Sharia Report Author Has Record of Hate Against Muslims, Jews, African-Americans

I wrote yesterday about the new report “Shariah: the Threat to America,” which has been endorsed by prominent Republican politicians like Pete Hoekstra and Michele Bachmann. The report suggests that any Muslims who “espouse or support shariah” — that is to say, any practicing Muslims — should be banned from government or military service, forbidden from immigrating to the U.S., and even tried for sedition (!) The effect, whether the authors intended it or not, would be to criminalize Islam as a religion.

But new evidence suggests that this was precisely the intention of at least some of the authors of the report. Alex Kane at Mondoweiss has more background on David Yerushalmi, the Center for Security Policy (CSP) general counsel who was one of the authors of the report and who was featured at Wednesday’s press conference in the Capitol marking its launch. (Richard Silverstein and Charles Johnson have previously looked into Yerushalmi’s unsavory record.)

What does Yerushalmi believe? Let’s take a closer look.

On Muslims:
— “It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam.”
–“The Congress of the United States of America shall declare the US at war with the Muslim Nation or Umma.”
–“The President of the United States of America shall immediately declare that all non-US citizen Muslims are Alien Enemies under Chapter 3 of Title 50 of the US Code and shall be subject to immediate deportation.”
–“No Muslim shall be granted an entry visa into the United States of America.”
(From the website of Yerushalmi’s group, SANE. Yerushalmi has since made all its content password-protected, but these statements are available here.)

On African-Americans:
–“There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote. You might not agree or like the idea but this country’s founders, otherwise held in the highest esteem for their understanding of human nature and its affect on political society, certainly took it seriously. Why is that? Were they so flawed in their political reckonings that they manhandled the most important aspect of a free society – the vote? If the vote counts for so much in a free and liberal democracy as we “know” it today, why did they limit the vote so dramatically?”
(Yerushalmi has since tried to scrub the article in which this statement appeared from the public record, but Charles Johnson provides a link to it.)

On Jews:
–“The Jews it seems are the bane of Western society. I will ignore the Leftist version of the Jewish problem… But the Jewish problem for conservatives is a different and quite interesting affair. It is most interesting because so much of what drives it is true and accurate.”
–“Jews of the modern age are the most radical, aggressive and effective of the liberal Elite. Their goal is the goal of all ‘progressives:’ a determined use of liberal principles to deconstruct the Western nation state in a ‘historical’ march to the World State…”
–“…one must admit readily that the radical liberal Jew is a fact of the West and a destructive one.”
(Once again Yerushalmi has attempted to remove all record of these statements from the Internet, but they have been preserved here.)

It strikes me that Pete Hoekstra et al may have some explaining to do as to why they’ve gotten in bed with this character.

Daniel Luban

Daniel Luban is a postdoctoral associate at Yale University. He holds a PhD in politics from the University of Chicago and was formerly a correspondent in the Washington bureau of Inter Press Service.

SHOW 3 COMMENTS

3 Comments

  1. RE: David Yerushalmi, the Center for Security Policy (CSP) general counsel who was one of the authors of the report

    SPOKEN WITH AN ACCENT AKIN TO HALEY BARBOUR’S: Well if it weren’t for his “ferin” soundin’ last name, I reckon this David fella might be jus’ the kinda good ol’ boy we need up yonder in the White House!

  2. Aw, c’mon guys. You’re resorting to the typical progressive/liberal tactic: If you can’t defeat their facts, attack them personally.

    First, have you read the book? Your attribution of the work to one man suggests that either you have not, or are determined to foster that opinion anyway. The book is actually a compilation, a collection of studies written by 19 authors. Yerushalmi is only one of the 19.

    As a journalist, I’ve had plenty of occasion to interview at length about half of the people who were contributors to the Shariah report, and have personally met at least three of them.

    They’re not racists. They’re not hate-mongers. But they are good researchers who have looked past Juan Cole and John Esposito’s apologetics for Islam to see what Islamic literature itself says about Shariah, jihad and the Hadiths.

    Do some digging into actual Islamic literature; read Islamic Law for yourself and you’ll likely be changing your opinion in the near future. Look past the warm and fuzzy personal opinion you may have because you know a ‘nice Muslim family’ who lives on your street. Many of the Muslim families you’ve read about having honour killings, wife abuse, or teenage sons who’ve run away to join al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, or Hezbollah come from just such households.

    Again, do the research yourself.

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