At least here in America. Halal can mean lawful or actions permitted by Shariah law without punishment imposed on the doer in many matters. We are not the Middle East. The right question is, is Islam as practiced worldwide, halal? Is it halal to keep your daughters stupid, pregnant and subservient? Is it halal to murder oneself to murder innocents for a bribe of 72 virgins? Is it halal to use death, dismemberment, beatings, threats, public humiliation and other crimes against others that one disagrees with?
If these things are halal then the hell with halal.
I bring this up because I received a question from a very thoughtful person concerning shariah or sharia law and the taking of America by Islam as they appear to be doing in Europe and Asia.
I think that we too will crumble without hardly a blink...what do you think?
jennifer
I do not believe we will.
I have lived and worked in DC, LA, NYC, Boston, Taos and other places and there is a difference in thinking among certain circles. I feel sorry for those that, as a friend quipped, have become so urbane that they are insane. That said, there are differences between Butte, Paducah and Billings as well. Unlike Europe and Asia, America is ployglot both literally and figuratively. We are a united people in a united state of steel workers, bankers, soldiers, ranchers and doctors, lawyers and such.
The urbane insane love to quip that our founding fathers were just a bunch of dead white guys, ie, all alike. How intellectually shallow. To understand our founders is to know just how different they were except in the vision and determination to build a better nation. Some were wealthy, some became wealthy, some lost their fortune and some died. To say that Jefferson, Adams, Burr, Hamilton, Madison and Franklin were all the same is not ignorance, it is stupidity because even a fourth grader has readily at hand descriptions of each. Their differences were wedded together, often not too prettily, to shape a nation. Yes, they were that important that you can still see their prints in the mold of each new generation of Americans.
It is not that Americans want to be a Washington or a Jefferson, nor do they want to be a John Wayne, George Washington Carver, Clara Barton or a Ronald Reagan, but they do want to emulate them in passion, excellence and devotion to principle.
Islam in America so far has only had to deal with lawmakers, philosophers and the media. They best watch out when they start running into the America that remembers what America is and will become. America's greatest strength is not just its people, but those people's belief in God, liberty and their neighbors. That America will not swear or violate as they kill those that would harm America and the American dream.
To travel America is to be awed. Its beauty alone staggers the mind. Its differences all wedded together, sometimes not so prettily, is what makes it strong and wildly brilliant. The human race shares basic needs and desires, but here in America, as those basic needs are daily met, Americans reach for the sky in little and big ways.
My son, three generations out of the coal mines grinding down hope, is wrestling with the question of becoming a doctor, an economist or a rally race car driver. My father died young just as all the males in his family before him even though he was the first to graduate from high school, college and medical school and married "up" to my mother whose fore bearers settled Jamestown, Richmond and numerous other towns and regions. I think my family special, but they are not unique.
They are American.
Islamofacists cannot possibly understand that which is why they will fail in their violent hope of the caliphate including America. How could their tribal tradition ever hope to understand a southern lady marrying a hard scrabble boy from the streets of Akron whose son married an Italian girl from New York whose godfather was a Brooklyn cop named Leo?
Jen, we must always keep up our guard, but Tehran will never play in Peoria. If they ever try to go off Broadway they'll find that my uncle, Old Zeth, can still nail them in the eye at 10 yards with tabaccy or 100 yards with a single shot. It would be no matter to him except he'd have to put down his book and his pulled pork sandwich to deal with any halal crap which would make him cantankerous. Trust me. No one wants to try to make him mad twice. I got the welts as reminders, but I also have the love, the wisdom and the patriotism handed down by a long line of Zeths. So do you and the majority of Americans.
