Freedom and Submission

The BBC just reported that an Iranian man is to be blinded in accordance with Sharia law. In Minnesota, a disabled student at a community college who required a service dog had to withdraw in fear of his safety and that of his dog after threats from a Muslim student who said according to Islam, canines are unclean. Also in the Land of a Thousand Lakes, foot baths have been constructed for Muslim cabbies at the airport. These cabbies are refusing passengers with alcohol (precisely the type of person who should be riding in a cab rather than risking driving drunk). A Muslim charter school paid for with public funds has religious study which is supposedly not compulsory at the end of the school day but the buses do not load and leave until after the "voluntary" prayer meeting. Harvard has sequestered one of its athletic complexes reserving it at times for Muslim women who say they must be fully veiled and therefore less mobile and able to exercise if men are present. All these accommodations seem to show great tolerance but in fact are victories of a pseudo-religiosity that serves for many of its practitioners as a political and legal system. This theocracy of fatwa and sharia is the least compromising faith entity and I hesitate to use "faith" here, that exists in the modern world. Ahmadinejad is not the highest power in Iran; the Ayatollahs are. Islam as it is practised by both Sunni and Shia adherents is incompatible with the ideals of individual liberty and representative democracy with their Judeo-Christian basis as has prevailed in the West. Certainly, there are individual Muslims who wish to reform their own religion, but they are a threatened minority. Salman Rushdie dared to question some aspects of the rule of his own faith-actually focusing on Pakistan but this so outraged the Iranians that they called for his death. Theo Van Gogh was butchered for questioning the cruelty of Islam. Recent history is replete with examples of Islamic extremism destroying its critics or those of other faiths. The Christian publishing house in Turkey where three were murdered, the Philippines, Thailand, the current barbarism in India. I say no more to the West giving in to Sharia, our liberty, indeed our very lives, depend on stopping the spread of this political philosophy cum religion, this set of laws that proscribe stoning, amputation, blinding, that in practice in Iran hangs homosexuals in the street. Only by saying no now, can we preserve our freedom from Islam whose actual translation means submission. Give them another inch, another Hamtramck with its call to prayer in the heart of Michigan, and you will soon see Madrids and Beslans in many states. We seek to co-exist-they seek to conquer.