The New Dhimmi Times?

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Totalitarians have an uncanny appreciation for the subversive effect of foreign propagandists. The Nazis had Lord Haw-Haw, Imperial Japan its Tokyo Rose, the Soviets the World Council of Churches (among many others) and the North Vietnamese Jane Fonda. Now, our time's totalitarian ideologues — the Islamofascists — have the New York Times.

This may not seem to be exactly a news flash. After all, the Times has been rendering invaluable service to the enemy's information operations and military campaigns for years. To cite but a few examples: In December 2005, the paper disclosed a highly classified program for monitoring suspected terrorists' communications on this war's global battlefield. In June 2006, it revealed another enormously sensitive surveillance effort concerning movement of funds around the world. And practically every day, what passes for its news pages and editorials run down the nation's leadership, military and progress in defeating our foes.

The New York Times marked a deplorable new milestone this weekend, however — a true nadir in collaborating with the enemy in the war of ideas. Its Sunday magazine featured an article by Harvard law professor Noah Feldman entitled "Why Shariah? Millions of Muslims think Shariah means the rule of law. Could they be right?" According to the Times' Mr. Feldman, the answer is a resounding "Yes."

The disinforming character of this essay is evident to the trained eye from the opening paragraph. Mr. Feldman depicts sympathetically the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who "gave a nuanced, scholarly lecture" recently in London. Dr. Williams we are told offered "the tentative suggestion ... that, subject to the agreement of all parties and the strict requirement of protecting equal rights for women, it might be a good idea to consider allowing Islamic and Orthodox Jewish courts to handle marriage and divorce." Then, it seems through no fault of his own, "all hell broke loose" on the poor, thoughtful clergyman.

Actually, what the head of the Church of England declared on the BBC was that it was "unavoidable" that Shariah law — a theo-political-legal code that the Islamofascists seek to impose on Muslims and non-Muslims alike in all of its barbaric, intolerant, totalitarian and mysogenistic glory — will be observed in the United Kingdom. The man now derided as "the Grand Mufti of Canterbury" was exhibiting the classic symptoms of an unbeliever who chooses to submit to the rule of Islam, rather than accept the other choice under Shariah, namely being put to death. The former is known as a dhimmi.

In an article that can only be described charitably as selective in its rendering of the facts, Mr. Feldman paints a portrait of Shariah that would earn admiration from the inventor of the Big Lie, Adolf Hitler. In fact, the text could have been written by the Muslim Brotherhood — an Islamofascist movement that is, by its own documents, charged with "destroying [the United States] from within" and "by its own hands." Actually, it is no exaggeration to say that the Times' Magazine has provided a six-page advertisement for the Brotherhood, effectively portraying it as a force for democracy and the rule of law that would make Thomas Jefferson swoon.

The Harvard professor, who helped write the new Iraqi constitution with its requirement that all laws must conform to Shariah, seems open to the Islamofascists' determination to have the same apply elsewhere. He concludes with this rhapsody: "With all its risks and dangers, the Islamists' aspiration to renew old ideas of the rule of law while coming to terms with contemporary circumstances is bold and noble — and may represent a path to just and legitimate government in much of the Muslim world."

Let's call this what it is: a paean to dhimmitude. The people who are actually going to have to "come to terms with contemporary circumstances" are not the Islamists. They are hewing to the immutable traditions of Shariah going back to the ninth century, as interpreted by the consensus of the faith's "authorities," the only figures allowed to speak for Islam.

It is the cruelest of delusions to contend that such Shariah law will produce "just and legitimate governments" anywhere. Mr. Feldman struggles to explain why it isn't so in two of the four places ruled by Shariah today — Iran and Saudi Arabia; he doesn't even try to do so with respect to Sudan or Gaza, let alone the nightmare that formerly was Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

Sunday's New York Times article could be chalked up to another travesty by a paper that has long since lost its way, but for one fact: It comes at a moment when the Islamofascists are poised to make a potentially decisive breakthrough. Unless action is taken swiftly, they will achieve a strategic penetration of Wall Street in the form of "Shariah-Compliant Finance" (SCF). Confusion, let alone deliberate disinformation about the true nature of Shariah, constitutes an invitation to disaster.

After all, the calamitous credit crisis is vaporizing such pillars of American capitalism as Bear Sterns. Other investment houses and commercial banks are desperate for cash. Islamist Sovereign Wealth Funds (more accurately described as Dictators Slush Funds) and other champions of SCF are offering to recycle trillions of dollars here — if only Wall Street will allow Muslim Brothers and other Islamofascists to call the shots, dictating who gets capital and credit on the basis of Shariah adherence. Archbishop Williams judged Shariah law unavoidable in Britain in part because the U.K. has embraced Shariah-Compliant Finance.

If we fall for this deadly Trojan horse and the seditious Shariah agenda that animates it, the New Dhimmi Times and Mr. Feldman will deserve no small portion of the blame.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for The Washington Times.