Scholar of Islam Andrew Bostom, interviewed recently about Islamic anti-Semitism here and here at FrontPage, has brought to our attention a revealing, 47-page Arabic-language document discovered by the Center for Security Policy and translated into English by his colleague at Translating Jihad. The paper was published by the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) in 2007, and presented at their 2008 careers conference in Houston. The document makes it clear that AMJA’s ultimate goal, as Bostom puts it, “is nothing less than the eventual subversion of the American legal system” to sharia law.
AMJA’s website explains that the group’s purpose is to service the growing Muslim population living in the non-Muslim Americas, giving them authoritative guidance as to what is allowable under the manmade laws of “infidel lands.” The organization also offers itself as “an authentic source of Islamic learning and thought for all peoples of the Americas.” All peoples who understand Arabic, that is. For those who do and who care to investigate, the organization reveals its subversive agenda.
As Translating Jihad notes about the newly discovered document from AMJA, the paper
makes clear that according to Islam, the only legitimate law is that which comes from Allah, and in fact authority to make laws rests with Allah alone. This renders every other legal system — including the American system — illegitimate.
Naturally, in the United States everyone is expected to abide by the law, under which all are equal, Muslims included. But AMJA’s authoritative rulings require all Muslims to defer to the law of infidels only according to darura, the doctrine of necessity, for “it is required for a Muslim to be hostile to courts which rule by man-made law.” As Translating Jihad states in his assessment,
Throughout the paper it is made abundantly clear that Muslims should view the American and other non-Muslim legal systems as infidel systems, and that they are only to participate in them in specific circumstances in order to benefit Islam and Muslims generally. They are specifically instructed to feel hatred in their hearts toward such infidel legal systems, and to do everything within their power to make the Islamic Shari’a supreme, even if that means engaging in deception in certain cases.
Even if it means engaging in deception. It is disturbing enough that such direction is being given to, say, the average Muslim called in for jury duty, but this is expected to apply to Muslims higher up the legal ladder as well – from legal aide to attorneys all the way up to judges. A Muslim judge too, according to the document, “must in his heart hate the man-made law”:
He must also do everything in his power to enact laws that allow the Muslims to practice their Shari’a. He must keep it in his mind that he was not permitted to take this job except to serve Islam and Muslims. He must also… judge by the rulings of the Shari’a as much as possible, even if by a ruse.
So a Muslim judge is allowed to participate in the infidel system of justice only to serve Islam and fellow Muslims, not everyone who comes before his bench without discrimination, and he must rule as much as possible according to the dictates of sharia without attracting undue attention to his true intentions and loyalty.
AMJA qualifies even something as fundamental as acquiring citizenship in, and swearing allegiance to, the United States. It has issued a fatwa ruling that U.S. citizenship is acceptable for Muslims only “on the condition that they do not accept indefinitely the law and legislation of that country” and maintain their “loyalty to Allah and His Messenger.”
Another fatwa from AMJA explicitly discusses preparing for offensive jihad against America and the West, as soon as Muslims are in a strong enough position to do so. Offensive jihad refers to the Islamic imperative to subjugate the world; defensive jihad means protecting Islam and Muslims against supposed aggressors. When asked whether the Islamic community in the West is ready to undertake offensive jihad, AMJA ruled:
The Islamic community does not possess the strength to engage in offensive jihad at this time. With our current capabilities, we are aspiring toward defensive jihad, and to improve our position with regards to jurisprudence at this stage.
As Translating Jihad points out, AMJA is not some fringe group. Its scholars are considered authoritative and influential, and it enjoys mainstream acceptance not only in the American Muslim community (including endorsement of the organization’s seventh annual American conference in Houston in late 2010 to train American imams), but internationally. This report from the Muslim Observer asserts that AMJA
has a list of scholars associated with it which stretches from Al-Azhar University to Virginia’s Open University, and back across the ocean to the professors at Saudi universities.
The organization has issued fatwas which sanction the killing of apostates, of blasphemers (including non-Muslims guilty of it), and of adulterers (by stoning, no less), and which condone marital rape. Those, from a mainstream Muslim authority. Somehow such rulings are always swept under the carpet by the chic and slick academic apologists for Islam like John Esposito or Reza Aslan, or President Obama’s Muslim advisor Dalia Mogahed, who offer slippery, whitewashed defenses of sharia.
Based on these rulings, it’s difficult to see that the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America is doing anything but fighting the long war against the infidel, secretly undermining our legal system now as much as possible, in tiny but accumulating increments, with an eye toward the day when fundamentalist Muslims can openly install sharia.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 3/21/12)
