It'll never happen... here's why

Submitted by Joshua Truax (United States), Oct 6, 2004 at 03:34

Leave it to Mr. Pipes to once again lay bare what America's "establishment" institutions have only rarely acknowledged about the nature of our enemy in this war we find ourselves in. Thank you.

That said, I seriously doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood or others of their ilk will ever actually realize their goal of bringing Shari'a to the United States, for three reasons:

1) The most obvious reason is that the attacks of 9/11/2001, and all previous, subsequent and future terrorist attacks carried out against Americans on behalf of Islam, have all but ensured that militant Islam will never appeal to any more than a very limited segment of the population (namely those who are already antipathetic toward American society to begin with). I'm sure I can speak for the overwhelming majority of Americans when I say I find the idea of adopting the very belief system that inspired 9/11 to be somewhere between laughable and treasonous.

2) Even notwithstanding all the terrorism-related baggage that Islamism comes with, it cannot hope to gain mass appeal in America for the simple reason that there really is no such thing as mass appeal in America anymore: Our cultural marketplace of ideas, lifestyles, arts and entertainment has become so vast (and ever-expanding) that no one belief system, religious, political or otherwise, can hope to ever come anywhere near national dominance, at least not through the peaceable means that groups like the Muslim Brotherhood claim to espouse.

3) Any serious attempt to "amend" the Constitution as we know it out of existence in favor of Shari'a law would be exceedingly difficult to actually pull off in any event. Even a more conventional amendment requires approval by two-thirds of of both houses of Congress, then ratification by three-fourths of state governments for enactment. Needless to say, this would require Islamist politics to have already become prevalent not just at the federal level but in at least 38 states before any proposal to actually scrap the Constitution could even be seriously put forth. Given points 1 and 2 above, to call the building of that level of power a Herculean task doesn't begin to do it justice. (Not to mention all the resistance that any Islamist political movement would presumably encounter from the federal and state judiciaries on Constitutional grounds in the meantime.)

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