Hysterical Blindness

"Who's the Justiciar here?" Theodoric of York consults the Writ of Common Wisdom.

There exists today in our Grand and Holy Homeland a secret party of seditionists who stealthily undermine secular authority by seeking to govern themselves according to religious law. While eagerly exploiting the freedoms and material conveniences of our contemporary culture, they remain wedded to a pre-medieval worldview.  

Shockingly, they have wrested concessions from distracted or intimidated policy-makers. Whether through ignorance or opportunism, those officials are now effectively abetting the establishment of small but expanding theocratic islands inhabited by people who are subject to stern and exacting codes governing every aspect of life -- including diet, recreation, social activities, sex and other marital matters, and mandatory religious worship.

Most insidiously, this tiny but aggressive sect demands that its adherents submit to the authority of religious leaders, rather than civil courts, in dealing with disputes -- and this subversive arrangement has actually been upheld by the Obama administration! Thanks to a very capable lobbying effort on Capitol Hill, an organization rooted in this movement managed to secure a special exemption last year when the Obamacare measure was enacted. 

These official favors were granted despite the fact that the organization is directly tied to a group seeking to bring every element of America's culture into subjection to God's law, as understood by the group's adherents. Statements by prominent figures in the movement make it plain that they consider themselves to be soldiers in a divinely guided "army" with an all-encompassing social mandate.

Obviously this is yet another instance in which the Obama administration is quietly abetting the establishment of Sharia law -- or at least, it might be, were such a campaign actually underway, which it isn't. As it happens, the commendably insular and admirably government-aversive religious group described above the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries (HCSM), which was created for the purpose of helping fellow Christians obtain health coverage outside of government-controlled health insurance organizations. 

 HCSM, a project of Samaritan Ministries International, claims as many as 100,000 members who pool resources in a "need sharing" system to help reimburse each other's medical expenses (up to $100,000). Some conditions -- such as those resulting from drug and alcohol abuse -- aren't covered. Nor are abortions or care for unwed mothers (who can find help from other faith-centered crisis pregnancy organizations). 

The group also champions the laudable work of independent physicians such as the heroic Dr. Stansilov Burzynski, who has been persecuted by the Regime-aligned health care establishment for his innovative and promising cancer therapy.

James Lansberry, vice president of Samaritan Ministries, reports that this system has managed to meet the needs of its subscribers, a fact in which he sees the hand of Providence at work.


Samaritan Ministries (SMI), a tax-exempt charity, describes itself as a covenant-defined community of Christian believers dedicated to following the Bible's commandments "to make every effort to live at peace and to resolve disputes with each other or within the church."

"A member who chooses to violate this command of scripture and his covenant with his SMI brethren, and takes a dispute to court, destroys our fellowship and has chosen to be as if he had never been a Samaritan Ministries member and to not have his needs shared with the membership," the organization explains to interested prospects. "Therefore, in becoming a member or reaffirming  your membership, you agree that any claim or dispute you have with, or against SMI, its employees, directors, members and associate members, that is related to SMI and its ministries in any way, shall be settled by Biblically based mediation and, if necessary, legally binding arbitration. And SMI agrees similarly with respect to any matter SMI might have with you."


Sarah Posner of American Prospect points out that arrangements of this kind -- "contractual agreements to submit to dispute resolution outside of the courts, with choice-of-law provisions" -- are "quite common in religious settings." They are used by many Christian educational and charitable groups. Similar arbitration arrangements are used by various Jewish congregations. Yet in recent days the discovery of nearly identical mechanisms for private dispute-settlement among Muslims has triggered another mass convulsion among people who like to pretend that we live in the shadow of an incipient Caliphate. 


In 2002, a leadership dispute in the Islamic Education Center (ICE) in Tampa resulted in the ouster of three of the organization's trustees. The  ICE is governed by a "constitution" drawn up in 1993 by a Muslim scholar known as an A'lim. Under the provisions of that document's "Organizational Framework," the A'lim has veto power over the board of trustees, who agree to accept that scholar's guidance "to insure adherence to Islamic laws." This includes arbitration of disputes involving personnel and financial matters. In this case, the leadership dispute boils down to the question of controlling $2.2 million the ICE received from the Florida state government after it purchased some property from the mosque to use in a road construction project.

Three years ago a lawsuit was filed by the Mosque's former trustees, who wanted to move the dispute into Florida's civil court system.  In January, shortly before the trial was to begin, one of the parties requested an emergency injunction to enforce the arbiter's previous decision. 

This came as a surprise to Tampa Circuit Court Judge Richard Nielsen, who has observed that "Prior to the motion the court was not aware of any arbitration pending between the parties." 


On March 3, Judge Nielsen -- in what should be perceived as that rarest of things, an act of judicial restraint -- ruled that he would not intrude in a dispute that falls within the jurisdiction of an existing, written, contract-based private arbitration agreement. Unfortunately, this meant it was necessary for Nielsen to write the following words: "This case will proceed under Ecclesiastical Islamic law."


That phrase, predictably, caused the fever swamp to boil over.



"To all of the naysayers on the left who say that Sharia can never come to the U.S., here is the latest example of how it is slowly and stealthily creeping into our judicial system--in this case, courtesy of a foolish, non-Muslim judge (known as a useful idiot in Lenin's days)," sneered Erik Stakelbeck of CBN News, a preening blowhard who is no part of a journalist but plays one on cable TV. Variants of this soundbite quickly proliferated like mushrooms that had fed on the stuff Stakelbeck and his ilk have been diligently shoveling for the past several years. 


In fact, rather than opening the door to Sharia, Judge Nielsen was trying to nail it firmly shut. The constitutional religious freedom guarantees are intended to protect religious associations from government control; in this case Nielsen was dealing with an intramural dispute among faithful Muslims  who had freely chosen to submit to the rulings of a Muslim scholar. This doesn't change simply because there's a great deal of money at stake, and one side -- in this case, ironically, the incumbent trustees of the Mosque -- decides it might get a better deal from non-Muslims than it apparently got from the A'lin.


Nielsen knows very little about the Muslim religion and doesn't appear interested to learn much more. However, testimony from Islamic authorities in the pre-trial hearing demonstrated that "under ecclesiastical law, pursuant to the Qur'an, Islamic brothers should attempt to resolve a dispute among themselves," wrote the Judge in a supplemental ruling issued March 22. "If Islamic brothers are unable to do so, they can agree to present the dispute to the greater community of Islamic brothers within the mosque or the Muslim community for resolution. If that is not done or does not result in a resolution of the dispute, the dispute is to be presented to an Islamic judge for determination, and that is or can be an A'lim."


This arrangement shouldn't appear at all peculiar to Christians who are even superficially familiar with the New Testament (see particularly Matthew 18:15-17). Indeed, this is quite probably a procedure Muhammad borrowed directly from Christian teachings when he created his religion.
 

"From the outset of learning of the purported arbitration award, the court's concern has been whether there were ecclesiastical principles for dispute resolution involved that would compel the court to adopt the arbitration decision without consulting state law," explains Judge Nielsen. "Decisional case law both in Florida and the United States Supreme Court tells us that ecclesiastical law controls certain relations between members of a religious organization, whether a church, synagogue, temple or mosque."

Jacobins "Baptize" (drown) Christians who refused to worship the State.

 The likeliest alternative to that position, of course, would be one permitting the State to arbitrate all disputes that arise within religious associations -- including those involving finances, governance, discipline, and standards of conduct. This would create all kinds of opportunities for officious busybodies of the sort who seethe over the impudence of groups like Samaritan Ministries who dare to carve out little pockets of autonomy in defiance of the Leviathan State. 

There is nothing in Judge Nielsen's preliminary decision that would in any way facilitate the establishment of a Caliphate. However, if he were to break ICE to the saddle of the state, his actions would potentially be of great use to social engineers looking to destroy any institutional resistance to State control over all aspects of life.

Every association that settles its disputes through private contract derogates from the power of the State -- which is something to be encouraged and celebrated. Yet this is lost on the kind of people who can't see the facts through the fog of their own hyperventilation. Compulsive mosque-baiting is a difficult habit for some people to overcome. But if people do it long enough, they go blind.

One tragic fact is plain to see: There are too many Americans who simply fear Muslims more than they love or understand freedom.

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Dum spiro, pugno!

Ave, Imperium!

Officer Dianobol, I presume? Yes, this pic (from the 2010 Super Bowl) just screams "Freedom!"

 Superbowl Sunday, the High Holy Day of our de facto state religion, has become such a brobdingnagian spectacle of militarist self-worship that Leni Riefenstahl would probably find the proceedings a bit excessive. The Caligulan feast in Dallas did offer one small source of consolation: Contrary to what compulsive mosque-baiters would have us believe, the culture on display is not haunted by the specter of impending Sharia rule. 

Hail the Empire! Superbowl Sunday, 2011

Christina Aguilera, selected to perform the role of Vestal in yesterday's Ludus Gladitorius, is in no peril of being stuffed into a burqa, much as that development would benefit the public. She may have fatally injured her career, however, by her inept recitation of the Regime's official hymn. 

Aguilera's celebrity will suffer, but she won't endure the hardships inflicted on dissidents -- many of them belonging to a sect founded in her home town of Pittsburgh -- who refused to offer ritual public submission to the State during the Holy Crusade to Save Stalin. 

During World War II, recalls Molly Worthen of The New Republic, those who refused to recognize the State as their liege attracted the eager attention of pious souls willing to correct their thinking:

Hail the Reich! Anschluss Saturday, March 12, 1938.

"Violence against Jehovah’s Witnesses [who reject oaths of allegiance to any government] erupted in hundreds of towns across the nation. In Wyoming, a mob tarred and feathered a Witness. Public officials permitted beatings in Texas and Illinois; in Nebraska, self-appointed patriots castrated another."


The Jehovah's Witnesses had a long-established and well-earned reputation for being insular, authoritarian, and confrontational. In matters of religious controversy they were strangers in the house of subtlety and given to exercise what one legal analyst called "astonishing powers of annoyance." 

What precipitated public persecution of the Witnesses, however, was not their sectarianism but their commendable loathing for the State. As Sarah Barringer Gordon of  American History magazine summarizes, Witnesses were taught to display "open disdain" toward "all forms of government," both in the United States and abroad. This included a "refusal to serve in the military or to support America's war effort in any way."

Painful to watch, more painful to hear.

In a 1940 Supreme Court ruling that upheld state laws mandating recitation of the Pledge (Minersville School District v. Gobitis), Felix Frankfurter asserted that "Conscientious scruples have not, in the course of the long struggle for toleration, relieved the individual from obedience to a general law."


"Some vigilantes interpreted the Supreme Court's decision as a signal that Jehovah's Witnesses were traitors who might be linked to a network of Nazi spies and saboteurs," notes American History. In the service of that grand deception, the Witnesses -- whose deviousness apparently knew no bounds -- arranged to have thousands of their co-religionists imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, and hundreds more executed for refusing to serve in the armed forces of the Reich. While officially sanctioned persecution of Witnesses by FDR's corporatist state wasn't nearly as intense, at least 1,500 members of the sect were assaulted in more than 300 separate attacks following the Gobitis ruling.

"In Imperial, a town outside Pittsburgh, a mob descended on a small group of Witnesses and pummeled them mercilessly," recounts Gordon. "One Witness was beaten unconscious, and those who fled were cornered by ax- and knife-wielding men riding the town's fire truck as someone yelled, `Get the ropes! Bring the flag!'"

Another patriotic mob in Kennebunk, Maine laid waste to the local Kingdom Hall. Jehovah's Witnesses in Rockville, Maryland were beaten by a mob across the street from a police station while officers looked on in contemptuous amusement.  In Litchfield, Illinois, "an angry crowd spread an American flag on the hood of a car and watched while a man repeatedly smashed the head of a Witness upon it."


"I hoped to beat up these people," one enforcer of patriotic virtue said after he and other members of the Greatest Generation took part in the Litchfield pogrom. "Why, they wouldn't even salute the flag! We almost beat one guy to death to make him kiss the flag."
Those were extreme measures, of course, but they were tragically necessary in order to make the infidel make Islam (submission) to the divine State and its sacred totem.

In 1940, shortly before the Supreme Court authorized violent enforcement of collectivist piety, the FDR administration was shamed into modifying the flag salute, which was identical to the notorious stiff-armed fascist salute. Three years later, the Court itself was shamed into revisiting its ruling in the case Barnette v. West Virginia Board of Education. 

During oral arguments, the counsel for the state Board of Education insisted that "permitting Jehovah's Witnesses to abstain from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and saluting the flag leads to more violence" from those zealous to punish the infidels, who (in the mind of this State functionary) had it coming to them.

"To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds," wrote Justice Jackson in a welcome repudiation of the earlier decision. 

Although nationalist violence against those who abstain from displays of nationalist piety fell out of fashion following Barnette ruling, there is an occasional relapse. For example, Brad Compeau-Laurion was assaulted and thrown out of Yankee Stadium by police officers during a 2008 baseball game for the supposed offense of using the restroom rather than participating in the mandatory singing of "God Bless America." 

Compeau-Laurion -- who eventually won a nominal settlement from New York City -- was not intoxicated, nor was he misbehaving in any way. Yet two tax-engorged bullies seized him, wrenched his arms behind his back, and dragged him out in humiliating fashion in front of a huge crowd. When he pointed out that it wasn’t necessary to hurt him because he was offering no resistance, one of his assailants belched something to the effect that things would get worse for him if he didn't shut up. 

“Get the hell out of my country if you don’t like it," one of the thugs sneered at Compeau-Laurion as he was kicked out of the stadium. The goons then returned to the section where Campeau-Laurion’s friend was still sitting and defamed Campeau-Laurion, informing spectators that he had been intoxicated and had told them, “This country sucks.” Compeau-Laurion said nothing of the kind, of course, but in light of the way he was treated he was certainly entitled to. 


America has never been plagued by the kind of fanaticism that led to people being harassed, beaten, mutilated, or murdered because they refused to profess allegiance to Mohammed and his religion, nor are we going to see this happen in the future. Crimes of that kind inspired by intolerant nationalism, however, are disturbingly commonplace. Any moral or material distinction between those varieties of fanaticism is too small to be measured by any instrument of which I'm aware.

War tends to destroy the critical distinctions between "country" and "government"; that's one reason why rulers are incessantly cultivating wars and similar crises. James Madison famously warned that no nation can retain its freedom in the midst of perpetual warfare. 

When the artlessly misnamed USA PATRIOT act was inflicted on our country in 2001, the legislators who enacted that measure before it was written insisted that it would be a temporary measure, subject to renewal at regular intervals. Congress is now poised to make that act as immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians -- thereby formalizing the state of perpetual warfare Madison warned against.



Mubarak's Egyptian torture state, one of the Empire's most lavishly compensated regional affiliates, has operated under an "emergency powers" decree for more than three decades. 

Whatever results from the turmoil in Cairo, it is immensely significant -- and more than a little inspiring -- to see hundreds of thousands of Egyptians loudly and defiantly insist that their country doesn't belong to the government ruling it. That defiance hasn't been limited to large public displays. 

Two New York Times correspondents who covered demonstrations in Cairo’s Liberation Square were among scores of journalists arrested and detained by the regime’s secret police. 

As they were taken to a nearby secret police headquarters, one reporter asked a soldier: “Where are you taking us?” 

"My heart goes out to you," replied the soldier. "I’m sorry.”

The reporters saw dozens of people, both Egyptian and westerners, handcuffed and blindfolded. The interrogator who subjected them to the display told them: “We could be treating you a lot worse.” 

Egyptian Christians shield Muslims at prayer in Cairo.

The sounds the reporters heard during their confinement underscored that warning. From a nearby cell, they could hear a series of dull whacks -- the soft, percussive noise of human flesh being beaten --  followed by screams of pain. 

They also caught snippets of a remarkable conversation:

“You are talking to journalists?” demanded the torturer.“You are talking badly about your country?” 

The victim defiantly rebuked his tormentor: “You are committing a sin. You are committing a sin.”

How many Americans – of any religious background – would display such self-possession, such principled defiance, in similar circumstances?

On "Superbowl Sunday," as millions of Americans celebrated the unsustainable debt-fueled opulence of our consumer culture and the decaying might of an imperial Regime in steep decline, Christians and Muslims living at the periphery of the empire united in a peaceful rebellion rooted in a shared rejection of the supposed divinity of the State. While Egypt certainly isn't the land of the free, it has a far better claim than we do to call itself the home of the brave.

 

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Dum spiro, pugno!