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SNL: How did you become so knowledgeable on the topic? MS: I knew nothing about Islam until I came to Palm Beach County and went to a presen- tation by a local rabbi who claimed that the Quran was the basis of Islamist terrorism or political Islam or whatever you want to call it. This guy was in other respects very liberal, but that set me back on my heels. How could the Quran be the basis of terrorism if the Quran has been around since 700 or so, and terrorism is a relatively recent phenomenon? I began to engage the rabbi in a dialogue about his thesis, and in the course of this, I had to read the Quran. I realized that my perception that Muslims are somehow different is based more on their headgear and the wearing of flowing robes than it is on anything that has to do with theology. SNL: Why does the idea of Sharia alarm so many Americans? MS: There is a portion of Sharia law that bears on civil or criminal law. The civil portion is on regulations about trade and commerce, inher- itance, marriage and divorce, child custody and then some sort of stuff we would con- sider criminal law. It's that stuff that excites people in the United States, because they see it as potentially conflicting with U.S. law. S N L : H o w i s S h a r i a i m p l e m e n t e d i n other countries? MS: Muslim-majority states have a quite vari- able relationship to Sharia law in terms of their legal system. In some states, the law of the state corresponds quite closely with Sharia, and then there are other polities where there is some degree of correlation, and then there are states where there is a low correspon- dence. A very interesting point is that Israel finances Sharia courts and pays its judges and sends its Muslim citizens that have issue with marriage and inheritance to Sharia courts. When people get worried about Sharia, they're worried about a couple of things. In Sharia, the procedures are very different from those of U.S. law. Usually, neither the plaintiff nor defendant has a lawyer, and instead of pre- senting evidence, they take oaths. They swear on the validity of their claims. There's no jury, and the judge usually renders a decision very swiftly. You come into court and you get the decision that day. For a U.S. lawyer or a per- son who is a fan of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, a Sharia court would just make their jaw drop, and that's a problem for human rights across the globe. SNL: What about harsh punishments? MS: For certain crimes, stoning and amputa- tion and flogging are authorized, but they're almost never carried out, with one interest- ing exception. For example, to have someone convicted of adultery, it requires four male witnesses of penetration, and because those evidentiary requirements are almost never met, almost nobody receives the stoning pun- ishment for adultery. Over the course of the entire history of the Ottoman Empire, there were only two cases of stoning. Where these barbaric punishments are occurring are in failed states overrun by Islamist militias imposing Sharia. Sarasota News Leader March 28, 2014 Page 56