We warned you. Over the weekend we noted that Monday’s scheduled hearing in the state House Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence Committee on HB 911 by Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, and HB 3027 by Rep. Randy Weber, R-Pearland, had the potential to turn into a “Muslim hate-a-palooza.”
Sometimes we hate being right.
Though neither of these bills explicitly mention Islam or Sharia, no one in the hearing room was unclear about the motivation behind this legislation. The committee heard an earful of unsubstantiated, hair-on-fire claims about the threat Islam supposedly poses to Texas, starting with Berman’s explanation of the bill.
That’s why I said at the very beginning that the bill number, number 9-11, is very significant in this case. We all know what happened on 9/11/2001. I want you to know it’s spreading.
So much for subtlety. Let’s just go ahead and play the September 11th trump card right off the bat.
When one of Berman’s fellow Republicans on the committee — Sarah Davis, R-West University Place — pressed him to cite a specific example of the problem his bill would correct, Berman was stumped:
Rep. Davis: … I don’t understand what Sharia law has to do with contractual negotiations … are these instances in family courts that are upholding Sharia law or what type of law? … What are the examples specifically that you’re talking about within the United States. What type of cases are those?
Rep. Berman: I can’t tell you that, but the use of, but they’re being used only in the city of Dearborn, Michigan, where a large concentration of Middle Easterners are found and judges are using, or allowing to be used, decisions made under Sharia law.
Things got even worse when the committee began to hear testimony on the bill. These folks had no problem coming up with reasons we need a bill like this. A citizen named Joyce Howard Pittman took the first crack at it:
I have studied Sharia a little bit, enough to know that it is an insidious situation to come into our constitutional law and can be very destructive to our courts and to our females and to our children. Females and children have zero rights under Sharia … Sharia still allows for slaves! I don’t think anyone wants that in this country. We want to keep our freedom. We want to keep our constitutional law.
So if we don’t pass this law, courts are going to be forced to re-institute slavery. Right.
Next!
Dory O’Brien, who identified herself as a “national member of Act! For America,” which she said is “the only organization in the United States that is dedicated to stopping radical Islamization in the country,” gave committee members a little lesson on the real agenda with Sharia law (based on her extensive research, of course):
Sharia law, as Mr. Berman said, is a complete way of life. They have stood around — “they” meaning the leaders of the Muslim brotherhood in the United States — have stated, flatly, that their reason for coming to the United States is to shred our Constitution. It is to put Sharia law in the place of our governing system.
Sound a bit paranoid to you? Rep. Joaquin Castro, D – San Antonio, thought so:
Rep. Castro: There’s extremists on every side of the political spectrum.
O’Brien: This is not an extreme law, sir.
Rep. Castro: No, no, no — I’m talking about the groups. Even if what you’re saying is true, there are extremists on every end of the political spectrum, so what makes you think they’re going to take over the country anymore than …
O’Brien: Because they have!
Rep. Castro: … neo-Nazi’s or any other group?
O’Brien: Because they’ve done it for 1,400 years in every country that they’ve touched!
Rep. Castro: So you’re predicting that folks who follow Sharia law are going to take over the United States of America?
O’Brien: If they can! We’re here to make sure they don’t.
1,400 years of unrelenting conquest, but Berman and Weber are going to draw the line at Texas. They won’t stand by and allow religion to trump American laws. Unless, of course, it is their God calling the shots. Here is the closing line of the letter Rep. Berman is circulating to solicit co-author’s for his bill:
Ironically, the number of this bill is H.B. 911. Neither of us had anything to do with getting that number and feel it was providential. You are invited to co-author H.B. 911. [emphasis added]
The bill was left pending in committee.
Next thing you know, them Sharias will be outlawin’ Red Lobster cuz they serve lobsters and oysters and….
Oh, wait! That’s the Bible that bans that stuff, not the Q’uran. Pass me the bacon, please.
The concept of “Sharia compliance” is used in commerical contract preparation and negotiation with persons, businesses and governments that consider Sharia law as governing their behavior. There are many aspects of this, but the biggest single factor that stands out is the prohibition of charging interest for loans.
The charging of interest, historically, was also banned by the Catholic church for the same reasons and same authority used by adherents of Islam. It’s usury. Google on Wiki.
Interest rates were charged during Roman times with rates commensurate to risk. When someone went bust, the option of selling oneself into slavery was open, and taken.
The Council of Nicea in 325 AD forbad the clergy from loaning money at interest rates.
The Koran (Qu’ran) forbad usury as equivalent to serious sin: And for practicing usury, which was forbidden, and for consuming the people’s money illicitly. We have prepared for the disbelievers among them painful retribution. (Al-Nisa 4:161)
The Third Lateran Council of 1179 ruled that those who took usury (interest) could not partake from the sacramens, and in 1311, Pope Clement V made it a heresy. Pope Clement V had a political dalliance with Philip IV (the Fair)of France in which the Papacy was moved to Avignon in France. In accordance with this arrangement, Phillip IV arranged to have the Templar Knights in France to be simultaneously arrest on Friday 13, 1307.
The Templar Knights, known mostly for their military prowess were also the founders of the first international banking system certainly in the Western World. One could donate an amount of money/property in a Templar castle in Denmark, or England, and be issued a coded letter. If one needed more cash, one could take his coded letter to a Templar castle in Sicily or Jerusalem and get the cash needed, and a new coded letter with the balance coded therein. The Templars became extremely wealthy and were exempt from national authority, save the Pope.
The Templars outside of France merged and melted off stage center, the money was never found, but the hatred of the Templar’s banking system was coded in the Lateran III prohibition.
Along comes Luther, and a few other “heretics” who reinterpreted usury out of the sinful category and into the good works category. This gave too much of an advantage to Proestants and usury as a sin died a quiet death. The rise of Italian banking incident to trade gave rise to such worthies as the Medici banking clan with the Fuggers in the North following.
Islam did not go through this crisis in confidence of loaning money for interest, but loaning for a handling fee equal to what interest rates might be charged is ok. Consequently “Sharia Compliance” is a set of legal instruments that govern the costs and risks of loaning money without being called “interest” or usury.
The anti-Shariah furor , therefore, given the heat with not light, likely has it’s roots in some Daddy Warbucks who lost money on a deal he couldn’t charged usurious rates on, like the credit card companies do today.
It has nothing to do with beating women, something that wasn’t disallowed until the Twentieth Century.
Here’s what I think. We are involved in three wars right now in Islamic countries, and we have been under siege at home by Islamist nuts. In World War II, the average citizen could get involved in the war effort by making army boots 24/7 at the local shoe factory, as my dad did in WWII. The army would not take him because he was a Type I diabetic. Alternatively, a person could purchase war bonds, participate in a scrap rubber drive, prepare Red Cross packages for the troops, or volunteer down at the local USO. These were all positive pursuits that would make the folks left back at home feel like they were on their own “frontline” helping to win the war—and feel like they were doing something that really counted. With the advent of the Korean War, Americans were introduced to a new home front concept:
“We are at war, but the home front should look like we are not at war. What war? Did you say something about a war? Nah!!! Impossible. Just look around here. Peaceful. Calm. You must be out of your mind. There’s no war.”
It didn’t totally work with Viet-Nam, but at least the Federales tried.
Personally, I think these anti-Sharia fruitcakes are actually trying to find the town scrap rubber drive or maybe someone to appoint them as neighborhood air raid warden. Because those things no longer exist, uncreative and clumsy people are forced to invent their own rubber drives. Unfortunately, those attempts end in simplistic and unhelpful solutions such as “burn a Koran” or truck-drag the Arab immigrant next door. If our federal government had a lick of sense, they would find something meaningful and harmless for these people to do to make them feel like they are part of the overall war effort—like in World War II.
Left to their own fruitcake designs, I see nothing but trouble on the horizon—as TFN has pointed out.
The Muslim has replaced the Jew as the semite to be anti.
A lot of the Islam bashing looks like taken word for word from the usual Jewish world conspiracy tracts.
The absence of any proof of the danger is seen as proof how sophisticated the conspiracy is (and that They already control the flow of information).
Until the Jews were granted equal treatment under the law after the French Revolution, before that Jews were subject of extra legal treatment (pograms, town burning, and those nasty execution rituals of the day) because of the charge of having killeed Christ. That charge has only recently been officially dropped by the Catholic Church.
The famous book “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” published in 1903 in Moscow purported to be a copy of a secret book of instructions by which world Jewry was going to conquer the world. It was adapted from some anti-semetic books in France and a political tract developed by the propaganda machine of Napoleon III to warn of the evils that his run for Emperor of the French was to counter.
The “Protocols” were taken as hard fact by many in the United States including Henry Ford.
Some call it a forgery, but it is more accurate to call it fiction, like the Orson Welles radio broadcast on October 30, 1938 based on the book :Invasion from Mass” While the broadcast was announced for what it was, it was so realistic that panic spread across the nation with supplemental reports of further sightings of more Martian landings.
Protocols served as a template for the design and development of “documentary proof” of the existence and substance of evil plotting of any kind with the twist that it is a source document rather than an interpretive document. Mein Kampf and Das Kapital were “interpretive” documents purporting to be authentic interpretations of evil intent aand practice.
As a work of propaganda, it is called “black propaganda” which is defomed in the PSYOPs world, as the purported authors and publishers are false. It purported to be an acual manual used by Zionist international conspiracy. There is no doubt who published Mein Kampt (Hitler) and Das Kapital (Marx) and those are called “white propaganda” as the authors are identified and take credit for it’s content.
The “source” of White Propaganda is not stated, like rumors.
In sum: White has an identified source, black has a false source, and greay doesn’t say. It has nothing to do with sneakiness or truth.
The works of the “Left Behind” faction of apocalyptic predictors use the Bible and with careful editing and selection of Biblical content stretches to show that the End of Times is near is black face or the scarecrow gambit. Likewise, a similar cut and paste of Islamic source material is also a scarecrow gambit. Scarecrows appear to crows as people, when they are rags and sticks.
Karl Marx’s Capitalism and the Capitalist is a scarecrow/punching bag for rich kids to take out separation angst on daddy dummies.
The theoretical bases of scape goating and hate mongering came be found in the field of psychology called “Transactional Analysis (TA) that posits that people love to collect emotional “stamps” by switching roles between Victime, Rescuer, and Prosecutor”. This is called “Karpman’s Drama Triangle” This is also described in “Games People Play”.
The propaganda variant of TA, which I have been working on recognizes that if one is to play victim, rescuer, and/or prosecutor, one needs villains. Villains are the dark side of heroic players (rescuer, prosecutor, victim) and include those who are Mean, Manipulative, and Mad. Now there may be no objective difference between a hero and a villain, it is the color glasses one uses to see them that matters.
Marx created a class of “proletarians” who qualify as the Victims on Das Kaptial. The Rescuer is the Vangaard of the Proletariat aka rich kids in college; college students are the vanguard because the “masses”, the “proletariat” are too stupid, ignorant, or trampled on to take care of themselves. The capitalist is the villain, and subject to preosecution by the vanguard. The underlying motive for Marxism is rick kid angst and directionlessness in a post feudal world.
The Nazi themes were to designate Jews as villain, and as such had to be mean, mad, and manipulative as per the Prtotocols. In this regard Jews had to have superpowers to cloud men’s minds while at the same time be inferior scum.
The Tea Party movement,as did other mass movements, have subsets with different villains and victimry. The Rainbow collection of the Sixties and early Seventies included a wide number of unrelated movements cobbled together to look like a single theology. Whate Saving was lumped with supporting Viet Cong propaganda efforts, as well as women’ and minority movements which linkage is similarly lumped together by various Conservative counter reactionists. That is why women’s issues are tied with national security issues in Republican minds, The Rainbow linkage is stil there, albeit there are actually no necessary links between the movements now that Moscow Cetral had wrought victory from the jaws of defeat in Vietnam.
The Tea Party movement’s mish mash of causes receive a synergism between them just as did the parts of the Rainbow Coalition. Once any component gets what they want, it is dangerous to stick around. The link between environmentalism and communist causes during the heydays of the Sixites, sufferes today by that association with legislation in the works to defund enviromental regulatory agencies. The fact that Communism made a far worse mess of the enviroment than any array of capitalist is lost in the heat of the Tea Party and forgotten by the Green. Chernobyl was in California.
The anti-Shariah drive ignores the fundamentals of US jurisprudence and Constitutional law save where taken out of context can supplement passages of the Koran also cut out without regard to context. What really is whacky is the Islamic terrorist who provides a convincing exemplar of pure nutcase villainy