Court: Marine can't challenge Shariah?

A federal appeals court says a Marine can’t challenge a U.S. government subsidy for a program that promotes Shariah, that radical Islamic law that includes chopping off hands for theft and beheading for leaving Islam.

The ruling came today from Alan Norris, Eric Clay and Allen Griffin, judges on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

They explained that the federal TARP funds given to AIG were exempt from such challenges because the authorizing legislation didn’t consider giving money to aid religious outreaches such as AIG’s Shariah programs, and that the money was directed there by “executive” decisions.

Thus, the taxpayer lacked “standing” even to complain about the issue.

And they came to their conclusion even though the court opinion admitted that shortly after the Treasury Department acquired an interest in AIG, the “department sponsored a conference entitled ‘Islamic Finance 101.’ The stated purpose of the conference was to provide government policymakers information about Islamic finance. The presentation materials from the conference discussed topics such as the source of Islamic finance, how Islamic finance works, and the market factors that caused its growth.”

The plaintiffs argued that Congress could or should have known its bailout money to AIG would go to Shariah “since AIG was well known as the leader in [Shariah complaint finance].”