The only reason that I didn't link to Matt Duss' post on the Frank Gaffney lead "Team B" report on the impending threat of Sharia law presented to members of Congress Trent Franks, Pete Hoekstra, and Michelle Bachmann was that I intended to write a post on it. Suffice it to say that congressional Republicans accepting a national-security report authored by birthers and Islamophobes like Gaffney and Andy McCarthy was bad enough. Now it seems that, according to Duss, the "expert" whose interpretation of Islamic law they drew from was David Yerushalmi, a man who believes that "Islam was born in violence; it will die that way," and wants "Muslim youth be taught from the cradle to reject the religion of their forebears."
That isn't the half of it. Yerushalmi basically wants to criminalize being a Muslim, proposing that:
- It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam.
- The Congress of the United States of America shall declare the US at war with the Muslim Nation or Umma.
- The President of the United States of America shall immediately declare that all non-US citizen Muslims are Alien Enemies under Chapter 3 of Title 50 of the US Code and shall be subject to immediate deportation.
- No Muslim shall be granted an entry visa into the United States of America.
In case it isn't immediately obvious, this resembles the kind of religious restrictions adopted by the kind of Islamist governments whose ideas we're supposed to be resisting, where conversion and apostasy are illegal. I said before that the mission statement of the torture wing of the GOP is that "Islamic extremists are monsters. We should be more like them," but I've never seen anyone take it so directly to heart. This guy is essentially calling for the adoption of a secular, American law that would treat American Muslims the way non-Muslims are treated in some authoritarian Muslim countries.
And of course, on top of all this, Yerushalmi says, "There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote." Where'd they find this guy?
Do Franks, Hoekstra, and Bachmann agree that Islam ought to be criminalized in this fashion? Do they think their colleague Keith Ellison ought to be deported because he is a Muslim? Do they think we ought to issue a congressional declaration of war against all Muslims? Do they think acts "knowingly in furtherance of, or to support the adherence of Islam" ought to be punished with the kind of sentence that one might draw for committing second-degree murder? They ought to explain why they think it's wise to accept advice on national-security matters from people who do.
