Spreading Shari'a through tantrums

Diana West:

Last week's column was about something that doesn't exist -- a multilevel strategy to combat the advance of Shariah (Islamic law) across the West.

The strategy doesn't exist because there's little understanding that the entrenchment of Shariah in the Western world poses a threat to liberty in the Western world.

This understanding doesn't exist because the critique of Shariah (a legal system best described as sacralized totalitarianism) required to devise a defensive anti-Shariah strategy is not considered possible.

Why not? The main obstacle is, well, the advance of Shariah across the West. In other words, we cannot criticize the spread of Shariah simply because Shariah's influence has spread. Thus, the reflex reaction to critical commentary -- even a newspaper page of political cartoons -- is to follow Islamic law and stop it (or try), or just shut up.

That's certainly what Yale has done, as events beginning in August demonstrate. That's when news broke that Yale and its press were omitting the Danish Muhammad cartoons (and other Muhammad imagery) from a forthcoming Yale University Press book expressly about the Danish Muhammad cartoons.

This sudden act of censorship, Yale said, was due to fear of Muslim outrage over the Muhammad cartoons again turning into Muslim violence. (Roger Kimball, Stanley Kramer and I have laid out evidence that Yale's censorhip was also due to fear of alienating Muslim donors.)

This violence, along with general Muslim outrage, has its roots in Islamic legal prohibitions against life imagery, criticizing Muhammad and sarcasm about Islamic law -- all outlawed by the standard Al Azhar University-approved Shariah manual, "Reliance of the Traveller," but all tools for the political cartoonist moved to comment on the connection between Muhammad and jihad violence. And why not? Indeed, the Islamic-world-renowned Sheik Yussef al-Qaradawi calls Mohammed "an epitome for religious warriors."

The publication of the Danish cartoons forced the question: What is more important to the West -- freedom of speech, or Islamic law masquerading as something Orwellian known as community harmony?

...

Shari'a law should be banned through out the world. It is an insult to intelligence and to humanity. It is based on a barbaric code from the Middle Ages that relies on corporal punishment and thought crimes. It should have no place in the modern world. Those who would submit to the tantrums of its followers do great harm to the cause of freedom.