Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Sharia Law: 'Preeminent Totalitarian Threat of Our Time'

Report here.

"Shariah is the crucial fault line of Islam’s internecine struggle. On one side of the divide are Muslim reformers and authentic moderates--figures like Abdurrahman Wahid, the late president of Indonesia and leader of the world’s largest libertarian Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama--whose members embrace the Enlightenment’s veneration of reason and, in particular, its separation of the spiritual and secular realms,"

(...)

“The good news is that millions of Muslims around the world--including many in America--do not follow the directives of Shariah, let alone engage in jihad,” says the report. “The bad news is that this reality reflects the fact that the imposition of strict shariah doctrine is at different stages across Muslim-majority and -minority countries."

The authors also differentiate between Islamists who use violence and those who do not. The violent Islamists, they argue, are already well known--groups such as al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hizballah. The non-violent Islamists, they say, pose a different and perhaps greater threat because while they have the same goals as their violent counterparts--the imposition of Sharia--their non-violent tactics make them harder to detect and oppose.

“Far less recognizable, however, is the menace posed by jihadist enemies who operate by deceit and stealth from inside the gates,” the experts said. “The latter threat is, arguably, a far more serious one to open, tolerant societies like ours.

Oh, and while we're at it, an appropriate picture:

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