We’re following up on last week’s hearing in the Texas House on the so-called anti-Sharia bills. Take a look at this clip from the Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee which took testimony on HB 911 by state Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, and HB 3027 by state Rep. Randy Weber, R-Pearland.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rODFnmnCOs0&w=480&h=390]
We’re sure you noticed that, essentially, supporters of such absurd legislation spend their time arguing over what Sharia law is and isn’t, but never about the so-called “facts” to back up their claim that Sharia has creeped into and will continue to infect our judicial system, and eventually, overtake and destroy the U.S. Constitution.
Well, I feel that rabid Chupacabras with laser death rays shooting out of their eyes are infecting Texas and the United States. I also feel threatened by Lex Luthor. Every single day. Where’s my legislation?
Rep. Berman is correct, it is spreading. The anti-Muslim hysteria, that is.
It should be repeated over and over again that this foolishness is costing Texas taxpayer dollars at a time when the GOP and their “buggermeister” Rick Perry” have put the state into a $27 billion hole, which is destroying public education, child protective services, dumping 45,000 senior citizens out of nursing homes onto the streets, and creating many other major problems which will haunt the state for decades.
I find it interesting that you failed to include my testimony which gave very specific court cases of where
courts in the US and even Texas are making rulings based on foreign law.
Before you criticize the “right”, get your information right. Report accurately to your members.
This is a very disingenuous report.
Pat Carlson, Texas Eagle Forum
The term “Shariah Complliant” came about as a part of making commercial contracts with those parts of the Islamic business community and legal systems that adhere to Islamic commercial law. It pertains largely to the costs of doing business like fees and interest rates. Islamic law, like Christian law until the Reformation, bans charging interest for loans.
Roman Law routinely allowed interest to be charged, usually ten percent, someting easy to calculate with Roman numberals, Later, The First Council of Nicea in 325 AD prohibitied the church from loaning at interest, a practce called usury. Islam picked up the tradition and applied it to Islam in general. Following the Templar Knights banking successes, the Pope Clement V and King Francis IV of Franch cut a deal to rip off the Templar’s alleged riches. Clement V decertifies the Templars and the Francis arrests the Templars in France on Friday October 13, 1307, burns a few, but can’t find the Templar’s money pot. No one ever does.
Shortly thereafter, the Pope makes usury a cardinal crime.
The Torah dissallows usuary between Jews, but with Gentiles, it’s kosher. The Jews in Europe were used by the nobility as go betweens to loan money, and charge interest. This, understandably caused a furor resulting in the massacre and explusion of Jews for their sins as bankers. Unfortunately, the practice of burning bankers did not carry over into modern times.
The rise of commercial banking in the Rennassance by such noteworthy families like the Fuggers in the North, and the Medicis in Italy resurrected and sanctified usury egged on by the rising mercantile and trading of Protestant nations replacing good works for poverty as duly acceptable holiness.
Islamic traders spread Islam all the way to Indonesia, and to parts of India. Islam spread as a part of trade was more acceptable and durable than Islam spread by the sword.
The use of “Shariah Compliance” is businees terms is purely business, and nothing else. The extension of the term as a forerunner of Islamic conquest is pure invention.
Those who cite other parts of Islamic Law conceerning Jihad, world conquest, etc as illustrated by True Beleivers in their terrorist garb are showing that a part of Islam is bent on a messy world conquest. The truth of the matter is that these terrorists are convinced of their own omniscience or power when in fact, they are closer to the mouse mounting an elephant with rape in mind.
Terrorist venom is proportional to thier impotence on an international scale. Those who raise the cry of an existential threat to the US by Shariah are like the frightened elephant on a stool terrified by the mouse. Elephants aren’t as cowardly as some elephants in our politics are.
Pat, we know what you’re up to.
We know what you’re about.
Quit wasting taxpayer money.
People like Pat Carlson are wired to be fearful:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iISI7ifh-AjUE3ejyC1wQmwFrMFw?docId=CNG.61c886c438708471a9f4ea23070fa70c.3a1
Ben, thanks for reminding. I’d read that recently. It helps me find some compassion for her.
Hey, Pat, that was a very uninformative and vague comment you made as it typical of the “Eagle” Forum. Next time how about providing something more substantial such as a picture of Bigfoot. At least adopt some truth in advertising and change the name of your organization to “Walking Eagle Forum.”
Thanks.
p.s. Do any of these nutcases actually know how laws are made and enforced in this country?
I think what Pat is concerned about is the possibility that federal, state, and local government will start taking Sharia ideas, concepts, and requirements and CONVERTING them into American law. I think the key word here is “convert.” For example, to the best of my knowledge, there is no federal, state, or local law that prescribes the kind of clothing a person may wear to go shopping in public. The U.S. Constitution does not address this either.
Pat is concerned that someone—someday—might pass a bill in the Texas state legislature requiring all women to wear a burqa when they go shopping in public—and that some governor who is out of his mind might actually sign the bill, thus making it Texas state law. Moreover, it might be passed in such a way that it is not perceived to be driven by religious considerations that would make it be overturned by federal courts under the First Amendment. In other words, they might get it passed “sneaky-like” like the Texas science TEKS and get it past the federal courts “sneaky-like.”
I think she just wants some extra legal insurance to make sure that no one could ever come close to actually doing that—sneaky-like or otherwise. I do think her concern about this is unjustified and driven by hysterical fear at this point in time. However, just as a matter of caution, it might be wise to watch what happens as time goes by and really see if an Islamic “Discovery Institute” develops out there and actually tries to bring things like this into reality. Being from the sneaky and deceptive side of the tracks in mode of operation as the Texas Eagle Forum is, I can see why Pat might be concerned with…well…being “outsneaked and outdeceited” by the Muslims.
Here my my state, it is still illegal to but beer on Sunday in many counties. At its base, that law is religiously driven, and it has never been taken down by the federal courts in my area. So, who is to say you could not do the same with a burqa————sneaky-like.
Good point, Charles. The only people who actively and continuously try to get religiously influenced laws passed in the U.S. are far-right Christians like Pat. Sometimes, maybe even most of the time, these laws they are trying to pass are in conflict with the Constitution.
What about all the laws and tax provisions that ensure that we’re all slaves to Middle East oil ? Now they can even pump enormous sums of cash into our election process through the US Chamber of Commerce or other groups.
How much more un-American can you get than that?
Sharia compliance has nothing to do with burkas, jihad, caliphates, etc ad nauseum.
It’s about writing contracts with Muslims in ways that are binding in Islam. Charging interests is frowned upon,
Go check
http://www.islamic-banking.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking
Good questions, David.
Pat’s house is on fire and she’s worried roaches might get into her kitchen.
I say we ban “sharia” oil.
Suspect Zero of Sharia Hysteria is David Yerushalmi at:
http://www.davidyerushalmilaw.com/
The SANE website front end has his ramblings end to end at:
http://www.saneworks.us/indexnew.php
The Socety of Americans for National Existence (SANE) places Islam as an existential threat to America, yet the recommendations of SANE call for criminalization of religion and suspension of Constitutional rights affforded not only to citizens but antone in the US passing through.
The degree to which the Constitution is undermined at such a fundamental level IMHO makes SANE/Center a clear and present danger to the Constitution, the gravest since the British burned the White House.
Read the Team B report of the “Center for Security Policy”
http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/documents/Shariah_The_Threat_to_America_(Team_B_II_Report)_9-14-10.pdf
I have not studied this issue carefully, but am aware of at least one case where a family law dispute in Texas was referred for mediation to an Islamic council in the North Texas area. We regularly enforce foreign contracts applying foreign law in commercial situations, but to what degree would we allow a couple first married in Yemen or Saudi Arabia but now living in Texas to determine child custody or the wife’s ability to divorce based on sharia principles?
TFN:
Seen this?:
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/13/texas-sharia-ban/
“I heard it on a radio station here on my way in to the Capitol one day,” Berman said Monday in an interview. “I don’t know Dearborn, Michigan but I heard it (Sharia is accepted law here) on the radio. Isn’t that true?”
—Rep Berman
I think Berman is senile. Not sure. May just be an idiot.
May I remind everyone once again that all this hoopla about sharia, etc seems to be designed to distract us from the incompetent governance that put Texas into a $27 bil hole and the draconian measures the idiot GOP legislature is enacting to cut spending?
The key issue in identifying grey propaganda is to determine whose ox is about to get gored and who benefits from the beef.
Black, white, and geey propaganda have to do with the source: false, true, or unspecified. There are too many different alleged sources of this hysteria to be the result of anything other than an unspecified central source.
Their central theme is that Islam is a virulent contagious infection that poses an existential threat to the Constitution of the US which requires the suspension thereof to stamp out and imposing a secular democracy in the Muddle East to protect Christian USA.
So who is facing an existential threat to existence by Islam?
Take a guess. Wild guess,
Answer: The one who feels like it is in the most danger of being aborted.