Rick Santorum and EPPC's Program to Protect America's Freedom are pleased to present a three-part symposium exploring the relationship between Shariah law and the West. As supporters of secular democracy are forced to engage those who would seek to install a global Islamic theocracy, challenging tensions are inevitable, and much hinges on the response we give. The series aims to instigate appropriate reflection on what it is we seek to defend, and how U.S. policy might go about doing that in a long battle where the weapons are not limited to stolen airplanes, but rather include the quieter tools of language, law, and financial institutions.

Following Andrew McCarthy's thoughtful analysis of libel tourism comes our second event on May 12, which will feature Nonie Darwish and Angela Wu debating the challenges posed by the recent rise of the U.N. resolutions on defamation of religion, which seek to prohibit "blasphemy" as defined by Shariah law (voicing dissent from the "official reading of Islam).

Ms. Darwish is an American writer and public speaker who has most recently published Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law. Ms. Wu is the International Law Director of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonpartisan and interfaith public interest law firm protecting the free expression of all religious traditions. She has worked on cases before the United Nations tribunals, the U.S. Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and domestic courts in countries around the world, and serves on the governing Bureau of the United Nations NGO Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief.

A third event will be held in late May (date TBA), and will explore the rise and international acceptance of Shariah-compliant finance, and the way in which classic Western institutions may or may not choose to accommodate it. More details about this event are forthcoming.

For more information, please contact Anne Snyder at asnyder@eppc.org or 202.682.1204.