The Future of Vice

Michael Yon's latest dispatch demonstrates the kind of world we would live in if Al Qaeda was able to spread Sharia Law.

"On the evening of the 24th I spoke with a local Iraqi official, Colonel Faik, who said the Muftis would order the severance of the two fingers used to hold a cigarette for any Iraqis caught smoking. Other reports, from here in Diyala and also in Anbar, allege that smokers are murdered by AQI. Most Iraqis smoke and this particular prohibition appeared to have earned the ire of many locals. After an American unit cleared an apartment complex on the 23rd, LTC Smiley, the battalion commander, reported that residents didn’t ask for food and water, but cigarettes. In other parts of Baqubah, people have been celebrating the routing of AQI by lighting up and smoking cigarettes.

Other AQI edicts included beatings for men who refused to grow beards, and corporal punishments for obscene sexual suggestiveness, defined by such “loose” behavior as carrying tomatoes and cucumbers in the same bag. These fatwas were not eagerly embraced by most Iraqis, and the taint traveled back to the Muftis who sat in supreme judgment. Locals, who are increasingly helpful in pointing out and celebrating the downfall of AQI here, said that during the initial Arrowhead Ripper attack the morning of the 19th, AQI murdered five men. Townsend’s men found the buried corpses behind an AQI prison, exactly where they’d been told to look for the group grave. Locals also directed Townsend’s men to a torture house. Peering through a window, American soldiers saw knives, swords, bindings and drills. AQI is well-known for its macabre eagerness to drill into kneecaps, elbows, ribs, skulls, and other parts of victims."

No smoking or they cut your fingers off. Kind of makes the prohibition of smoking in restaurants look like child's play. Also, you can't carry a cucumber and 2 tomatoes in the same shopping bag because of its sexual suggestiveness. Can you imagine the carnage Al Qaeda would have pursued had they seen something like this at PrideFest?

That's what I don't get. The same people who criticize the U.S. when it is trying to stop the tyranny that is propagating this type of oppression are the exact people that will be systematically killed should Al Qaeda and its fanatics be allowed to live. As Mark Steyn points out in America Alone, if the Islamists take over the world, those of us who are conservatives will pretty much just grow our beards and have a few more wives, but the groups of people backing liberal causes will be the first ones persecuted. The liberal voices speaking out on the war should be the ones decrying the enemy's brutality and oppression.

Of course, we can't imagine Islamists taking over the world. Just like we couldn't imagine 2 airplanes flying into the WTC on September 10th.