‘Civilization Jihad’ Comes to Court

By Frank Gaffney, Jr, Center for Security Policy

Want to know what our Islamist enemies have in mind for America? Look at Europe.

Virtually every country there has found itself under siege from Muslims seeking to impose the supremacist Islamic doctrine they call shariah on everyone else. The preeminent organization promoting this agenda is the Muslim Brotherhood, now banned as a terrorist group in its home country of Egypt, but prospering in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in what has been known as the Free World. In fact, as Egyptian courts hand down death sentences to those engaged with the Brotherhood’s violent efforts to overthrow the government there, ours is opening the door to asylum for those who have only engaged in “limited” material support for terrorism.

More insidious than the Muslim Brotherhood’s violence, however, is its stealthy subversion. In a 1991 strategic plan introduced into evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial, a senior Brother named Mohammed Akram described this form of warfare as “civilization jihad.”

In Akram’s words, the goal of the Brotherhood’s civilization jihadists is “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within…so that God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” His “Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America” lays out how this ambitious goal is to be achieved under our noses by penetrating and subverting “from within” the West’s civil society and governing institutions.

The London Telegraph reports that this campaign has just scored a major success in Great Britain. That country’s trade association for lawyers, the Law Society, has declared its members can begin drawing up shariah-compliant wills that will be enforceable in British common law courts.

As the Telegraph put it on March 22nd:

“Under ground-breaking guidance, produced by The Law Society, High Street solicitors will be able to write Islamic wills that deny women an equal share of inheritances and exclude unbelievers altogether.

“The documents, which would be recognized by Britain’s courts, will also prevent children born out of wedlock – and even those who have been adopted – from being counted as legitimate heirs.

“Anyone married in a church, or in a civil ceremony, could be excluded from succession under Shariah principles, which recognize only Muslim weddings for inheritance purposes.”

Such inroads are coming on top of the presence of something on the order of 87 shariah courts that operate side-by-side with Britain’s own judiciary. As one of the U.K.’s most courageous opponents of such practices, Baroness Caroline Cox, told the Telegraph: “No longer do we have a single legal code in our society. Instead, alongside our own law, there is now effectively a parallel quasi-legal system operating within some Muslim communities.”

Think that cannot happen here? Think again. The Muslim Brotherhood’s largest front group in this country, the Islamic Society of North America, requires each of its chapters to maintain arbitration panels that serve as proto-shariah courts. It is a matter of time before Islamists and their apologists begin demanding that such courts be allowed to adjudicate disputes not just between willing parties, but in cases where one party – most likely women and/or children – would prefer to have the protections of our Constitution.

Worse yet, as a study published by the Center for Security Policy in 2011 has documented, there have been at least 27 different instances in which U.S. courts have allowed the use of shariah law to govern – even where doing so has violated constitutional rights of the plaintiffs or defendants. (An updated version of this study now nearing completion indicates that, as of today, there are many more such cases.)

As a corrective to this civilization jihadist incursion into American jurisprudence, seven states have adopted legislation known as American Laws for American Courts (ALAC). If they wish to avoid the fate now facing British citizens who are likely to be denied their rightful inheritances and, in due course, other privations at the hands of shariah, every state in the country should adopt ALAC.

Of course, our Constitution’s Article VI declares that it is the supreme law of the land. But that will no long be the case if the civilization jihadists have their way. We must ensure that shariah is not allowed to undermine that constitutional precept – to the detriment of women, children and the rest of us.