THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XII, Issue # 199, September 21, 2010
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
KORAN BURNING, ISLAMIC LAW, & THE GLOBAL JIHAD:
THREE COMMENTARIES
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
WILLFUL DISPARAGEMENT, DESECRATION, & DESTRUCTION OF RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS, RELICS, SCRIPTURES, SANCTITIES, &
SANCTUARIES: THE RELEVANCE OF SUCH ACTIVITIES TO ISLAMIC LAW & THE GLOBAL JIHAD MILITANT ISLAM IS
WAGING AGAINST THE U.S.A., THE WEST, & ALL OTHER NON-MUSLIM PEOPLES & CULTURES
"RUSHDIE RULES" REACH FLORIDA
By Dr Daniel Pipes
Washington Times, September 21, 2010
http://www.danielpipes.org/8881/rushdie-rules-florida
Pastor Terry Jones' plan to burn copies of the Koran at his church in Gainesville, Florida, let it be emphasized, is
a distasteful act that fits an ugly tradition. That said, two other points need be noted: Buying books and then burning
them is an entirely legal act in the United States. Second, David Petraeus, Robert Gates, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, and
Barack Obama pressured Jones to cancel only because they feared Muslim violence against Americans, if he proceeded.
Indeed, despite Reverend Jones calling off the Koran burning, five Afghans and fourteen Kashmiris died in
protests against his plans.
That violence stems from Islamic law, the Shari'a, which insists that Islam, and the Koran in particular, enjoy a
privileged status. Islam ferociously punishes anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, who trespasses against Islam's sanctity.
Codes in Muslim-majority states generally reflect this privilege; for example, Pakistan's blasphemy law, 295-C, punishes
derogatory remarks about Muhammad with execution.
No less important, Shari'a denigrates the sanctities of other religions, a tradition manifested in recent years by the
2000 Palestinian desecration of the Jewish Tomb of Joseph in Nablus, the 2001 Taliban destruction of the Buddhist
Bamiyan statues in Afghanistan, and the 2002 Palestinian desecration of the Christian Church of the Nativity in
Bethlehem. A 2003 decree -- Fatwa # 40378, posted at The Encylopedia of Fatwas, www.islamweb.net -- ruled
the Bible suitable for use by Muslims when cleaning after defecation. In May, 2010, Iranian authorities
reportedly burned hundreds of Bibles. This imbalance, whereby Islam enjoys immunity and other religions are
disparaged, has long prevailed in Muslim-majority countries.
In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini abruptly extended this double standard to the West, when he decreed that British
novelist Salman Rushdie be executed on account of the blasphemies in his book, The Satanic Verses. With this,
Khomeini established the Rushdie Rules, which still remain in place. They hold that whoever opposes "Islam, the
Prophet, and the Koran" may be put to death; that anyone connected to the blasphemer must also be executed;
and that all Muslims should participate in an informal intelligence network to carry out this threat.
Self-evidently, these rules contradict a fundamental premise of Western life, freedom of speech. As summed up by the
dictum, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," that freedom assures
protection for the right to make mistakes, to insult, to be disagreeable, and to blaspheme.
If the Rushdie Rules initially shocked the West, they since have become the new norm. When Islam is the subject,
freedom of speech is but a pre-1989 memory. Writers, artists, and editors readily acknowledge that criticizing Islam can
endanger their lives.
Western leaders occasionally stand with those who insult Islam. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher resisted
pressure from Tehran in 1989 and stated that "there are no grounds on which the government could consider banning"
The Satanic Verses. Other governments reinforced this stalwart position; for example, the U.S. Senate
unanimously resolved "to protect the right of any person to write, publish, sell, buy, and read books without fear of
violence."
Likewise, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen stood strong in 2006 when disrespectful cartoons of
Muhammad in a Copenhagen newspaper led to storms of protest: "This is a matter of principle," he stated. "As Prime
Minister, I have no power whatsoever to limit the press – nor do I want such a power."
Both those incidents led to costly boycotts and violence, yet principle trumped expedience. Other Western leaders
have faltered in defense of free expression. The governments of Australia, Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Great
Britain, Israel, and the Netherlands have all attempted to jail or succeeded in jailing Rushdie-Rule offenders.
The Obama administration has now joined this ignominious list. Its pressure on Mr. Jones further eroded freedom of
speech about Islam and implicitly established Islam's privileged status in the United States, whereby Muslims may insult
others but not be insulted. This moved the country toward dhimmitude, a condition whereby non-Muslims acknowledge
the superiority of Islam. Finally, President Obama, in effect, enforced Islamic law, a precedent that could lead to other
forms of compulsory Shariah compliance.
Obama should have followed Rasmussen's lead and asserted the principle of free speech. His failure to do so means
Americans must recognize and resist further U.S. governmental application of the Rushdie Rules or other aspects of
Shari'a.
------------------------------
FURTHER THOUGHTS ON KORAN BURNING
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes Mailing List, September 21, 2010
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/09/koran-burning
Several additional points that did not fit into my column today, "'Rushdie Rules' Reach Florida":
In contrast to Terry Jones and his miniscule band, British Muslims twice burned copies of The Satanic Verses
in pubic during 1988-1989, attended by crowds of 1,000 and 7,000. One hardly needs to point out that the government
did not apply pressure on the ringleaders to desist out of fear of violence resulting.
In contrast to the permission to use the Bible as toilet paper, Muslims rioted, causing at least fifteen deaths,
over an incorrect report in Newsweek that interrogators "flushed a Qur'an down a toilet" at the U.S.
detention center at Guantánamo Bay.
The change in U.S. policy signaled in the Jones case fits a larger context of Obama administration willingness to
shut down free discussion of Islam, as signaled by its endorsement of a United Nations Human Rights Council
resolution proposed by the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
By threatening Jones' life, Islamists also benefit by potentially bankrupting him. Pretty clever. Details from the
Gainesville Sun:
"The cost of policing the Dove World Outreach Center
for the planned Qur'an burning that never
happened is expected to come to about $100,000 each
for the Gainesville Police Department and the Alachua
County Sheriff's Office, officials say. And Gainesville
City Manager Russ Blackburn said the city intends to
present a bill for the costs to the church's senior pastor,
Terry Jones."
"Sheriff Sadie Darnell said she also is considering billing
the church. … Sheriff's Office spokesman Lt. Steve
Maynard said 242 deputies were on duty Saturday, 160
of whom were working specifically because of the
planned protest."
"Total costs for security are actually higher when adding
in the participation by other agencies, including the
Florida Department of Law Enforcement and several
sheriff's offices that provided support such as bomb
sniffing dogs and detection devices, officials said."
"Blackburn said he isn't sure how realistic it is to expect
the church to pay or how much legal authority the city
has to compel the church to pay. City Attorney Marion
Radson said, from his observations, the City was
providing a "direct service" to the church."
Several copycats did burn Korans on September 11, 2010; for example pastors and others did so in Michigan,
Tennessee, and Australia. The case of Derek Fenton got the most attention because a video of him burning pages
turned up in YouTube and, in consequence, his employer, the New Jersey Transit Authority, fired him.
In "Is Koran Burning Protected by Free Speech?" the Legal Project's Dan Huff looks at the legal implications of what
he calls the "Petraeus defense":
"The Constitution permits the government to censor speech
if necessary to achieve a compelling government interest.
This is a very high standard, but the fact that the nation's
top commander made a rare public appeal for restraint will be
cited as strong evidence that avoiding offense to Muslims is
essential to the U.S. national interest. Once this dangerous
premise is accepted, the door is open to court injunctions
against speech that inflames Muslim sentiment in
strategically important locations."
In "Terry Jones, Asymmetrical Warrior," David Goldman of First Things offers the most original take on this
incident.
"L'Affaire Jones demonstrated that a madman carrying a match
and a copy of the Koran can do more damage to the
Muslim world than a busload of suicide bombers.… What's the
dollar value of the damage from a used paperback edition of the
Koran, available online for a couple of dollars?"
Goldman goes on to speculate that non-Muslim intelligence services might be drawing conclusions from the impact
Jones had and might decide to use his methods to throw the Muslim world into chaos. He, then, offers some thoughts
on what those initiatives could look like.
------------------------------
ISTINJA' WITH THE TORAH & NEW TESTAMENT
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes Mailing List, September 21, 2010
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/09/defecation-torah-new-testament
My reference in a column today, "'Rushdie Rules' Reach Florida," included this sentence: "A 2003 decree ruled the
Bible suitable for use by Muslims when cleaning after defecation." That allusion deserves further explanation.
The 2003 decree is Fatwa #40378 in The Encyclopedia of Fatwas (Arabic: Mawsu'at al-Fatawi) on
www.islamweb.net. Issued on November 23, 2003, it contains the standard question-and-answer format of a fatwa and
reads thus in English translation:
Judgment: Despising the Torah or the New Testament
Question: "Does someone who insults the Torah or the New Testament engage in apostasy, given that these include
some words of God?"
Answer: "It would be impermissible to disdain the Torah and New Testament, if they contained the truth and the name
of the exalted, such as the name of God the Most High. Whoever does this [i.e., disrespects the books] knowingly and
by choice would be considered an apostate and would be despised by God. But [in fact] the Torah and New Testament
do not have anything exalted in them. They are known to have been corrupted, so there is no problem disdaining them.
Ash-Shams[ad-Din] Ar-Ramli [d.1004 A.D.] said in [his book of fiqh] Nihayat al-Muhtaj: "It is impermissible to use
respected books like those of hadith and fiqh for anal cleansing after defecation (al-istinja',????????? ), but
non-respected books like philosophy, Torah and the New Testament, which are known as corrupt and which do not
contain exalted names, can be used for anal cleansing after defecation."
Interestingly, Fatwa #40378 is no longer posted in The Encyclopedia of Fatwas; an announcement on its old
page drably states that "There is no fatwa with this number." The screen shot posted on my website, however,
establishes that this fatwa was once posted.
Fatwa #40378 appears to have been removed in late 2009, as a result of the Dena Milany controversy. Milany, a German
woman, posted the fatwa in English translation and Arabic original, then posted a call on Facebook for a "koran toilet
paper roll," complete with graphic of such an item. Muslims demanded the deletion of this page and the agitation
reached to Egypt, where Sheikh Ali Abu'l-Hasan, a former president of Al-Azhar University's Fatwa Committee,
published a fatwa (reported in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Yawm as-Sabi' on September 27, 2009) in which he
ordered the "shedding of [her] blood." Milany responded by publicizing the above fatwa on her blog,
http://denamilany.blogspot.com.
Despite its removal, the fatwa remains valid. Taking it down from the website does not cancel it; that would require that
the institution that issued it formally declare it illegitimate. This has not happened because the Shari'a clearly permits
istinja' with the Bible. Indeed, specialists on Shari'a have through the centuries discussed the legitimacy of istinja'
using the Torah and New Testament.
© Daniel Pipes 2010
Commentaries Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, September 21, 2010
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
The Islamist Fifth Column -- America's Internal Enemies:
Disloyalty, Subversion, Sedition, & Treason
Lawfare -- The Use of Law as a Weapon in War & Politics:
Islamist Lawfare & the "Legal" Jihad Against America & the West
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
Publisher of Middle East Quarterly,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for National Review Online, Front Page
Magazine, the New York Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and
developments in the Middle East have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network
television, as well as at universities and think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the
U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately
twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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