Sharia Law: Quite Possibly in a City Near You

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The True Face of Islam

Well, at least one thing can be said: these Muslims are consistent with the teachings of the Qur'an and life example of Muhammad.

Make no mistake about it. This is the true face of Islam.

Who needs free speech anyway?



In case you were unaware, the Qur'an does not contain a parallel verse to Matthew 5:44: "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

Sharia law. Coming to a city near you!

Sharia Law Comes to Michigan

(www.answeringmuslims.com) David Wood

Watch this Video!



A Detailed Explanation of the Video

On June 21st, I moderated a peaceful public debate between Mary Jo Sharp and Ehteshaam Gulam. After the debate, Nabeel, Mary Jo, and I went to the Dearborn Arab Festival, which had already become an open celebration of persecution against Christians. The festival organizers had declared that Christians could not distribute materials on the public sidewalks or street, and, when the matter was brought before the courts, the judge agreed that Christians could not freely distribute information during the festival. (Note: This decision has been defended in the media by claiming that the “no-distributing-materials” rule applied to everyone, and therefore wasn’t unfair to Christians. However, anyone who was at the festival knows that this is not true. People were walking up and down the sidewalks distributing pamphlets and brochures, right in front of security. The rule was only enforced against Christians, and therefore only the rights of Christians were violated.)

Muslim security guards (one of whom had “Hezbollah” tattooed down his forearm) took things a step further and wouldn’t even allow Christians to talk about their beliefs openly. Security guards also repeatedly entrapped Christians in an attempt to get us to violate the court order.

This even happened to me, despite the fact that I wasn’t talking to anyone about Christianity or Islam. I had a pamphlet in my front pocket, and one of the Muslim security guards walked up to me and said, “That looks like a really interesting pamphlet. Could I have it?” She even had her walkie-talkie in hand! Fortunately, I had already heard about this woman and other Muslim security guards doing this repeatedly at the festival, so I didn’t fall for it. That’s when Nabeel and Mary Jo entered the tent in an attempt to question a group of Muslims about a horribly inaccurate pamphlet they were distributing. What happened next may be outlined as follows:

• We see a booth that is specifically for answering questions people have about Islam.
  
• Nabeel walks up to the booth and attempts to ask a question.
  
• When the Muslims don’t want to talk on camera, Nabeel begins walking away.
  
• One of the Muslims (a former member of Tupac’s crew!) then invites Nabeel back for a dialogue.
  
• Security grabs our camera and forces MJ to turn it off. Security then breaks up the discussion, despite the fact that the Muslims at the booth agreed that we could record the conversation.
  
• We leave the tent and ask a police officer if we are free to record; he responds that we are in a public area and can record all we want. He also says that it is illegal for anyone to touch our cameras or force us to turn them off.
• We walk up to some non-Muslim security guards and ask if we can record a dialogue; they reply in the affirmative.
  
• Nabeel attempts to reestablish the discussion, but this time the Muslims at the booth don’t want to talk on camera.
  
• We leave the booth, and I see the woman who had grabbed the camera and forced MJ to turn it off. I begin recording the woman (in case we need to identify her later), at which point she gets on her walkie-talkie and informs her fellow Muslim security guards that we are harassing her.
  
• Following their pattern of entrapping Christians at the festival, the Muslim security guards convince two teenagers to strike up a conversation with Nabeel and snatch a pamphlet from his hand.
• While one of the teens distracts Nabeel with a conversation, the other snatches the pamphlet from Nabeel's hands.
  
• Within seconds we’re surrounded by a mob of Muslim security guards.
  
• The Muslim security force slaps our cameras, threatens us, shouts profanity at us, openly proclaims that our rights as Americans are meaningless, pushes us, kicks and tries to trip Nabeel, and lies to the police.
  
• The head of security then informs the police that we must be removed from the festival.
  

Fortunately, we got most of this on tape! See the video at the top.

Now think about this. We insisted on our Constitutional rights to (i) ask a question at a booth, and (ii) record in a public place. This was enough to get us banned from a public sidewalk in Dearborn, Michigan (the city with the highest percentage of Muslims in the U.S.). By comparison, the Muslim security guards openly harassed, intimidated, bullied, threatened, entrapped, and assaulted Christians; they openly proclaimed that they don’t care about our rights as American citizens; they used profanity as they insulted us; they lied to police. This behavior was perfectly welcome in Dearborn, even at a family festival! (There were other examples of open hatred as well.)

I have contacted the Arab Chamber of Commerce (the organization responsible for planning the festival, selecting the security team, and deciding that Christians are no longer free to distribute information in public places). I have asked for an apology and for their thoughts on how such horrendous treatment of Christians will be avoided in the future. They have not responded.

Going back to the time of Muhammad, whenever the population of Muslims becomes significant, followers of other religions are suppressed, and the proclamation of non-Muslim beliefs is forbidden. This second-class status for non-Muslims is prescribed by Sharia, and the victims are called "dhimmis." Welcome to Sharia in the United States, my friends.

Pro-marriage Speech Garners Professor's Profane Wrath

(Onenewsnow.com) Charlie Butts and Jody Brown

After being called a "fascist" by his professor, a Christian California student has filed suit against his college for violations of his free-speech rights.

Less than a month after voters in California decided to amend their state constitution and protect traditional marriage, Jonathan Lopez -- in a public speaking class -- shared his beliefs on faith and marriage. David French of the Alliance Defense Fund picks up the story.

"Jonathan talked about his faith -- and one of the things he talked about in context of his faith was...marriage," says French. "He read from the dictionary definition of marriage. The professor stopped the class, called him a 'fascist b_____d' -- [he] used the expletive -- [and] told the class that anyone who wanted to could leave if they were offended...."

According to an ADF press release, when no one got up to leave, the instructor simply dismissed the class, effectively ending Lopez's speech -- which violated the student's free-speech rights, adds the attorney, especially since other students made speeches on other subjects. Religious speech, notes French, apparently was excluded from the open-ended speech assignment.

"You just cannot shut down student speech like that," states French, who explains that Lopez was well within the confines of his professor's assignment, and that the professor's actions not only constitute viewpoint discrimination but also comprise "retaliation" because he disagreed with Lopez's religious beliefs.

According to the ADF attorney, the professor was not yet finished. "When [Lopez later] complained about what was an obvious act of censorship, he was threatened with expulsion by that same professor," he says.

The speech professor is identified as John Matteson of Los Angeles Community College. ADF reports that after Proposition 8 (the marriage-related constitutional amendment) was approved on November 4, Matteson told his entire class: "If you voted yes on Proposition 8, you are a fascist b_____d."

Ultimately Matteson refused to grade Lopez's November 24 speech, and wrote on the evaluation: "Ask God what your grade is."

Pro-life Pastor Prepares for Sentencing

(Onenewsnow.com) Charlie Butts

An Oakland, California, pastor could face jail time for expressing his pro-life views.

Pastor Walter Hoye ran into trouble with an abortion clinic while doing an informational picket. Dennis Howard, leader of The Movement for a Better America, believes Hoye is innocent.

"His approach was simply to carry a sign that said 'Jesus Loves You. Can We Help?' and offering those who wanted it some information about alternatives to abortion," Howard explains.

A complaint was filed and Hoye was found guilty in spite of proof to the contrary. "There was a video taken of him doing this, and it shows that he was not harassing anybody," Howard points out. "In fact, he was being harassed by escorts from the abortion clinic."

Pastor Hoye faces up to two years in jail and a $4,000 fine. Howard is calling Christians into action. "We feel that pro-life organizations around the country ought to take up this man's cause and pray and fast between now and February 19," he concludes.

That is when Hoye is due to be sentenced.

The Elephant in the Room: Intimidating Critics of Islam

Politicians and citizens who raise questions about the religion are targeted.

(The Philadelphia Inquirer) Rick Santorum

We lost more than a million jobs in the past few months, the headlines remind us. So last month's story about a Dutch court's ruling that Geert Wilders was "inciting hatred and discrimination" - and that "it is in the public interest to prosecute" him - understandably didn't make the American news.

Did Wilders rip off a minority in a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme? No, he's a member of the Dutch parliament, and his precise villainy was releasing a 15-minute film. Entitled Fitna, it suggests a direct link between certain verses of the Koran and acts of terrorism.

Not to be outdone, the United Kingdom this week banned Wilders from entering the country. Its reasoning: His "presence in the U.K. would pose a genuine, present, and sufficiently serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society." A letter from the home secretary went on to tell Wilders that "your statements about Muslims and their beliefs, as expressed in your film Fitna and elsewhere, would threaten community harmony and therefore public security."

In 2007, Cambridge University Press destroyed unsold copies of Alms for Jihad after it was sued by Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi-Irish businessman whom the book accused of financing al-Qaeda. So much for academics standing up against book-burning.

In 2005, reporters from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten were forced into hiding after publishing a series of 12 cartoons about Muhammad. Islamic fundamentalists found the images blasphemous and threatened to bomb the paper's offices and kill its cartoonists - apparently, in certain quarters, an alternative to a letter to the editor.

Last year, at the urging of the Canadian Islamic Congress, author Mark Steyn was forced to defend himself against charges of racism and "Islamophobia" that were filed with three Canadian human-rights commissions, based on his columns in Maclean's magazine.

And, following a 2008 U.N. resolution urging nations to outlaw "defamation of religion," several nations - including Italy, the Netherlands and France - are attempting to ban "hate speech" against religious groups.

All of these incidents are calculated to intimidate critics of Islam in Europe and across the West. The message in the European Union is clear: Politicians, religious figures, and even private citizens with religiously and politically incorrect opinions will be subject not only to Muslim protest, but to criminal prosecution and violent retribution.

What publisher will print Steyn's next book if it can be labeled a hate crime and banned in most countries? "Pretty soon, your little book is looking a lot less commercially viable," Steyn has said. "At the end of the day, there'll be a lot of . . . American books that will go unpublished here in America."

In addition, these incidents deflect attention away from real - rather than trumped-up - religious discrimination. In the arena of actual persecution of religious minorities, Arab and Islamic nations are much of the problem.

Look at the U.S. State Department's 2008 Report on International Religious Freedom. Among the dozens of limitations on religious freedom in the Arab-Islamic world are the crimes of apostasy - converting from Islam to another religion - and blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad, both punishable by death under Muslim Sharia law. Coptic Christians are, at best, second-class citizens in Egypt; Baha'is are savagely persecuted in Iran; and churches and synagogues are banned in Saudi Arabia, as is any non-Muslim religious activity in public.

This is not a front- or even back-page story in the American press today. Why? Because it has nothing to do with the economy.

The gathering storm I have been warning of for years has now formed over the West. Yet instead of fighting the gradual incursion of Sharia and the demands of an intolerant, even militant Islam, Westerners are cowering and fatalistic. Last year, the Archbishop of Canterbury conceded that acceptance of some parts of Sharia in Britain seemed "unavoidable."

So how did the market do today?