Why Sharia?
Surrender of Jerusalem
The NY Times gets busy preparing for their Moslem overlords.
"No legal system has ever had worse press." "Sharia is bold and noble." You got that? All that crazy stuff you've heard about Sharia? Just bad PR. That's all. Good thing we've got CAIR and the NY Times to straighten us out.
"In fact, for most of its history, Islamic law offered the most liberal and humane legal principles available anywhere in the world. Today, when we invoke the harsh punishments prescribed by Shariah for a handful of offenses, we rarely acknowledge the high standards of proof necessary for their implementation. Before an adultery conviction can typically be obtained, for example, the accused must confess four times or four adult male witnesses of good character must testify that they directly observed the sex act. The extremes of our own legal system — like life sentences for relatively minor drug crimes, in some cases — are routinely ignored. We neglect to mention the recent vintage of our tentative improvements in family law. It sometimes seems as if we need Shariah as Westerners have long needed Islam: as a canvas on which to project our ideas of the horrible, and as a foil to make us look good.
(Read it all if you can. It's all just so much post-Edward Said, Orientalist twaddle.)
I don't know NY Times, I don't think we exactly needed two jets full of passengers flying into the World Trade Center to project our ideas of the horrible on, or even as a foil to make us look good! You know what I'm saying?
No surprise, in the end the author comes down on the side of the Islamists.
"...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."
Unfortunately, the way it's looking these days, it's going to be your and my world, too.
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