic state and birth of American fascism.” (Hat tip to Robert Spencer, who runs the superb Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch Websites, for being among the first to point out Hedges’ attacks against Christians.)

When one looks at what is going on in the real world, Hedges’ analysis sounds positively deranged. Did Christians kill nearly 3,000 of our fellow Americans on September 11? Did Christians bomb Khobar Towers or the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania or the USS Cole? Were Christians responsible for the bombings, shootings, beheadings and other depravity we have witnessed in places as diverse as London, Casablanca, Madrid, Beslan, Gaza, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ramadi, Baghdad, Kirkuk, Basra, Beirut, Riyadh, Bali, southern Thailand and scores of other locations? Of course not. The real threat to our freedom today is not posed by law-abiding American Christians who work long hours and take second jobs in order to enable their children to escape what they consider to be poorly-run public schools, but by radical Muslims seeking to replace our nation with a caliphate.

And jihad and terrorism are not the only tactics that radical Islamists are using to remake American society: People with a similar political/religious agenda are also seeking to make Shariah law (definitions vary, but in general it is taken to mean permitting harsh traditionalist interpretations of Islamic law including a husband�s almost unlimited right to use violence to �discipline� his wife). A 1993 article in The American Muslim outlined a plan to use the precedent of American Indian courts to set up a system of “Muslim family law.” It adds that: “Such a radical change in American law — allowing Muslims to take control over their family law issues — must be initiated from the indigenous Muslim community here in the United States.”

Could Minnesota (which seems to have become a testing ground for Shariah advocates) portend what the future holds, with a few well-organized Islamists trying to force Shariah on the rest of us? Some Muslim cashiers at Target stores refuse to swipe bacon through checkout scanners and insist that customers bag their own pork products. At Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, for example, Somali cab drivers are asserting their “right” to refuse service to passengers carrying alcohol or traveling with service dogs, both of which they deem unclean. Airport officials have proposed stiff penalties including suspension of airport taxi licenses for any cab drivers, Muslim or non-Muslim, who refuse service for reasons other than safety.

Hassan Mahmoud, director of the Islamic Law Institute at the Muslim American Society (MAS) of Minnesota, depicted Shariah as a civil-rights issue and has been lobbying airport officials against penalizing the recalcitrant drivers. But some of the Somali drivers say they have no problem with the penalties. Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, supports them. “We tell the taxi drivers, if you don’t want to do this [transport dogs or liquor], change your job,” Jamal said. “You are living in a country where alcohol is not viewed the way it is in your country.”

The major push to impose Shariah in this country comes from the MAS. In 2004, the Chicago Tribune published a series detailing the fact that the MAS, with more than 50 chapters nationwide, is in fact the American affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood. Founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, an Egyptian schoolteacher, the Brotherhood has affiliates in nearly 70 countries. International terrorism consultant David Gartenstein-Ross points out that al-Banna, who to this day remains the spiritual inspiration and guide of MAS, said violence was an acceptable way to promote Islamic ideology and implored his followers to “[c]ompletely boycott non-Islamic courts and judicial systems.”

Mustafa Saied, a Floridian who formerly was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, left the organization in 1998 because of its anti-Semitism and support for violence in the Middle East. He told the Tribune that members preferred to operate in secret, in the event that U.S. authorities cracked down on Hamas supporters — many of whom are members of the Brotherhood.

What would our legal system look like if these people get their way and succeed in imposing Koranic law? One very plausible example came from Germany on Wednesday; the newspaper Der Spiegel reported that a German divorce court judge cited the Koran in rejecting a 26-year-old woman’s application for a speedy divorce from a husband who beat her and threatened to kill her. Because the husband and wife were both from Morocco, the judge reasoned, she would have to wait up to a year for divorce.

The bottom line is that the freedom and dignity of Americans — Muslim and non-Muslim alike — is indeed threatened by people who seek to impose this sort of agenda upon us — either through terrorism and violence or by judicial fiat. Chris Hedges’ ravings against the American Christian “threat,” by contrast, suggest that part of our country’s journalistic elite is so consumed with its petty hatreds that it has lost touch with reality and forfeited the right to be taken seriously.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Joel Himelfarb is the assistant editor of the editorial page of the Washington Times.

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