Law

"Sharia Judge", Mark Martin

Islamic extremism and violence have already occurred in our society. This is the disease which comes from engaging in war, supported by popular fear, whipped up by political and economic motives. The psychological and sociological fall-out from Afghanistan and Iraq have just begun to play out in American culture. This Islamic extremism did not take the form of a car bombing. It was much more insidious and corrosive to the American justice system and Constitutional guarantees. 

A Muslim man, attending a Halloween parade in a small Pennsylvania town,  physically attacked a marcher in the parade because the parader was costumed as a Zombie Mohammad, next to a friend who was costumed as a Zombie Pope. The Muslim man was detained. Charges were filed. There were many witnesses. There was a video of the attack. It was a costume parade in public on an American street, after all.

The judge, a military veteran of service in Muslim countries and Muslim convert, who presided over the case when it came to a hearing dismissed the case on the basis that its was the Muslim man's right to attack a person who represents Mohammad. He spent six minutes berating the attacked victim for his actions in the parade. He defended the Muslim man's religious right to violence in the circumstances. 

I am happy to say that most accounts of this incident in the media express consternation. However, there is no clear indication that this incident will not be met with state or Federal intercession. In other words, local Sharia Law may already be in effect in the U.S..

As a gay man, should I expect that I can be attacked by a Muslim if I kiss my partner on the street in America? Will I need to research the local law if I travel in the U.S. in future? Are we returning to a new era of Jim Crow with atheists, homosexuals and freethinkers being the new targets of sanctioned hate crimes?

This may sound like hyperbole to more conventional ears. Segregation was once widely accepted in America not so very long ago. Gay men were sentenced to criminal punishment as Communists and degenerates in courtrooms across America not too long ago. 

Look to the mosques being built in every major U.S. city with money from Saudi Arabia. How long will it be before these incidents become commonplace if the law does not firmly assert the separation in the U.S. between civil and religious laws? While those of us who are more easily identifiable as non-Islamic in the eyes of fanatics may bear the earliest attacks from this extremism, it will not be long before this cancer corrupts the fabric of civil, secular society for all citizens, unless it is nipped in the bud by those who are sworn to defend the Constitution of the United States. At this writing, no authority seems to have come forth to deal appropriately with Judge Martin.