Sharia Comes To New Jersey

Many of you are aware of a Supreme Court decision in the Islamic nation of the United Arab Emirates which recently held that wife and child beating are acceptable so long as the punishment wasn't "too extreme." But what you may not know is that a judge in New Jersey recently considered sharia law and Islamic custom in rejecting a restraining order requested by an abused wife.

There is a very disturbing trend in American courts that results in the negation of American law and custom in favor of politically-correct multicultural nonsense. Dangerous nonsense. Here's a quick summary of the case and the New Jersey judge's decision: A married Moroccan Muslim couple moved to New Jersey some years back. After suffering continued beatings and spousal rapes, the wife finally resorted to the New Jersey courts. The facts are undisputed. Police took photos of the battering, demonstrating multiple severe bruising over her entire body. A gynecologist testified to the forced sex. At the couple's house, blood stains were found in many locations, most noticeably on the couple's bed. DNA tests established that all the blood stains came from the wife.

The wife requested a restraining order against the husband. Slam-dunk prior to the latest abandonment of American decency and law. But these are very perilous times. Even the husband's imam testified that Islam requires that the wife must submit to her husband's sexual demands. But he refused to answer what Islam allows if she says no. The husband himself, citing his version of Islamic law, testified that he warned the wife that: "You must do whatever I tell you to do. I want to hurt your flesh. This is according to our religion. You are my wife, I can do anything to you." Had a cult fundamentalist Christian said the same thing by way of defense, the court would have laughed heartily before turning the husband over to the police.

The court made a decision that in my lengthy years in the law I never expected to hear from an American judge. First, the judge determined that the criminal acts were proved (this was a civil court, so the judge had no immediate jurisdiction over the criminal charges). BUT, he then unbelievably denied the restraining order. Without even the concurrence of the defendant's imam, the judge simply ignored New Jersey law and instituted his own version of Islamic/sharia law. He further held that the husband could not be culpable for the physically violent sexual assaults because, hold your breath, "he did not have the specific intent to sexually assault his wife, and because his actions were consistent with his religious practices." Therefore under sharia law this Muslim husband had the right to rape his wife.

In America, we are all supposed to be bound equally by the laws of our nation and our states. It has been the long history of American jurisprudence that you don't apply California law to an Illinois case, you don't apply British law to a federal case, and you don't apply religious law of any kind to any case. This creeping Islamism is an abandonment of the entire course of American jurisprudence. It is an early example of the "special treatment" for Muslims that no other civil or religious class of Americans is allowed. Furthermore, it indicates the willingness of damned fool liberal jurists to begin following the descent into hell already being experienced in Great Britain where there are government-sanctioned Islamic courts separate from the English judicial system.

I wonder how the judge would rule if I beat the crap out him because my religious views allow me to physically attack judicial wrongdoers. In fact, I'd be jailed just for making the threat to throttle him. At least one state, Oklahoma, has begun the march that every state should join by amending its state constitution to forbid state court judges from considering sharia or the law of other nations in a purely state matter. I think it would be a great development if the US Supreme Court would also follow that lead.

Before packing my .357 Magnum and booking a flight to New Jersey, I found out that a New Jersey appellate panel overruled the judge's decision and ordered him to issue the restraining order forthwith (in legal parlance, "forthwith" means "yesterday, you idiot"). That does not alter the fact that an American judge was willing to ignore a very specific New Jersey anti-spousal abuse statute in order not to offend a practitioner of one single religion. It wasn't Christianity, or Judaism, or Buddhism, or Hinduism. It was the one religion that promotes hatred, male domination of women, jihad, and mass murder for infidels--namely, Islam.

According to current politically-correct thought, I'm now supposed to do a lengthy disclaimer that I only mean "radical Islam." Instead I offer the following, "radical Islam" is a redundancy. When an allegedly moderate imam can't bring himself to condemn spousal rape and physical abuse committed by one of his faithful, I have to ask "what is moderate Islam?" There is more to mainstream Islam than flying airplanes into skyscrapers. And if America ever allows sharia to enter the legal system in any form, America is doomed and the rule of law is gone forever.

Somewhat related note: On Wednesday, National Public Radio fired liberal contributor Juan Williams for making the very sensible remark on the Fox O'Reilly Factor that "when I get on a plane and see people in Muslim garb who identify first and foremost as Muslims, I get nervous." The rest of his remarks were sharply aimed at dispelling what he considered to be anti-Islamic stands taken by others. He has consistently been a promoter of the concept of "broad moderate Islam." None of that mattered when the leftists discovered he had made one small and rather innocuous remark aimed at fundamentalist Muslims of a very specific type. So far, the rumor is that CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations) called NPR and demanded Williams be fired. NPR is largely funded by taxpayer funds, so this is getting very close to government censorship of any speech that is even mildly critical of even minor factions of Islam. A judge happily applying sharia law. A taxpayer-funded national radio station firing someone for making a very minor criticism of Islam. A President who bows low to the Saudi king. Are you getting nervous yet?