Sharia Compliant Part Four - I am a Jew, I am a Christian

Wall Street Journal Reporter Daniel Pearl

The purpose of listing excerpts from the writings of Imam Rauf has been two fold: 1) Demonstrate what he meant by Sharia Compliant. 2) Demonstrate that there is no universal sharia law.

January 23, 2002 Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped, tortured, and ultimately decapitated by Pakistani members of Al Qaeda.  His death was ultimately confirmed, the following February.  Before his beheading, he confessed to his captors of the preposterous crimes of being a Jew and an American. [1] February 23, 2003, a Memorial Service was held at B'nai Jeshurun, a prominent synagogue in Manhattan, and in the audience was Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl's father. [2]  Imam Rauf was invited to speak at this memorial.  In this context of an American Jew who was murdered for being an American Jew, Rauf uttered these words,

If to be a Jew means to say with all one’s heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. [Judea] Pearl.

This Muslim imam stood before a Jewish congregation in a synagogue and claimed to be a Jew.  Jeffrey Goldberg notes that the Islamists that murdered Pearl despise Christians, Jews, and apostates.  A sample of the speech is below.[3]  I recommend clicking the link to read the rest.

We are people of faith and perhaps people without any professed religion: practicing and perhaps not. Today we are members of many faiths: Christian, Jew and Muslim. But we have come together to confirm the common ground of our faiths, on which we all stand united, to assert our common values, values that constrain us to act in the highest sense of what it means to be human. 

 We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one’s heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl. 

If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one Mr. Pearl. 

 And I am here to inform you, with the full authority of the Quranic texts and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, that to say La ilaha illallah Muhammadun rasulullah is no different. It expresses the same theological and ethical principles and values.

We are here especially to seek your forgiveness and of your family for what has been done in the name of Islam.[4]