Dershowitz Silent as Harvard Becomes the Hub for Sharia

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz circa October 15, 2003, accepting an award for his efforts to protect the separation of religion (church) and state. At this event, he stated, “…the concept of freedom from religion, is more important than any other right in the Constitution. Why? Because freedom from religion entails freedom of religion. It entails freedom of conscience, it entails freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.”

Indeed. So WHY Professor Dershowitz, are you UTTERLY SILENT about the pseudo-academic movement on your own Harvard University campus to justify more widespread application of the religious totalitarianism of Islamic Sharia—including within the West—a system of religious “law” which gravely threatens our own most precious, hard-won freedoms of conscience, speech, and assembly?

Last week I discussed—and brought directly to Mr. Dershowitz’s attention via e-mail—the Sharia-promoting exploits at Harvard of UCLA Law Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl, and his Harvard campus “facilitator” Roy Mottahedeh.  

And today’s (March 16, 2008) Sunday New York Times Magazine contains another egregious apologetic for Sharia by Harvard’s own thrusting young pseudo-academic Noah Feldman.  

As I documented almost 5-years ago, regarding Mr. Feldman’s absurd and corrosive work, then: 

I believe his apologetics regarding the application of the Shari’a (Islamic Holy Law)- past, present, and potentially in the future- are delusional and corrosive.  

My major concerns are the following:  

(I) A completely uncritical acceptance of the most sanitized, sacralized version of “classical” Islamic history, from Muhammad’s consolidation of control over Arabia, through the extensive jihad conquests of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Feldman’s writings are disturbingly reminiscent of Professor John Esposito’s presentations, which suffer from these inappropriate biases, as lucidly described by the scholar Bat Ye’or: 1) historical negationism, consisting of suppressing or sketching in a page or a paragraph, one thousand years of jihad which is presented as a peaceful conquest, generally “welcomed” by the vanquished populations;  2) the omission of Christian and, in particular, Muslim sources describing the actual methods of these conquests, and the rule of the conquered peoples, as sanctioned by the classical jihad ideology written by numerous Muslim jurists since the 7th century: pillage, enslavement, deportation, massacres, and the imposition of dhimmitude;  3) the mythical historical conversion of “centuries” of “peaceful coexistence”, masking the processes which transformed majorities (i.e., vast Christian populations,  in particular) into minorities, constantly at risk of extinction. 

(II) Moral equivalences that range from the deliberately disingenuous, to the frankly absurd; just a few examples:     

· The contemporary Anglican Church is deemed comparable to those Shi’ite clerics (including, one must assume, Khomeini disciples) calling for the creation of an Islamic state in Iraq. 

· The application of  Halachic law in Israel is highlighted trying (most unpersuasively) to argue that the imposition of Shari’a would be no worse- an utterly absurd comparison given the truly circumscribed application of Halachic Law in Israel, relative to the far reaching repression of basic rights for all women and all non-Muslims under Shari’a law, or Shari’a-inspired law in Muslim countries, or even Muslim-dominated provinces (eg., in Northern Nigeria) that apply the Shari’a. 

· Apologism for barbaric hudud punishments (stoning to death for adultery; mutilation for theft) under the Shari’a. 

 · Non-sequitur discussion of the “limitations” of the U.S. Bill of Rights without any serious discussion of the fact that true freedom of conscience (i.e., including the right to become an atheist or change one’s faith) simply does not exist in any of the 55 countries of the Organization of Islamic States, while many are in egregious violation of its provisions. 

This warped historiography and unacceptable moral equivalence are melded in a clumsy, callow manner yielding roseate, if not downright reckless predictions about the presumed actions of so-called “Islamist-democrats”. 

Indeed, the bizarre concept of “Islamist-democrats” epitomizes the profoundly flawed premises of Feldman’s analyses. He specifically cites Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the influential Muslim Brotherhood as an example of such an “Islamist-democrat”, calling him “complex”. Again, one is reminded of John Esposito’s utterly discredited reasoning. During a January, 1998 interview – Sheikh Qaradawi stated his beliefs- using unfettered Medieval terminology- that Islamic law divided the People of the Book – Jews and Christians – into three categories: 1) non-Muslims in the lands of war; 2) non-Muslims in lands of temporary truce; 3) non-Muslims protected by Islamic law, that is to say, the dhimmis. Sheikh al-Qaradawi, made it clear that Islamic law had established different rules for each of these categories. The good Sheikh had thus summarized concisely the theory of jihad war (unfortunately ignored by Feldman, Esposito, and their ilk) which regulates the relations of Muslims with non-Muslims.  

More recently, I demonstrated the profoundly negative consequences of having empowered Mr. Feldman to help “craft” the Sharia-compliant constitutions of Iraq and Afghanistan, while ignoring the prescient warnings of those like a serious scholar of Islamic Law, Joseph Schacht: 

Writing in 1955, Joseph Schacht, arguably the greatest 20th century scholar of Islamic Law, identified the still unresolved problems with modern, inchoate Islamic reform efforts. Schacht noted how, 

“The idea of religious law—the concept that law, as well as the other human relationships, must be ruled by religion—has become an essential part of the Islamic outlook. The same, incidentally, is true of politics, and even economics; it explains the recent attempt to hold an Islamic economic congress in Pakistan. Because they cannot face the problem, because they lack historical understanding of the formation of Mohammedan religious law, because they cannot make up their minds, any more than their predecessors could in the early Abbasid period [which began 750 C.E.], on what is legislation, the modernists cannot get away from a timid, halfhearted, and essentially self-contradictory position.” 

And Schacht concludes,

“The real problem poses itself at the religious and not at the technically legal level.” 

Yet despite Schacht’s observations, and the proven, concrete success of the post-World War II reforms in Japan, past intellectual honesty on Shinto has been replaced, at present, by craven, politically correct ignorance on Islam, in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Thus, as championed by a callow American pseudo-scholastic apologist for Islam’s Shari’a, who evangelized for “Islamic Democracy,” Shari’a-compliant Afghani and Iraqi constitutions were crafted (and of course extolled by this same “scholar”, here, and here).  

What a travesty that the voluble Mr. Dershowitz has thus far declined to summon his outstanding polemical skills and confront this pernicious threat to a fundamental right the good Law Professor aptly terms,  “more important than any other right in the Constitution,” emanating from his very own Harvard campus!