Tag Archive for: ADL

Over 1,500 American Rabbis Agree: ADL is NOT ‘Competent’ to Combat Anti-Semitism

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Over 1,500 rabbis agree that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is “no longer competent to identify, let alone combat, antisemitism.’”

An ADL spokesperson, describing the new initiative, wrongly claimed that “Anti-Israel activism in and of itself is not antisemitism” and that they would need to “carefully evaluate” student government resolutions supporting BDS, the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement that seeks to destroy the State of Israel.

As explained by Discover the Networks:

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is a Hamas-inspired initiative that aims to use various forms of public protest, economic pressure, and court rulings to advance the Hamas agenda of permanently destroying Israel as a Jewish nation-state. While Hamas pursues this goal in its low-intensity war against Israel by means of terrorism and bloodshed, BDS supplements those efforts in the United States.

In June, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement slammed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh for “betraying” Palestinians because he met with the Moroccan Prime Minister. The rage was due to Morocco’s normalization agreement with Israel.

Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) Southern Regional Vice President Rabbi Moshe B. Parnes rightly states:

“Only someone with no sense of Jewish history could claim that BDS is not antisemitic.”

On May 31, I wrote an extensive article about the ADL and its “Brief History on Antisemitism,” which focuses on Christians, while completely avoiding the ongoing jihad against Israel. Even some churches today, as well as the World Council of Churches, ruled by globalist doctrine and liberation theology, sympathize with the Palestinian resistance against Israel. They buy into the lie that the Palestinians are the victims while Israel, struggling for its survival since 1948, is the “oppressor.” See the Kairos Palestine document, which drives this agenda, HERE.

Those with common sense and a minimum knowledge of history should be questioning the willful blindness and the agenda of the ADL.

1,500+ rabbis say ADL no longer competent to identify, let alone combat, antisemitism

Coalition for Jewish Values, August 3, 2021:

Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) took renewed aim at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today, after the ADL announced a partnership with Hillel International, the Jewish college organization, to document antisemitism on American campuses. While such an effort is noble and worthwhile, the ADL, CJV points out, demonstrated that it lacks the moral clarity to properly identify antisemitism, let alone combat it. An ADL spokesperson, describing the new initiative, wrongly claimed that “Anti-Israel activism in and of itself is not antisemitism” and that they would need to “carefully evaluate” student government resolutions supporting BDS, the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement that seeks to destroy the State of Israel.

“Only someone with no sense of Jewish history could claim that BDS is not antisemitic,” said CJV Southern Regional Vice President Rabbi Moshe B. Parnes. “The first Nazi edict was a boycott of Jewish businesses; economic warfare directed against the Jewish people was then and has always been one of the first signs of systemic Jew-hatred. Combating antisemitism in all its forms defined the ADL’s mission throughout its long and storied history, and it is crucial that it return to its core goals.”

For millennia, antisemitism has been driven by fabricated conspiracy theories regarding Jewish supremacists acquiring wealth by means of thievery and fraud. In the modern era, the same fictional beliefs are applied to the State of Israel. BDS arose from and is perpetuated by the same concocted claims expressed as land theft, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and similar terms, providing a prime example of ancient antisemitism in new dress….

COLUMN BY

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Anti-Defamation League ‘Has Become A Fraud’ as Leftist Biases Overwhelm Its Core Mission

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“The ADL has become a fraud,” wrote Jewish-American political activist Charles Jacobs, president of Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), in 2019 about the Anti-Defamation League. As he and others have documented, the ADL, the “biggest Jewish defense agency” against antisemitism, has in recent decades become the “biggest failure” as leftist biases among American Jews have perverted this core ADL mission.

Jacobs recently reviewed the ADL’s downfall and the need for new Jewish leadership in an APT webinar with his fellow conservative Jews William A. Jacobson and Jonathan S. Tobin. Jacobson, a Cornell University Law School professor, heads the Legal Insurrection Foundation. The political commentator Tobin edits the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS).

The “ADL advocates for the Democratic Party’s agenda items,” Jacobs wrote in 2014, and has made an “awful detour into universalism and partisan politics.” This reflects the historically left-leaning political sentiments of most American Jews. As the conservative Jewish political writer Seth Mandel noted in 2018, the “ADL has long supported abortion rights, which is not a ‘Jewish issue’ in any way.”

These biases have often rubbed conservative Jews the wrong way, such as Herut North America’s United States National Director, Moshe Phillips. In 2013, he rebutted a 2010 smear by then ADL National Director Abraham Foxman of the late conservative talk radio pioneer, Rush Limbaugh, as an anti-Semite. “The ADL does not speak in our name. Abraham Foxman does not speak in our name,” Phillips wrote.

While Foxman had extensively analyzed Islamic antisemitism and its threats to Israel, vitally important for Jews, in his 2003 book, Never Again: The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism, such views remained exceptional among ADL leaders. As Jacobs observed:

Like failed generals fighting the last war, they focused on Nazis and the political right — and ignored the changed battlefield for as long as they could. They deliberately, out of political consideration, minimized the assaults coming from “progressives” and Islamists.

That modern anti-Israel “animus comes mostly from the ideological left, with which a majority of Jews identify for many reasons, is painful and confusing to many,” Jacobs observed in 2010. He elaborated in 2017:

ADL kept sending those (fundraising) postcards with swastikas found in bathroom stalls in Iowa, and campaigned against Pat Robertson…even though many people now believe that Robertson and Christian evangelicals are Israel’s, and the Jews’, best allies.

An APT study of 1995-2011 ADL press releases offered a “good if not perfect indicator of ADL priorities,” an APT pamphlet noted. In this 15-year period APT “found that only 3 percent of ADL’s press releases focus on Islamic extremism and Arab anti-Semitism,” while merely another five percent of press releases concerned terrorism. “Fighting for causes unrelated to Jewish defense accounts for 31 percent of ADL’s press release output,” APT concluded.

Meanwhile the ADL’s own 2014-1017 extensive studies of antisemitism worldwide revealed that Muslims are by far the most anti-Semitic group globally in comparison to other religions and atheists. In a “cover-up mode” the ADL downplayed its own data, Jacobs observed. The findings were “politically incorrect” for an ADL “anchored in the Left.”

Empirically proven Islamic antisemitism calls into question the open border policies of Jewish groups including the ADL towards Muslim migrants and/or refugees. Jewish leaders “refuse to acknowledge the political and social consequences of the mass influx of Muslim immigrants,” Jacobs has noted. These leaders “fail to understand how promoting tolerance of the intolerant may be lethal,” as when the ADL has ignored Islamic threats to homosexuals in the United States.

By contrast, the ADL has a “pattern of allying with Muslim anti-Semites to fight ‘Islamophobia’ and then defaming legitimately concerned citizens,” Jacobs noted in 2012. Thus ADL branches have actually coordinated with local affiliates of the Hamas-derived Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), something that made him call for Foxman’s resignation. American anti-sharia activist Pamela Geller noted that same year that he had equated her with anti-Semites such as Louis Farrakhan and Patrick Buchannan.

Precisely the opposite, Jewish leaders must demand of Muslims a reevaluation of Islamic anti-Semitic doctrines, Jacobs demanded in a 2010 interview. This would parallel past critical Jewish engagement with Christian antisemitism. As Jacobs noted, the “enormous, life-saving reversals in Christian theological teachings about Jews could not have been achieved without years of intensive Jewish critique of Christian Biblical texts and traditions.”

The dismal state of the ADL and other Jewish organizations prompted APT and its Jewish allies in 2020 to call for new Jewish leadership in America. Yet Jacobs noted in 2010 the reticence of many Jews to risk conflict with powerful Jewish personalities and groups. “In the case of the ADL, I know several prominent Jewish leaders who agree with my criticism 110%, but could not speak out publicly without great risk,” he had said.

Jews desperately need effective defenses against contemporary anti-Semitic dangers. Yet since Jonathan Greenblatt succeeded Foxman as ADL National Director in 2015, Jacob’s concerns have only worsened. Greenblatt, a veteran Democratic political operative has abandoned whatever political impartiality Foxman once showed and turned the ADL into a rigidly leftwing organization, as a concluding article in this series will examine.

COLUMN BY

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ADL smears foes of jihad violence against Israel as ‘Islamophobes,’ gets canceled as ‘anti-Muslim’ anyway

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Jonathan Greenblatt is discovering that any dissent, no matter how small and qualified, from the far-Left agenda — which is increasingly open in its hostility to Israel — will get you defamed as an “Islamophobe,” no matter how much you pander, no matter how much you desperately try to stay in the good graces of those who set the tune to which the rest of us must dance. The sinister Salam al-Marayati of MPAC has smeared ADL as “anti-Muslim” for supporting Israel, and Greenblatt is dismayed, saying that “the allegation that ADL falls along the same side of Islamophobes is patently false.”

Of course it is. The ADL has repeatedly done to foes of jihad violence against Israel and other states, and foes of Sharia oppression of women and others, exactly what Salam al-Marayati is doing to him now. Greenblatt could have used this as an occasion to wake up and realize how he is being played, and how the entire “Islamophobia” enterprise is a scam designed to intimidate people into fearing to oppose jihad terror, for fear of falling prey to what al-Marayati is doing to him now. But instead of having an original thought for the first time in his life, Greenblatt is doubling down, pleading with al-Marayati to accept him. Will it work? Almost certainly not, but it will likely lead the ADL to become even more anti-Israel than it is now.

“ADL: We’re proud of our record defending Jews — and Muslims,” by Jonathan A. Greenblatt, Forward, December 16, 2020:

As one of the oldest civil-rights organizations in the Jewish community, we’re not unaccustomed to criticism, even in the pages of one of America’s oldest Jewish news outlets. But the OpEd by Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which the Forward published on Tuesday morning, was illuminating about how certain quarters in our society desperately try to employ cancel culture to silence others. In this case, the author is trying to marginalize ADL and make support for the State of Israel disqualifying in pursuing civil rights for all Americans, including the Muslim-American community.

Al-Marayati argues that ADL is a source of “anti-Muslim” rhetoric and cannot be fully trusted as an ally in the fight for civil rights because of our support of the Jewish state. It is an argument taken from the playbook of a fringe smear campaign being run against ADL that, to its credit, MPAC has not signed his name to, but which he still chose to directly quote in his piece. Still, their campaign is wrong and without merit on a number of levels. It is also dangerous, creating a space where we as a Jewish organization are judged more for what we do or do not say about Israel than for all of the advocacy work we do here in the U.S. and abroad fighting for marginalized communities.

This is a common tactic in a smear campaign – narrow down a broader argument (in this case, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) into a singular, unfounded allegation (in this case, that ADL is Islamophobic because of our support for the Jewish State). But the allegation that ADL falls along the same side of Islamophobes is patently false….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Obama Defends Iran Deal by Attacking Opponents

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Instead of the issues, there is a shrill war of words against good faith opponents.

In a recent speech at American University, President Obama attempted to sell his Iran nuclear agreement to a skeptical American public, which according to all reliable polls opposes the deal overwhelmingly.  By making his pitch in a speech instead of a press conference, he avoided having to answer questions, clarify past inconsistent statements, and discuss the distortions that have been used to justify the deal.  Rather than allay concerns that are causing worry even among Congressional Democrats, he instead heaped scorn on Republicans, attacked his critics, derided Binyamin Netanyahu, and minimized the threat to Israel.  His speech was as self-congratulatory as it was detached from geopolitical reality.

And for once, liberal Jewish organizations disagreed with him publicly.

Mr. Obama attempted to woo Jewish groups into supporting the deal before his speech, but instead met with stiff resistance.  Although known more for lobbying than open confrontation, AIPAC strongly opposed the deal and urged Congress to reject it.  The Anti-Defamation League likewise objected, announcing in a public statement that:  “We are deeply disappointed by the terms of the final deal with Iran … which seem to fall far short of the President’s objective of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon state.”  Underlying these statements is the realization that the deal will facilitate Iran’s nuclear program and encourage a regional arms race.

The concerns of the liberal Jewish establishment were perhaps best summed up in an August 5th op-ed by David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, which stated among many other things the following:

By abandoning the earlier negotiating posture of dismantling sanctions in exchange for Iranian dismantlement of its nuclear infrastructure, and instead replacing it with what is essentially a temporary freeze on its program, the P5+1 has indeed validated Iran’s future status as a nuclear threshold state, a point that President Obama himself acknowledged in a media interview.

Given the nature of the Iranian regime and its defining ideology, AJC cannot accept this prospect. It is too ominous, too precedent-setting, and too likely to trigger a response from Iran’s understandably anxious neighbors who may seek nuclear-weapons capacity themselves, as well as, more immediately and still more certainly, advanced conventional arms, adding an entirely new level of menace to the most volatile and arms-laden region in the world. Surely, this cannot be in America’s long-term security interests.

After fully articulating his organization’s fears and concerns in the piece, Harris wrote that “AJC opposes the deal and calls on Members of Congress to do the same.”

Irrespective of his past assurances that no deal would be preferable to a bad deal, he is attempting to force a very bad deal on the US and its allies.

Though the ADL and AJC were deferential in acknowledging the efforts of President Obama, John Kerry and their European partners in negotiating with Iran, they nevertheless concluded that the deal is bad for the United States and Israel.  This view echoes a growing concern that it accomplishes none of the goals used to justify negotiations in the first place, and the nagging realization that Iran will fulfill its nuclear ambitions even if it does comply.

Based on its history, Iran is unlikely to comply in the absence of effective monitoring procedures; and without truly verifiable compliance, it will likely continue enriching uranium clandestinely and may well have enough reserves to produce weapons before the deal expires.  Some intelligence experts believe that Iran already possesses a sufficient stockpile.

It is significant that Jewish criticism of the deal is not coming solely from conservative groups like the Zionist Organization of (ZOA), Americans for a Safe Israel and the Republican Jewish Coalition.  Liberal establishment organizations finally seem to grasp that Obama’s Mideast policies have promoted the growth of Islamic extremism and have threatened Israel’s safety and security.  They also understand that the deal will lead to nuclear proliferation in the region.  Accordingly, American Jews who had always supported the President and downplayed his hostility for Israel are now calling on Congress to reject the deal.

Senator Chuck Schumer, whom many predicted would support the deal to preserve his chance of being named the next Democratic Senate leader, announced that he would vote against it.  Though early reports predicted that Schumer would vote for the deal, he may have been swayed by the thousands of letters sent by alarmed constituents urging him to vote no.  As a consequence, he is being pilloried by the political left and the White House and has been the target of anti-Semitic slurs.

The President’s allies are responding to criticism by attacking those who oppose the deal, casting aspersions on their motivations, invoking classical anti-Semitic canards of undue Jewish influence and dual loyalty, characterizing Jewish dissent as unpatriotic, and accusing Israel of orchestrating the opposition.

Liberal criticism of the deal is usually couched in expressions of thanks to Obama and Kerry for their efforts – despite their clear animus for Netanyahu and mocking dismissal of Israel’s existential concerns.  Still, it cannot be disputed that many liberals now recognize that Obama’s stated goal of preventing Iran from going nuclear is inconsistent with the final agreement, which legitimizes and enables its nuclear program.  Irrespective of his past assurances that no deal would be preferable to a bad deal, he is attempting to force a very bad deal on the US and its allies.

Many Americans are concerned that the deal does not require Iran to destroy its nuclear infrastructure, submit to “anytime, anywhere” inspections, fully disclose all of its nuclear activities or cease subsidizing terrorism – former red-lines that American negotiators ultimately conceded.  They are also bothered that Obama agreed to lift ballistic and conventional weapons bans – against the advice of military advisers – and that Iran can beat monitoring efforts by evasion, misdirection or simply failing to disclose its covert nuclear facilities.  This is especially problematic in light of the existence of secret side agreements (which neither Kerry nor Obama disclosed to Congress) affecting the ability to monitor compliance by, among other things, allowing Iran to provide its own soil samples to inspectors.

A growing number of Jewish Democrats are also troubled that the deal places trust in an Islamist regime that remains unrepentantly anti-American and antisemitic, brazenly states that it will not honor agreements with infidel nations, and repeatedly threatens to destroy Israel and exterminate her people.  Contrary to the naïve claims of its supporters, the deal will only destabilize an already volatile region, provide Iran with funds to continue financing terrorism and regional unrest, and motivate the Sunni states to acquire their own nuclear arsenals.

Rather than assuage any of these concerns, Obama used his speech to belittle and disparage all who question the deal and to compare his Republican critics in Congress to Iranian hardliners.  Though he’s elevated combative, divisive politics to a high art since his first days in office, this comment troubled many Democrats for its insulting tone and moral vacuity.

The ease with which Obama compares good faith opponents to fanatical religious extremists is all the more disturbing in light of his seemingly compulsive aversion to offending Islamist sensibilities and his failure to condemn the pernicious doctrines used to justify terrorism.

The President’s war of words will probably grow shriller as the Congressional vote in September draws closer, especially if more Democrats reject the deal in advance.  He will continue to attack those who disagree with him, malign Netanyahu for speaking truth to power, and bully Israel by threatening her with isolation.  He will not be moved even if most liberal Jews end up opposing the deal.  They have acted as his apologists for more than six years; and if they no longer support him, he may simply lump them together with those assertive Jews who have always been critical of his policies and question their loyalty.

On the surface, President Obama remains unmoved by the domestic and international consequences of his ill-conceived foreign policy.  But if, as many believe, his real intent is to reduce American global influence, legitimize Islamist regimes, and treat Iran as the dominant power in the Mideast, he may be following a knowing strategy that accepts, and perhaps welcomes, the regional and global risks.

Mr. Obama’s agreement with Iran has been compared to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Nazi Germany.  The comparison may be inapt, however, because Chamberlain hoped that ceding territory would satisfy Hitler and prevent war.  The deal with Iran, in contrast, will give the mullahs a nuclear muscle that they have repeatedly vowed to flex.  Whereas Hitler lied in Munich about the prospect of peace in exchange for land, Iran has affirmatively promised terrorism, war and genocide when it gets what it wants.

Though Congress may not be able to trust the President’s hollow assurances, history suggests that it can certainly take the Iranians at their word.

The Ferguson Riots and Lessons from 1964

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Policesign

The wrong lesson.

It’s a sad day when the first day of school is delayed a week because of rioting, as it has been in Ferguson, Missouri.  Teachers, instead of being in classrooms teaching, have been getting “crisis training.” Those who have irresponsibly been quick to judge in the case of the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer without all the facts have only added fuel to the fire.  This is the case in the lessons about Ferguson that have been prepared, free for teachers to download.

They follow the numerous lessons already fashioned out of the Trayvon Martin case (such as one by PBS called “Debating Race, Justice and Policy in the Case of Trayvon Martin”), with the focus on race and social justice, instead of real justice–as in the jury system, evaluation of evidence, etc.

It almost seems that the indoctrinators have been waiting with material.  Within days of the shooting, the lessons were ready for teachers to download. PBS has come out with an entire list of “resources” for teaching about Ferguson and Michael Brown to grades 7-12 (including links to videos from the PBS News Hour). The Anti-Defamation League offers a detailed lesson plan (Common Core-aligned), with discussions centered on race, the “militarization” of police, and the best ways to engage in “activism.” Teachers are instructed to play the lyrics of rapper J.Cole who has already written a song about Michael Brown. Teachers are then to ask students:

“How did you feel while listening to the song?”
“What do the lyrics mean?”
“Why do you think he wrote the song?”
“Will it make a difference?”

These lessons follow the lead of journalists, who have been quick to condemn the police, blaming the “militarization of police” for criminal and subversive elements. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch presented the first night’s looting, which seemed to go on while police stood back, as a justified release of emotion.  It was not.  The gangs came out in even greater force the following nights, perhaps encouraged by their successes and enflamed by the rhetoric of the race agitators that have come out at such moments throughout the twentieth century, especially fifty years ago.

Fifty years ago in Rochester my neighborhood was set on the path to destruction by the riots. This July in a perverse kind of “celebration” media outlets and libraries “looked back” to 1964.  The rationalizations for the rioting back then were what they are now: poverty, unemployment, discrimination, bad housing.

Nothing was the same after the riots in Rochester in 1964, no matter what the teachers or commentators said.  The destroyed businesses, ruined property values, and deteriorating schools that we had to live with defied the politically correct lessons and the commentary from perches in the suburbs or Washington, D.C.  The criminals 50 years later know the script; they know that their actions will be excused by the agitators and the oh-so-sensitive who write from offices far from the violence.  It’s shocking to see it happen over and over, in Rochester in 1964 and in Ferguson in 2014.  Today, audaciously, pundits in Washington, D.C. lecture police to be more understanding, more “brave.”

What’s different today is that the anti-police pundits are seen as being conservative.  But these conservatives are new kinds of conservatives, they insist.  They disparage the old-fashioned conservatism.  All they want is freedom, they say.  They’re purists, lumping every form of social control under Big Government.  They are, proudly, Libertarians.

Barry Goldwater 1962

Barry Goldwater 1962

Really?  Then they ought to consider the words of Mr. Libertarian himself, Barry Goldwater, who in 1964 said this in his acceptance speech for the nomination of Republican presidential candidate:

Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign aggression, is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any government, and a government that cannot fulfill that purpose is one that cannot long command the loyalty of its citizens. History shows us – demonstrates that nothing – nothing prepares the way for tyranny more than the failure of public officials to keep the streets from bullies and marauders.

This is what we need to start putting in lessons for school children…after teaching the adults in Washington, D.C., who would lecture us about the “militarization of police” or being more “brave.”

A Rabbi’s Letter to Georgia Legislators on American Law for American Courts

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Re: HB 895 – Foreign Law; prohibit the application of foreign law in Georgia courts; violations of rights guaranteed natural citizens by U.S. and Georgia Constitutions

Dear Congressman Hightower,

My name is Rabbi Jonathan Hausman. I have a BA in Judaic Studies, MA in International Affairs concentrating on the Middle East (both degrees from The George Washington University), JD from Emory University (licensed to practice in the State of Connecticut and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania), and my Rabbinic degree from Kollel Lomdei Torah of The Tifereth Israel Rabbinical Yeshiva. I spent a great deal of time living and studying in the Middle East having lived and worked in Israel and studied at The American University of Cairo. I read, speak and write Hebrew and Arabic, and am conversant in Jewish and Islamic sacralized texts and literature.

It has come to my attention that representatives of the Anti-Defamation League gave testimony opposing the aforementioned legislation SB 895 – Foreign Law; prohibit the application of foreign law in Georgia courts; violations of rights guaranteed natural citizens by U.S. and Georgia Constitutions.

I write to you in response as one who possesses the unique skills to plumb the sources of two traditions (Judaism and Islam) along with the requisite legal training appertaining to US law and Constitutional governance.

Indeed, a comprehensive study was undertaken by the Center for Security Policy (CSP) in 2011 which uncovered the extent of the use of Sharia (Islamic Law) as the basis for legal decisions. 50 Appellate court cases from 23 States were reviewed in this study. Most of the cases referenced in this study involve Muslim women and children, who were asking American courts to preserve their rights to equal protection and due process in cases dealing with divorce and child custody. These families came to America for freedom from the discriminatory and cruel laws of Shariah. However, all 50 Appellate decisions dealt with the application of Sharia in contravention to the Constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law.

The CSP study’s findings suggest that Sharia law has entered into state court decisions, in conflict with the Constitution and state public policy. Some commentators have said there are no more than one or two cases of Sharia law in U.S. state court cases; yet the Center for Security Policy found 50 significant cases just from the small sample of appellate published cases in 2011. The number of lower court decisions that did not result in appeals is not known as such cases are generally not reported.

With all due respect to the claims of the ADL that the aforementioned legislation’s supposed purpose is to counter the infiltration of our judicial and legal system by Sharia (Islamic) law while subsequently claiming that no Georgia court decision, or any other court decision, demonstrating an actual need for this legislation can be found is demonstrably incorrect.

Many have asserted with certainty that state court judges will always reject any foreign law, including Sharia law, when it conflicts with the Constitution or state public policy; once again, the Center’s study found 15 Trial Court cases, and 12 Appellate Court cases, where Sharia was found to be applicable in these particular instances. The facts are the facts: some judges are making decisions deferring to Sharia law even when those decisions conflict with Constitutional protections. The complete study is available at http://shariahinamericancourts.com/.

Some have also claimed that such legislation is applicable to all religious law. So, for instance, the observant Jewish community regularly uses religious tribunals (Batei Din) to resolve all kinds of disputes, including divorce settlements, which often are the basis for civil court divorce decrees and orders. But this legislation would prevent a Jewish couple in Texas from voluntarily using a Bet Din to resolve their divorce settlement, and also would invalidate an out-of state divorce based on a Bet Din arbitration. This is incorrect.

There is a basic Rabbinic principle that has operated since roughly the year 226 CE. That principle is known as Dina d’malchuta Dina, the law of the country is binding and, in certain cases, is to be preferred to Jewish law/Halacha. Rabbinical developments evidenced a practicality regarding dealing with and maintaining positive relationships with the governing non-Jewish civil society (e.g. Parthian and subsequent Sassanid Persian rulers of Babylonia) which surrounded the Jewish community. This extended to the Jewish communities of Europe and, subsequently, transplanted to the United States.

While it is true that Jews maintained their own courts in certain locales during certain historical periods whose decisions were enforced by the secular authorities, such Rabbinical court decisions always were set aside if there was a conflict with the society at large. As a member of the Rabbinate who engages frequently with many different issues regarding matters of personal status (marriage, divorce, property settlements, etc.), I can attest to one basic fact of legal life. If a Get (Jewish bill of divorce) is issued by a husband to a wife without a civil divorce, that couple is still married in every jurisdiction in this country. This is just one example amongst many.

Halacha/Jewish Law has this precept that one must be reconciled to changed circumstances regarding government, and that civil law is necessary for the functioning of the greater society. The result was an internal recognition of Judaism’s non-supercessionist and non-conversionary character. According to the Prophet Nehemiah, Jews should obey the laws of their rulers (Nehemiah 9:37). It extends to real property issues (after all, the government could/can confiscate property), common currency, taxes, recognition of administrative officers and documents and regulations issued by such authorities, as well as the appointed juridical positions within and outside of the Jewish community.

As for those issues dealing with personal piety (e.g. Kashruth, that is observance of the Jewish dietary rules), such only apply to Jews specifically and not to the world at large. There is nothing coercive vis a vis general society.

Sharia, on its face might be described as the religious code for living the moral system according to Islamic tradition; perhaps, in the same way the Bible would serve for Christians. The difference is quite stark, however.

Sharia refers both to the Islamic system of law and the totality of the Islamic way of life. It is immutable, perfect, unchangeable, static, and unchanging. Death penalty for apostasy, as well as homosexuality, adultery, freedom of speech issues when it comes to criticizing Islam or Muhammad or drawing satire cartoons, disfigurement for theft, depredations suffered by women (e.g. the increasing frequency of honor killings in the US protected under Shariah, female genital mutilation, child custody and absconding of minor children) and the irrelevancy of women’s testimony as well as lower percentage of inheritance and no rights regarding issues of child custody, plaintiffs exacting legal revenge (eye for an eye is taken literally), gambling, alcohol consumption all command exacting punishment under Sharia.

The only instance in the United States dealing with a criminal prosecution for female genital mutilation occurred in Georgia. Furthermore, there are known to be two cases of children of a marriage between a non-Muslim American mother and a Saudi Muslim father who absconded with the children because Sharia law dictates that custody resides solely with the Muslim father and male relatives.

The United States has a Constitution under which the government functions, and the Bill of Rights which protects basic human rights and freedom – rights derived from the Almighty according to the secular foundational documents of these United States – freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of education and freedom to organize political parties. The pertinent question regarding Sharia is thus. Does Sharia, as a legal system act in consonance with the Constitutional legal principles so cherished by and supported by over two centuries of American case law or does it stand for a diminution of the rights of many segments of our population? If the latter, then legislation such as HB 895, The application of foreign law and foreign forum selection in certain family law proceedings certainly is one of the surest methods to protect the Constitutional rights of parties in family law matters under Georgia law and practice, as well as in front of the Georgia Judiciary.

Sincerely,

Rabbi Jonathan H. Hausman
BA,MA, JD, Rabbinic Ordination
Spiritual Leader
Ahavath Torah Congregation
Stoughton, Massachusetts

Cc: Congressman Wendell Willard, Chair, GA House Judiciary Committee
Congressman David Ralston, Speaker, GA State House
Congressman Alex Atwood, Secretary, Public Safety and Homeland Security
Committee

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review. The featured image is courtesy of David B. Strutt Photography, www.dstruttphotography.com.