The Honor Of God

Keith Ellison doesn’t like tobacco smoke.  One day last week, a member of his staff smelled “a very strong odor” coming from a nearby office in their building.  In typical liberal fashion, he didn’t track down the vile offender and ask him if he might, out of deference to Mr. Ellison, extinguish his cigar.  Instead, he called the cops.

It turns out that the smoker had a perfect right to enjoy his cigar—the building in question is not covered by the city’s draconian nonsmoking ordinance.  But the story doesn’t end there, because Mr. Ellison himself, informed of this fact, dropped by to ask the smoker to refrain in the future.

All of this might sound like a normal day in our brave new health-conscious world, except for a few salient facts.  Mr. Ellison is a freshman congressman, a Democrat from Minnesota—and the first Muslim ever to serve in Congress.  The building in question was a House office building in the nation’s capital.  And the offender is Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), a longtime critic of open immigration, and currently a candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2008.

Mr. Ellison’s office now claims that the congressman suffers from “seasonal asthma,” implying that his dislike of cigar smoke has nothing to do with his religious beliefs.  Since Mr. Ellison saw fit to swear his oath of office with his hand upon the Koran, however, skeptics might be forgiven for wondering whether his concerns go just a little bit beyond his health.

Are we seeing the convergence of the therapeutic state and Islamic law?

Some Muslims in America are willing to make the connection clear.  Dr. Khalid Siddiqui is the president of the Muslim Association of Greater Rockford (Illinois) and the chairman of the board of the Rockford Iqra School.  He was also, at one time, the assistant director of neonatology at Swedish-American Hospital, the largest hospital in Rockford.  In February 2002, Aaron Wolf, the associate editor of Chronicles, and I interviewed Dr. Siddiqui and others in the library of the school.  When the subject turned to sharia, Dr. Siddiqui assured us that Americans do not have to fear the imposition of Islamic law in the United States—not because Muslims here have no interest in establishing sharia but because, when sharia comes to the United States, it will come democratically.  The Constitution, he explained, is a “pure Islamic document,” and he detailed how Muslim doctors such as himself would be able to frame the debate over, say, a nationwide ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol purely in terms of health.  Ditto with tobacco, and with pork.

Sharia would benefit us all, Dr. Siddiqui concluded, because when men make laws, they make them in their own interest.  But “Who is superior to us?  Only God.  If He made the laws, then He can be unbiased.”

God may be unbiased, but those who consider themselves servants of Allah certainly are not, and they, of course, are the ones who will implement and enforce sharia.  Magdy Kandil, one of the founders of MAGR and one of the other men we interviewed, was very frank about the issues that have concerned Muslims in America since September 11.  Chief among them is the restriction of civil liberties, which Kandil argued was part of a broader backlash against Islam.  This backlash is coming “from some minority in the U.S. who now feel threatened by a new minority.”

Whom could he possibly mean, I asked, since political and religious leaders have been quick to embrace Islam and declare it a religion of peace?  He didn’t answer but just looked at me in annoyance: He knew that I knew that he meant Jews.