Daniel Greenfield article: The
Inevitability of Sharia Law in the West

The Inevitability of Sharia Law in the West

Posted: 26 Apr 2010 08:37 PM PDT

When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And so
liberals believe that the solution to every problem is more socialism.
Americans often believe the solution to every problem is more democracy.
And Muslims believe that the solution to every problem is Islam. Combine
the three, and you arrive at the inevitability of Sharia law in the West.
As Muslims harness democratic pluralities in countries that have become
socialist and thus less free, they will impose Islamic law.

In the conception of religion held by Western Liberals,
religious moderates are people who are willing to allow the separation of
religion from civic life, or even its domination by the civic code.
Religious extremists they believe are people who want to impose religion
on public life. By this standard however, there is virtually no such thing
as a Muslim moderate, because Muslims do not recognize the hallowed ideas
of Western liberals such as pluralism and the separation of church and
state.

Even the few exceptions such as Turkey, did not create
separate spheres, so much as they imposed forced secularism in order to
modernize the country. And these exceptions are also collapsing, notably
in Turkey where the Islamists under Erdogan have come to power. The
imposed secularism in countries such as Turkey originated at a time when
it was thought that a Muslim country had to forcibly secularize in order
to enjoy the benefits of a modern state.

But the willingness of
Westerners to accommodate Islam, and the billions in oil money that have
flowed into Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have discredited that notion by
showing that one can be a fanatical Muslim and still be a doctor in
England, or own skyscrapers in Dubai, be a Lord or a Peer, a respected
professor in a French university or have a nuclear reactor assembled in
your country. Political correctness, appeasement and Dhimmitude have
eroded the gains made by secularization, and helped radicalize
Islam.

Muslim countries who are socially, morally and politically
backward, nevertheless have access to all the modern technology and
conveniences of the West. Their backwardness makes it all but impossible
for them to actually reform their countries so they provide opportunities
for their own people, but makes it all too easy for them to export their
surplus populations to the West.

And so a goat herder who still
believes that he has the right to kill his daughter if she so much as
looks at a boy, can get on a 747 and arrive in London or Paris in a matter
of hours. New York or Los Angeles in a matter of a few more. His children
will go to Western schools, where they will be implicitly or explicitly
taught the superiority of Islam, almost as much as they would be in a
Madrassa. They will never be forced to choose between Islam and the
benefits of the West-- and so they will inevitably choose both, benefiting
from their free educations, their professional careers and the good life,
while embracing increasingly fanatical Islamic ideas, in order to balance
out their materialistic lives.

This combination of a Western trappings and Islamic interior
will doom the West. Because Islam is an ideology that is less about faith,
than it is about governance. Unlike their Western liberal patrons, Muslims
do not recognize any distinction between church and state. Which means
they are bent on imposing their religion on the state. Western liberals
believe that most Muslims are moderate. Most Muslims however believe that
the remedy for all social, political and moral ills lies in Islam.

A believing Muslim, whether Westerners consider him an extremist
or a moderate, will believe that Islam and the Koran have the solution for
all of society's ills. Social problems are caused by a lack of Islam. In
his worldview, Muslim countries can only repair their problems through
Islam. And non-Muslim countries in the Dar al Kufr (Realm of the
Infidels), Dar Al Harb (Realm of the Sword) are bound to be even worse
off, because they don't follow Islamic law. Which means their only
solution is Islam.

In such a scenario, Sharia is inevitable.
Because as Western liberals think of social reforms in terms of added
government control, Muslims think of reform as added clerical control.
This makes Muslims and Socialists seem like natural allies, at least for a
time, because both confuse reform with centralization that takes
individual liberties. Meanwhile the Western Liberal is deluded enough to
think that any application of Sharia law will be moderate, when in fact it
will be no such thing. Because the Muslim understanding of the world is
radically different than the Western understanding of the
world.

For example take
the recent statement by a Muslim cleric that blames immodestly dressed
women for earthquakes. Such an idea has a basis in Islam. It may seem
utterly insane to the Western mind, but it demonstrates a worldview in
which every individual action is inherently interconnected with the larger
social welfare, (an idea shared by both Muslims and Socialists). And if
indeed women not wearing a burka cause earthquakes-- then the greater good
demands that they be compelled to wear them. After all what is more
important, freedom of dress or people dying in earthquakes?

Variations of that argument will accompany resistance to any
Islamic ban. And the only response to it can be that the idea behind it is
lunatic and unproven. Yet the former would be construed as denigrating
Islam and the latter is a useless point, as there is also no way to
disprove that (or any other insane linkage that a cleric might come up
with).

If you really doubt that such a thing can happen in the
rational West, remember that much of our best and brightest currently
believe that cow flatulence and human exhaling is destroying the planet,
that gender differences are the product of nurture and that people who
share their political views have superior genes. The belief of that
Islamic cleric is no more absurd than these, and with enough force and
propaganda behind it, is just as likely to be accepted. And much worse
things will be as well.

As a country's population rises, it will
approach the Sharia tipping point. Sharia law's imposition will be sold as
social reforms, just as they are throughout the Muslim world. And since
only disruptive forces would be opposed to it, naturally criticizing its
implementation would be one of the first bans. There is only one clean way
to avoid it. Just as there is only one clean way to avoid a Communist or
Nazi takeover. And that is not to have people inside your borders who want
to see the country turn into a Nazi, Communist or Islamist state. If you
fail to do that, then sooner or later, you will either face a bloody civil
war, or/and live under a Communist, Nazi or Islamist state.