UK - Islam and apostates

What does the Rahman case mean for the UK and indeed for the entire West?

Charles Moore writing in the Telegraph has this to say about Islam and apostates.

The reason, it seems, why Muslims want apostates killed is not just outrage at abandoning what they regard as the truth. It is because they see it as a kind of treason. Islam thinks it wrong to separate the government of a nation from the rule of faith. Indeed, the only nation whose ultimate validity it recognises is what it calls "the Muslim nation". Changing your faith is considered as much a threat to order and society as secretly working for the KGB was for us in the Cold War.

What this means is that there can be no equality, or even safety, for other religions, let alone for atheists, in a sharia-based Muslim society. The best that can be hoped for is the second-class, protected status for Christians and Jews, rather like the rights of black tribes under apartheid in South Africa, which is called "dhimmi". Dhimmis have inferior rights, and have to pay a special tax. What is out of the question is conversion.

What's all this have to do with Britain?

40% of UK Muslims want Islamic law in Britain.

In an otherwise good article, Moore falls into a trap like so many others.

There are, nowadays, many Muslims who do not agree with this ferocious intolerance. The Council for American-Islamic Relations has issued a statement saying that the Koran does not demand such punishments. Some in our own Muslim Council of Britain agree. A clutch of moderate Muslims who had a private meeting with the Prince of Wales about this last year told him that they regretted the penalty. They also said, however, that they were not going to speak out against it in public.

First, the two groups that More mentions both have links to terror. And second, these people say one thing to Muslims and the opposite to us infidels.

Moore and the Telegraph are not the only ones sounding alarm bells.

As David Warren notes:

The case of Abdul Rahman, like the organized Danish cartoon apoplexy (still continuing in some parts of the world, where Muslim demagogues are still using it to whoop up anti-Western hysteria), brings us face to face with Islamic doctrines inimical to the survival of our civilization. And here, I wish I could say "Islamist", but the unpleasant truth is, Islamic doctrines. For the Shariah principles in question are shared by all four of the Sunni schools of jurisprudence (Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, and Shafi'i), plus the Shia school. There is no "sixth school" that recognizes religious and civic freedom, in any way that resembles what these expressions mean in the West.

All five of the actual schools or traditions take a view of idolatry, that entirely removes the possibility of freedom of expression in public life. Moreover, all take a view of apostasy that presents a palpable threat to the life and liberty of every non-Muslim, and excommunicated Muslim. And such doctrines as "jihad" (when interpreted as perpetual holy war against all infidels), and "razzia" (permission to raid and plunder our infidel communities) are not such as can be assimilated with Western jurisprudence.

We cannot pretend for long, the way President Bush has been doing (albeit from humane and sound tactical motives to begin with), that the Shariah is compatible with freedom and democracy. The systems of government we advocate, or by necessity impose, must explicitly provide civil protection to non-Muslims and Muslims alike, against Shariah courts and their rulings. I have come to realize there is no alternative to this.

After two years of me sounding the alarm, it's good to see that people are not only waking up to the danger Islam poses, but they are speaking out about it.
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