Andrew C. McCarthy's Blog, page 8

Judge Bork on Law & Life

At The New Criterion's site, Roger Kimball has re-posted my 2009 review of A Time to Speak, an anthology drawn from  Judge Bork's brilliant lifetime of writing.

Judge Bork Has Died

Robert H. Bork passed away early this morning in Virginia. He died of heart complications. He was 84. I was privileged to know him, as were many of our NR circle. He was, simply, a great jurist and an exceptional man. Our hearts go out to Mary Ellen and to their family.

Spring Fever: "Slim" Is Apparently Arabic for "Landslide"

It is hard to keep a straight face hearing and reading the mainstream media's accounts of Egypt's constitutional referendum. Reuters is typical: Yes, the sharia constitution is going to pass, but Islamists achieved only a "slim vote win" which should "embolden" the "opposition" going forward. 

Cases of spring fever abound in the West, but this one is clearly terminal. The sharia constitution is not winning by a slim margin. It is winning in a landslide. At the moment, the vote stands at about 56.5% to 43.5% against the "opposition" -- which is called the "opposition" rather than the "supporters of democracy" in order to avoid the embarrassing reminder of what is being so soundly thrashed.

The referendum is already a rout for Islamic supremacists, but there is more. As noted here last week, Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader Egyptians freely elected to be their president, bifurcated the referendum. Only about half the country voted, the rest will vote next Saturday -- after being fired up by pro-constitution imams in the mosques on Friday. Understand that of the two halves, the one that already voted this past weekend was expected to have the larger number of "opposition" votes. When all is said and done, the final tally will be closer to a 2-to-1 romp for the Islamists.

If you pierce the "Arab Spring" fantasy and deal with Egypt and the broader Middle East as they are -- as I have tried to do in Spring Fever and, before that, in The Grand Jihad -- this result is inevitable. Reliable polling, years before Mubarak fell, told us that about two-thirds of the populace favors the imposition of strict sharia. When they finally got an opportunity to vote freely, Egyptians voted overwhelmingly in favor of Islamists -- by a 4-to-1 margin in both the initial election on constitutional amendments (which allowed popular elections to go forward quickly) and in the parliamentary election.

Naturally, many Western commentators and politicians, heavily invested in the Arab Spring narrative, strained to find a silver lining when Morsi was elected in a fairly close race (about 52% to 48%). But they neglected the inconvenient details: (a) Morsi's win was actually impressive given that he was a virtual unknown who became the Islamist standard-bearer only after the then-ruling military junta disqualified the more popular Brotherhood candidate (Khairat el-Shater) shortly before the election; and (b) Morsi's opponent in the run-off was not a secular-democrat but a Mubarak regime relic -- i.e., those opposed to the Brotherhood were not turning to democracy in trying to stop the Brotherhood.

What you are seeing in the referendum on the sharia constitution is the real Egypt and the real Muslim Middle East. There is no democratic revolution -- not if we're talking about real democracy. There is sharia. And here is another guarantee: things will get worse. Once sharia is formally recognized as law, Islamists and their vigilante gangs feel far more comfortable taking enforcement matters into their own hands on the streets.

Dark times ahead.

Blasphemy and Islam

In Cairo on Wednesday, a Coptic Christian blogger named Alber Saber was convicted of blasphemy and “contempt of religion.” There’s a tragic irony: As any of the country’s Christians can tell you, contempt of religion is not merely permitted but encouraged in the new, post-Mubarak Egypt. What is criminal, what has become increasingly perilous, is any criticism of Islam.

Nor is truth a defense. Another Egyptian court recently upheld the blasphemy conviction of Makarem Diab, also a Coptic Christian. Diab had gotten into a discussion with a Muslim acquaintance, Abd al-Hameed, who, in the course of mocking Diab’s faith, insisted that Jesus was a serial fornicator. Diab countered Hameed’s baseless taunt with an assertion most Islamic scholars regard as accurate: namely, that Mohammed had more than four wives. Yet, because the context of Diab’s assertion evinced an intention to cast Islam’s prophet in an unfavorable light, Diab was prosecuted for “insulting the prophet” and “provoking students.” He was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.

This is now everyday life in Egypt. It is also certain to be the future of Egypt. The overwhelmingly Islamist population, having first elected Islamic supremacists led by the Muslim Brotherhood to top leadership positions, is now poised to adopt a constitution that is founded on sharia, Islam’s totalitarian legal framework, and that expressly enshrines these blasphemy standards. But the problem is not just sharia in Egypt. Sharia is here.

#ad#About three weeks ago, another Egyptian court sentenced seven people to death after convicting them in absentia on blasphemy charges. Most of the seven are in the United States. Most of them are Coptic Christians; one is a Florida-based pastor who is a blistering critic of Islamic scripture. The charges relate to the defendants’ alleged involvement in “Innocence of Muslims,” an obscure amateur video that Islamists have frivolously cited as a pretext for their latest round of international mayhem -- and that the Obama administration has fraudulently portrayed as the catalyst of a massacre in Benghazi in which jihadists killed four Americans, including our ambassador to Libya.

So how has President Obama responded to the Egyptian government’s human-rights violations, its failure to protect the Copts from persecution (indeed, its willing participation in that persecution), and its provocations against Americans -- which now include ordering their killing, through a kangaroo-court process that flouts our due-process standards, over their engagement in activity that is expressly protected by our Constitution?

Well#...#the president has announced that not only will he continue funding Egypt’s Islamist government, but he intends to include in that U.S. aid the provision of 20 F-16 fighter jets. Moreover, Obama is continuing his administration’s collaboration with the 57-government Organization of Islamic Cooperation on the “Istanbul Process.” That is the OIC’s campaign to impose sharia’s repressive blasphemy standards.

The most recent aggression in this blasphemy enterprise --- a years-long, carefully plotted OIC campaign to snuff out American free-speech rights under the guise of “defamation of religion” -- is U.N. Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18. It calls on Western governments to outlaw “any advocacy of religious hatred against individuals that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has zealously colluded with the OIC in seeking the implementation of 16/18. Notwithstanding her contortions, it is a gross violation of the First Amendment. Our law permits the criminalization of incitement to violence only when an agitator willfully calls for violence. Our Constitution does not abide what the resolution is designed to achieve: the heckler’s veto and, worse, the suppression of speech predicated on mob intimidation -- the legitimation of barbaric lawlessness.

Nor does the Constitution’s guarantee of free expression tolerate the outlawing of speech that prompts discrimination, much less hostility. And contrary to administration hairsplitting, it makes no difference that the resolution would not “criminalize” expression that prompts discrimination or hostility. To quote the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law” suppressing protected speech. It does not say “Congress shall make no criminal law.” No law means no law -- no civil law, rule, regulation, guideline, etc.

As the framers understood, virtually everything we actually need a government for can be handled -- more responsively and thus more responsibly -- at the local and state level. There is one essential reason for having a federal government, and one principal reason for the creation of the office of President of the United States: to protect our citizens in the exercise of their fundamental rights from hostile foreign forces.

Our fundamental rights are now under attack. As far as that is concerned, it is of little moment that the Egyptian government, joined by its Islamist confederates, threatens our lives and our liberties through court orders and resolutions -- through lawfare rather than violent jihad. We are every bit as much under siege.

What is of great moment is that the president has joined the hostile forces against us, against Americans whose protection is the sole reason for the federal government’s existence.

If that is to be Washington’s posture, what do we need it for? It is bad enough when Leviathan cannot tell America’s friends from America’s enemies. But what is the point of a federal government that cannot tell America’s enemies from America? Or that can tell perfectly well, but chooses to fight for the wrong side?

— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the executive director of the  Philadelphia Freedom Center . He is the author, most recently, of  Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy , which was published by Encounter Books.

Sharia Scholars of al-Azhar: Participating in the Constitutional Referendum Is a Religious Duty

Have you been wondering why Egypt's president Mohamed Morsi (of the Muslim Brotherhood) is so anxious to have the draft sharia constitution submitted to a public referendum? Wondering why Islamists win all elections in post-Mubarak Egypt -- usually by a landslide -- even though the Western media keeps telling you that the "Arab Spring" is all about young, secular, Facebook revolutionaries? Here is a clue. The sharia jurists of al-Azhar University, the seat of Sunni learning since the 10th century and the most influential institution in Egyptian life, have decreed that participating in the upcoming referendum is a religious duty for all Muslims.

Further, a member of the al-Azhar fatwa committee, Sheik Hashem Islam, explains that Islam forbids both (a) objections to Morsi's declaration that the draft constitution be submitted to a public vote, and (b) the efforts of secularist judges to derail the referendum by refusing to supervise it (Egyptian law mandates judicial supervision of elections). Note that objection to Morsi's declaration and the threat of a strike by the judges are two of the principal strategies employed by the draft constitution's non-Islamist opponents.

Morsi has now decided to bifurcate the referendum. It will start on schedule this Saturday (ex-pats are already voting), but this will only be a first-round, limited to ten governorates. This ameliorates the threat of a judicial strike (less judges needed for monitoring) and allows the Brotherhood to concentrate its prodigious get-out-the-vote machine in fewer places. A second round will be held for the rest of the country on the following Saturday, December 22.

So al-Azhar's sharia masters are greasing the wheels for adoption of the new sharia constitution (which just happens to give them Iranian mullah-style authority over the interpretation of sharia). And as is always the case in the new Egypt, the campaign is proceeding in harsh sectarian terms: opponents of the constitution are portrayed as "against God's law" and "the enemies of Islam."

Gee, I wonder how the vote will come out. 

Egypt's Predictable Unraveling

As Egypt under the heel of Mohamed Morsi unravels, here’s the late-breaking news: The Muslim Brotherhood is the enemy of democracy.

This has always been obvious to anyone who took the time to look into it. Nevertheless, it has not been an easy point to make lo these many years. Even as the Justice Department proved beyond any doubt in court that the Brotherhood’s major goal in America and Europe -- its self-professed “grand jihad” -- is “eliminating and destroying Western civilization,” to have the temerity to point this out is to be smeared as an “Islamophobe.” That’s the Islamophilic Left’s code for “racist.”

Nor is it just the Left. Like the transnational progressives who hold sway in Democratic circles, many of the neoconservative thinkers who have captured Republican foreign-policy making encourage “outreach” to “moderate Islamists” -- a ludicrously self-contradictory term. The idea is to collaborate in the construction of “Islamic democracies.” That’s another nonsensical term -- to borrow Michael Rubin’s quote of a moderate Muslim academic piqued by the encroachments of Turkey’s ruling Islamists, “We are a democracy. Islam has nothing to do with it.” That is clearly right. Yet, to argue the chimerical folly of the sharia-democracy experiment is to be demagogued as an “isolationist.” It is as if the Right can no longer fathom an engaged foreign policy that concentrates solely on vital U.S. interests and treats America’s enemies as, well, enemies.

#ad#Of course, it is neither Islamophobic nor isolationist to observe that Islamic supremacism is derived from literal Muslim scripture; that it is a mainstream interpretation of Islam whose adherents, far from being limited to a “violent extremist” fringe, number in the hundreds of millions and include many of Islam’s most influential thinkers and institutions. These are simply facts. Nor is it Islamophobic or isolationist to contend that any sensible engagement with Islamic supremacists -- very much including the Muslim Brotherhood -- ought to be aimed at their marginalization and defeat, not their cultivation and empowerment. This is not a popular view; opinions amply supported by unpleasant facts are rarely popular. But following it would strengthen pro-Western Muslims while promoting an American global engagement that is essential, effective, and affordable. That is the very antithesis of Islamophobia and isolationism.

The central contention here has been that the Muslim Brotherhood is an innately, incorrigibly Islamic-supremacist outfit. Wherever it establishes a presence, it seeks -- as gradually as indigenous conditions require, and as rapidly as they allow -- to implement its repressive construction of sharia. Wherever it gets the opportunity to rule, it uses its power to impose this sharia, despite resistance from the society’s non-Islamist factions.

This is not a mere theory. Egypt, the world’s most important Arab country, is violently convulsing before our eyes in direct reaction to the suffocation that is Islamist rule. So, will we finally take the lesson? Will we finally come to understand why democracy and Islamic supremacism cannot coexist?

Western democracy has Judeo-Christian underpinnings. At its core is the equal dignity of every person. This sacred commitment, ironically, enables our bedrock secular guarantee: freedom of conscience. It is anathema to the Brotherhood. As their guiding jurist, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, teaches: “Secularism can never enjoy general acceptance in an Islamic society.” This is because “the acceptance of secularism means abandonment of sharia.”

#page#Now, maybe you doubt this. Maybe you think “Islamic democracy” enthusiasts like Hillary Clinton, edified by her trusty aide Huma Abedin, know more about sharia than Sheikh Qaradawi does. But let’s just say I doubt it -- and I am quite certain that the ummah would laugh, and then probably riot, at such a suggestion.

The Brothers really do believe what they say. They especially believe what Qaradawi says.

#ad#Obama officials tirelessly portray the Brotherhood as a normal, “largely secular” organization. Other Western progressives nod their heads in unison. Even with Egypt aflame over Morsi’s aggressive constitution gambit -- the fulfillment of his campaign promise of a constitution that would reflect “the sharia, then the sharia, and finally the sharia” -- New York Times Cairo bureau chief David Kirkpatrick assures Hugh Hewitt’s listeners that the Brotherhood is a “moderate, regular old political force” that “just want[s] to win elections.” The Brothers, you are to conclude, are just an Islamic analogue to Europe’s Christian Democrats.

This is worse than lunacy. It is the most irresponsible brand of willful blindness. Mr. Kirkpatrick, in fact, amplifies his see-no-sharia analysis with a whopper: You oughtn’t render harsh judgments about the Brothers’ intentions because, “you know, you don’t know what their ultimate vision of#...#the good life looks like.”

Actually, they could not have made themselves clearer on that subject. Perhaps you’ve heard: “Allah is our objective, the Prophet is our leader, the Koran is our law, jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Islam, in this ultimate vision, cannot tolerate secular democracy because sharia -- the “Koran is our law” part of the equation -- will not abide it.

Sharia, Qaradawi elaborates, is a “comprehensive system” of “legislation” derived directly from “Allah’s injunctions.” Our notion of secularism, in which sovereignty belongs to the people, is for Qaradawi a “denial of the divine guidance.”

Imposition of the divine guidance is the Brotherhood’s raison d’être. As explained after Mubarak’s fall by Khairat al-Shater, the Brothers’ strategic leader and Morsi’s patron, “to subjugate people to God on earth” -- “to organize our life and the lives of the people on the basis of Islam” -- is “our main and overall mission as Muslim Brothers.”

The draft constitution the Brothers are currently trying to force on Egyptians elucidates their idea of the “basis of Islam” to which people must be subjugated. The Hudson Institute’s Samuel Tadros expertly analyzed it this week on the Corner. The Brothers make the “principles of sharia” the cornerstone of law; squelch authentic moderate reformers by stipulating that “principles” are limited to the four established Sunni jurisprudential schools (which consider all questions to have been settled by the tenth century); and vest in the fundamentalist scholars of ancient al-Azhar University a dispositive role in interpreting sharia -- similar to the mullahs of Shiite Iran.

There is more. The new constitution tellingly strikes the old constitution’s reference to “citizenship” -- a term that implied equality between Muslims and non-Muslims -- as the basis for Egypt’s political order. It empowers the Islamist state to “entrench#...#moral values” in society by enforcing the Islamist ideal of “family values.” It denies freedom of conscience by refusing many religious minorities the right to worship. Although Christianity is not outlawed, the finances of Christian churches are placed under government control -- enabling the creation of a Communist-style national church, subject to Islamist domination. It denies freedom of expression by adopting sharia’s repressive blasphemy laws, under which any criticism of Islam is brutally punished. It deletes the former constitution’s express guarantee of equality for women “in the fields of political, social, cultural, and economic life.”

Phony “teachable moments” abound in the era of Obama moralizing, but this one is worth our attention: Egypt is the Brotherhood unleashed. This week’s despotic bloodletting is the natural, logical, entirely predictable end of the Brotherhood’s machinations -- not just in Egypt but everyplace the Brothers operate. That includes the United States, where our government takes their counsel, invites them to shape our national-security policy, and gives them a veto over the content of materials used to train our law-enforcement, military, and intelligence agents.

It is long past time to realize that this is not a game. The Brothers are playing for keeps.

— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the executive director of the  Philadelphia Freedom Center . He is the author, most recently, of  Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy , which was published by Encounter Books.

Analyses of the Draft Egyptian Constitution

I was just a guest on our friend Hugh Hewitt's show, and he asked me if there was a really good analysis of the constitution drafted by Egypt's Islamist controlled constituent assembly. I sent Hugh's listeners to Samuel Tadros's post here on the Corner. (Patrick also recommended it earlier.) I've seen a number of analyses, including some very good ones, but Samuel's is the simply the best. It is especially good at giving the reader the crucial Egyptian context in which words are used, or omitted. Well done. 

Egypt Continues to Follow the 'Turkish Model' of Sharia Totalitariansim

In Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, which is generously reviewed by VDH in the current edition of NR, I argue that Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood will follow (and is following) the trail blazed by Turkey's Islamist prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Brotherhood-influenced party, the AKP. This path is called the "Turkish Model" by enthusiasts of "Islamic democracy." As I demonstrate in the book, the Turkish Model is actually a formula for turning a society that is pro-Western and reasonably democratic into a sharia state -- the implementation of sharia, Islam's societal framework, being the goal of all Islamic supremacists. As Erdogan put it, "Democracy is just the train we board to reach our destination" -- not a way of life, but a route to Islamization.

For various reasons, I contend in the book that Egypt will descend into sharia totalitarianism much more quickly than the decade it has taken Erdogan to accomplish the still ongoing process in Turkey. That theory is borne out more with each passing day. One of Erdogan's key tools of intimidation and the crushing of dissent is the abuse of prosecutorial authority. Mohamed Morsi is proving a quick study.

One of Morsi's early moves was to sack the prosecutor general and appoint a Brotherhood loyalist, Talaat Ibrahim Abdallah. (See this photo of Morsi meeting with Abdallah within minutes of the latter's swearing-in.) Today, in the middle of the debate over the new sharia constitution that Morsi is planning to ram-rod through in a referendum next week, the Egypt Independent reports that Abdallah has opened an investigation against several of Morsi's principal political opponents -- including former presidential candidates Amr Moussa and Mohamed ElBaradei, as well as Ahmed al-Zend, the head of the so-called "Judges Club" -- on suspicion of espionage and sedition.

The report elaborates that the investigation is based on a lawyer's complaint, alleging that 

Moussa met with former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and agreed with her to fabricate internal crises, and that all of the politicians named in his complaint then met at the Wafd Pary headquarters to implement the “Zionist plot.” He requested that the accused be banned from travel and that the Wafd Party headquarters be confiscated for investigation. Filing criminal charges against opposition figures was a common practice during former President Hosni Mubarak’s era. 

Yeah . . . and it's a common practice in Islamic "democracies."

Between Golf Rounds, Obama Honors Led Zeppelin, Dustin Hoffman and David Letterman

Good to see the president fully engaged on our cratering economy. I'll bet that 3-week Hawaii vacation can't get here soon enough.

Re: Moonshot

Mark, were there no lunar hearts and minds to win?