From the beginning of the "Arab Spring," I said here and elsewhere that it was not a democracy movement, as the Western press was claiming, but an Islamic supremacist pro-Sharia takeover that would result in the creation of Islamic states that would be far more hostile to the U.S. and Israel than the Arab nationalist regimes they were supplanting. This assessment was greeted with the usual scorn: the Islamic supremacist media machine charged "Islamophobia," on Fox Juan Williams said I was "fearmongering," and the usual suspects made the usual ad hominem attacks. Yet everything that has happened since then has shown that I was right all along.
But Islamic supremacists and their allies and useful idiots in the mainstream media continue to peddle their soothing lies. The Islamic supremacist and adolescent mudslinger Reza Aslan was at West Virginia University last night speaking about the developments in the Middle East, and heaping more steaming piles of what he calls analysis on the hapless marks in his audience. "Believe it or not," Aslan said, and anyone with eyes in his head will opt for "not," "the greatest single aspiration in the region at this moment is to achieve democracy." Slyly implying that those who have cast doubts on this alleged wonderful flowering of democracy are motivated by racism, he continued: "It does not matter where you pray or what skin color you were born with; democracy is a fundamental right of life." He also, according to the report on his talk in the campus paper, "aimed to debunk that the Arab Spring is an Islamic takeover. This myth is simply an American paradox due to the primary belief that we live in a secular country that easily separates church and state, he said." Ah yes, of course. "There is not much difference between us and them," Aslan said. "These groups now have the opportunity to come out of the mosque and to market ideas and see how they can come to life in reality."
Yes, "there is not much difference between us and them." After all, we all want to cover women in burqas and enslave them to their husbands, brutalize and terrorize non-Muslims, murder apostates from Islam, and extinguish the freedom of speech, don't we? And apparently one way these Egyptian parliamentarians hope to "come to life in reality" is by crucifying people and amputating their limbs. Yet as always, it doesn't matter how outstandingly wrong and deceptive politically correct spokesmen are. It doesn't matter that none of their predictions ever come true, or that everything they said was nothing to be concerned about turns out to be a matter of major concern. There is never any accountability for them at all -- that a clown like Reza Aslan gets invited to speak at any university at all, while those who are consistently correct are demonized and marginalized, is a measure of how debased and politicized American academia and the public square in general have become.
"MP proposes Sharia punishments for murder, theft crimes," translated from Al-Masry Al-Youm at Egypt Independent, March 14 (thanks to Twostellas):
The People’s Assembly Proposals and Complaints Committee discussed in a meeting Tuesday a bill proposed by MP Adel Azzazy from the Salafi-oriented Nour Party that would apply Islamic law for certain crimes.The proposed law calls for the application of “Heraba,” an Islamic penalty for criminal actions that include overt robbery, murder, forcible taking of property with a weapon and vandalizing public facilities.
The penalties according to Azzazy’s bill are execution in the case of murder, or cutting one arm and one leg from opposite sides of the culprit’s body in the cases of robbery and forcible taking of property. If the taking of possessions is accompanied by murder, the penalty would be death or crucifixion, to be determined by the judge.
This is in accord with the Qur'an: "This is the recompense of those who fight against God and His Messenger, and hasten about the earth, to do corruption there: they shall be slaughtered, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall alternately be struck off; or they shall be banished from the land. That is a degradation for them in this world; and in the world to come awaits them a mighty chastisement" (5:33).
The bill also stipulates imprisonment for intimidating citizens, and that the prison sentence will end when the felon repents.These penalties would only be imposed on adult, mentally stable wrongdoers who either commit the crimes or assist in carrying them out, according to the bill.
Policemen are entitled to treat felons with force after warning them, and are also entitled to shoot them dead. But if they surrender or are wounded, policemen are obliged not to hurt them, the proposed law says.
Stolen possessions should be returned to their owners, the law says, but it stipulates that if their owners are unknown, they should be put in the state's treasury. For murders, citizens affected by the crime should be given the options of retribution, receiving compensation or granting amnesty.
“This is God’s law and is not optional,” Azzazy said, commenting on his proposal. “The current penalties are not deterrent enough.”
MP Gamal Heshmat from the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party praised the bill. He said that under former People’s Assembly Speaker Sufi Abu Taleb, draft laws were adjusted to match Islamic Sharia but were later shelved intentionally.
But the assembly’s committee asked Azzazy to reformulate the bill after the Justice Ministry’s representative, Haytham al-Baqly, criticized its lack of accuracy, saying that many of its stipulations are found in existing laws.
According to Parliament’s bylaws, the Proposals and Complaints Committee, after approving the law, should submit it to the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee, which would write a report on it before slating a session to reach a final resolution.
UPDATE: I added a comment at the West Virginia University paper site, showing the falsity of Aslan's remarks, but the comment was removed. Another academic bastion of free inquiry and honest debate reveals itself.
RSS Feed
The verb translated to "slaughtered" in v 5:33 is yuqattalu, which is (I believe) the participle of taqteel, which means to "kill in a very painful manner."
So, ignoring crucifixion, someone simply executed would be killed in such a grotesque and painful way that it would be beyond the pale of modern sensibilities, such as stoning (rajim), etc.
http://books.google.com/books?id=04B-mS2SPpcC&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=yuqattalu&source=bl&ots=z1TaNAsko8&sig=UvSmh_Ih7lUCipDAANWnJkc9oK4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4wRNT8_JKcTYqgGp8IzFDg&sqi=2&ved=0CDQQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=yuqattalu&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=bB4UAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=yuqattalu&source=bl&ots=vR7rDe4GvH&sig=IKn9EezhD5fiHRxqizFWS9B37hs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4wRNT8_JKcTYqgGp8IzFDg&sqi=2&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false