GAFFNEY: Courting Shariah

OPINION:

Hats off to Sen. Jeff Sessions. The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee has opened up an important new front in the debate over Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s fitness to serve on the Supreme Court: her attitude toward the repressive legal code authoritative Islam calls Shariah and her enabling of efforts to insinuate it into this country.

By so doing, the Alabama legislator has given his colleagues and the country an opportunity not only to flesh out and evaluate the thin public record of President Obama’s second nominee to a lifetime appointment on the nation’s highest court but also afforded us all what Mr. Obama might call a “teachable moment.”

Specifically, this Supreme Court nomination offers a prism for examining the concerted and ominous campaign under way to bring Shariah to America, thanks to the troubling role Ms. Kagan played during her tenure as dean of Harvard Law School. In a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Mr. Sessions reflected on that role in noting a seemingly astonishing inconsistency in the nominee’s much-touted support of homosexual rights:

“Now information has come to light suggesting that Ms. Kagan may … have been less morally principled in her approach than has been portrayed. Around the same time that Dean Kagan was campaigning to exclude military recruiters - citing what she saw as the evils of ’don’t ask, don’t tell’ - Harvard University accepted $20 million from a member of the Saudi royal family to establish a Center for Islamic Studies and Shariah Law.

“An Obama State Department report concerning Saudi Arabia and the Shariah law concept noted: ’Under Shariah, as interpreted in [Saudi Arabia], sexual activity between two persons of the same gender is punishable by death or flogging.’

“Ms. Kagan was perfectly willing to obstruct the military, which has liberated countless Muslims from the hate and tyranny of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, but it seems she was willing to sit on the sidelines as Harvard created a center funded by - and dedicated to - foreign leaders presiding over a legal system that would violate what would appear to be her position.”

Some of Ms. Kagan’s defenders have sought to excuse her failure to oppose the promotion on campus of a brutally homophobic agenda by claiming that the program funded by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is actually on another part of Harvard’s campus, not that of the law school. For example, the George Soros-funded attack website Media Matters claimed: “Harvard University, not Harvard Law School - where Kagan served as dean - accepted the Saudi prince’s [2005] gift.”

Mr. Sessions did not say Elena Kagan accepted the check. Rather, he pointed out that her selective opposition to mistreatment of gays suggests that something other than principle was operating. If Ms. Kagan had no trouble with people who advocate the murder of homosexuals having offices anywhere at her university, it would appear her determination to deny access to its campus to military recruiters bespeaks nothing more than hostility toward the armed services. Is that something we really want in a Supreme Court justice?

Worse yet, Dean Kagan had an even more direct connection to the Saudis’ Shariah-recruitment efforts at Harvard. She personally officiated in 2003 over the establishment of an Islamic Finance Project at the law school. The project’s purpose is to promote what is better known as Shariah-compliant finance (SCF) by enlisting in its service some of the nation’s most promising law students.

Consequently, it is absolutely appropriate for senators to explore Ms. Kagan’s attitude toward Shariah - an anti-constitutional, supremacist legal doctrine that is a threat not only to homosexuals, but also to our civil liberties and society more generally.

Shariah-compliant finance dates back to the 1940s, when it was invented by leading figures in the Muslim Brotherhood. This international organization has as its stated mission “destroying Western civilization from within … by its own miserable hand.” SCF is designed to further these seditious purposes by: legitimating Shariah in non-Muslim societies; compelling non-Shariah-adherent Muslims to use SCF rather than conventional financial products (in particular, arrangements that involve charging or paying interest); and diverting funds through techniques known as “zakat” (tithing) and “purification” to support jihad. In fact, one of the driving forces behind the SCF industry, Qatari Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has called SCF-generated zakat “jihad with money.”

Ms. Kagan’s Islamic Finance Project also has played a prominent role in encouraging the U.S. government to endorse Shariah-compliant finance. Notably, a founding adviser to the project, Harvard professor Samuel Hays III, conducted a “seminar for the policy community” in November 2008. It was sponsored by a former Goldman-Sachs-executive-turned-assistant-treasury-secretary, Neel Kashkari, who at the time was responsible for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The signal thus sent could not have been clearer, either to Mr. Kashkari’s colleagues in government or to those in the financial sector: At a moment when the very viability of major banks and investing institutions critically depended on this individual’s favor, it would be advisable to embrace Shariah-compliant finance.

Thank heavens Jeff Sessions will play a leading role in the Judiciary Committee’s scrutiny of Elena Kagan. Because there is so little else to go on concerning her judgment and judicial philosophy, her attitude toward and association with Shariah’s insinuation into this country loom large. We can only hope Mr. Sessions and his colleagues will make the most of this teachable moment.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the syndicated program “Secure Freedom Radio,” heard in Washington weeknights at 9 p.m. on WTNT 570 AM.