Islamic Law Conquering the U.S.

Clare M. Lopez

Previously, we looked at the spread of Islamic law - shariah - throughout Western civilization, with a focus on how Western Europe already is slipping under its influence. In this segment, the focus is on the United States (U.S.) and how shariah is establishing a presence in this country as well.

In the U.S., the Muslim Brotherhood leads the offensive to insinuate Islamic law into American society. Established in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, the Brotherhood (or Ikhwan) is committed, just like al-Qa’eda, to re-establishment of the caliphate and global imposition of Islamic law. Its Creed is: “Allah is our objective, the Qur’an is our law, the Prophet is our leader, Jihad is our way, and death in the way of Allah is our highest aspiration.” Many of the Brotherhood’s internal documents have been made public, as during the 2008 Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror funding trial in Dallas, Texas. From these documents, we know that nearly every single major Muslim organization in the U.S. is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood or one of its derivatives.

Among these are CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations), the Fiqh Council of North America, ISNA (the Islamic Society of North America), ICNA (the Islamic Circle of North America), IIIT (the International Islamic Institute of Thought), MAS (the Muslim American Society), MSA (the Muslim Students Association), NAIT (the North American Islamic Trust), and hundreds of others.

In myriad ways, these organizations work to insinuate shariah into American academia, courts, non-Muslim faith communities, government, military, the workplace, and society in general.

On university campuses across North America, MSA students campaign for shariah-compliant gender segregation at gyms and swimming pools, hold “Nakba” Day events to commemorate the “catastrophe” of the 1948 founding of the State of Israel, and welcome speakers to campus who champion terrorist organizations like HAMAS and Hizballah and praise jihad as a means to spread shariah.

According to a June 2011 study published by the Center for Security Policy, “Shariah Law and American State Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court Cases,” a total of 50 cases in 23 different states involved a “conflict of law” between shariah and American state law. The cases tell the story of Muslim American families, mostly Muslim women and children, who had turned to the U.S. courts to preserve their rights to equal protection and due process which are unavailable to them under shariah.

While in most of these cases, American law eventually took precedence over shariah, in three cases of this relatively limited study, shariah was found to be applicable. The very fact that shariah was invoked in this many cases of a limited study sampling suggests that Islamic law already has made deep inroads into the American legal system.

Across the diverse span of America’s faith communities, the influence of Islam is growing. “Interfaith Dialogue” has become the favorite expression of well-meaning but naïve enablers who strive to outdo one another with invitations for Ikhwan-affiliates to grace their halls with the soothing cadence of taqiyya* messages. Given how enamored many of these faithful are of the concept of “bridges,” it is doubtful any of them has ever read Sayyed Qutb’s “Milestones.”

“The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah** is great, and a bridge is not be built across it so that the people of the two sides may mix with each other, but rather only so that the people of Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam.”

The U.S. Treasury Department not only promotes Shariah Compliant Finance among American banking and finance companies, but with its 2008 bail-out of AIG, forced U.S. taxpayers to become unwittingly complicit in ownership of one of the largest commercial divisions in the country dedicated to shariah-compliant financial products. Not only is complete information about Islamic law withheld from the American shareholder, but advice from Boards of Muslim clerical advisors on how each company’s obligatory annual zakat*** tax is invested likewise is not fully transparent. According to shariah, all annual zakat tax must be invested in one or more of eight recipient categories: one of them is jihad.

Shariah’s influence extends into the U.S. military. Bibles received in soldiers’ mail are confiscated in Afghanistan and Iraq. Non-Muslim troops are dissuaded from touching the Qur’an and ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) enforces special protective treatment for the Muslim book, in accordance with shariah. American military chaplains engage in outreach to Afghan Muslims, in order to demonstrate U.S. tolerance and diversity. To his enduring shame, Gen. David Petraeus expressed outrage at Pastor Terry Jones’ expression of his First Amendment rights to burn a personally-owned copy of the Qur’an in September 2010, saying it could “endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort here." Perhaps the General forgot to which Constitution he took his oath of service: the American one pledges him and all who serve in uniform to defend Pastor Terry Jones’ actions while the Afghan one, which is under shariah, would impose the death penalty.

Islamic law has penetrated the inner reaches of the U.S. Intelligence Community: this final example can be seen in the U.S. government’s submission to shariah-compliant language codes. Whereas the 9/11 Commission Report, published in 2004, contains hundreds of references to Islam, jihad, and the enemy, official documents published after 2008 have scrubbed such words from the texts.

The 2008 Department of Homeland Security publication, “Terminology to Define Terrorists” took its vocabulary suggestions from advisors linked to the Brotherhood. Likewise, the National Counterterrorism Center’s March 2008 guide “Words That Work and Words That Don’t” advised employees to avoid invoking Islam, labeling things “Muslim,” or using terms like “jihad” or “mujahedeen.”

The 2009 FBI Counterterrorism Analytical Lexicon does not contain the words “Islam,” “Islamic,” or “Muslim” even once. And when the Obama administration published its official National Security Strategy in 2010, it went so far as to remove “Islamic extremist” from its pages. In effect, top levels of U.S. national security are now in compliance with Islamic law on slander.

When the enemy is able to insinuate the practice and encouragement of alien foreign law into American society on this scale, the battle to remain free of shariah is far along.

Glossary of Terms

*Taqiyya - Deceit or dissimulation sanctioned in Islam to protect the faith or individual believer but also a common tactic to mislead infidels as well.

**Jahiliyyah - Pre-Islamic pagan time that Sayyed Qutb applies to modern-day society as well.

***Zakat - Obligatory annual tax on all Muslims and shariah-compliant companies.

Clare M. Lopez, a senior fellow at the Clarion Fund, is a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on Middle East, national defense, and counterterrorism issues.