Michigan Court Establishes 'Blasphemy'-Free Zone for Islam

Writing at The Corner, Nina Shea recaps the latest in the saga of Terry Jones, who has been trying to take a peaceful, non-flammable protest of sharia and jihad to the sidewalk outside the largest mosque in America in Dearborn, Michigan only to be outlawed by the Michigan District Court. Like all other envelop-pushing cases, this latest incident serves as a stress test of the rule of law in our society. And, like most other such envelop-pushing cases, it proves that the rule of law is strong — only the law that is strong is sharia (Islamic) law.

The Michigan District Court’s egregious ruling against Jones is all about protecting Islam from criticism, rather than about protecting criticism from Islam, which is what US jurisprudence, not to mention the American Way, demands. It is sharia that the US court is enforcing.

One particularly hideous aspect of the ruling bars Pastor Jones and his colleague Assistant Pastor Wayne Sapp from visiting the vicinity of this mosque for the next three years. Jones and Sapp are American citizens; the area the court has barred to them is in American territory. With this ruling, the judge has made the court both the creator and also the enforcer of what amounts to a public, criticism-free and protest-free zone for Islam, a place in USA where “blasphemy” against Islam is against the law.

“No-go-zone” is what we call those pits in Europe where violence and intimidation of non-Muslims have ethnically cleansed areas to a point of Islamic purity and de facto Islamic law. Where Islamic courts are recognized, as in the UK, where Islamic law is recognized, as in the premise of the cases against Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Austria, Lars Hedegaard in Denmark and others, Western courts are increasingly bending to, incorporating and implementing Islamic law. In Jones’ case, the Michigan court seems to be doing something a little different. By physically carving out a criticism-free area for Islam, the Michigan Court is making history by creating the first de jure, physically defined no-go-zone in the USA, maybe in the whole Western world.

This is leaping, not creeping, sharia.