Theocracy in America

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I listened to a disturbing NPR report on a sex abuse scandal in a Hasidic Jewish community and school in Brooklyn.

It was a very troubling report. Probably even more so than the Catholic clergy sex scandals due to the insular nature of the community and the omerta that has descended upon it.

The Brooklyn District Attorney expressed frustration that the omerta is preventing his office from getting any cooperation from the community. They feel the problem should be dealt with 'in house.'

In recent years, howls of uproar exploded in places like England and Ontario when it was suggested that perhaps Muslims who "voluntarily" chose so should be subjected to Sharia law, rather than the criminal law of those jurisdictions. The howls of uproar were well justified. Theocracy is antithetical to fundamental notions of western civilization. If you want to live in a religious state, move to Iran.

The controversies were also seized upon by militarists in the US to advance their Islamophobic agenda. But except for the NPR piece, this story has got virtually no play outside the NYC media.

So if society risks disintegrating if Muslims are exempted from the laws of the land, why is the same not true of Jews? Is the real concern the fear of a theocracy or a fear of a non-Judeo-Christian theocracy?