Secularism versus Sharia: This is not complicated, people!

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Don't Worry About Sharia???

Q: What's even better than Sharia law imposed by bearded clerics with their brains stuck somewhere in the 12th century?
A: Why, self-imposed postmodernist progressive pre-emptive Sharia compliance, of course!

Early in November the ACLU announced that they would be suing the New Jersey Transit Authority over the firing of Derek Fenton. This was greeted by a deafening, and highly significant, silence.

You see, Derek Fenton had done what pastor Terry Jones had merely threatened to do. And he did it at Ground Zero, on September 11th, and, thanks to YouTube, in front of the whole world:



In case you missed it, and as the video above shows, on September 11 of this year, Fenton went down to lower Manhattan and, after getting as close as he could to Ground Zero, calmly opened up a copy of the Koran, tore a page out of it, and set it on fire. Then he tore out another page, and set that one on fire. He kept doing this until some NYPD officers took Fenton into custody without any resistance. He was later released without being charged with any crime (for, indeed, he had committed none).

By the following Monday, the New Jersey Transit Authority, for whom Fenton had worked for over 11 years, announced that he had been fired. According to the New York Post, the NJTA claimed that Fenton's "public actions" violated its code of ethics and that he "violated his trust as a state employee." The Post also said:

In response to questions from NewsCore Tuesday, NJ Transit released a statement saying: "Derek Fenton was terminated on September 13, 2010 from his employment at NJ TRANSIT. An at-will employee, Mr. Fenton’s public actions violated New Jersey Transit’s code of ethics."

Compared to the brouhaha surrounding Terry Jones' empty threats, Derek Fenton's case has almost completely disappeared from view since his firing. The only people who seemed to be paying attention at all were the usual right-wing xenophobe suspects who hate Muslims because they aren't, you know, Christian. A few of these nimrods actually openly speculated that the ACLU would not touch the case because, in their view, the ACLU is just another Jihadist front-group. So once the ACLU took Fenton's case, they lost interest as well.

For those with short attention spans, please recall that when Fenton was fired, not only did the Governor of New Jersey (Republican Chris Christie) publicly praise this blatantly unconstitutional act (source), but just two days after the firing, one of the nine human beings whose job it is to interpret the Constitution, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, openly and specifically questioned whether or not burning the Koran is disqualified from being protected speech because it might be the 21st century equivalent of "shouting fire in a crowded theater." (source)

In reality, though, it's more like shouting fire in a burning theater!

Links:

• N.J. Man Who Burned Koran at Ground Zero Fired From Job (NY Post)
• NJ conductor who burned Quran sues over firing (AP)
• Derek Fenton, New Jersey Conductor Who Burned Quran, Sues Over Firing (Huffington Post)
• NJ Transit was right to can Koran-burning creep Derek Fenton, says Gov. Chris Christie
  (NYDailyNews.Com)
• The Koran and Justice Breyer (PostPartisan blog by Charles Lane at WaPo)