Do You Want Sharia?

... is the only question worth asking either politicians or citizens. All decisions flow from that one answer.

The follow-up to someone saying, "No, I don't want Sharia" is this - "Then what are you willing to do to stop it?" There are all kinds of ways to end up in Sharia. It hardly matters how we get there in the end. Being cowed into gradual acceptance through terror attacks is only one way.

I've blogged tediously, but I repeat myself, about this before. The Caliphate Is Coming To France had this tidbit.

Modern warfare in the West is fought at the ballot box. A voting majority can impose their will on the rest of the population like an invading army. I'm sure there are constitutional limits to what elected officials can do in France, but they exist here, too, and they appear pretty easy to brush aside. Amendments 1, 2 and 5 are all threatened these days and not by wild-eyed radicals. The California constitution briefly included a definition of marriage that was struck down by judicial whim. In the post-modern, secular West, a constitution doesn't provide much protection when the majority wants to exert its power.

In Nation Building In Europe, I blathered on thusly.

If you can't do nation-building in a majority-Muslim country in the Middle East and produce a liberal democracy, what makes you think you'll be able to do it when a European country becomes majority-Muslim?

The terror attacks are indeed a big deal, but they are the symptom, not the disease. While the individual attackers are more interested in the personal gain of 72 virgins, the community that bred them is almost certainly intent on Sharia. Dig this.

(A)s explained by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, perhaps the world’s most influential Sunni sharia scholar, “secularism can never enjoy a general acceptance in an Islamic society,” because “the acceptance of secularism means abandonment of Shari’ah, a denial of the divine guidance and a rejection of Allah’s injunctions.” Qaradawi elaborated (in his book, How the Imported Solutions Disastrously Affected Our Ummah), “Islam is a comprehensive system of workship (Ibadah) and legislation (Shari’ah).” Thus: “The call for secularism among Muslims is atheism and a rejection of Islam. Its acceptance as a basis for rule in place of Shari’ah is downright apostasy.”

So is Sharia OK? Instead of screaming at each other, something of which I am most certainly guilty, we ought to read up on Sharia and see if we can live under it. If not, then there are very serious questions we must answer and soon. Well, maybe not soon in the nations where we've maintained some amount of sanity such as America, Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe, but it would be a useful exercise for us to help clarify our thoughts.

An additional benefit of asking and discussing the question is that it tones down the debate and ought to give us all a point on which we agree. It's a lot easier to communicate civilly when you start on common ground. If you do engage in an online debate about a recent terror attack or the topic in general and you ask this question, I'd be interested in hearing how it went.

Somehow, I just don't think that 72 virgin thing is going to end up as advertised.