Liberals Need a Lesson in Empiricism

I fondly recall once getting into a shouting match with a political theory professor at the UW after he commented that the extermination of my Kulak ancestors had nothing to do with Marxism. As our debate expanded, I learned some interesting facts from my fine Marxist professor, namely that the 50 some odd million Chinese and Chinese minority peoples killed by Mao had nothing to do with Marxism, that the Soviet Gulag had nothing to do with Marxism, and that nearly every other negative event associated with Marxism, 1975 Cambodia, Castro's political prisons, and the Berlin Wall for example, all had absolutely nothing to do with Marxism.

Marxism, being the penultimate achievement in human political and social thought was flawless, he contended. Therefore, none of these negative events could have anything to do with it.

Most of my classmates stared at their lecturer inattentively thinking instead about the best way to ask out the girl next to them or about the hang over they were still trying to get over three days after losing 14 rounds of beer pong. Several classmates nodded. A few of us grunted in disgust and did our best to argue with our blind teacher. I wondered then how such an educated man could be so blind to the empirical evidence before him. I wonder today how so many well-intentioned and educated liberals are so blind to the realities of radical Islam and particularly Sharia law.

Some time ago I watched this British documentary on You Tube.

The documentary does its best to portray Sharia in a positive light. In fact an independent observer with no prior knowledge of Sharia law would walk away from the documentary thinking that Sharia was mostly a way for African women to get compensation from deadbeat dads.

Documentaries like this are one liberal response to conservative criticisms of Sharia law. The other common response usually comes without a British accent and therefore doesn’t sound quite as enlightened. It is still surprisingly affective and it usually goes something like this:

Conservative: Can you believe that a woman was sentenced to death by a Sharia court in Saudi Arabia for being gang raped by four of her cousins?

Liberal: Zionism!

Conservative: What do you mean?

Liberal: Christianity and Judaism are just as violent as Islam.

Conservative: What does that have to do with the case of this poor woman?

Liberal: Spanish Inquisition, Crusades, Mumia Abu Peltier…

Anyways, back to my original quandary? How is it that liberals are able to ignore what they see right in front of their own eyes? How can they deflect the reality of Sharia law as it is practiced in the real world by real people. How can they ignore oppressed women in 2007 by changing the subject to the brutality of Medieval Christians?

Two recent cases illustrate this point:

http://michellemalkin.com/2007/11/28/mohammed-teddy-bear-teacher-charged/

The Case of Mohammed the Teddy Bear.

Michelle Malkin has done an outstanding job covering this issue. Rusty from Jawa Report was good enough to create the following graphic.

The gist of the story is this. Ms. Gillian Gibbons, a 54 year old British educator working in a Khartoum elementary school had her class vote to name a classmate's Teddy bear. A popular 7 year old student named Mohammed recommended naming the bear after himself. The class took a vote.

Twenty out of 23 students voted to name the bear Mohammed after their 7 year old classmate. The response of Khartoum was to arrest Ms. Gibbons and charge her with insulting the prophet of Islam, a serious crime under Sharia law (as it is applied to nearly everyone in nearly all Muslim nations and a few neighborhoods in France). Ms. Gibbons now faces 6 months in jail, 40 lashes, and a fine.

The case of the Girl of Qatif.

The Girl of Qatif is a Muslim 19-year-old Saudi girl who committed a very serious crime under Sharia law – she allowed herself to be kidnapped and gang raped by seven men. In some Muslim countries that lack the purity and enlightenment of Saudi Arabia, this poor girl might have been subject to a tribal Jirga rather than a Sharia court and her sentence could have been much more severe such as death by stoning, an honor killing at the hands of a relative, or a combination of the two.

In the birthplace of Sharia, however, this criminal is subject to far less punishment – just 90 lashes…and an additional 110 lashes for having had the audacity to appeal her sentence. That is Sharia Law in action. That is how Sharia law is enforced throughout the Muslim world.

Liberals need a lesson in empiricism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism

BTW…This is what a few dozen lashes under Sharia law looks like 20 days later. HT-Atlas