Without doubt the jurisprudence of the Western world was inspired by the religions Christianity and Judaism. Secularists and atheists in the West have spent years trying to disprove the fact that indeed the laws of their lands were inspired by what is commonly accepted today as the Ten Commandments, other laws of the Old Testament and to a lesser degree the teachings of Jesus Christ.
As the laws of the West were being promulgated, it seems that Western lawmakers took the meaning of the law from the Old Testament, and their ideas of redemption and rehabilitation somewhat from the teachings of Jesus who preached love of enemies, mercy and redemption through God’s grace for all of mankind. Unfortunately in Western jurisprudence, Jesus’ ideas don’t come into play until the Old Testament laws have placed a person in prison where now as a convict, it is believed that the teachings of Jesus should have more bearing on his destiny than the judgment of the Pharisees.
There are those who believe that the term Judeo/Christian reflects the timing of the various periods of rule of these faith’s ideas, Judaism having preceded Christianity. In reality, it is quite possible that the juxtaposition of the terms reflects their position in respect to which commands the greatest amount of influence in our contemporary law and its interpretation. Even today, we find that our supposedly secular legislature in the United States looks quite a bit to the Old Testament for guidance, or at least inspiration in respect to its approaches to war, peace, justice and also punishments. There is practically nothing, either in federal or state laws that give the impression that we , as a country are any longer interested in rehabilitating or redeeming the soul of man except through the evangelicalism of the protestant church which focuses its zeal mainly on the Arab and Muslim world, and of course Africa.
The US Church has seemingly lost interest in saving its domestic flock, except when it’s time to vote. In both the Church’s and the Synagogue’s domestic politics, we find a lot of Caiaphas and very little Jesus in their attitudes on abortion, capital punishment, marriage, homosexuality and entitlement and the legislation passed by our Congress that regulate these customs. Even in respect to law enforcement, we find increasingly that the idea of a constabulary whose aim is to serve and protect the citizen, is giving way to a system where the police officer is seen as an agent of the government whose purpose is to protect the property and interest of the government authority from the citizen who is no longer innocent until proven guilty, but is rather guilty until proven innocent, which is straight out of the Judaism of Pharisees. This seems the case, in spite of the fact that the government owns nothing and has no interest that is not also the citizen’s property and interest.
Prisoners who languish in US prisons, a disproportionate number of which are minorities, African Americans and Hispanics, have been excluded from our American evangelicalism, except when it comes to competing with Islam for converts. Christian converts are given privileges and special treatments in prisons that other prisoners who convert to religions like Islam, or Buddhism are not. There have also been attempts to impose difficult requirements upon Muslim preachers and Imams who which to work in the prisons, and also their Muslim followers. The Church and Synagogue went so far in their attempts to chase Muslim preachers away from the prisons that they launched false and absurd charges that Muslim preachers were radicalizing prisoners against the government, and recruiting them to be domestic terrorists. Even though it has neither been said nor proven, it is my opinion that prisoners like Imam Jamil Al Amin who is being kept in solitary confinement in a super max prison for a crime that he very obviously did not commit, are denied Qur’ans, and the right to pray in congregational prayers because of such lies that were whispered into the ears of legislators, and subsequently the DOJ and Prison Wardens, by evangelicals in competition with Islam.
Of course the case of one man is not enough to support my argument that Judeo/Christian jurisprudence, once touted as the most fair, impartial and independent judicial philosophy and system in the world has failed. Not only has it failed, but it has fallen to the extent that its core principles, stated values and cause are barely visible anymore to the public’s eye, and it is the public’s eye by which any system of justice should be viewed, and not through the eyes of professional jurists, theorists and judges.
Perhaps the most glaring example of the failure of the Judeo/Christian judicial system is the United State’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Palestine. We need go no further to mention the backlash against Muslims and Arabs following 9/11. The rounding up of innocents who were placed in secret prisons where they were tortured, not to get information to protect civilization from the violence of religious extremists, but rather to coerce false confessions from innocent people, hoping to provide testimony to support the war on terrorism initiated by Israel prior to 9/11, is also a sign of moral and legal failure.
Following 9/11 our government, with the knowledge and assistance of Europe, rounded up young men, denied them their freedom because of their race and religion, tortured them and killed them because these governments were looking for false confessions about fake Muslim plots to carry out fictional acts of terrorism. This is not to mention that bodies of jurisprudence, like the Omnibus Anti-Terrorism Law, Secret Evidence Act, and the Patriot Act which were adopted by our government, and similar laws adopted by government’s throughout the world who followed our lead as we enacted laws that stripped citizens of freedom, sought to deny people the right to self defense, that authorized illegal wiretapping and denied citizens the presumption of innocence and due process, all under the false guise of fighting terrorism.
The most persuasive sign of systemic failure is when a system fails to, or is incapable of responding to a crisis in a way that is consistent with its own self confessed values, principles and objectives. Judeo/Christian jurisprudence was not only incapable of rising to the challenge of blood lust and desire for revenge that permeated our society after the false flag attacks of 9/11, political appointees within our government were allowed to re-interpret and in some cases actually to rewrite laws to facilitate government lawlessness. US Prosecutors were dispatched with the command to round up Muslims and Arabs right here in the US to be deported, or arrested and tried sometimes twice or three times on the same charge until the prosecutor could find a jury that would convict people for acts carried out before laws were passed that criminalized past behavior.
The US judiciary became the primary battleground for the war on Islam being waged through our government by the Church and Synagogue, as war on terrorism, which is why our media never covered a single terrorism trial, except the trial of a French citizen named Mossaoui who shouted very negative and ridiculous claims about Islam to the jury during his testimony. He is a supposed Al Qadea operative that shared an e-mail with a US citizen of Jewish faith, who was killed in Iraq. It was reported upon the Jewish-American’s death, that his personal belongings included a Qur’an and anti-US propaganda that was littered with Qur’anic references, possibly to be left strategically at false flag crime scenes where Islam would be scapegoated as the usual suspect.
Instead of focusing on the crash of the US judicial system taking place before our very eyes, the media kept their lens focused on the illegal wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars kept American blood boiling and our fear level high enough to convince us that any challenge to our government’s errant behavior and the destruction of our judiciary was unpatriotic, undermining the troops, and making the US vulnerable to more attacks. Not until recently has the American public began to realize that the war on terrorism is a monumental hoax that has cost us billions in dollars, a priceless value in the lives of our young men and women who gave their lives in these crusades, and also those who have been injured and disabled for life. It also cost us our moral authority and our prestige and good standing in the world. Where were the judges, the lawyers, the great legal theorists and law professors? Why did they sit silently and not challenge those who were clearly undermining our judiciary and in fact our country?
The genocide in Palestine by contrast to Iraq and Afghanistan is a much more plain and convincing sign of the failure of the Judeo/Christian judicial theory and system of the West in my view. Through this conflict we have learned that Judeo/Christian law is not blind and equal if you are not Christian or Jewish, non white and rich. We also learned that there is no moral obligation either stated or implied towards those who are not Christian, Jewish European, or rich and famous. Keep in mind that the Ashkenazi Jews that rule Israel are white and European, and that it is their Talmud, even more than the Orthodox Jew’s and the Zionist Christian’s Old Testament that is undermining the world in respect to the rule of law and moral justice.
The fact that Israel has been allowed to implant itself through ethnic cleansing in the Muslim world based upon a fictional right supported by a suspect interpretation of their Old Testament historicism, should be enough to cause any jurist of any legal philosophy to cry foul. That this ethnic cleansing has been allowed to take place over 60 years, in violation of every law known to God and man is another proof that Judeo/Christian justice is not available to non Jews and non Christians, or Christians of the wrong race or culture. In fact Judeo/Christian law has proven incapable of recognizing the equal value of all human life and the equal potential for good of every human soul.
The most ironic and also the most disheartening fact in respect to the systemic failure of Judeo/Christian jurisprudence in respect to the colonization of Palestine by the European Ashkenazim, and the subsequent 9/11 failures, is that this is not the first time that it has failed so dramatically and destructively. It’s first historic failure of this magnitude was during the human slave trade of Africans to the West’s “New World” and the second was arguably the genocide against the Native Americans and then the periods of European colonization when neither the Church, or the European colonial governments were able to see or understand the evil of their project, even though their own judicial philosophy should have suggested to them that what was taking place in India, Africa and Latin America was not only a moral crime, but it was also the failure of Judeo/Christian jurisprudence to judge accurately and fairly the actions of its own society and leaders, and to hold them accountable.
It is important that we not only recognize this systemic civilizational failure in our lifetimes, but it is also important that we address it appropriately. The Judeo/Christian judicial philosophy has inspired and guided the establishment of independent judiciaries throughout the world, including many in the Muslim world. This judicial system of Judeo/Christian laws is arguably the single most significant cause of violence in the entire world, and might also be the cause of much of the world’s poverty, and much of the world’s crime. Its rhetoric fills the hearts and minds of people young and old with delusions of perfect justice that simply does not exist in the Judeo/Christian world and that could never be attained by a system, the very foundation of which is racial and class preference.
Anisa Abd el Fattah is the founder and Chairwoman of the National Association of Muslim American Women. She has a PH.D. in Islamic Jurisprudence from the Islamic College for Advanced Studies in London.
