Dr. Andrew Bostom on the Imprisonment of Sudanese Christian Convert Meriam Ibrahim

Below is a partial transcript of an interview conducted on May 15, 2014, by Secure Freedom Radio’s host Frank Gaffney of Dr. Andrew Bostom, author of Sharia Versus Freedom. The entire discussion may be listened to here.

Frank Gaffney: What is likely to happen to [Meriam Yahia Ibrahim]?

Andrew Bostom: Well, she has been convicted of violating two articles: one that has to do with apostasy, one that has to do with adultery. Both are so-called mandatory hadd offences. She’s slated to get 100 lashes. At nine months pregnant, Frank! 100 lashes. She could be killed for apostasy. Usually that would take place after she delivers the baby.

She’s imprisoned with her 20-month old son, who is a US citizen because of the father, who is a [naturalized] US citizen. Now, the father was told by the US Embassy that they weren’t terribly interested in the case—this was what he was told last month. And even though he presented them with documents, showing his wedding documents and the baby’s birth certificate, he was told that he’d have to have blood drawn for a DNA test sent back to the United States. This is how supportive our US Embassy has been of an American citizen and an imprisoned 20-month old American citizen toddler.

FG: The Obama administration [has] turned at best a blind eye to this shariah program and the supremacy that it entails, and the misogyny and brutalization of women and all the rest. At worst it’s enabling it. I’m struck by the extent to which—particularly under Hillary Clinton’s tenure in the State Department, but in the period since then as well—we’ve seen this kind of behavior that…I think, knowing shariah as you do and the mindset of the people that promote it, must be emboldening them enormously.

AB: Absolutely, Frank. At the bare minimum, the State Department should have demanded that the government of Sudan release this 20-month old toddler, who is a US citizen. This is outrageous. To compel the father to have a DNA test to prove paternity of this toddler is just an absolute outrage. It capitulates to all the shariah jurisdictions, and even just the morass, to allow this kind of thing to take place. It’s not enough to issue statements that Sudan is in violation of international agreements. This is meaningless.

FG: To the extent that we signal to those who adhere to shariah a submissiveness on our part by these kinds of accommodations, what does their doctrine tell them they must do in response?

AB: Forge ahead. Forge ahead with a program to Islamize, for example, international human rights instruments. They’re patterned after our Bill of Rights, but the International Declaration of Human Rights, which is a UN document, is to be superseded, per the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, by the Cairo Declaration, which is the universal declaration of human rights in Islam. Which is a shariah-based conception of human rights, where practices such as what’s being levied upon this poor woman are absolutely considered to be legitimate.

FG: Most Americans listening to this program would probably say, “Well, that can’t possibly happen here.” People being lashed, people being condemned to death for apostasy and that sort of thing. Can it happen here?

AB: Well, look, of course it’s antithetical to the principles this country was founded upon. However, such ideas are being propagated within our borders, and they’re being taught in mosques. And the imams who teach these things are themselves being taught, for example, by the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America…. This is a mainstream imam training organization in North America, and they are promoting the shariah supremacist agenda in great detail and with great gusto. They see themselves as being those who will inculcate within the Muslim community of North America the ideas that would lead to politicians promoting shariah, lawyers in mainstream legal professions promoting the shariah.