No, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke: Fox is seriously accusing the Obama administration of seeking to impose Islamic Sharia law in the United States.
Needless to say, the accusation totally false and just another example of the hate-filled insanity and paranoia of Foxaganda, America's most-watched cable news network.
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The entirety of Fox’s claim is based on an e-mail posted on March 21, 2007 in National Review’s blog claiming that Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh — now an appointee to the State Department — had indicated that Sharia could apply in the U.S.
According to White House spokesman Reid Cherlin, the allegations contained in the e-mail are false. Moreover, in an article buried on its website, Fox conceded that that it has been unable to reach the author of the e-mail posted by National Review.
But that didn’t stop Fox from quoting from the e-mail’s account and claiming that the e-mail was a direct quote from Koh, and it didn’t stop Fox from making the absurd claim that the Obama administration is seeking to impose Sharia law upon the U.S.
There’s no question about Fox’s agenda here: they are trying to fan the flames of hysterical anger against the Obama administration for their own partisan purposes.
But there is a real question about why the rest of the media refuses to criticize Fox for its extremist propaganda.
Fox has no problem attacking CNN or MSNBC, yet other than Keith Olbermann, nobody in the broadcast media has had the courage to take on Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes.
Why is that?
(Transcript below the fold.)
Transcript:
ALISYN CAMEROTA (Fox anchor): The White House is defending its nominee to be State Department Legal Adviser. Now, some of the criticism of this nominee, Harold Koh, is based on remarks that he reportedly made saying that Islamic Sharia law should apply in U.S. courts, even though those laws are used in some countries to justify stripping women of basic rights and even worse, frankly.
Nonie Darwish is with the group Arabs for Israel. She is also the author of the book "Cruel and Usual Punishment." Nonie, thanks for joining us this morning.
NONIE DARWISH: My pleasure, thank you.
CAMEROTA (Fox): So this man, Harold Koh, this potential State Department nominee has impressive credentials. He’s a Dean at Yale University, but he also has a history of supporting Sharia law — even here in the U.S. What are some of the things that he has said in the past that has raised eyebrows?
DARWISH; Well, uh, I heard that he doesn’t mind referring to laws, foreign laws and integrating them into the U.S. legal system. It’s very hard for me to imagine that an American official can incorporate Sharia law, because Sharia is totally at odds with our bill of rights, and our Constitution. Sharia does not allow freedom of religion. It dscriminates against women, against non-Muslims. There is no equal rights under Sharia.
A Muslim head of state can come to power through seizure of power, not through elections. A Muslim head of state must be obeyed even if he is unjust. A Muslim woman can be beaten by her husband. There are so many laws that are totally against our Constitution.
CAMEROTA (Fox):Does it go so far to recommend honor killings in the event that a woman has done something inappropriate, or even public stonings?
DARWISH: Sharia law does not discriminate between crime and sexual sin, so you can have somebody who murders a non-Muslim and if you murder a non-Muslim, you won’t have the death penalty. But if a woman commits a sexual crime, like having a boyfriend, it is legal to kill a woman who commits apostasy or commits sexual crime. There are three murders allowed under Sharia law. The first one is to kill an apostate. The second to kill an adulterer, and to kill a highway robber. A Muslim can kill a non-Muslim and he will never get the death penalty.
CAMEROTA (Fox):Sorry to interrupt you, Nonie, but the picture we’re seeing there is of that nominee, Harold Koh. He reportedly back in 2007 told the Yale Club in Greenwich, Connecticut, that, quote, "in an appropriate case, he didn’t see any reason why Sharia law would not be applied to govern a case in the United States." What might that appropriate case be?
DARWISH: I cannot think of one case that can bring us any benefit from Sharia. While there are many people in the Middle East fighting Sharia, and, we are not doing a service to the reformists in the Middle East by acknowledging that Sharia is the kind of law that we can respect here in America. Sharia is totally barbaric. It is anti-woman. It is anti non-Muslims, and uh, I cannot even think of one thing except the brutal punishment of criminals.
CAMEROTA (Fox):Okay now very quickly, since the Obama Administration surely knows Harold Koh’s position on this, why would they be tagging him as the State Department nominee?
DARWISH: Perhaps he is trying to appease Muslim countries, but this is the wrong kind of policy because we’re standing against progress in the Muslim world. The Muslim world has a lot of reformers who are trying to progress because the laws of Sharia support Jihad. Supports Jihad against non-Muslims. It is the duty of a Muslim head of state to do Jihad, and by Jihad, the definition of Jihad according to mainstream Sharia books is a war with non-Muslims to establish the religion.
Do we want to confirm that Jihad is ok against us in America? This is Sharia!
CAMEROTA (Fox): Excellent question. Nonie Darwish, thank you so much for joining us this morning and giving us all of this background.
DARWISH: Thank you very much, my pleasure.