Creeping Sharia

Lee Harris (not to be confused with Sam Harris, of the unhinged “new atheist” movement) has a thoughtful piece in the Weekly Standard, “Speaking of Islam” in which he fingers a troubling conundrum facing the West: our civil order is being threatened by the re-emergence of the furor theologicus, last seen in the West in the 17th century.


"The English-speaking peoples are justifiably proud of their tradition of free speech. When Thomas Macaulay reviewed the achievements of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, he observed that the victorious English Whigs had shown how "the authority of law and the security of property" could be reconciled with "a liberty of discussion and of individual action never before known."



The sickening and astonishing actions of the Canadian government in the guise of the Alberta Human Rights and Citizen Commission in allowing lawsuits against Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant for publishing things that are offensive to Islam should awaken Americans to lawsuits coming to a jursidiction near you.

Mr Harris has done us a signal favor in reminding us of the fragility of the civic bond vis-a-vis strongly held religious views. The resurgence of people who once again are willing to threaten and commit deadly violence for their beliefs, and whose intentions are to gain ascendancy for those beliefs, certainly does threaten our hard-won balance of freedom of speech and thought with civil social relations. It is certain that radical Islam intends the reshaping of Western societies, and many effects are already being felt. Non-Muslims have been cowed into a new reticence, preferring to watch as their societies are changed rather than make a scene: no sense trying to argue with a crazy person—it only makes one look crazy as well. Yet there is an alternative to allowing the free expression part of the Anglo societal agreement to live and let live go by the boards; if we are to lose a cherished part of our liberal order, why not make the offending Muslims bear the brunt of it, since they are the ones threatening it? Their actions can as easily be categorized as hate speech, especially since their thought often turns to violent actions. Why not deport those who threaten the civil social order? The charge of hypocrisy they will raise is far less injurious than the slide into sharia law that is the obvious Islamic vision for our future. Mr Harris might have mentioned, as surely he knows, that dhimmitude does not include freedom of speech. Sadly, the liberalism of the far left is the senescence of doddering old fools, some of whom are not that old.

Read the whole thing here: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/687vefpl.asp

And what about our other Anglo friends, the ones who got the whole thing off the ground with their common law and organic constitution, our friends the Brits?

Where are the Brits against creeping sharia? These bits from The American Thinker give one pause:

In Turkey, more than 100,000 protestors were in the streets of Ankara to protest a government measure that would lift the ban on head scarfs at Universities:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/02/huge_prosecular_protest_in_tur.html

Meanwhile, in England, Muslim medical students are refusing to obey hygiene rules brought in to stop the spread of deadly superbugs, because they say it is against their religion:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/02/the_uk_faces_a_choice_between.html

AND, Husbands with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long Government review:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/02/there_wont_always_be_an_englan.html

We should thank the Brits for demonstrating what happens to bedwetting, multi-culti pc weanies unable to just say no to Islam. We can't say we havent been warned.