The City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health has asked Women’s March co-organizer, Linda Sarsour, an anti-Zionist, pro-Sharia law Muslim, to be its commencement speaker.
Sarsour has made numerous positive comments regarding Sharia:
@LaRebelleFleur shariah law is reasonable and once u read into the details it makes a lot of sense. People just know the basics
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) September 22, 2011
@RobertWildiris I don’t drink alcohol, don’t eat pork, I follow Islamic way of living. That’s all Sharia law is.
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) April 29, 2014
You’ll know when you’re living under Sharia Law if suddenly all your loans & credit cards become interest free. Sound nice, doesn’t it?
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) May 13, 2015
We are worried about Sharia Law taking over the country? #HobbyLobby ruling shows there’s something more to fear and Islam isn’t it.
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) June 30, 2014
10 weeks of PAID maternity leave in Saudi Arabia. Yes PAID. And ur worrying about women driving. Puts us to shame. https://t.co/xZAwgg6HXL
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) November 16, 2014
Sharia law is a legal system adopted in many Muslim-majority nations; it provides a framework for how to live one’s life, as well as punishments for those who break the law.
According to the BBC:
Sharia law divides offences into two general categories: “hadd” offences, which are serious crimes with set penalties, and “tazir” crimes, where the punishment is left to the discretion of the judge.
Hadd offences include theft, which can be punishable by amputating the offender’s hand, and adultery, which can carry the penalty of death by stoning… Apostasy, or leaving the faith, is a very controversial issue in the Muslim world and experts say the majority of scholars believe it is punishable by death…
There are five different schools of Sharia law. There are four Sunni doctrines: Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanafi, and one Shia doctrine, Shia Jaafari. The five doctrines differ in how literally they interpret the texts from which Sharia law is derived.
The Washington Post writes that in Iran, “in accordance with sharia law, homosexual intercourse between men can be punished by death, and men can be flogged for lesser acts such as kissing. Women may be flogged.” And under Saudi Arabia’s “interpretation of sharia law, a married man engaging in sodomy or any non-Muslim who commits sodomy with a Muslim can be stoned to death. All sex outside of marriage is illegal.”
When Linda Sarsour says “shariah [sic] law is reasonable and once [you] read into the details it makes a lot of sense,” what exactly does she mean?
Sarsour has also called Zionism “creepy,” equating it with racism:
Nothing is creepier than Zionism.Challenge racism, #NormalizeJustice. Check out this video by @remroum https://t.co/q282BYT8
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) October 31, 2012
The Zionist trolls are out to play. Bring it. You will never silence me.
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) October 12, 2015
For the uninitiated, Zionism, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, is “the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism has come to include the movement for the development of the State of Israel and the protection of the Jewish nation in Israel through support for the Israel Defense Forces.”
Sarsour has praised violent action, tweeting an image of a little boy with rocks in his hands as he seemingly approaches Israeli forces. She captioned the image with: “The definition of courage. #Palestine.”
Perhaps the most disturbing thing Sarsour has ever done is when she tweeted that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Brigitte Gabriel “don’t deserve to be women.” Ali was a victim of female genital mutilation in her youth, and Gabriel a victim of violent Islamic extremism. Both have gone on to be powerful voices in the effort to expose and reform Islam.
Appearing on Fox News, Ayaan Hirsi Ali responded to the tweet:
“Ms. Sarsour is not interested in universal human rights. She’s a defender of Sharia law… There is no principle that demeans, degrades, and dehumanizes women more than the principle of Sharia law. And Linda Sarsour is a defender of that…
Why did she not organize a march for Asia Bibi? That’s the woman in Pakistan who’s on death row. She’s condemned because allegedly she did something that caused her to blaspheme. Or Mariam Ibrahim in Sudan, who was imprisoned…
Linda Sarsour is not a defender of universal human rights, she’s a defender of Sharia law. She hates me because I expose what Sharia law is.”
How the leaders at CUNY came to the decision to invite Linda Sarsour to be a commencement speaker is incomprehensible. She’s a defender of a brutal set of Islamic laws, she despises Zionism, putting it on the same level as racism, and she called for Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Brigette Gabriel to have their genitalia taken from them because of their outspokenness on Islam.
What a world.