Pa.-Muslim Judge Basically Applies Sharia in Assault Case

Added on 2/24/12 - Video with audio of the court proceedings. It clarifies a lot of what was first reported and it is just as bad:

Added on 2/28/12 - It turns out the the Judge is not Muslim, but functions as a Dhimmi instead.
Dhimmi is the Muslim Euphemistic term of "protected peoples" who live as less-than second-class citizens in their own nation once the place is taken over by Muslims.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/02/why-we-need-anti-sharia-laws-muslim-judge-enforces-sharia-in-case-of-muslim-attacker-on-mocker-of-mu.html

I can think of no other way to describe this event. An application of Sharia Law recently occurred in a Pennsylvania court. I presume that it was a  Municipal court given the circumstances.

The full post with additional links will be below. I will state the facts as briefly as possible:

An atheist group had a march. In that event were two members of the group who were in zombie costumes, one of the Pope, and one of Mohammed. A Muslim in the crowd assaulted the guy in the Mohammed costume. Apparently the assault was not severe enough to warrant the actor being charged with a crime (felony), but the victim was told by a police Sgt. that he of course had a right to press charges.

In court, a judge, also apparently a Muslim (I am assuming he was a convert from the photos and the personal background of himself unnecessarily provided by the magistrate), dismissed the charges againt the defendant and engaged in a bizarre lesson in Islamic Law and sensibilites directed towards the victim. This included referring to the victim as a "dufus'.

The Judge, Mark Martin, also noted that the the victim would have been killed for doing the same thing in an Islamic country. What does the penalty for offending a Muslim in a Muslim nation have to do with the price of tea in China?

This cannot be treated as a "let sleeping dogs lie" moment. This has all the makings of a catastrophe. A government official who is charged with finding of fact and applying the law decided that none of this matters in the special case of a Muslim who was upset with the mocking of his religion, social system, and his religion's founder. Note that also the Judge did not note that the defendant's claim of not being aware that what he did was illegal is not a defense in US law - "Ignorance of the law is no defense" is something of which American teenagers are aware.

This is a gross malcarriage of justice (It does not meet the criteria of miscarriage as it appears to be purely intentional). The Judge added what appears to be a mistranslation of the Muslim greeting "wa-liakum al-salaam". He stated that it meant "God be with you". Similar to the Hebrew "Shalom a-lehem", the greeting means "Peace be upon  you" and can of course refer to God's peace being with the person. What kind of Muslim cannot even translate his own greeting?

How can this judge, who in all probability figured that he had found a way to 'prime the pump' for possible future hate speech laws in the US or at least bring the idea to the fore, think that he did anything other than embarrass himself, let alone his profession?

I hope that the victim appeals this to the county superior court. He really has no choice. This does not even approach the double-jeopardy standard. The judge never considered the law, the testimony, or even allowed the introduction into evidence of the video taken at the time.

Personally, I don't find true Atheists (Many who claim to be are actually agnostic) to be deep-thinking people. Their outlook reduces us to the level of animals who eat, mate, and die. It is an intellectually lazy way of avoiding any thought about one's purpose for existence. Even more slothful than that is their willingness to just accept the beginning of the universe and its results as a random series of billions of  accidents. Yes, I am aware of the books coming out now by Stephen Hawking's buddies in which all sorts of gyrations are employed to try to prove that something (matter, etc.) can come into existence from nothing but the preliminary arguments that I have read don't appear to hold any water. I will buy the books when I can get used ones.

Having stated that, I have never assaulted an Atheist nor do I plan on doing so. Conversely, I also cannot recall ever being assaulted by an Atheist for any reason. I would not dispense with my support of free speech and expression to stop anyone from exercising his or her rights. The victim did nothing that merited being assaulted. Even though I am a Catholic, I think that it was a good idea to have the Pope represented also in that it demonstrates that they were not going to get attacked by any Papists.

The first link has a good video. The second has audio of the Judge.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/02/sharia-in-pennsylvania-muslim-admits-to-attacking-atheist-over-zombie-muhammad-muslim-judge-dismisse.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf11F3y9LOE&feature=youtu.be