(Kadi: the judge, who, according to the theory of Muslim law [sharia], has to decide all cases involving cases of civil and criminal law)
Responding with self-righteous indignation this past August, 2011 to queries about his judicial appointment of Sohail Mohammed, a Muslim, New Jersey governor Chris Christie proclaimed “Ignorance is behind the criticism of Sohail Mohammed.” He added, peevishly, that his “sharia-[Islamic]law business is crap . . . and I’m tired of dealing with the crazies!”
But Christie’s uninformed and defamatory diatribe willfully ignored that Mr. Mohammed was a board member of the cultural jihadist American Muslim Union (AMU) organization, and personal attorney for AMU’s Mohammed Qatanani, an admitted member of Hamas, whose covenantal goal is the jihad genocide of Israel’s Jewish population. Of course having been deliberately blind and politically pandering enough—given New Jersey’s large Muslim community—to ignore these alarming connections to jihadism, it was easy for the disingenuous governor to angrily dismiss any potential concerns about Mr. Mohammed’s predilection for applying sharia in his judicial decisions, as opposed to antithetical US constitutional law.
Fast forward six months to the unabashed sharia-compliant, Islamic blasphemy law-based “decision” of American convert to Islam, and Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania Magisterial District Judge Mark Martin. The proceedings were in fact “surreal”, as summarized by blogger Al Stefannelli, and captured on audio. Simply put, Judge Martin chose to abandon his required fidelity to the constitutional law of the US, and instead behaved as dutiful pious Muslim Kadi, albeit in a Pennsylvania state court. Just below is Stefanelli’s apt synopsis of the full 36 minute 52 second res ipsa loquitur audio:
The Pennsylvania State Director of American Atheists, Inc., Mr. Ernest Perce V., was assaulted by a Muslim while participating in a Halloween parade. Along with a Zombie Pope, Ernest was costumed as Zombie Muhammad. The assault was caught on video, the Muslim man admitted to his crime and charges were filed in what should have been an open-and-shut case. That’s not what happened, though.
The defendant is an immigrant and claims he did not know his actions were illegal, or that it was legal in this country to represent Muhammad in any form. To add insult to injury, he also testified that his 9 year old son was present, and the man said he felt he needed to show his young son that he was willing to fight for his Prophet.
The case went to trial, and as circumstances would dictate, Judge Mark Martin is also a Muslim. What transpired next was surreal. The Judge not only ruled in favor of the defendant, but called Mr. Perce a name and told him that if he were in a Muslim country, he’d be put to death. Judge Martin’s comments included,
“Having had the benefit of having spent over 2 and a half years in predominantly Muslim countries I think I know a little bit about the faith of Islam. In fact I have a copy of the Koran here and I challenge you sir to show me where it says in the Koran that Mohammad arose and walked among the dead. I think you misinterpreted things. Before you start mocking someone else’s religion you may want to find out a little bit more about it it makes you look like a dufus and Mr. (Defendant) is correct. In many Arabic speaking countries something like this is definitely against the law there. In their society in fact it can be punishable by death and it frequently is in their society.”
Judge Martin then offered a lesson in Islam, stating,
“Islam is not just a religion, it’s their culture, their culture. It’s their very essence their very being. They pray five times a day towards Mecca to be a good Muslim, before you die you have to make a pilgrimage to Mecca unless you are otherwise told you can not because you are too ill too elderly, whatever but you must make the attempt. Their greetings wa-laikum as-Salâm (is answered by voice) may god be with you. Whenever, it’s very common when speaking to each other it’s very common for them to say uh this will happen it’s it they are so immersed in it.”
Judge Martin further complicates the issue by not only abrogating the First Amendment, but completely misunderstanding it when he said,
“Then what you have done is you have completely trashed their essence, their being. They find it very very very offensive. I’m a Muslim, I find it offensive. But you have that right, but you’re way outside your boundaries or first amendment rights. This is what, and I said I spent about 7 and a half years living in other countries. when we go to other countries it’s not uncommon for people to refer to us as ugly Americans this is why we are referred to as ugly Americans, because we are so concerned about our own rights we don’t care about other people’s rights as long as we get our say but we don’t care about the other people’s say”
But wait, it gets worse. The Judge refused to allow the video into evidence, and then said,
“All that aside I’ve got here basically.. I don’t want to say he said she said but I’ve got two sides of the story that are in conflict with each other.”
And,
“The preponderance of, excuse me, the burden of proof… “
And,
“…he has not proven to me beyond a reasonable doubt that this defendant is guilty of harassment, therefore I am going to dismiss the charge”
The Judge neglected to address the fact that the ignorance of the law does not justify an assault and that it was the responsibility of the defendant to familiarize himself with our laws. This is to say nothing of the judge counseling the defendant that it is also not acceptable for him to teach his children that it is acceptable to use violence in the defense of religious beliefs. Instead, the judge gives Mr. Perce a lesson in Sharia law and drones on about the Muslim faith, inform everyone in the court room how strongly he embraces Islam, that the first amendment does not allow anyone ” to piss off other people and other cultures” and he was also insulted by Mr. Perce’s portrayal of Mohammed and the sign he carried. This is a travesty. Not only did Judge Martin completely ignore video evidence, but a Police Officer who was at the scene also testified on Mr. Perce’s behalf, to which the Judge also dismissed by saying the officer didn’t give an accurate account or doesn’t give it any weight.
Abundant contemporary evidence demonstrates that Islamic law and mores regarding blasphemy, today, remain distressingly incompatible with modern conceptions of religious freedom, and human rights. Thus writing in the early 1990s, the esteemed Pakistani scholar Muhammad Asrar, whose opinion was accepted by Pakistan’s Shari’a Court, defined “blasphemy”, focusing on the Muslim prophet, as:
Reviling or insulting the Prophet (pbuh) in writing or speech; speaking profanely or contemptuously about him or his family; attacking the Prophet’s dignity and honor in an abusive manner; vilifying him or making an ugly face when his named is mentioned; showing enmity or hatred towards him, his family, his companions, and the Muslims; accusing, or slandering the Prophet and his family, including spreading evil reports about him or his family; defaming the Prophet; refusing the Prophet’s jurisdiction or judgment in any manner; rejecting the Sunnah; showing disrespect, contempt for or rejection of the rights of Allah and His Prophet or rebelling against Allah and His Prophet.
And in accord with classical Islamic jurisprudence (for example, The Risala of al-Qayrawani [d. 996]), Madani argues that anyone who defames Muhammad — Muslim or non-Muslim — must be put to death.
Intrepid historian David Littman has been chronicling, nearly alone, for over two decades, the concerted efforts of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now “Islamic Cooperation”, OIC) to Islamize international human rights instruments, and apply the sharia “standard” for blasphemy to all nations. Littman warned, for example, about the development of the Shari’a-based 1990 Cairo Declaration (i.e., the so-called Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam), to which all member states of the OIC are signatories, publicizing the immediate objections of a brave Senegalese jurist, Adama Dieng. Dieng, a Muslim, who subsequently became a United Nations special rapporteur, then serving as secretary-general to the International Commission of Jurists, declared forthrightly in February 1992 that the Cairo Declaration, under the rubric of the Shari’a,
…gravely threatens the inter-cultural consensus on which the international human rights instruments are based; introduces, in the name of the defense of human rights, an intolerable discrimination against both non-Muslims and women; reveals a deliberately restrictive character in regard to certain fundamental rights and freedoms..; [and] confirms the legitimacy of practices, such as corporal punishment, that attack the integrity and dignity of the human being.
Although Kadi…er Judge Martin clearly does not understand—or abide—US constitutional law, and its non-Islamic principles, his “sensibilities” are ominously consistent with mainstream Islamic blasphemy law as reiterated by the Pennsylvania Muslim judge’s co-religionist colleagues from the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America. The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA), whose mission statement maintains the organization was, “…founded to provide guidance for Muslims living in North America…AMJA is a religious organization that does not exploit religion to achieve any political ends, but instead provides practical solutions within the guidelines of Islam and the nation’s laws to the various challenges experienced by Muslim communities…”, is accepted as such by the mainstream American Muslim community. Notwithstanding this mainstream acceptance, including uncritical endorsement of its seventh annual American conference in Houston (October 15-18, 2010) to train American imams, AMJA has issued a ruling which sanctions the killing of “blasphemers”—including non-Muslims guilty of this “crime”:
Fatwa # 77506: On “Blaspheming” Muhammad, the Muslim prophet, Dr.Salah Al-Sawy 2009-01-21
[F]or those scholars who say that repentance of a person who insults Allaah or His Messenger shall not accepted, [they] mean that repentance does not lift up the set punishment for cursing and insulting the Prophet, i.e., execution. Because the Prophet is the one who was actually wronged and insulted and he is no longer alive, therefore, he is not alive to practice his right to forgive him [the blasphemer] for what he did. Also, no Muslim is ever is entitled or authorized to forgive on the Prophet’s behalf.
During his 2008 debate with the cultural jihadist Tariq Ramadan, Ibn Warraq elucidated what is at stake should such Islamic supremacism prevail:
The great ideas of the West — rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy — are superior to any others devised by humankind. It was the West that took steps to abolish slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in Africa, where rival tribes sold black prisoners into slavery. The West has secured freedoms for women and racial and other minorities to an extent unimaginable 60 years ago. The West recognizes and defends the rights of the individual: we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live lives of our choosing…Nor does the West need lectures on the superior virtue of societies in which women are kept in subjection under sharia, endure genital mutilation, are stoned to death for alleged adultery, and are married off against their will at the age of nine; societies that deny the rights of supposedly lower castes; societies that execute homosexuals and apostates. The West has no use for sanctimonious homilies from societies that cannot provide clean drinking water or sewage systems, that make no provisions for the handicapped, and that leave 40 to 50 percent of their citizens illiterate.
Notwithstanding the politically expedient, willfully blind moral cretinism of Chris Christie, and other politicians of his ilk, it is well past time for the US to regain its sense of self-worth, disbar any judges who behave like de facto Kadis such as Mr. Martin, disband organizations like AMJA which promote murderous “blasphemy law,” and deport AMJA’s Muslim “jurists”.
