Month: September 2008

Sharia law comes to Britain

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’re seeing it in Greeley, Colorado, in Minnesota, and other places around America: The quiet jihad, that gradually introduces Sharia law and forces concessions from the society in which Muslims have chosen to live.  Now comes a report from Abul Taher in the Times of Britain,

Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

Nobody in government made a decision to set up Sharia courts. Muslims figured out how to use British law to accomplish their aim.  There already exist parallel courts for domestic law under something called the Arbitration Act.

Jewish Beth Din courts operate under the same provision in the Arbitration Act and resolve civil cases, ranging from divorce to business disputes. They have existed in Britain for more than 100 years, and previously operated under a precursor to the act.

So the Muslims took advantage of the law to set up their own Sharia courts, which have been ruling on some cases for a year. They have dealt with divorce, inheritance and domestic violence. Here’s what has happened:

Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons.

The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.

In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.

Funny that Sharia’s valuing of women as less than men doesn’t seem to bother the politically correct class. In the contradiction between Islam and feminism, Islam wins.

The Muslims who have set up these courts said that if the Jewish courts are allowed to exist, so must the Sharia courts. The British have no defense against this claim, since they are so “fair” that they cannot discriminate between Jews who wish to practice their religious in private, posing no threat to the larger society, and Muslims who wish to impose their religion and their legal system on the entire country, many of whom have been quite open about their goal.

It doesn’t help that high officials have been supportive of instituting Sharia courts:

The disclosure that Muslim courts have legal powers in Britain comes seven months after Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was pilloried for suggesting that the establishment of sharia in the future “seems unavoidable” in Britain.

In July, the head of the judiciary, the lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, further stoked controversy when he said that sharia could be used to settle marital and financial disputes.

There are some great comments from readers, including one from a Dutchman who says in his country fundamentalist Muslims are losing ground because the Dutch are fed up with them.

Kenyan Somalis to be issued with passports for anywhere?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m bringing this news to you from a blog for Kenyan Somalis, therefore I can’t say for sure if this blogger knows what he is talking about.   It seems that Kenyan Muslims are getting ready to go to Mecca in December but instead of getting restricted passports as in the past, they will be issued wide open passports.

I suppose this is one way to move along any malcontents who have taken up residence in Kenya.

Muslims travelling to Mecca for the Hajj will be issued with unrestricted passports valid for travel anywhere in the world, Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang’ has said.

In the past, pilgrims applying for passports were issued with travel documents valid for one year and restricted to the Middle East.

“The restriction imposed on passports issued to Muslims travelling for the Hajj shall be lifted. Consequently, they will be issued with travel documents valid for 10 years,” Mr Kajwang’ said.
He was speaking at his offices, where he held a meeting with officials of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (Supkem). The officials had an audience with the Minister to seek intervention to expedite the issuance of passports ahead of the annual pilgrimage in December. Supkem had complained the Government discriminated against Muslims seeking legal documents.

If this is true, it sure looks like the Kenyan government is saying, as it waves goodbye, “bon voyage!”

CAIR calls JBS Swift “uncooperative”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In this Denver Post story from Saturday we learn that CAIR and its handmaiden, the EEOC, have been trying for a long time to get Swift to cooperate with demands for religious accommodation in another of Swift’s plants but to no avail, so far.   And,  CAIR predicts a long haul in Greeley.   Hang in there Swift!    I can’t believe I am cheering for a meatpacker. 

A civil-rights group holds little hope that a week-old dispute between Muslim workers and their bosses at a Greeley slaughterhouse will end quickly, based on the company’s recent response in a similar standoff in Nebraska.

A mediation session between Brazilian-owned JBS Swift & Co. and the Council on American-Islamic Relations to discuss issues involving Muslim employees at its Grand Island, Neb., plant ended Wednesday without progress, CAIR officials said.

“They were completely uncooperative,” said Christina Abraham, director of civil rights at CAIR’s office in Chicago, which is handling both Swift disputes.

“Though we’re hopeful, the issue in Greeley may follow the same route and it could take years,” she said.

Notice how CAIR is labelled a civil-rights group by the Denver Post, what a joke.   This is the type of story that will continue to appear—bad meatpacking business screws poor Somalis who only want to pray.  I would have some respect for the Denver Post if they explored the issue of what the Somali workers are saying to the Arab press about the “Mexicans” in Greeley.  But they won’t.    Gates of Vienna tells us why:

News stories that pit one protected minority against another make the MSM very unhappy. Whether it’s Muslims and homosexuals, Eskimo seal hunters, or wife-beating Latinos, news items about conflicts between officially recognized grievance groups give the mainstream news services indigestion. There’s no way that they can shoehorn these stories into the dominant narrative — evil white heterosexual racist men against minorities, gays, and women — so they tend to leave them out.

Since our readership has boomed over the last week, new readers may want to use our search function for the word “Somalis” to begin to get up to speed on the community clashes with this huge immigrant group across America.    For a starting place on the Greeley/Swift/Somali story go here.

Criminalizing criticism of Islam

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Elizabeth Samson in the Wall Street Journal reports on attempts by Muslims to shut down speech and other expression critical of Muslims and Islam. She begins:

There are strange happenings in the world of international jurisprudence that do not bode well for the future of free speech. In an unprecedented case, a Jordanian court is prosecuting 12 Europeans in an extraterritorial attempt to silence the debate on radical Islam.

The prosecutor general in Amman charged the 12 with blasphemy, demeaning Islam and Muslim feelings, and slandering and insulting the prophet Muhammad in violation of the Jordanian Penal Code. The charges are especially unusual because the alleged violations were not committed on Jordanian soil.

Among the defendants is the Danish cartoonist whose alleged crime was to draw in 2005 one of the Muhammad illustrations that instigators then used to spark Muslim riots around the world. His co-defendants include 10 editors of Danish newspapers that published the images. The 12th accused man is Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, who supposedly broke Jordanian law by releasing on the Web his recent film, “Fitna,” which tries to examine how the Quran inspires Islamic terrorism.

The author says the Jordanian action is “part of a larger campaign to use the law and international forums to intimidate critics of militant Islam.” She cites the United Nations General Assembly, which recently passed a Resolution on Combating Defamation of Religions. However, it was really about one religion, as the only one mentioned in the resolution was Islam.  And look at this, horrifying on two counts.

More worrying, the U.N. Human Rights Council in June said it would refrain from condemning human-rights abuses related to “a particular religion.” The ban applies to all religions, but it was prompted by Muslim countries that complained about linking Islamic law, Shariah, to such outrages as female genital mutilation and death by stoning for adulterers. This kind of self-censorship could prove dangerous for people suffering abuse, and it follows the council’s March decision to have its expert on free speech investigate individuals and the media for negative comments about Islam.

That’s a good job for a free speech expert in an Orwellian world.

We’ve seen that some countries take their cues from “international opinion” to decide what is allowable. That, I would guess, is how Canada’s Human Rights Commissions came to think their job is to persecute journalists like Mark Steyn whose writings offend Muslims — even though what offends them is Steyn quoting Muslims’ own words. So the UN’s actions are very ominous indeed.

And as for Jordan, their prosecution isn’t just an exercise in talking to themselves. The Jordanian government has asked Interpol to arrest Geert Wilders and the Danish cartoonists and bring them to Jordan to stand trial. Both the Dutch and the Danish governments have refused to turn their citizens over. But if any of the targeted people go to a place that recognizes the Jordanian prosecution, they will be in jeopardy.

So Islamic governments can prosecute people for whatever annoys them, and those people won’t be able to travel to any country that recognizes the prosecution.  Thus does Islam keep encroaching on our lives.

Somalis in Greeley on a “long walk to justice”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I admit I am having trouble keeping up with the action and rhetoric in Greeley, CO where over 100 (mostly Somali) workers were fired from the Brazilian-owned Swift & Co meatpacking plant after they walked off the production line a week ago Friday.

Now lawyers for the Union, United Food and Commercial Workers, say they will fight for each job.   Joining in the meeting with fired workers yesterday was State Representative, Jim Riesberg D-Greeley, who got in on the “we are welcoming” act.  We are fighting for you, he said,  and in the meantime sign up for your taxpayer-funded welfare benefits.  From the Greeley Tribune:

“We need to spend a lot of time negotiating with Swift so you can have your jobs back,” said Riesberg, who fielded questions from frustrated former employees.

Riesberg assured the Somalis that they are welcome in Greeley.

Without guarantee that they will get their jobs back, people at the meeting were urged to register for unemployment and file for workman’s compensation.

Programs such as the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition and the Colorado State Refugee Services Program are in place to help the Somalis survive this transition, the workers were told.

Amber Tafoya with the coalition said she has spoken with employees that were laid off [fired] and believes JBS Swift was in error.

“We will be with you on your long walk to justice,” Tafoya said. “I’m confident that you as a community have the solution to your problems.”

To learn about what the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition is go here.

These government supported Immigrant Rights Coalitions must be active in every state.  We saw them making waves in Shelbyville, Tennessee, and the Illinois “Rights” Coalition was involved in Obama’s little money circle for community organizing that involved Arab groups, the Woods Fund, and William Ayers.

I wonder if there could be a taxpayer supported group called “Regular old American Rights Coalition.”