LISTEN TO PAUL SPERRY
Notwithstanding his
war-hero son’s genuinely patriotic example, Khizr M. Khan has published papers
supporting the supremacy of Islamic law over “man-made” Western law — including
the very Constitution he championed in his Democratic National Convention
speech attacking GOP presidential nod Donald Trump.
In 1983, for example, Khan wrote a glowing review of
a book compiled from a seminar held in Kuwait called “Human Rights In Islam” in
which he singles out for praise the keynote address of fellow Pakistani Allah
K. Brohi, a pro-jihad Islamic jurist who was one of the closest advisers to
late Pakistani dictator Gen. Zia ul-Haq, the father of the Taliban movement.
Khan speaks admiringly of Brohi’s interpretation of human
rights, even though it included the right to kill and mutilate those who
violate Islamic laws and even the right of men to “beat” wives who act
“unseemly.”
As Pakistani minister of law and religious affairs, Brohi helped
create hundreds of jihadi incubators called madrassas and restored Sharia
punishments, such as amputations for theft and demands that rape victims produce
four male witnesses or face adultery charges. He also made insulting the Muslim
prophet Muhammad a crime punishable by death. To speed the Islamization of
Pakistan, he and Zia issued a law that required judges to consult mullahs on
every judicial decision for Sharia compliance.
Khan, who says he immigrated
to the U.S. in 1980 to escape Pakistan’s “military rule,” nonetheless spoke
admiringly of Brohi in his review of his speech. He praised his remarks even
though Brohi advocated for the enforcement of the medieval Sharia punishments,
known as “hudood” (singular “hadd”), that were later adopted and carried out
with brutal efficiency by the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.
“Divinely ordained
punishments have to be inflicted,” Brohi asserted, “and there is very little
option for the judge called upon to impose Hadd, if facts and circumstances are
established that the Hadd in question has been transgressed, to refuse to
impose the punishment.”
Of course, such cruel and
unusual Sharia punishments, ranging from stonings and floggings to beheadings,
would be a flagrant violation of the Eighth Amendment of the United States
Constitution.
Western society is built on
individualism and secularism, concepts enshrined in the Constitution. But Brohi
scoffs at them, arguing, “The individual has to be sacrificed. Collectivity has
a special sanctity attached to it in Islam.”
Brohi goes on to argue that
human rights bestowed by Islam include the right of men to “beat” their wives.
“The best statement of the
human rights is also to be found in the address delivered by the prophet
[Muhammad] so often described as his last address,” Brohi said, quoting: “ ‘You
have rights over your wives and they have rights over you. You have the right
that they should not defile your bed and that they should not behave with open
unseemliness. If they do, God allows you to put them in separate rooms and to
beat them but not with severity.’ ”
In his book review,
Khan takes no issue with Brohi’s shocking interpretation of human rights.
In fact, he claims Brohi “successfully” explains them and argues his points
“convincingly.” (The review, which lists Khan as “director” of an Islamic
center in Houston, was published in the Texas International Law Journal.)
“The keynote speech of Dr.
A.K. Brohi, former Pakistani minister of legal and religious affairs, is a
hallmark in this book,” Khan writes. “It successfully explains the Islamic
concepts of ‘right’ and ‘just’ in comparison to their Christian and Judaic
counterparts.”
Adds Khan: “Brohi argues
convincingly for the establishment of a moral value system before guarantees
can be given for any kind of rights. To illustrate the point he notes, ‘There
is no such thing as human right in the abstract.’”
In context, Khan concurs that
human rights can only be guaranteed through the establishment of Sharia’s moral
and legal code.
Khan provides his own
advocacy for Sharia law in a separate academic paper titled “Juristic Classification
of Islamic Law,” which
he also wrote in 1983, while studying in Saudi Arabia.