Manufacturing the Muslim Menace - Political Research Associates

Manufacturing the Muslim Menace
all facets of our society in an effort to undermine it.
According to Ashabi, one strategy it seeks to use is
“nominating Muslim sympathizers to political office
and law enforcement ranks to then gain access to
computer databases.” 273
SSI President Henry Morgenstern also uses
Brooke Goldstein’s analysis of “Lawfare.” In
Morgenstern’s book Global Jihad, Goldstein has
asserted:
The Islamic movement has two wings—
one violent and one lawful—which can
operate apart but often reinforce each other.
While the violent arm attempts to silence
speech by burning cars when cartoons of
Mohammed are published in Denmark,
the lawful arm is skillfully maneuvering
within Western legal systems, both here
and abroad. 274
SSI’s magazine featured a two-part series by
Goldstein on “How Islamic Tactics Are Targeting
Free Speech,” which concludes, “the use of western
‘hate speech laws’ and other products of political correctness
to destroy the very principles that democracies
stand for, must be countered.” 275 Morgenstern
writes that “some of the Muslim organizations dedicated
prima facie to promoting cultural, economic,
and even individual rights issues or warding off hate
and discrimination but at heart comprise a very
potent arm of the Jihad in the United States because
they undermine the very legal foundation of our ability
to counter them.” 276
5. Muslims Seek to Replace the U.S.
Constitution with Islamic, Sharia, Law
This frame raises the specter of a repressive
Islamic Caliphate ruling over America and suggests
that support for Sharia, rather than kinetic violent terrorism,
is the “the most dangerous threat.” 277 Like the
Islamic “Fifth Column” conspiracy theory, this Sharia
one evokes Cold War fears of global Communism.
The menace of a global Islamic dictatorship stands in
for the former Soviet one. Sharia is a set of ideals that
define a properly constituted Islamic existence.
Selective interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence are
used by some terrorists to mobilize recruits with the
ultimate goal of establishing a global Islamic government,
or Caliphate. This frame is used to stigmatize
civil rights advocates who fight religious discrimination
by vilifying religious accommodation as capitulation
to Islamic rule. CI Centre faculty member
46 POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES
Tawfik Hamid argues that, “Making concessions to
Shariah law is a potentially endless process that could
ultimately result in the passage of unconstitutional
and barbaric laws within the U.S. If every religious
group in the U.S. is allowed to practice its own tribal
or religious law instead of constitutional law, then the
whole notion of a unified country will no longer
exist.” 278 No such process is actually underway.
Further, the demonization of Sharia ignores the
ongoing domestic transformation and accommodation
of Islam to American legal, cultural, social, and
economic norms.
At SSI’s October 2010 Homeland Security
Professionals Conference, John Giduck of Archangel
Anti-Terror Training said, “Going back to the time of
Mohammed, Muslims’ goal has been to take over the
world. They’re looking for lifestyle impact as well as
legal impact.” 279
“You watch,” Giduck told the crowd of police and
federal agents, “in roughly four years, Sharia law will
be recognized by our appellate courts and then there
will be case law precedent that recognizes Sharia
court decisions. . . They will set it up when they think
our courts are ready and then police will be required
to enforce Sharia law. That’s how they affect change
in American society.” 280
Asked to elaborate by a PRA investigator, Giduck
declared, “It’s already happening in the lower courts,
with that New Jersey case. This is how things are
evolving in this country.” 281
In the New Jersey case in question, a judge
denied a restraining order to a woman who testified
that her husband, a Muslim, had forced her to have
non-consensual sex. Judge Joseph Charles, Jr. said he
did not believe the man “had a criminal desire to or
intent to sexually assault” his wife because he was
exercising his prerogatives as he understood them
under Islamic law. Two months later, a state appeals
court correctly reversed that decision. Andrew Silow-
Carroll, the editor in chief of the New Jersey Jewish
News, pointed out that the judge made a bad call and
was overturned. In addition, he noted that our system
already allows some civil matters—but not crimes—
to be settled through other means of arbitration.
“Among those alternative mechanisms is the beit din,
or rabbinic law court,” Silow-Carroll wrote. “Every
day, Jews go before batei din to arbitrate real estate
deals, nasty divorces and business disputes.” Silow-
Carroll continued,
[the notion] of a “soft” takeover of our
banks, universities, and government agen-