Sharia: not a threat to America

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Today, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld a federal district court injunction against Oklahoma's anti-sharia law, passed by Oklahoma voters by a margin of some 70% back in 2010 (the federal district court issued its order blocking the law very soon after it was passed).

Court: Oklahoma ban on Islamic law unconstitutional. The Tenth Circuit's full opinion can be found here.

As everyone knows, popular hostility in the United States towards Muslims, Arabs, and anyone perceived as being remotely Middle Eastern spiked after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and this hostility hasn't receded much in the decade following the attacks. It has included political posturing in Congress, abjectly silly hostility to a proposed Islamic cultural center in New York City, paranoid suspicion towards people who aren't even Arab or Muslim, violent incidents (such as this, this, this, this, and this), and a wide variety of anti-Islamic rhetoric in our news media.

More recently, a particularly paranoid streak of weirdness has infected many Americans, which causes them to believe, against all evidence, that slowly but surely Islamic sharia law is supplanting American law in American courts, as part of a general worldwide Islamic effort to destroy America from within. Briefly looking up "sharia in America" on Google is like shaking a big tree, causing all sorts of nuts to fall out (examples include this, this, this, this, and this).

These sites all have a common theme, namely that various shadowy Muslim groups, working in concert as part of a worldwide conspiracy, are surreptitiously using American courts to apply sharia law to Americans, in an attempt to bring America under sharia law without us even realizing it. These sites all cite a similar body of state court cases which, they assert, demonstrate that American courts are wrongfully looking to sharia for guidance, instead of American case or statutory law. Muslim women are denied divorce because sharia law gives them no freedom! Muslim families are allowed to force their children into unconscionable marriages! Muslims are getting special treatment and their contracts are evaluated using sharia!

But, as the ACLU report linked above easily demonstrates, these claims are patently false.

There is no evidence that Islamic law is encroaching on our courts. On the contrary, the court cases cited by anti-Muslim groups as purportedly illustrative of this problem actually show the opposite: Courts treat lawsuits that are brought by Muslims or that address the Islamic faith in the same way that they deal with similar claims brought by people of other faiths or that involve no religion at all. These cases also show that sufficient protections already exist in our legal system to ensure that courts do not become impermissibly entangled with religion or improperly consider, defer to, or apply religious law where it would violate basic principles of U.S. or state public policy.

It was just this kind of fear-mongering nonsense that prompted Oklahoma legislators to pass a bill banning the use of sharia in Oklahoma state courts. The funny thing is, while as stated there is no evidence of some vast Muslim conspiracy to supplant American law, the drive to ban sharia in America is a concerted effort, led by an attorney from New York named David Yerushalmi. Mr. Yerushalmi, a member of an ultra-Orthodox sect of Judaism, has a history of anti-Islamic bias and racism. (Detailed story here.) So far, he's been behind three states' enactment of anti-sharia laws (Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Louisiana), and measures currently under discussion in several more. Even more enlightening, the various groups and individuals supporting these initiatives could be described as being the Christian and Jewish counterparts to radical Muslims who do want to impose their religion and way of life on others. The point being that fundamentalists are all the same, whether they be Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or atheist: our way is the only way, and you will submit or else.

The Tenth Circuit has here rightly declared the Oklahoma law's language discriminatory, finding that the it specifically targeted Islamic religious law (a definite no-no under the First Amendment) and failed to assert a compelling state interest: "Given the lack of evidence of any concrete problem, any harm Appellants seek to remedy with the proposed amendment is speculative at best and cannot support a compelling interest. 'To sacrifice First Amendment protections for so speculative a gain is not warranted....'" With the injunction upheld, the case will return to federal district court to determine whether the law is unconstitutional. I think it highly likely that the court will hold it so.

With no evidence of sharia posing an actual threat to America, do you think this might shut up the idiots who peddle such nonsense? Sadly, I doubt it.

Comments

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Good on 'em.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

The hotheads and kooks are always going to see bad guys behind everything. But eventually, as usually happens, cooler heads prevail.

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

If I'm not mistaken, don't the Amish have their own brand of sharia to settle civil suits? And, of course, there's the totally secular concept of binding mediation, which is essentially the same thing sans the religious angle.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

There are also similar Catholic and Orthodox Jewish courts in operation in the US. They require the consent of everyone involved, and have the right of appeal to secular courts, just like every religious court in the US.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

I like this ruling if for no other reason than that it will like cause Pamela Geller's head to twist around a full 360 degrees and shoot fire out of her nostrils. That image is bringing me wonderful, wonderful schadenfreude.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

lol Now *that's* a mental image that makes me happy.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I wish I lived in a reality where any kind of evidence would shut up conspiracy theorists and racists.

[dukexmachismo.livejournal.com]

As alternate realities goe, that's pretty damned alternate.


How bout them FEMA camps, huh?

[whak-hat.livejournal.com]

While I agree to the fact that a 'christian only' policy leaves much to be desired no way in hell should Sharia ever be allowed to be practiced anywhere, even in the Muslim nations. It is a violation of human rights and shouldn't be tolerated. In the same breath I'll say I believe ANY religion that oppresses human rights should not be allowed/should be reigned in.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

So, do I have the right to submit myself to a law that you find problematic? Because that's how religious law in the US works - by the consent of all parties involved, with appeals to secular courts available.

[whak-hat.livejournal.com]

I find it a problem when someone tells you that you are unworthy because you are 'gender, race, religion, whatever'. I have a bigger problem when that law executes you or allows your rape because you ARE that 'gender or whatever'. Sorry, I've seen and heard to much of the enactment of 'sharia law' to ever think of it as anything but an oppressive construct of greedy men.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

With no evidence of sharia posing an actual threat to America, do you think this might shut up the idiots who peddle such nonsense?

This is why mangers on public property during Christmas are considered a threat to American secularism. Any time religious based cases are taken before the court in any way, shape or form; they stand to form a dangerous legal precedent.

Tailoring any law toward any religion is more of a threat to religion than court rulings that specifically exclude religious considerations. That is why courts are compelled to rule this way.