Robert Spencer: Impeach Pennsylvania’s sharia Judge

In FrontPage this morning I call for justice to be done to Judge Mark Martin in Pennsylvania:

The facts of the case are clear: Ernest Perce, a young atheist in Pennsylvania, marched in a Halloween parade dressed as “Zombie Muhammad.” A Muslim, Talaag Elbayomy, grew enraged when he saw Perce’s costume, and began choking him while trying to pull off the fake beard that Perce had glued onto his face. Perce went to the police, and so did Elbayomy – the latter under the mistaken impression that it was illegal in the United States, as it is in many Muslim lands, to insult or mock the prophet of Islam. Elbayomy was mistaken, of course: it isn’t illegal to mock Muhammad in the United States, but it may be soon, courtesy Judge Mark Martin, who dismissed the case against Elbayomy.

Martin claimed in a message trying to explain away his mishandling of the case that he dismissed the case for lack of evidence: “In short, I based my decision on the fact that the Commonwealth failed to prove to me beyond a reasonable doubt that the charge was just; I didn’t doubt that an incident occurred, but I was basically presented only with the victim’s version, the defendant’s version, and a very intact Styrofoam sign that the victim was wearing and claimed that the defendant had used to choke him. There were so many inconsistencies, that there was no way that I was going to find the defendant guilty.”

Martin didn’t mention in his apologia that Perce was filming at the time Elbayomy attacked him, and the video evidence is quite clear. Nor did he mention that a police officer on the scene, Sgt. Bryan Curtis, backed up Perce’s version of events. Both the video and Curtis’s testimony give the lie to Martin’s claim that “I was basically presented only with the victim’s version, the defendant’s version, and a very intact Styrofoam sign that the victim was wearing and claimed that the defendant had used to choke him.”

Nor did Martin mention that he lectured Perce at length about how his Halloween costume outraged Islamic sensitivities, concluding: “And what you’ve done is you’ve completely trashed their essence, their being. They find it very, very, very offensive. I am a Muslim. I find it very offensive…You are way outside your bounds of first amendment rights.” Martin later denied that he was a Muslim, and so when he told Perce that he was one, he may have been speaking conditionally, as in, “If I were a Muslim, I, too, would find it offensive.”

However, despite the best efforts of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and its increasingly compliant enablers in the Obama Administration, it is still not illegal to offend Muslims in the United States. In fact, it is only illegal to offend Muslims and Islam under Islamic law. In lecturing Perce at length about how he had “trashed” Muslims’ “essence” and then ignoring two important sources of evidence that proved the charge against Elbayomy, Martin was effectively enforcing Sharia in an American courtroom. For under Islamic law, Elbayomy would have been perfectly within his rights, and even to be commended, for choking Perce for mocking Muhammad. The only criticism that might have been leveled against him had this case been brought in Jeddah or Tehran was that he didn’t finish Perce off altogether.

Pamela Geller interviewed Perce, who articulated the implications of the ruling: “Martin’s decision effectively says that Muslims do not have to learn to accept blasphemy against their religion without violence. Yet when you are a citizen of the USA, you accept our Constitution. Free speech is our foundation.”

Indeed. With the OIC engaged in a years-long struggle to compel Western states to criminalize truthful speech about jihad and criticism of Islam under the guise of criminalizing “religious hatred,” Martin’s skewed and biased ruling is particularly ominous, especially insofar as it coincides with Sharia prohibitions on speaking ill of Muhammad, the Qur’an, and Islam....

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/03/robert-spencer-impeach-pennsylvanias-sharia-judge.html