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Remember Mike Warnke?
Dec. 4th, 2011 01:00 pmSomehow, a lot of right-wing people have gotten the idea that there is some kind of active movement trying to bring Sharia Law to the United States.
I'm not sure where this idea originated (though I suspect it's the usual group who make such things up: Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, and all the jokers down at Fox News).
I thought at first that it is, on the face of it, kind of laughably ridiculous. But then I thought about it. What are some of the features of Sharia law? No wine. No homosexuality. No abortion. Women submit to their husbands. Mandatory giving to religious organizations. Holy Carp! There really are people trying to bring all this about! Unfortunately, they're also the ones who are running around warning about attempts to bring Sharia law. I'm not sure how that's working for them.
In other news, (well, actually similar) – remember Mike Warnke? Really big in the 80's, he traveled around on the Christian lecture circuit giving his testimony about how he was saved from a life of Satanism and collected money for his foundation to help kids get out of it, too?
Of course, it turned out that he made the whole thing up. Not only was he not involved in any kind of Satanic cult, but the kind of goings-on he described never happened to anybody in real life. All details were taken from his own imagination and that of various Hollywood screenwriters.
Oh, yeah, and all that money he collected to help kids caught up in Satanic activities? Yeah, no kids. It all went to his own rock-and-roll lifestyle as he traveled around the world giving his act, and telling bigger and bigger lies.
Why do I bring up Mike Warnke now? Well, it seems a few other people have stolen his idea. Replace “Satanism” with “Islam”, and you've got Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem, and Zacharia Anani. They're doing the exact same thing, complete with fake testimony of their Islamic past (Kamal Saleem, it turns out, is actually Khodor Shami, who worked for Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting network before moving to working for Focus on the Family.) There's apparently no evidence that any of these people were ever Muslim (they're all currently Fundamentalist Christians), let along radical Islamic Terrorists. And, like Mike Warnke's Satanism, the Islam they describe doesn't actually exist outside of their own imaginations and that of such luminaries as Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, and all the jokers down at Fox News.
Now, you would think that in a world that has a significant number of actual Muslims in it, it would be harder to convince people that the complete nonsense you're making up about it is true. You would doing such a thing would result in them being immediately exposed, discredited, and off the lecture circuit. If you thought so, you would be wrong. Like Warnke, they have been exposed. But unlike him, exposure doesn't seem to be slowing them down anyway.
Guess bearing false witness against thy neighbor just isn't as looked down on as it used to be.
I'm not sure where this idea originated (though I suspect it's the usual group who make such things up: Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, and all the jokers down at Fox News).
I thought at first that it is, on the face of it, kind of laughably ridiculous. But then I thought about it. What are some of the features of Sharia law? No wine. No homosexuality. No abortion. Women submit to their husbands. Mandatory giving to religious organizations. Holy Carp! There really are people trying to bring all this about! Unfortunately, they're also the ones who are running around warning about attempts to bring Sharia law. I'm not sure how that's working for them.
In other news, (well, actually similar) – remember Mike Warnke? Really big in the 80's, he traveled around on the Christian lecture circuit giving his testimony about how he was saved from a life of Satanism and collected money for his foundation to help kids get out of it, too?
Of course, it turned out that he made the whole thing up. Not only was he not involved in any kind of Satanic cult, but the kind of goings-on he described never happened to anybody in real life. All details were taken from his own imagination and that of various Hollywood screenwriters.
Oh, yeah, and all that money he collected to help kids caught up in Satanic activities? Yeah, no kids. It all went to his own rock-and-roll lifestyle as he traveled around the world giving his act, and telling bigger and bigger lies.
Why do I bring up Mike Warnke now? Well, it seems a few other people have stolen his idea. Replace “Satanism” with “Islam”, and you've got Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem, and Zacharia Anani. They're doing the exact same thing, complete with fake testimony of their Islamic past (Kamal Saleem, it turns out, is actually Khodor Shami, who worked for Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting network before moving to working for Focus on the Family.) There's apparently no evidence that any of these people were ever Muslim (they're all currently Fundamentalist Christians), let along radical Islamic Terrorists. And, like Mike Warnke's Satanism, the Islam they describe doesn't actually exist outside of their own imaginations and that of such luminaries as Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, and all the jokers down at Fox News.
Now, you would think that in a world that has a significant number of actual Muslims in it, it would be harder to convince people that the complete nonsense you're making up about it is true. You would doing such a thing would result in them being immediately exposed, discredited, and off the lecture circuit. If you thought so, you would be wrong. Like Warnke, they have been exposed. But unlike him, exposure doesn't seem to be slowing them down anyway.
Guess bearing false witness against thy neighbor just isn't as looked down on as it used to be.
