State Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, and state Rep. Judd Matheny, R-Tullahoma, have introduced a bill that would make it a felony to adhere to Sharia law in the state of Tennessee — punishable by 15 years in jail. The facially unconstitutional law would make Tennessee the leading state in the Union in the denial of freedom of religion.
The law declares Sharia to be a danger to homeland security and includes any adherence to Sharia (including feet washing and prayers) as prohibited acts.
Matheny is the House speaker pro tempore and actually says that he is defending the U.S. Constitution by denying religious practices to citizens.
The law was reportedly drafted by David Yerushalmi, an Ariz.-based attorney who runs the Society of Americans for National Existence, a nonprofit that says following Shariah is treasonous. The article below reports that Yerushalmi has “close ties to Frank Gaffney, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy.”
Yerushalmi has been denounced as a “facsict” by writers like Richard Silverstein, who quotes Yerushalmi on such notable comments as this:
One must admit readily that the radical liberal Jew is a fact of the West and a destructive one…Indeed, Jews in the main have turned their backs on the belief in G-d and His commandments as a book of laws for a particular and chosen people…What interest does America have in a strong Israel? If your answer is democracy in a liberal or western sense, know you have sided with the Palestinians of Hamas.
The bill is little more than an anti-Islamic screed. It includes such “findings” as:
The knowing adherence to sharia and to foreign sharia authorities is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the United States government and the government of this state through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the United States and Tennessee Constitutions by the likely use of imminent criminal violence and terrorism with the aim of imposing sharia on the people of this state.
It misstates critical aspects of the Islamic faith:
Sharia in particular includes a war doctrine known as jihad, which is an organic, intrinsic and central feature of the laws and traditions of sharia due to a consensus among sharia authorities throughout the ages
Jihad is in fact a general term that does not mean violent overthrow but a wide range of religious based charity and service, according to experts on Islam.
The bill is SB 1028 in the Senate and HB 1353 in the House. It treats mere adherence to Sharia as tantamount to terrorism, and includes a provision giving the state attorney general the power to designate a sharia-following organization in the same way that the U.S. Attorney General declares an organization to be a terrorist organization:
(1) The attorney general and reporter is authorized to designate an organization as a sharia organization in accordance with this subsection (a) if the attorney general and reporter finds that:
(A) The organization knowingly adheres to sharia;
(B) The organization engages in, or retains the capability and intent to engage in, an act of terrorism as defined in § 39-13-803; and
(C) The act of terrorism of the organization threatens the security or public safety of this state’s residents.
Here is the law: SB1028
There are few sites more critical of the abuses of Sharia law than this blog. If you search Sharia on this site, you will bring up an endless array of shocking abuses. However, the way to fight such abuse is not to become equally authoritarian and hateful. Most of these abuses are concentrated in radical Islamic governments. Sharia law is far broader in its application and interpretation.
It is highly ironic to see politicians advocating a bill criminalizing religious practices in the name of protecting a Constitution created to protect religious freedoms. One would have to go pretty far from our shores to find how to implement such laws. For example, Saudi Arabia outlaws places of worship of other religions and, of course, the Taliban regularly punishes those who practice other religions.
In the end, these legislators will simply expend taxpayer money to defend a law that has been unconstitutional since the establishment of this Republic.
Source: Tennessean
Jonathan Turley
You’re just adorable when you don’t have a clue.
Why not just wheel around and give yourself a big ol’ pat on the back.
I am pleased to announce the partnership of Mr. Harris and Mr. Buddha. As you have noticed they have been moving around and around to various threads on this blog. You can see that they make a cute couple and have the agility to jack all of the threads for personal reasons and vendettas. Please join us in praising the efforts of both of the fine intelligent men on our behalf.
Thank You both for your continued eaffronts.
Oooo.
Another antisocial, pro-anarchy, anti-civilization, anti-legalism, pro-tyranny jerkwad with a bad case of “I know you are but what am I”.
I’m so not impressed.
The proofs and arguments on my part, and the lack thereof from Brian, stand.
So unless you can provide some proof whereas he has provided none?
You might as well put a sock in it, propaganda puppet.
Because nanny-nanny-boo-boo will just get you laughed at around these parts.
“Brian makes no sense at all unless you’re a supporter of tyranny.”
So you should understand him perfectly as that is what you support, with great enthusiasm I might add.
Not at all, Fanboy.
Simply because 1) the only two people in the world I’m jealous of are Buzz Aldrin and David Gilmour and 2) Brian makes no sense at all unless you’re a supporter of tyranny.
Buddha is Laughing:
You are just jealous that Dr. J. Brian Harris, PhD. is better at post mortem equine flagellation than you are and that he makes eminently more sense in the process.
Gingerbaker,
http://www.mediamonitors.net/elmasry31.html
This article answers the nickel flavored ice cream issue.
Brian,
Claiming it is unethical to defend your postulates in a forum that thrives on assertions and (this is very important) proofs is simply evasion. As evasion is a form of lie of omission – in this case a lie of omission of proof – and lying is prime facie unethical, technically speaking not defending your ideas by simple evasion is unethical. Not the other way around. But reversed thinking is a hallmark of the things you say. “Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.” – Adolf Hitler
There is no misunderstanding of your idea as presented. Your idea is simply wrong and has been proven wrong. Those who do not defend their postulates, cannot defend their postulates. A goal of both science and law is proof. If you had any, you’d be wise to use it, because an assertion without proof is merely a belief and not a fact. Facts are king.
You can believe the moon is made of green cheese if you like. The fact is that it is made of silica, alumina, lime, iron oxide, magnesia, titanium dioxide and sodium oxide. This is borne out by samples brought back from the moon and analyzed with mass spectrometers. You see, the proof is in the eating of the pudding, Brian. You want to show your pudding but no let anyone eat it. Human existence without laws and courts – dispute resolution in the adversarial mode – would be brutish, marred by even more injustice and inequity, expanding tyranny of the strong over the weak, violence, and anarchy. This is because adversity arises not from the legal process, but from human nature in their interaction with each other and the environment. The law arose as a check on human nature, a stabilizing force that allowed civilizations to grow beyond simple tribal sizes.
I have made a sound case against your postulate as a matter of logic.
I have demonstrated your postulate harms the law, not helps it.
I have demonstrated your postulate harms society and civilization.
I have demonstrated your postulate harms the Constitution which guarantees adjudication of disputes as a right and establishes the judiciary as a key support in the triumvirate construction of our government.
I have demonstrated that you would harm the law by removing one of its key operating mechanisms.
You have demonstrated you can state an easily dismantled fiction as if it were a fact, offer no proof, and when confronted on your absence of proof, respond with circular logic, false equivalences, evasion, mischaracterizations, lies, obfuscation, made up meanings for terminology, religious ramblings and appeals to your inappropriate authority.
If by this “every effort I find anyone here has made to tell me how my finding is being rejected only further validates my findings” you mean that you came here to prove your “work” was wrong and utter crap, then yes, your work has been validated as wrong and utter crap. And that is the sum total of what you’ve validated. It will remain the sum total of what you’ve validated until you provide proof to the contrary. But you won’t because to provide that proof is “unethical”. But you can’t, because such proof does not exist or is of such dubious quality as to be as easily dismantled as your initial false assertion.
Both in science and in law, there is a simple maxim regarding proof.
Put up or shut up.
But saying that to prove your assertion is unethical?
Is just simply hilarious.
BIL:
Well, that’s succinctly said.
But, I don’t see the flavors as chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. More like chocolate, vanilla and nickel. Islam is going to vociferously and steadfastly demand accommodation for policies that are frankly unconstitutional and morally repugnant to Western society… And that is something quite new.
Islam represents a fundamentally different threat to Western democracy than the other Abrahamic sects, pardon the pun. I don’t think historical extrapolation from Christianity is going to be a useful analytic tool, either. One must resist the natural and politically-correct inclination to see them as equivalent.
The rise of fundamentalist Christianity in the U.S. has been a bizarre emulsion of right-wing politics, corporate interests, and Southern identity. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamicism around the world is a natural and organic consequence of the religion. These are very different phenomena.
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, February 24, 2011 at 8:01 pm
Brian,
Yeah, that you aren’t living in the real world is pretty much a given at this point.
If you were, you’d realize exactly how bad an idea you have about the necessary role of adversarial process in law and the maintenance of civilization.
####################################
As I work at understanding the conventinal social construct of “the real world,” I learn about the power of imagination.
Until the Internet became sufficiently functional, I had no viable access to the “top tier,” not even while at Carleton College, a peculiar school founded and set loose by some of those “Minnesota Congregationalists” of the sort my dad and his parents were. I was a Minnesota Congregationalist.
Minnesota Congregationalists are a hardy bunch, no one survives northern Minnesota winters unless hardy.
Carleton College stumbled on purpose into being deemed among the top ten liberal arts colleges in the U.S. in the surveys of the now-not-printed-on-paper U.S. News and World Report.
So some top tier people came to Carleton College to get a top ten liberal arts college education. Some of us Minnesota Congregationalists found an interesting research opportunity by studying those few top tier folks who were foolish enough to come unwittingly to Carleton College to be studied by some Minnesota Congregationalists.
The hard environment of northern Minnesota (Carleton is in the more mild environment of southern Minnesota, being in Rice County) sometimes allows a northern Minnesota Congregationalist to become uncommonly hardy, hardy enough to do research on those of the top tier who are ensnared by the thought of a really good education, and become research subjects for Minnesota Congregationalists such as one like me.
But there are Minnesota Congregationalists and there are Minnesota Anti-Congregationalists, and the Anti-Congregationalists vastly outnumber the Congregationalists.
Were it else, Michelle Bachman would be unelectable.
The top tier folks here so profoundly remind me of Minnesota Anti-Congregationalists as to astonish me.
Anti-Congregationalists are perhaps the world experts on the process of displacement by scapegoating.
Anti-Congregationalists always point away from themselves. the better to try to hide themselves from themselves and everyone else; Congregationalists point toward themselves, the better to be known and understood by themselves and everyone else.
I find self-honesty to be an inverse function of self-perceived socio-economic status. Until some folks here began to work as though to squash me like a bug, I had far greater doubts about the social tragedy of the elect. Unlike them thar fundamentalist fundamentalists, who, like the Principal in the movie, Doubt, strive to avert doubt until the ability to even do that becomes doubtful, I work at maximizing the doubts I have.
Thus, I profoundly doubt that anything of my life will ever be deemed of any viable use by anyone of the top tier. The top tier students in my Carleton College class treated me far worse than anyone on this blawg ever has.
Real Minnesota Congregationalists are very nearly the opposite of those of society’s top tier. Once a Minnesota Congregationalist, always a Minnesota Congregationalist; the experience of being a Minnesota Congregationalist is indelible.
The experience of being a Minnesota Congregationalist and a Carleton Collegian, when combined, is infinitely stronger than indelible.
Didn’t attend a Minnesota high school and didn’t also attend Carleton College? Whosoever did not attend a Minnesota high school and did not attend Carleton College lives in a world which is as-though excluded from some Minnesota Congregationalists who attended a Minnesota high school and who attended the Minnesota college named Carleton.
Those whose life experiences are different than my life experiences will experience a world different than the one I experience because we do not share the identical sequences of life experiences.
As a Minnesota Congregationalist, I welcome all people into my world, the world of my life experiences. I do so by describing my life experiences as accurately as I am able to so describe.
Of course, like every real Minnesota Congregationalist, I endorse the whole range of human diversity, for it is only through that diversity that there are any people who can survive Minnesota winters.
No person who did not walk about a mile to high school in Detroit Lakes with temperature below minus forty Fahrenheit and wind around 40 miles per hour, to school on time, home for lunch, back to school on time, and then back home, more than once and more than twice simply does not share enough physical world experience with me to qualify as able to honestly critique my life and its work. My having far too many experiences not common among the top tier plausibly rules out any top tier person having been given access to the sort of physical world experiences which form the real substance of my life. While I was in high school the Congregational Church parsonage was at 125 East Willow Street, Detroit Lakes. At times, there was a North Wind in the Willows.
From “East O’ the Sun and West O’ the Moon,” page 17-23:
Early next morning the North Wind woke her, and puffed himself up, and blew himself out, and made himself so stout and big, it was gruesome to look at him. And so off she went, high on the back of the North Wind up through the air, as if they would never stop till they got to the world’s end.
Down here below there was a terrible storm; it threw down long tracts of woodland and many houses, and when it swept over the great ships foundered by the hundreds.
So they tore on and on,–no one can believe how far they went,–and all the while they still went over the sea, and the North Wind got more and more weary, and so out of breath he could scarce bring out a puff, and his wings drooped and drooped, till at last he sunk so low that the crests of the waves lashed over her heels.
“Are you afraid?” said the North Wind.
She wasn’t.
But they were not very far from land; and the North Wind had still so much strength left in him that he managed to throw her up on shore close by the castle which lay East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon; but then he was so weak and worn out, t hat he had to stay there and rest many days before he could get home again.
And now the lassie began to look about her and to think of how she might free the Prince, but nowhere did she see a sign of life.
Then she sat herself down right under the castle windows, and as soon as the sun went down, out they came, trolls and witches, red-eyed, long nose, hunch-backed hags, tumbling over each other, scolding, hurrying and scurrying hither and thither.
At first they almost frightened the life out of her, but when she had watched them awhile and they had not noticed her, she took courage and walked up to one of them and said: “Pray tell me what goes on here to-night that you are all so busy, and could I perhaps get something to do for a night’s lodging and a bit of food?”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the horrid witch, “and where do you come from that you do not know that it is to-night that the Prince chooses his bride. When the moon stands up high over the tree tops yonder we meet in the clearing by the old oak. There the cauldrons are ready with boiling lye, for don’t you know?–he’s going to choose for his bride the one who can wash three spots of tallow from his shirt, Ha, ha, ha!”
And the wicked witch hurried off again, laughing such a horriboe laugh that it made the lassie’s blood run cold.
But now the trolls and witches came trooping out of the very earth, it seemed, and all turned their steps toward the clearing in the woods.
So the lassie went too, and found a place among the rest. Now the moon stood high above the tree tops, and there was the cauldron in the middle and round about sat the trolls and witches;–such gruesome company I’m sure you were never in. Then came the Prince, and his face grew white, but he said nothing.
“Now, let’s begin,” said a witch with a nose three ells long. She was sure she was going to have the Prince, and she began to wash away as hard as she could, but the more she rubbed and scrubbed, the bigger the spots grew.
“Ah!” said an old hag, “You can’t wash, let me try.”
But she hadn’t long taken the shirt in hand, before it was far worse than ever, and with all yer rubbing and scrubbing and wringing, the spots grew bigger and bigger and the darker and uglier was the shirt.
Then all the other trolls began to wash, but the longer it lasted, the blacker and uglier the shirt grew, till at last it was as black all over as if it had been up the chimney.
“Ah!” said the Prince, “you’re none of you worth a straw, you can’t wash. Why there sits a beggar lassie, I’ll be bound she knows how to wash better than the whole lot of you. Come here, lassie,” he shouted.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I think I can.”
And almost before she had taken it and dipped it in the water, it was white as snow and whiter still.
“Yes; you are the lassie for me,” said the Prince.
At that moment the sun rose and the whole pack of trolls turned to stone.
There you may see them to this very day sitting around in a circle, big ones and little ones, all hard, cold stone.
But the Prince took the lassie by the hand and they flitted away as far as they could go from the castle that lay East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon.
I, J. Brian Harris, have here put that excerpt for those whose eyes of the mind can see the truth within it and whose ears can hear the cries of the children forsaken by the gruesome company of those the Boogeyman has as though transformed into horrid, gruesome company.
I wonder if its only those as though transformed into horrid, gruesome company, who accompany each other the dissonance of shared horrid gruesome company as regards an ostensibly worthless person such as I am as actually worthless and thereby worthy of contemptuous ridicule and derision…
In the world wherein I actually live, there can never be anything save love, though love may be distorted by secret agonies of unresolved trauma.
I come here in the truthfulness of an autistic person incapable of living in the manner of an infant, regardless of my chronological age. The more directly truthful become the words I am able to find, the more directly the top tier people here disclose the agonies of unresolved trauma.
I come to help the law, not to harm it. For the law has become as a ferocious lion with a thorn in its right front paw, and I, in the manner of a worthless little mouse, can see the thorn and already understand how to safely remove it.
Of course, taking out a thorn from the paw of a ferocious lion will give the lion greater pain in the short run than leaving the thorn alone. And yet, with the thorn in its paw, the lion will not function all that well as king of the jungle.
The thorn in the right paw of the lion of truthful justice is the thorn of the Adversarial Principle.
It initially astonished me that anyone here would regard my comments as being of persuasive intent. This is Professor Jonathan Turley’s blawg, and I have gathered that it is of the “legal theory” blawg sort.
All I have been doing here is offering a bioengineering-based, biophysics-grounded notion regarding legal theory, and, when apparently misunderstood regarding that notion of legal theory, have worked to learn whether there is a practicable method of overcoming such misunderstandings as may seem apparent to me.
I experience it as curiously strange that knowledge and understanding well validated in biology and social psychology are granted no viable entry into the Adversarial System of Jurisprudence.
I use subtle humor as a way of probing human psyches, because I have never found a more gentle and effective way to survive my encounters with the “world of most people.” I use a Natural Philosophy textbook from 1836 as though it were a definitive source in terms of modern physics, and some comments suggest to me that there are top tier folks incapable of fathoming that sort of absurdly ridiculous joke.
I use H. G. Wells, “The Outline of History”as though it were a comprehensive text of world history up to and including yesterday, and some comments returned suggest to me that some top tier folks are as though incapable of recognizing the utter absurdity of anyone actually being serious in doing that.
I came here to put to a practical test the finding of my research regarding the Adversarial Principle, and, somewhat to my surprise, every effort I find anyone here has made to tell me how my finding is being rejected only further validates my findings.
I observe that it would be profoundly unethical for me to put here, on this Turley blawg, that which profoundly answers the seemingly strongest counter-arguments I have here noted regarding the research I am doing.
I do have a web site tied down, I am making the needed arrangements to become set up to scan and convert to .pdf format a host of documents from my inpatient hospital days, and I recognize the need to redact, and only redact, such information as would improperly disclose the “identity” of anyone other than myself.
The one who cries last, cries best.
haha
depending on the song it could have been justifiable.
pete,
…I was attempting to answer your question: “am i the only person on this blog who has ever been arrested and actually did what i was arrested for?” with that video because I have heard rumors ….
pete,
Well, don’t quote me but I heard the name in this song was altered a bit
buddha
a preacher like that is why i haven’t set foot in a church (except for weddings and funerials) for over 30 years. haven’t missed it either
am i the only person on this blog who has ever been arrested and actually did what i was arrested for?
pete,
That’s a good thing. People who are too serious are usually incapable of having a sense of humor. Like my uncle. He used to be one of the funniest guys I know. Very happy go lucky. Then he got the fundamentalist Christianity so bad he became a preacher. Now he’s one of the most humorless people I know. He hasn’t totally lost it, but the difference is like that of driving on a interstate and walking down a footpath.
Brian,
Yeah, that you aren’t living in the real world is pretty much a given at this point.
If you were, you’d realize exactly how bad an idea you have about the necessary role of adversarial process in law and the maintenance of civilization.
amen bro
i just try not to take myself too seriously.
He who laughs last, laughs best.
In your world, I give to you the last laugh.
I am not in your world, never have been, and never will be.
I am not laughing, have not been laughing, and am unlikely to begin laughing until after the end of forever, after the end of all eternity, and after the end of whatever follows all eternity.
There are people as though chained in prison.
There are other people who carry the chains of others, that others may be set free.
There are some who carry long chains made of many chains of others.
Those who carry many chains of others are those who have long chains on.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU1gFka4w-I&w=480&h=390%5D
I am among those who have long chains on. When you are ready, BiL, I will gladly add your chain to the ones I already have on.
pete,
roflol – You’ve just been on fire this week. Can I get an “Amen!”?