An open letter to the head of the ADL, denouncing his condemnations of those who see Sharia as a threat to American values and liberty.

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Family Security Matters | Aug. 18, 2011

Dear Mr. Foxman,

For centuries Vilna occupied a special place in the hearts and minds of Europe’s Jewish communities. People celebrated the city as a study center, replete with libraries, schools, poets, playwrights, rich Jewish culture — and especially, learned rabbis and Jewish legal intellects.

From Rabbi Samuel of Babylonia to Rabbi Gershom of Germany, scholars throughout Jewish history taught the people to adapt to their host nations — and never demand the reverse. Rabbis also prized those students blessed with generosity and sufficient wisdom and humility to admit their errors and apologize to injured parties. No one is perfect, of course, but they correctly tutored Jewish men and women that those trying to achieve these charitable goals (among others) would at least reach goodness.

Alas, as a native of Vilna and child survivor of the Holocaust, none could have shouted more obstreperously than did your Aug. 10 JTA op-ed, headlined “Shout down the Sharia myth makers.” Leaders do not shout. They speak, listen and continue to learn. Through off-key cheer-leading, you merely highlighted your own ignorance.

“The separation of church and state embodied in U.S. and state constitutions,” you wrote, renders completely unnecessary, proposed “anti-Sharia bills” in several states. Our constitution already “prohibits our courts from applying or considering religious law in any way that would constitute government advancement of or entanglement with religious law.”

Obviously, it would contradict every bedrock American principle to force any U.S. resident — whether citizen, legal resident, or illegal alien — to unwillingly comply with religious law. On this we agree. There, our agreement ends.

For you also allege that the bills — addressing recently exposed U.S. state court outrages imposing foreign laws that infringed upon constitutional law and universal human rights alike — were based not on reality or actual decisions. The bills rest on “prejudice and ignorance,” you claim, advanced through “myth making … about the threat of Sharia” in the U.S. These ills, you further assert, have effected “camouflaged bigotry” against Islam and Muslims.

Theoretically, American courts should strictly adhere to U.S. constitutional law concerning any and all religious practices, edicts or canons. But the record could not be more clear: they too often err on the side of foreign law — and make no apology.

Criminal defendants asked U.S. courts, as I noted to you in March 2011, to substitute Islamic laws in lieu of domestic statutes. In Massachusetts, a federal court denied the motion of jihad-financiers to excuse their terror-funding tax fraud via First Amendment religious freedom guarantees, which they asserted to protect their rights to provide Islamically-mandated “charity.” Based on sharia, however, a New Jersey court did absolve wife beating and rape before that state’s appeals court reversed its ruling. And a Florida court similarly ordered parties in a civil dispute to follow Islamic, not U.S. law.

Face it, Mr. Foxman: for decades, U.S. courts have also miserably failed Muslim women and children on foundational precepts. On Mar. 24, 1986, for example, Laila Malak lost her 14-year old son and 9-year-old daughter when California’s appeals bench enforced a Beirut sharia custody ruling — given without her knowledge or participation, and allowing only 15 days from her post-facto notification to mount what would almost assuredly have been a futile “appeal.”

Sharia courts always give custody of minor children to fathers, a fact mentioned in footnote 2 to the California’s appeals bench decision. Married to Abdul in 1970 in Beirut, Laila in 1976 fled its bloody religious war with him and their son Fadi, and bore Ruha Jan. 25, 1977, in Abu Dhabi. In July 1982, without Abdul’s permission (and therefore against Islamic law), Laila moved with her children to her brother’s San Jose home, where she filed for a divorce and custody. Santa Clara county superior court denied three attempts by Abdul to enforce a Nov. 1982 Abu Dhabi sharia order that gave him custody, without due process, Laila’s knowledge or court consideration of the children’s “best interests.”

Simultaneously, however, Abdul had secured a Beirut sharia custody order — also without due process or the consideration of children’s “interests” requisite in U.S. courts. Ostensibly, the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA) allows “comity” only for foreign rulings that hail from “legal institutions similar in nature” to U.S. courts — with “reasonable notice and opportunity to be heard” for everyone. What should apply, however, does not always.

Sharia courts are not “similar in nature” to U.S. courts, Mr. Foxman. As strictly Islamic judiciaries — neither secular nor civil — these dictatorial forums often force religious law on unwilling victims without recourse. Likely, Laila Malak has never seen her kids again. By contrast, Jewish law would not allow this; nor would a Jewish Beit Din ask that its decision replace U.S. criminal, civil or secular law.

Laila Malak’s tragic case could and would have been avoided had California previously adopted something like the American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) bills recently passed in Tennessee (May 2010), Louisiana (Aug. 2010) or Arizona (Apr. 2011). While the bills vary somewhat, none mentions sharia, contrary to your assertions regarding the Tennessee and Louisiana laws.

Since the 1970s, in dozens of similar cases, American courts nationwide applied sharia in lieu of constitutional laws. Albeit incomplete, a review of state courts and appellate benches produced manifold instances of “unconstitutional application of foreign and religious law in our judicial system.” Whatever their total, one cannot accurately describe cases unearthed thus far, as “a proverbial solution in search of a problem,” as you want us to believe. For the women and children affected they were life-destroying cataclysms.

No American, nor any Jewish leader, should accept that. You head an institution founded to defend and protect the Jewish people from anti-Semitism. Mr. Foxman, in Islamic nations, sharia laws implement institutional discrimination against Jewish people and other non-Muslims. Sharia demands and requires non-Muslim subservience. Who are you to defend it? How dare you?

With or without your unwarranted shouting, many courageous citizens, state and national legislators fortunately have acted, and will so continue, to prevent future travesties of justice.

Based perhaps on the experiences of your early life, Mr. Foxman, many long trusted and believed you to represent the American Jewish mainstream. Nevertheless, you lack an ounce of the humility evident in most great men. Via your intolerance of scholarship — and declarations on subjects of which you know less than nothing — you have unfortunately relinquished the right to trust, on any account.

Sincerely yours,

Alyssa A. Lappen
Investigative journalist and poet
https://www.alyssaalappen.org

CC: U.S. Rep. Allen West
CC: Ami Eden, Editor in Chief, JTA
CC: Andrew McCarthy, Columnist and former U.S. Attorney
CC: Diana West, Syndicated columnist
CC: Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, Cong. Mount Sinai; Exec. V.P., New York Board of Rabbis
CC: Jeffrey Weisenfeld, Philanthropist and Trustee
CC: Morton Klein, CEO, Zionist Organization of America
CC: Debra Burlingame, Co-founder, 9/11 Families
CC: Tim Brown, Co-founder, 9/11 Families
CC: Binyamin L. Jolkovsky, Editor in Chief, Jewish World Review
CC: Matthew R.J. Brodsky, Editor, InFocus, Jewish Policy Center
CC: Gary Rosenblatt, Jewish Week
CC: Susan Rosenbluth, Editor, Jewish Voice and Opinion
CC: Rick Greenfield, Editor, Jewish Ledger
CC: Steven Baum, Editor, Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism

_____________________________________________________________________________________

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Alyssa A. Lappen is a U.S.-based investigative journalist focusing on the Middle East and Islam. She is a former Senior Fellow for the American Center for Democracy (2005-2008); former Senior Editor of Institutional Investor (1993-1999), Working Woman (1991-1993) and Corporate Finance (1991). She was previously an Associate Editor at Forbes, where she worked upwards of 12 years (1978-1990), and an editor and staff writer at several other publications. She is also a poet. Her website is https://www.alyssaalappen.org.

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Is opposition to sharia a social crime?

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Family Security Matters | Mar. 31, 2011

ADL now supports sharia. How can any supporter of civil rights defend the introduction of such barbaric “law” into the United States?

The following is an open letter addressed to the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.

Dear Mr. Foxman —

I am absolutely appalled that ADL has smeared the name of a reputable attorney, David Yerushalmi alongside others who, unlike him, are indeed egregious in word and deed.

Attorney Yerushalmi was rankly faulted in a terribly unprofessional article some weeks ago. In my opinion, as a journalist of 35 years experience, this is a case in which he was genuinely libeled and I certainly hope he intends to sue. I believe he has a cause of action.

As you know, libel in America consists of stating something inaccurate (often intentionally) — and with purposeful malice. The article I note above contained no facts on which to base its opinions, and malice virtually dripped from the prose. In recent years, journalists have often made me ashamed of my lifelong profession, but this piece took the cake and the frosting as well. If it had any role, partial or otherwise, in your determination to add Mr. Yerushalmi to a list of hate-mongers, I would urge you to reconsider.

I have spoken with Mr. Yerushalmi as a source and find him one of the most precise attorneys I know. His information is absolutely credible. He thoroughly and exactly cites many Islamic law texts. He is never inaccurate. Never. He is certainly not the hateful man that you paint him.

Perhaps you are unaware that the national leadership of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), on the other hand, has repeatedly been identified by federal law-enforcement officials to have had links with terrorist organizations. This occurred in Nov. 2008 with the Holy Land Foundation Hamas and terror-financing case. The government obtained 108 unanimous verdicts on ALL 108 terror-financing, money laundering and tax fraud charges leveled against five HLF officers. Some of the funds they sent to Hamas had washed through CAIR accounts, proven by canceled check copies.

Federal evidence was again cited in the civil suit by the family of David Boim in the Chicago 7th Circuit Court of Appeals against the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) — CAIR’s predecessor and co-founder — in Dec. 2008. The federal judge in that case ruled that the CAIR predecessor — namely the IAP — was indeed inseparable from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim American Society and he held their agents responsible, fully and finally, for the $156 million judgment in the Boim’s case against them. Thus $156 million less is now available to fund Hamas terrorism.

Then in October 2010, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that hundreds of individuals and organizations named as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation case — including CAIR — would NOT be delisted as unindicted co-conspirators, due to the preponderance of evidence against them. CAIR knew and knows that the evidence against its leadership and several CAIR chapters is indeed so strong that it could never have won an appeal, and did not even try. An appeal was filed by another North American Muslim Brotherhood organization with which you may not be familiar, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), a subsidiary of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

It is a travesty that you brand as a hate monger a man legitimately attempting — via the U.S. courts — to legally defeat efforts of the above groups, among others, to increasingly impose Islamic law through secular U.S. civil courts and institutions. Unfortunately, the encroachment of these laws is not a “theory” but is a well-established fact.

In Florida, in the last few weeks, a judge ruled that a mosque must — under secular U.S. laws — follow sharia to resolve an internal dispute between members. Those suing came to America to ESCAPE sharia law. Yet now a U.S. court has ordered them to adhere to it. They will appeal this egregious decision, rightfully so.

A New Jersey judge ruled some months ago that a man who had badly beaten his wife had the right to do so, since sharia condones this practice. Fortunately, that decision was reversed on appeal.

In Massachusetts, about four years ago, the ACLU motioned for dismissal of criminal charges against three terrorists who fraudulently obtained charitable tax-exempt status to fund suicide murder. Sharia law requires Muslims to give 2.5% of their wealth annually to charity (zakat); funding jihad and jihad fighters are covered by several of eight religiously mandated means to allocate annual zakat payments. The ACLU cited these facts in its motion, arguing that raising monies to fund jihad, fraudulently or otherwise, is Constitutionally protected religious practice under the First Amendment. Fortunately, the federal district justices in Worcester, Ma. denied this motion point blank.

Do you suppose that any of the above instances are part, at best, of some wildly imaginative conspiracy theory? I assure you the ACLU motion to protect the religious freedom of fraudulently collected “tax-exempt” funds for jihad was quite real. I held and read the motion in my own hands, and reported on the case. The argument was all too real — albeit surreal.

Mr. Foxman, contrary to your claims in the ADL commentary on Mr. Yerushalmi, these cases are not the figment of some lunatic’s mind. Unfortunately, in fact, dozens of similar such cases nationwide demonstrate an orchestrated attempt to inject Islamic law into the U.S. secular legal codes, both on state and national levels. In those cases that the goals are achieved, these sharia laws provide exceptions for Muslims alone — to legal standards normally considered foundational to Western civilization — on a vast array of points and issues.

Another difficulty is that, unlike other kinds of religious law, sharia law is composed largely of edicts and regulations to be imposed upon non-Muslims. If it is allowed to continue to its logical terminus, therefore, the only possible conclusion of this trend would be complete decimation of all manner of constitutionally protected freedoms, including freedom of speech, “out of religious respect.” Consider the case of Uganda. Yes indeed, Idi Amin was educated in Saudi Arabia and ultimately he fled to and died there. While this aspect of Amin’s history was barely reported, he hoped to impose sharia law on Uganda. Let us recall the genocidal results.

Certainly we can demand respect for all faiths, without disallowing any criticism whatever. Look, for example, at your own criticism of Mel Gibson’s film on Christ. No one branded you a hatemonger. You merely expressed your opinion as a matter of constitutionally-protected free speech. And so it should be with all faiths — including Mohammed, Islam and sharia. How on earth can people learn any of its dark aspects if no one is allowed to speak on the subject without merciless and baseless accusations of hate mongering like those you leveled in this case.

You may recall Wafa Sultan, who lived under sharia, and spoke quite plainly against sharia and Islamic precepts on Al Jazera, shocking the Arab and Muslim worlds. She has now done so in America too.

I would think you’d support the Freedom Pledge that Dr. Sultan and her other fearless Former Muslims United co-founders — including Nonie Darwish, who lost her father to a suicide “martyr” mission — have sent to dozens of Muslim leaders across the U.S. They ask these leaders to pledge to protect religious freedom of apostates to Islam, namely to promise to openly oppose fatwas calling for apostates’ deaths, and do everything else possible to protect their freedoms from medieval — not to say unconstitutional and illegal — practices like the Islamic death penalty for public abandonment of faith. Only two Muslims have signed, God bless them both. That is no figment of imagination, either, nor are the fatwas calling for their deaths.

Florida U.S. Rep., Ret. Col. Allen West agrees with Mr Yerushalmi — that sharia proponents have put America’s secular laws under attack for years now and, via the judiciary, have already had considerable success eroding them. Having served two tours of duty in Iraq, Rep. West is familiar with the Islamic laws and has seen them in action on the ground.

That ADL is unaware of any of the above noted facts does not render “hate-mongers” of those Americans who pay keen attention to their surroundings and do not share your complacency.

Once upon a time, the ADL did excellent work to combat anti-Semitism, which of course was its founding mission. Here, the ADL has apparently taken the side of organizations that for decades have expressed zealous anti-Semitism, hatred of Jews and hatred of Israel — and indeed of the very concept (much less existence) of a Jewish state. They have done so both through their words at private organizational conferences, and writings in organizational publications and pseudo-academic journals — and with their money, for suicide bombers, in Jerusalem and Israel, among other things.

It is easy to find such statements and positions from their leadership over the last 30 years, and recently too. For years, dozens of hard-working non-profit organizations have researched these organizations to expose them. In several terrorism and related cases, the federal government has prevailed partly on the basis of their solid, professional research. That is but one way in which individuals dangerous to America (and Israel) were convicted of terror-related crimes, deported for fraudulent immigration applications or both.

Furthermore, in part, you label David Yerushalmi “extremist” for asking that the U.S. actually enforce existing immigration laws. You may not like it, but that is a legitimate political viewpoint, for legal reasons of course, but also for humanitarian considerations. It is certainly not grounds for the juvenile name-calling the ADL issued in this case. Actually, “undocumented workers” very often suffer horrendous landlord and employment abuses — and the highest rate of criminal assault, theft, fraud and so on targeting any population. For among those “undocumented workers” live tens of thousands of criminals. Indeed, several 9/11 hijackers were what some might, ten years later, call “undocumented workers.”

Taken together, these two positions in the ADL frontal attack on David Yerushalmi sadly suggest that the organization now opposes those who want only to uphold existing U.S. laws — legally, I might add — yet agrees with groups that regularly break U.S. laws, verbally and financially support anti-Semitism and terror, and have already in effect funded dozens of murders, perhaps even hundreds.

Agreed, there have been Jewish extremists. But they are very few and far between. More importantly, David Yerushalmi is not one of these. I think you do great disservice to the Anti-Defamation League and the time-honored fights against anti-Semitism and racism by siding with extreme, radical, hateful, proven terror-supporting organizations. They are intent upon demolishing his good name — and that of anyone else daring to criticize them or their agenda, much less their precepts of faith and religious law — and thereby to intimidate the American press and leadership into silence. Surely you should recognize this as the tactic of brown shirts.

Opposing the emergence of sharia law in American public life hardly exemplifies racism, or extremism. It is merely an effort to maintain and enforce the Constitutional separation of church and state, based on sad and very real experience over the last decade in particular.

Moreover, it is the earnest effort of many concerned minorities who ought to be ADL’s natural allies — former Sudanese slaves, former Muslims fearful for their lives (even in America), Maronite Christians, Hindus whose temples have been smashed by the thousands, Coptic Christians with families suffering mass slaughter (hundreds burned, alive, in churches), now, in Egypt and on and on.

Yet you attack Mr. Yerushalmi as an extremist.

Shame on you. Shame!

I read your mother’s oral history and am fortunate to have known and to know other survivors of the Vilna ghetto and Stutthoff, generally unknown death camps in its orbit and death marches. They bestowed a sacred blessing and this indelible lesson, to speak out, not to remain silent. Your mother, I think, did not save you from the Holocaust to do something so atrocious as this.

Best regards —

Alyssa A. Lappen

Investigative journalist and poet
https://www.alyssaalappen.org

CC: U.S. Rep. Allen West
CC: Diana West, Syndicated columnist
CC: Andrew McCarthy, Columnist and former U.S. Attorney
CC: Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, Cong. Mount Sinai and President, New York Board of Rabbis
CC: Jeffrey Weinsenfeld, Philanthropist and Trustee
CC: Debra Burlingame, Co-founder, 9/11 Families
CC: Tim Brown, Co-founder, 9/11 Families
CC: Editor in Chief, Jewish World Review
CC: Gary Rosenblatt, Jewish Week
CC: Matthew R.J. Brodsky, Editor, InFocus, Jewish Policy Center
CC: Rick Greenfield, Editor, Jewish Ledger
CC: Susan Rosenbluth, Editor, Jewish Voice and Opinion
CC: Steven Baum, Editor, Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism

_____________________________________________________________________
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor Alyssa A. Lappen is a U.S.-based investigative journalist focusing on the Middle East and Islam. She is a former Senior Fellow for the American Center for Democracy (2005-2008); former Senior Editor of Institutional Investor (1993-1999), Working Woman (1991-1993) and Corporate Finance (1991).



Sharia in action in Aceh. How can any supporter of civil rights defend the introduction of such barbaric “law” into the United States?

EDITOR’S NOTE: In addition to the items listed above, it should also be pointed out that the ADL has decided in its article to smear David Yerushalmi as a racist, as well as someone it sneers at as perceiving sharia implementation to be a “conspiracy.”

The smear that David Yerushalmi is a racist is a point which the ADL emphasized through an update to another smear-piece against Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, where Attorney Yerushalmi is said to indulge in “anti-black bigotry.” The ADL suggested in the article discussed by Ms. Lappen that, “He also contended that African-Americans are a ‘relatively murderous race killing itself.”

David Yerushalmi has presented on his SANE website a repudiation of earlier criticisms of this and other comments, where it is clear the original statements were taken out of context. He states that this repudiation has been available to ADL since September 2010. This repudiation covers other points, but for brevity I reproduce one paragraph that relates specifically to the “murderous” comment:

“The reference to blacks and murder in New York specifically linked to an article I had written (and published in the American Thinker here) which analyzed a New York Times story which addressed the Department of Justice statistics that show that blacks in New York are grossly overrepresented among the City’s murderers. Indeed, I point out that the victims in these cases are most likely to be fellow blacks. Would one be irrational to conclude that blacks are more likely to murder (more “murderous”) than non-blacks? To suggest otherwise is to argue that the statistics reported by the DOJ and relied upon by the New York Times are inaccurate. Moreover, nowhere in the article do I even begin to suggest that these statistics are explained by skin color or race more broadly, and indeed the article leaves open the why because statistics themselves could never tell us that.”

It is deeply worrying that a lawyer’s opposition to sharia law — which runs contrary to the principles enshrined in the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights — should be used as a cudgel to attack him. When such an attack comes from a group supposedly aiming to defend the rights of Jews yet is seen to be apparently condoning Sharia, this obviously raises alarms about motive and intent. More so when leading proponents of Sharia in America have been shown to support the terrorist organization Hamas, which invokes the killing of Jews as part of sacred Islamic scripture in its Hamas Charter. This and other clauses that call for the delegitimization of Israel have not subsequently been removed from the Hamas Charter.

Adrian Morgan, The Editor, Family Security Matters.

All Articles, Poems & Commentaries Copyright © 1971-2021 Alyssa A. Lappen
All Rights Reserved.
Printing is allowed for personal use only | Commercial usage (For Profit) is a copyright violation and written permission must be granted first.