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A man stands accused of murdering a pregnant Egyptian mother in Germany.  The crime is hideous.  A man has lost his wife; a small child has lost its mother.   The response from one Muslim cleric has been to call on German Muslims to carry out vigilante justice.  This is also hideous.  According to The Times

A fatwa [religious edict] has been issued against him [the suspected murderer] and authorities fear that he is the target of revenge for the Islamic world… The fatwa has been issued by a Sheikh Ihab Adly Abu al-Madjd in a video clip on the internet. He calls on all Muslims in Germany to take vengeance and “receive the award of Allah.”

Extraordinary measures have been taken at the courthouse where he will be appearing, including the stationing of several hundred police officers and the installation of a wall of bulletproof glass. 

The authorities fear a repetition of the riots against Danish and Scandinavian institutions after the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad in September 2005.  

Effectively, Sheikh Madjd and extremists like him are saying that due process in the courts and parliaments is irrelevant; their version of Islamic law should supersede European law.  This is not the first time we’ve seen this kind of behavior.  

Freedom of speech is in the universal declaration of human rights.  Yet, in recent years in Denmark there have been threats against cartoonists because of depictions of Mohammed deemed blasphemous.  Danish journalists have also been subject to threats and violence. 

In France, a massive wave of riots erupted in response to the death of two boys who thought police were chasing them, and accidentally electrocuted themselves while hiding inside a power station.

Throughout Europe, there are hundreds of Muslim enclaves that are off-limits to uniformed law-enforcement.  In effect, this means there are hundreds of regions in Europe where Islamic law supercedes, to some degree, the law of the state.

Reform-minded Muslim writer and activist Irshad Manji has bullet-proof windows and a lock on her mailbox in response to the death threats she has received because of her work.  Others individuals like controversial Dutch MP Geert Wilders receive heavy state protection because of extremist threats.  (He received almost 300 serious death threats in 2008, alone.  Other Dutch politicians were similarly threatened.)

In America, we have also witnessed threats from Islamists, with multiple plots uncovered in the past few months alone.  In these cases, as in the cases above, we see individuals who were willing to take extra-legal action based on their extremist interpretation of Islamic law, placing it above the law of the state in which they lived.   

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser has written frequently on the need to separate political Islam from the faith.  “We must engage the majority non-Islamist American Muslim community to reject political Islam and its fuel for radicalized Islam,” he said.  Efforts like those he is promoting are one important way we can educate our children for the future, to ensure they help build their societies like all other Americans, by committing to peaceful actions—as opposed to vigilantism—to redress any grievances and to right what they see as wrongs. 

Words cannot encompass the tragedy a man in Germany has caused, borne of his hatred for a Muslim.  If convicted, he will be punished under German law.  And that is as it should be. 

You can contact Dr. Jasser’s organization, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, here.