*headdesk*

Tennessee Bill Wants to Make Shariah Law a Felony

I'm just going to quote Pat's Papers directly: Two Republican state legislators in Tennessee have introduced a bill that would make practicing Islamic Shariah law a felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The bill categorizes any adherence to Shariah law—including prayers—as a “danger to homeland security” reports the Tennessean. Other states have attempted similar motions though most have focused on excluding Shariah law from US courtrooms. Critics call the bill “nonsense,” pointing out that “people of all faiths have to follow secular law.”

This is just silly. Aside from the snarking in the article ("Well, sharia law prohibits stealing, does this mean I should become a thief?") it's just absurd. "Well, of course, sharia law would have to apply to everybody and then they'd kill us all for not being Muslim! OMG!" Except... not so much. It's my understanding that things like sharia law (or, something more common in the US, Beth Din, the pluralization I'm not sure of) is optional. You have two parties who can't agree, and rather than take it to the secular courts they decide to take it to the appropriate religious courts instead. And why not? If you want your rabbi or your priest or your next door neighbor's cat to settle your dispute for you, who's to argue? So long as everybody agrees that this is the way to go, go you! It's just another form of alternative dispute resolution.

But - and correct me if I'm wrong here - in countries such as the US this is used for civil suits, not for criminal suits, mostly because you're not going to get the state to agree to try you in anything other than the state courts. So it pretty much as no effect on anybody outside the two parties who agreed to use this method.

Incidentally, speaking of Wikipedia, they say something interesting which I'm not going to try to back up at this time, instead trusting one of you to correct me if they're wrong:

One contribution Islamic law made to Western law, was the legal procedure. Until the Crusades, legal procedure in the West often consisted of "God's judgments" by boiling water (or another "ordeal") or by duel. By contrast, Islamic law decided on the basis of proof and allowed the defendants to express freely, a practice that had been established in the time of the second Caliph of Islam, Umar. Marcel Boisard argues that these procedures were transmitted to Europe via Louis IX, who instituted several reforms upon returning from the Crusades.[208]

If this is right, using the sarcasm employed earlier I can safely say... "Well, shariah law calls for a strict level of proof and for the defendants to, uh, defend themselves. You want to take that away?" Of course, that may very well be what some parties wish to do, but I'm a pessimist.

Last week I made waaaaay too many black beans for a recipe.

But I remembered I'd read about making brownies with black beans, so I put a cup and a half aside. And with one thing and another, those brownies didn't get made. (One thing was that all the recipes online called for canned beans and box mix. No thank you!)

Today I committed myself to making those brownies... but the beans had gone bad. I could easily have made NORMAL brownies, but once I decide to do a thing I like to follow through as I intended. So I just boiled some more beans.

You know, when you make black beans the water ends up, well, black? They're the beans from the black lagoon!!!!

Anyway, several hours later I finally made this recipe, taking the advice from the comments and adding half a cup of flour. I also stuck some peanut butter on top, and didn't add the mint extract. (Sorry, Lizziey! But then, we're not sharing with you anyway :P)

Now, the idiotic comments that "Oh, I'm so okay with my kids gorging on THESE brownies because they get protein and fiber!" are, as I said, completely absurd. A quick check on the data shows that you're hardly getting any of that in a reasonable serving. And if it's NOT a reasonable serving it's still too many brownies for every day.

So I'm not going to cook these just to make dessert a little healthier. It's dessert. It's not really supposed to be healthy... and if I want a healthy dessert, I'll just give the nieces a mango or some bananas or something.

But I would absolutely cook them again for the texture. Very firm, and the brownies held their shape even though I cut them, as is traditional, when they were barely out of the oven. I know I shouldn't, but I do anyway.

They tasted pretty much like normal as well, and of course you don't have to use any flour at all. So all in all, I have to say this experiment was a wild success.

And the nieces weren't able to guess the secret ingredient at all! I had to tell them!