Federal judge approves government funding for Sharia indoctrination

Another foolish decision by an ignorant and politically correct judge. "Judge OKs 'flag of Islam on American soil': Decision approves government funding for Shariah indoctrination," by Bob Unruh in WorldNetDaily, January 19 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Attorneys for a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War say they have filed a petition to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a federal district judge ruled it is OK for the U.S. government to fund commercial enterprises that promote the indoctrination of Islamic law, or Shariah, in the United States.

The decision came from Judge Lawrence Zatkoff, who changed his perspective on the issue and said just last week that he would dismiss a constitutional challenge brought by Kevin Murray against the U.S. government's bailout of AIG, the insurance giant.

AIG used more than "$100 million in federal tax money to support Islamic religious indoctrination through the funding and promotion of Shariah-compliant financing. ... SCF is financing that follows the dictates of Islamic law," said the Thomas More Law Center, or TMLC.

TMLC is representing Murray in his challenge to the use of federal tax money to promote Islam in the U.S.

The non-profit legal advocacy group's president, Richard Thompson, warned of the precedent.

"Judge Zatkoff's ruling allows for oil-rich Muslim countries to plant the flag of Islam on American soil," he said. "His ruling ignored the uncontested opinions of several Shariah experts and AIG's own website, which trumpeted Shariah-compliant financing as promoting the law of the prophet Mohammed and as an ethical product and a new way of life."

TMLC and co-counsel David Yerushalmi immediately filed a notice of appeal to the 6th Circuit.

"[Zatkoff's] ruling ignored AIG's use of a foreign Islamic advisory board to control investing in accordance with Islamic law," Thompson continued. "This astonishing decision allows the federal government as well as AIG and other Wall Street bankers to explicitly promote Shariah law - the 1,200-year-old body of Islamic canon law based on the Quran, which demands the destruction of Western civilization and the United States."

Thompson warned it is the same law "championed by Osama bin Laden and the Taliban; it is the same law that prompted the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks; and it is the same law that is responsible for the murder of thousands of Christians throughout the world. The law center will do everything it can to stop Shariah law from rearing its ugly head in America."

The lawsuit, Murray v. Geithner et al., was brought because Murray, as a taxpayer, alleges he is being forced to contribute to the propagation of Islamic beliefs and practices predicated upon Islamic law, which he says is hostile to his Christian religion.

Among those who submitted statements in the case were two noted experts in Islamic law and terrorism, Stephen C. Coughlin and Robert Spencer.

Coughlin, a lawyer and decorated Army Reserve officer, is a leading Pentagon expert on the link between Islamic law and jihad. He explained that by engaging in Shariah-compliant financing, AIG and the federal government - which owns 79.9 percent of AIG - are engaging in the religious practice of Islam.

Islam teaches hostility and discrimination against Jews, Christians and anyone who doesn't accept the Quran as the "word of Allah," he said, explaining that the indoctrination stems from the same law that motivated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.

As WND reported, Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, has studied Islamic theology and history for 30 years. He is author of "Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs," "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades" and eight other books on Islam. He has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the U.S. Central Command, the U.S. Command and General Staff College, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the U.S. intelligence community.

Spencer explained that by offering Shariah-compliant financing, AIG is promoting religious behavior that teaches hatred and discrimination against Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims....

Indeed.

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Who do we write to complain?

"Shari'ah compliant" finance also presents a handy way to launder money for "Islamic charities" monies going to finance Jihad. Look for much more of this in the future.

One way to put the brakes on Sharia finance fiddles is to force companies to adopt Corporate Compliance policies. This entails (among other things) totally transparent financial structures in the company that ensure any attempt to transfer funds to terrorist organizations, for example, under the guise of charity contributions would be flagged up immediately.

Corporate Compliance is the relatively new kid on the block, but it's gaining ground. I'm involved with the implementation of these policies in large companies and know that it is an effective 'firewall' against corruption.

It's based on the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. Here's an overview for anyone who is interested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes–Oxley_Act

impeach,Impeach,IMPEACH!!!!!!!!

It just keeps getting better and better

Folks - think about how our way of life is being desicrated in the name of tolerance and diversity. It will be the demise of the USA. Many many years from now, it will end with the throats of every last man women and child having their throats sliced open and the blood will runoff in the sewers.

P.C. has to be thrown out in special cases. THIS IS ONE OF THEM. Smarten up dammit.

God save the USA, no one else will.

Diversity is an evil thing.
Diversity means "dis-unity"...

We need to be united as Christians and as United States citizens.

Don't play around with semantics in an attempt to find something good with diversity; dis-unity is bad.

People confuse tolerance with pacifism. Tolerance ends when tolerance is not returned. Islam is a non-tolerant, violent religion. It has NO place in the USA.

If Christians killed as many muslims a day as muslims kill Christians, it would be all over the news... but the idiotic news stations in this country are silent, as is our socialist secretary of state, Clinton... But then again, the irreverant, ungodly people of this country voted her boss into power, and just as, "stupid is as stupid does", he put her into that position.

I only hope that whereas the Bible says, "God is not mocked", that the ungodly will be dealt with sooner than later for allowing this country to become so intolerant towards Christianity.

The funny thing is, if the situation was reversed (A Muslim sued cause they felt it infringed on THEIR rights of Islam) we would bend over and appease them in a heartbeat.

Man, Sharia Law is coming, man. Spencer's book 'Stealth Jihad' isn't scratching the surface. They are coming, its just a matter of time until they rape my daughter and sell her to slavery, rape and kill my wife, all while holding me down and making me watch - even after I pay the Jizya

This is unbelieveable our judges and politicans have no clue what they are doing to this nation all in the name of Islam. This is not an Islamic nation it is a civil nation. If the Muslims want to live under Sharia law they should stay in an Islamic country. We have our civil laws in place and they need no adjustments. Ignorance is no longer an excuse for treason.

Islam has once again "out smarted the United States justice system". Why should it be a supprize this time? As long as this nation avoids the truth, we will most certainly never reach a just verdict in the justice system. Political Correctness must end it's strangle hold on truth, in the courts of this nation. There is only one truth on any given subject. There are those whom not only know the truth concerning Islam. And have been saying so publically for years. The news media is afraid to tell the truth. Because they may be jailed or killed for doing so. But Bill Warner, Robert Spencer, Brigitte Gabriel, Mateen Elass, Nonie Dawwish, Greet Wilders, Dr. Tawfik Hamid, Joy Brighton, and Guy Rogers all know what the truth is concerning Shariah Law and its history. Or does the truth have anything at all to do with anything any more...?

Government ownership of a "private" enterprise is a problem unto itself. Here, the Islamic-compliant part (payment of a Jihad tax) of AIG's operations was just a fraction of the whole. The judicial politics of this particular case made it difficult even for any judge to rule in plaintiff's favor. Suppose you were to list an array of one hundred individual and different objections to any government action, if each one of them alone was enough to stop the government action then government would not be able to function at all. AIG, as the court noted, was not primarily religious.

I object to the federal government's faith-based gifting schemes to religious organizations. Here too the problem, the establishment issue, would be entirely sidestepped because it is not just one religion or religious group that gets money, it is distributed to many (which I say is subject to arbitrary disbursements, and wholly excludes gifts to apostates). Such legislation targets religion specifically for special favors and should be even more suspect than the case brought against the government for their pro-Sharia AIG investment.

If is routine for government to tactically add one allowable feature to any law or action so that it can be claimed to have "any" legitimate public purpose, then attach one or more offensive elements onto it. A judge, and a plaintiff, would have to be very skilled at disambiguation so as to find a clear basis for overturning the government action, and then to explain the reasoning in an opinion.

The challenge of disambiguation is useful in other contexts too, as when Hamas is deemed to be a charity organization, by some, notwithstanding its' charter provisions that set out an unmistakable genocidal intent. Same for the Party of God.

When Eugene Volokh addressed the case issue in "Court Rejects Claim that AIG’s Use of Sharia-Compliant Financing Violates the Establishment Clause" he included some remarks about investing by government employee retirement funds. I believe that he overstated the independence that these funds have from the government itself. I commented initially as follows:

Government compulsion upon any person to entrust some of their savings in a pseudo-independant investment pool that thereafter invests in a religiously oriented enterprise should be viewed as a violation of an individual’s rights if they are not offered the option to opt-out entirely from the investment pool.

This would avoid the disambiguation problem by refocusing exclusively on an individual liberty interest of one individual alone and their liberty interest as to their own private savings. Below are some follow-up comments I had drafted but did not post to Volokh.com. Hopefully someone might find them useful:


Eugene's characterization of the independence of government employee retirement plans was too broad. As to this particular case with the government taking a direct ownership interest there is one person trying to upset one single big deal, on religious grounds. If it were another case, hypothetically, where just one public employee wants to take their own money and entrust it elsewhere, they could try to assert their individual religious objection, where they would insist on opting-out. It would not upset any single identifiable big deal. It would be much easier for a judge to go along with. But, as a class, the public employees have become like a giant aggregated group of captive investors, of accounts that are only nominally their own.

The plaintiffs here brought the wrong case, in my opinion. I think that nearly every public employee retirement plan had a small investment in AIG, just as they had in Enron. One small victory could have set a precedent, to let individuals engage in their own investment decision boycotts for any reason that suits their own philosophy, and particularly so if they can raise religious objections. It need not be specific to, and confined to, the facts of any given company. It would not require asking a judge to ponder the implications of unwinding some deal already struck, creating a remedy nightmare that is beyond the mental capabilities of any person, let alone a mere mortal judge that has far less economic expertise than say, for example, Judge Posner.

Keep it simple. A little victory would have been more durable, and repeatable, than the one off case that this plaintiff brought. The fact that Islamic terrorist taxes supports terror, not charity, should be something worthy of judicial notice, but not yet today. (Charity designation for IRS purposes can be defeated by a single criminal act by an entity.) Don't ask a judge to embrace your own religious view, just ask a judge to respect your own view (even if unquantifiable) as to your own individual investment choices. Deny CalPERS, for example, the right to have a pool of captive investors.

The precedential effect of the case that was decided could also be applied to a company that makes a big public display that they are not Sharia-compliant, but are proudly Jihad-Terror-Free. The Muslim Brotherhood would not be able to object to such a designation through a judicial order, attempting to transform a whine about personal stigma into pro-Sharia legislation from the bench. A Jihad-Terror-Free label would merely allow individuals to make informed investment and purchasing decisions, just as the Sharia-compliant label does. We wouldn't want a company that displayed a Jihad-Terror-Free label to be automatically disqualified for federal contracts and the like.

My advice would be to 1) Seek repeal of "faith-based" gifting by government and 2) Seek out one state government employee that is forced to entrust their retirement savings to a state retirement investment pool and argue on their behalf that they do not want to take advantage of the (optional?) federal tax breaks for retirement savings and that they want their pay, all their pay, at the same time and in the same form as their other ordinary pay.

The opt-out demand can be repeated tens of thousands of times. The court decision leaves no other option. Boycott participation in any pseudo-independant government run investment pool that has or has had any investment in AIG (or any other company that engages in investments that the individual finds objectionable).

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