The brief // by Ben FrankelGratuitous insults: The staying power of bad ideas

Published 4 March 2011

The state of Tennessee will consider a bill which will make supporting Sharia law a felony; Oklahoma already has a similar measure of the books, but it is currently under judicial review; burning the Koran and declaring Sharia law to be a felony are not going to help in our war against terrorism; they will have the opposite effect; they are provocative measures which will inflame Muslims around the world; without the active support of Muslims around the world, the war against the terrorists cannot be won; one way to make sure we do not receive such support is by burning the Koran or by declaring support for Sharia law to be a felony; legislating that support for Sharia law is a felony is unnecessary; we outlaw polygamy without declaring support for Mormonism to be a felony; Hassidic Jewish men believe that they can divorced their wives simply by repeating “I divorce you” three times; we do not allow that – without declaring support for Orthodox Judaism to be a felony

Here are quick comments on four topics that caught our eye this week:

1. Bad ideas

The state of Tennessee will consider a bill which will make supporting Sharia law a felony. Oklahoma already has a similar measure of the books, but it is currently under judicial review.

 

Making the support of Sharia law a felony is a bad idea – just as bad as the idea by that nutty Florida pastor to burn the Koran.

The leaders who publicly criticized the plan to burn the Koran – Obama, Clinton, Gates, Patreaus, the FBI’s Muller, and others – should now come out against legislating support for Sharia as a felony.

Some on the right criticized Obama, Clinton, Patreus, and Gates for coming out against the burning of the Koran because, so the argument went, such criticism would have a chilling effect on free speech. To which the proper response is: nonsense.

As they did during the debate over the Koran burning, I am sure these leaders would assert that we live in a constitutional democracy in which certain rights are protected, and that, therefore, neither the Florida pastor nor the Tennessee legislature could be stopped by an executive fiat.

These officials thus upheld and affirmed the constitution, proclaiming to the whole world that even when the exercise of a constitutionally protected right threatened and undermined the U.S. national interest, it was still a constitutionally protected right and its exercise should not be interfered with.

We note that these Obama administration officials were more determined to uphold the constitution, come what may, than was Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

Had Obama, Clinton, Gates, Patreus, and the director of the FBI not commented on the pernicious consequences of the Koran burning for U.S. national interest and to U.S. troops, and had they not expressed the government’s disapproval of the burning, they could have been accused — justifiably — of dereliction of duty.

It is the same with coming out against legislating support for Sharia as a felony.

People who run our government have to govern in the real world. They have to protect the welfare of our troops in the field; do whatever they can to see to it that these troops do not face even greater risks and difficulties than they already do in protecting the U.S. national interest; try to bring the Muslim world to our side – especially now that the Arab world appears to be opening and the views