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Two seemingly unrelated things happened recently, one in Oklahoma, the other in Pakistan, that focused my attention on our fragile American culture. We think all people are like us, are similarly motivated, see the world as we do, abide their religions as we do, and most importantly, believe all religions are basically much alike and life affirming. We are endangered by our own blissful ignorance of other cultures.

Ruling in Oklahoma
A recent ruling in Oklahoma, by Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange, has blocked a change the voters of her state had approved. The voters said the state must not use the laws of other nations, nor Islamic Sharia Law in the deliberations of its courts. In over-ruling the electorate, the judge said she believed Sharia Law changes from environment to environment. I read that as saying that Sharia Law here wasn’t the same as (as bad as?) in Somalia or Pakistan. Laughable were it not such a dangerous notion.

We don’t like to think of any religion or culture as not being equally protected by our laws and Constitution. However, if being a religious Muslim meant living by a code similar to that of a good Lutheran, that is, dealing mostly with the “inner world” of the individual and following the Golden Rule in the outward culture, the issue would not have been on Oklahoma’s ballot. The judge failed to understand what the citizens did: Islam is a complete culture, a way of life, a system of law, not just another religion as we understand “religion” in the West.

As a way of life and culture, Islam dictates almost all of an adherent’s major “choices.” Most of the substantive actions in life are demanded by Allah in the Koran. Some actions are proscribed in a second book (The Hadith), and a tiny portion of actions Allah does not care about. A large number of actions are forbidden. Sharia Law is there to spell out details of marriage, divorce, child rearing, food, clothing, hygiene, prayer, commercial and criminal law, and much more. A complete code of daily conduct. It is religion, politics, and law. Most important of the things forbidden is to question any part of Islam.

Unfortunately for the women of Islam even the activities that Allah does not care to direct, husbands or other male family members do. The men believe they are empowered to control females—totally, like their sheep or their cell phones. The voters of Oklahoma don’t want Sharia Law in their courts because they understand the consequences of Sharia’s underpinning culture and it is not ours: Steal? Cut off the hand. Raped? Four men must bear witness against the rapist. If the rapist is exonerated, the woman is stoned to death.

I recently opened a National Geographic magazine and staring back at me was a young woman. Her nose was gone. So were her ears. After suffering beatings from her husband, she decided to run. She was caught, held down, and her husband disfigured her.

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial “Fulfilling Our Duty as Muslim-Americans” by Dr. Quanta A. Ahmed, author of In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor’s Journey in the Saudi Kingdom, “Justice is the cornerstone of Islamic life—despite the appalling reality of many Muslim-majority countries today. Every faithful Muslim must contribute to the preservation of justice within their society.” She goes on to say that can be accomplished by providing “expert testimony, informing on radical entities and perhaps foremost, educating ourselves about our religion.”

Assassination in Pakistan
The hard fact is, critical examination of Islam is forbidden. Even to question is heresy. The recent assassination of Salman Taseer in Pakistan, by one of his own guards, was in retaliation Taseer’s belief that the Islamic blasphemy laws needed to be examined. Taseer was responding to a case in which a Christian woman was under arrest and in danger of death because she was alleged to have said something Muslims believed to be blasphemy.

Five hundred clerics in Pakistan lauded Taseer’s assassin who smiled for the press cameras from the police car. The clerics told their people not to mourn Taseer, he had been dealt with justly.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, “Experts believe the outpouring of praise for the killer of Salman Taseer, the former governor of Punjab who was slain by his own security detail in Islamabad on Tuesday, reflects deep support for religious intolerance and will have a chilling effect on reform-minded public figures.”

Chill indeed. Europeans are reaping the harvest of their silence and the refusal to rightly name the adversary within. Large European cities, such as Paris have Muslim enclaves where police fear to enter. Many, if not most, of the disturbances outside these enclaves are from bands of male Muslims, euphemistically called “roving youth” by the cowed European press. The authorities are afraid their culture will be completely overwhelmed if they try to stem this violence head-on.

The Muslim birthrate in these countries and in Russia far exceeds the aging native populations. Demographers estimate that by 2050 (and many say sooner), Muslims could simply vote in a Sharia-compliant government in some European countries.
Sometime the death knell of a people and their culture is the physical environment. Sometimes change is wrought through conquest, sometime by demographics. And, sometimes, because ignorance is not bliss. America can survive all of those influences by upholding the inherent cohesive force of our culture embodied in our laws.

To understand why that is imperative, we need to start learning about Islam, Sharia, madrassa schools, The Hadith, and the heros of Islam. We need to speak up against rulings like Judge LaGrange’s. We need to be counted, like the 70% of Oklahomans who understand that our way of life, not just religious freedom, is protected by the Constitution; we need to affirm that if we start bringing in laws that have not been sifted through the historical process of our courts and our Constitution, we are in danger of becoming a culture with courts that can excuse murder and mutilation, and eventually, exert rigid control of all education and personal activity.