Stephen Miller, President Trump’s senior adviser for policy and architect of the administration’s controversial travel ban, lives in a Washington, D.C. condominium apparently built in accordance with Islamic Sharia law.
Miller made headlines after using the term “cosmopolitan” as a dog-whistle pejorative against CNN reporter Jim Acosta at a White House press briefing late last week.
The Acosta-Miller exchange drew rebukes from some and praise from others. Miller is now reportedly being considered for the senior communications position in the Trump White House. The Washington Post recently brought attention to the fact that Miller lives in a $1 million luxury condo-which his dad paid for.
However, a little-noticed report in the Washington City Paper from 2014 adds an interesting wrinkle to the Stephen Miller story. According to author Aaron Wiener, CityCenterDC was built by Qatari Diar, the real estate investment arm of the tiny Gulf Arab dictatorship led by Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
And, Wiener’s report notes, CityCenterDC was built to conform to the principles of Islamic law, or Sharia. According to the New York Times, this means no banks allowed at CityCenterDC–due to Sharia’s prohibition against charging interest–which happened to mesh nicely with the original developers’ vision anyway. Thus, Qatar’s $620 million investment came entirely in the form of equity rather than a loan. Establishments focused on selling alcohol were also a non-starter.
When the rules were initially reported, right-wing blogs went apoplectic and the City Paper itself voiced concerns about how bars–a D.C. necessity–were considered haram by CityCenter’s development group.
The furor eventually died down and questions about alcohol seem to have been answered by the presence of multiple dining establishments serving wine and cocktails.
Still, Stephen Miller has been accused of being Islamophobic. According to CNN, he cut his political teeth while an undergrad at Duke University. There, he ran the “Terrorism Awareness Project,” described as an initiative intended to educate students about the rise of “Islamofascism”– a controversial term for hard-line political Islam or Islamism.
In promotional materials for the project, Miller wrote:
“Gripped by complacency and the omnipresent force of political correctness, our nation has failed to educate our youth about the holy war being waged against us and what needs to be done to defeat the Jihadists that are waging this war. American kids attend school in an educational system corrupted by the hard left. In this upside-down world, America is the villain and Jihadists the victims of our foreign policy. Instead of opening eyes, we are fastening blindfolds.”
Strangely enough, Miller now lives in an apartment purportedly built in accord with Islamic principles and financed by Qatar–a state committed to Sharia law–where, in accordance with certain jurisprudential traditions, homosexuality is punishable by death and people are regularly flogged for alcohol consumption and “illicit sexual relations”.
[image via screengrab/Fox News]
Follow Colin Kalmbacher on Twitter: @colinkalmbacher
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