Shari'a and American Islam - What the Numbers Say

Andrew McCarthy has another great article at National Review Online on radical Islam. In "The Coordinates of Radicalism," McCarthy asks the question, 'What is it that radicalizes Muslims, including American Muslims?'

Here is the unsettling but sedulously avoided truth: What radicalizes Muslims is Islam.

Political correctness requires that we becloud this simple truth with a few caveats that, in most any other context, would be regarded as distractions by sensible people. So it is necessary to say that there is more than one interpretation of Islam. We must further note that the fact that Islam itself is the radicalizing catalyst does not mean that all, or even most, Muslims will become radicals. But here is another disquieting truth: Even the terms “radicalization” and “radical Islam” get things exactly backwards. The reality is that the radicals in Islam are the reformers — the Muslims who embrace Western civilization, its veneration of reason in matters of faith, and the pluralistic space it makes for civil society. What we wishfully call “radicalism” is in fact the Islamic mainstream.

So where did he get this incredible idea?  Why, from data, of course.

These are the principal takeaways from an important study just competed by Israeli academic Mordechai Kedar and David Yerushalmi of the Center for Security Policy in Washington. As detailed in a just-published Middle East Quarterly essay, “Shari’a and Violence in American Mosques” (available here), the authors’ “Mapping Sharia” project surveyed 100 randomly selected mosques across the United States. Onsite, fully 81 percent of the mosques featured Islamic texts that advocate violence. In nearly 85 percent of the mosques, the leadership (usually an imam or prayer leader) favorably recommended this literature for study by congregants. Moreover, 58 percent of the mosques invited guest lecturers known for promoting violent jihad.

(Well, I'm sure sitting in a church for 20 years listening to your minister declare, "God damn America!" has no affect on your outlook, either.)  As McCarthy points out in his article, the data does not account for those Muslims who do not attend a mosque, so we have no idea as to where they stand on shari'a and violence, but it is not a good sign that over 80%  of the mosques surveyed support violence against non-Muslims, and does not bode well for successful Islamic integration into the American cultural melting pot (you know, that culture where everyone is free to follow their own faith--or not--and no one gets killed for not believing in Islam... or being gay... or having sex out of marriage...).

Of course, I'm sure that none of this is real as the study was conducted by 'evil Jooos!!!'   Go read the whole article here.