James DeMeo's OBRL-News Blog

You do not gain your rights from society. They are inherent, a part of your nature and natural history as a human being, "God-given" (whatever your concept of god may be) and no state, national or international government body either "gifts" to you such rights, nor can take them away, except to the extent people collectively abdicate their independence and empower the state (or dictator) to steal such rights from themselves and their neighbors. This concept of the natural rights of humans was never intrinsically American, and has historical roots in European Enlightenment values among others. It is historically related to the struggle of ordinary people against feudal kings and castes, those who would resist anyone putting a boot-heel on their neck. But for the contemporary period of time, the early 21st Century, with so much freedom being freely given away to posturing dictators, freedom-hating Mullahs and party bosses, and to international "Unions" and "UN"-type bodies who have only POWER as their goals, it is important to recognize the spirit contained in the US Declaration of Independence, penned over 200 years ago, and still going strong despite many efforts to still its voice. J.D.

From Robert Spencer's Jihadwatch.org
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/012088.php

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." — Declaration of Independence

"Thus if [a] Muslim commits adultery his punishment is 100 lashes, the shaving of his head, and one year of banishment. But if the man is not a Muslim and commits adultery with a Muslim woman his penalty is execution...Similarly if a Muslim deliberately murders another Muslim he falls under the law of retaliation and must by law be put to death by the next of kin. But if a non-Muslim who dies at the hand of a Muslim has by lifelong habit been a non-Muslim, the penalty of death is not valid. Instead the Muslim murderer must pay a fine and be punished with the lash....Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a lower level of belief and conviction, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim…then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death, since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain...Again, the penalties of a non-Muslim guilty of fornication with a Muslim woman are augmented because, in addition to the crime against morality, social duty and religion, he has committed sacrilege, in that he has disgraced a Muslim and thereby cast scorn upon the Muslims in general, and so must be executed....Islam and its peoples must be above the infidels, and never permit non-Muslims to acquire lordship over them." — Sultanhussein Tabandeh, A Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, F. J. Goulding, translator, London, 1970.

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..." — Declaration of Independence

Non-Muslims have "absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines." If they do, "the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life." — Syed Abul Ala Maududi, founder of the Pakistani political party Jamaat-e-Islami