Thread: Impeach Pennsylvania’s Sharia Judge

Impeach Pennsylvania’s Sharia Judge

Tuesday, 06 March 2012 06:37
Robert Spencer



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.
This is why it is urgent that Judge Martin be impeached and removed from his post. Islamic law has now been involved in court cases in twenty-three states, while the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) has embarked on a three-million-dollar nationwide campaign to whitewash Sharia and convince Americans that it is entirely benign, nothing to be concerned about at all. Yet there is no form of Sharia that Islamic jurists have ever elaborated or that has ever been implemented anywhere in the Islamic world that does not restrict the freedom of speech and require infidels to adopt a posture of chastened silence toward Islamic supremacism and Qur’an-inspired violence. And now an American judge in an American courtroom has validated the proposition that non-Muslims must not criticize or mock Muhammad or Islam in any way by ignoring evidence and letting go unpunished an attack upon an American who was exercising his right to free expression in a way that offended Muslim sensibilities.
Islamic supremacist groups in the U.S. such as ICNA and the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) are fiercely resisting the anti-Sharia measures now being considered in twenty states, and it is easy to see why: they would effectively stop or at least put a strong brake upon efforts to bring elements of Sharia to this country. They would put an end to the demand that American businesses and educational institutions must change the way they operate in order to accommodate Islamic law and custom. But with judges like Mark Martin on the bench, ICNA, CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood entities in the U.S. don’t need to worry: Martin is already Sharia-compliant, already eager to set aside American law in order to do their bidding.
That’s why Mark Martin needs to be impeached, and soon. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are our most fundamental bulwarks against tyranny. Americans who think that these freedoms cannot be encroached upon or eroded because we have the First Amendment are naïve. They’re already being encroached upon: Hillary Clinton recently held meetings with the OIC, the particulars of which have never been disclosed, to discuss strategies to implement the OIC’s campaign to restrict free speech in America. And it is only going to get worse, unless lovers of freedom take a stand now. Ernest Perce’s case is the case of every believer in freedom, whether or not one approves of his particular form of mockery.
Impeach Pennsylvania’s Sharia judge!
Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran (Regnery), and he is coauthor (with Pamela Geller) of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (Simon and Schuster).
Impeach Pennsylvania

“Zombie Mohammed” Judge Responds

Eugene Volokh • February 25, 2012 5:29 pm

A reader passed along this message that appears to be from the judge in the Zombie Mohammed case:

This story certainly has legs. As you might imagine, the public is only getting the version of the story put out by the “victim” (the atheist). Many, many gross misrepresentations. Among them: I’m a Muslim, and that’s why I dismissed the harassment charge (Fact: if anyone cares, I’m actually Lutheran, and have been for at least 41 years).
I also supposedly called him and threatened to throw him in jail if he released the tapes he had made in the courtroom without my knowledge/permission (Fact: HE called ME and told me that he was ready to “go public” with the tapes and was wondering what the consequences would be; I advised him again to not disseminate the recording, and that I would consider contempt charges; he then replied that he was “willing to go to jail for (his) 1st amendment rights”- I never even uttered the word “jail” in that conversation).
He said that I kept a copy of the Quran on the bench (fact: I keep a Bible on the bench, but out of respect to people with faiths other than Christianity, I DO have a Quran on the bookcase BESIDE my bench, and am trying to acquire a Torah, Book of Mormon, Book of Confucius and any other artifacts which those with a faith might respect).
He claims that I’m biased towards Islam, apparently because he thinks I’m Muslim. In fact, those of you who know me, know that I’m an Army reservist with 27 years of service towards our country (and still serving). I’ve done one tour in Afghanistan, and two tours in Iraq, and am scheduled to return to Afghanistan for a year this summer. During my first tour in Iraq, I was ambushed once, attacked by a mob once, sniped at once, and rocketed, bombed, and mortared so many times that I honestly don’t know how many time I’ve been attacked. Presumably by Muslim insurgents. My point: if anyone SHOULD be biased towards Muslims, one would think it would be me. I’m not, however, because I personally know or have met many good, decent people who follow Islam, and I shouldn’t characterize the actions of those who tried to kill me as characterizations of all Muslims.
When I asked him why he dressed up as “Muhammad zombie,” he told me that it was because he was reflecting the Muslim belief that Muhammad rose from the dead, walked as a zombie, and then went to heaven. That was one of the reasons I tried to spend 6 whole minutes trying to explain and de-mystify Islam through my own knowledge, and in an attempt to prevent an incident like this recurring in my community. Unfortunately, the message was obviously not received in the vein that I had intended. And, in the interest of full disclosure, I did use the word “doofus,” but didn’t call him that directly; I said something akin to “ if you’re going to mock another religion or culture, you should check your facts, first- otherwise, you’ll look like a doofus.”;
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 so many inconsistencies, that there was no way that I was going to find the defendant guilty.
A lesson learned here: there’s a very good reason for Rule 112 of Rules of Criminal Procedure- if someone makes an unauthorized recording in a Court not of Record, there’s no way to control how it might be manipulated later, and then passed off as the truth. We’ve received dozens upon dozens of phone calls, faxes, and e-mails. There are literally hundreds of not-so-nice posts all over the internet on at least 4 sites that have carried this story, mainly because I’ve been painted as a Muslim judge who didn’t recuse himself, and who’s trying to introduce Sharia law into Mechanicsburg.

UPDATE: Sorry, forgot to add this at first: I don’t think this justifies the judge’s berating of the victim, for the reasons I mentioned in the initial post; but I thought it important to let the judge provide his side of the story.

The Volokh Conspiracy » “Zombie Mohammed” Judge Responds