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09 April 2011 By Juan Cole Loon Lawyer David
Yerushalmi is behind the surge of anti-Sharia bills
It might be a good idea for us LoonWatchers to begin
to contact these state senators and representatives
and provide them with information about the Loons who
are behind these proposed anti-Sharia bills. Sure,
they may not care, but at the very least I think it
could lead some of these officials to reconsider
sponsoring these bills once they find out that 1)
there is no threat posed by Sharia to our legal
system, and 2) that the people pushing these bills are
wacked out crazies who foam at the mouth at the
mentioning of Islam and Muslims (i.e. they're bigots). One of the more striking things about the current anti-sharia craze is how often state legislators who introduce anti-sharia bills can't answer basic questions about Islamic law or why they see it as a threat. In Alabama, for example, when the state senator who sponsored an anti-sharia bill was asked by a reporter to simply define sharia, he responded: "I don't have my file in front of me." In Florida, anti-sharia bill sponsors couldn't name a single case where Islamic or international law had been used in a troubling way in U.S. courts. When, on Wednesday, I interviewed a Nebraska state senator behind a similar bill, I asked him about what cases were causes of concern to him. He responded: "I'm not in my office to look them up." How could all these legislators be so uninformed about their own bills? A big part of the reason is that most of them did not actually write the legislation in question. Rather, many of the anti-sharia bills being considered around the country are either based on or directly copied from model legislation created by an obscure far-right Arizona attorney and activist named David Yerushalmi. The Nebraska case is instructive. State Sen. Mark Christensen introduced a bill(.pdf) in January to bar the use of any foreign law in Nebraska courts. When I spoke to Christensen on Wednesday, he acknowledged he did not have a deep understanding of the issue, referring me back to his office when I asked him what cases involving sharia or foreign law were troubling to him. He summed up his reason for sponsoring the bill: "This is America. We use America's law." (For more on what sharia actually is, see here and here.) It turns out Christensen introduced the bill after his office was approached by the head of the local chapter of the anti-Muslim group ACT! for America, Christensen aide Dan Wiles told me. ACT! for America is a Florida-based group led by Brigitte Gabriel. In a profile last month, the New York Times detailed Gabriel's strategy of selectively quoting the Quran to paint most or all Muslims as violent extremists. "They came and talked to several different senators, and Sen. Christensen decided to introduce the bill," Wiles said, adding that he was presented with model legislation. "It pretty much was exactly what was drafted and introduced," he said. "Everything substantive was the same." The model legislation in question originates with Yerushalmi, the Arizona lawyer who is associated with several organizations including the American Public Policy Alliance. The model anti-foreign law bill on the Public Policy Alliance's website has been used in states including Florida, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri and South Dakota. It is called "American Laws for American Courts." Who is Yerushalmi? His background leaves little doubt that these anti-"foreign law" bills are designed to target sharia. He has written, for example, that "The Muslim peoples, those committed to Islam as we know it today, are our enemies." A group he founded, the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), has reportedly advocated for a law making it a felony "punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam." The Anti-Defamation League has also called out Yerushalmi for his "anti-black bigotry." (Mother Jones also has a good profile of Yerushalmi here.) http://motherjones.com/ politics/2011/02/david- yerushalmi-sharia- ban-tennessee So next time the sponsor of an anti-sharia bill can't answer basic questions about Islamic law, it's a good sign Yerushalmi's role deserves more scrutiny. Suspicion Based on Religious Misinterpretation - Wajahat Ali The CSP report's contradictions can only be resolved through unconstitutional means. And the authors propose doing so with no sense of irony. They argue that believing Muslims should have their free speech and freedom of religion rights restricted: "In keeping with Article VI of the Constitution, extend bans currently in effect that bar members of hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan from holding positions of trust in federal, state, or local governments or the armed forces of the United States to those who espouse or support Shariah." The authors have already conceded that even mainstream Muslims espouse sharia. So by the report's own analysis, CSP are recommending that even mainstream American Muslims, who follow sharia in their personal lives, be prohibited from serving in the government or the armed forces. The authors cite Quran verses that "are interpreted under Sharia to mean that anyone who does not accept Islam is unacceptable in the eyes of Allah and that he will send them to Hell," concluding, "When it is said that Sharia is a supremacist program, this is one of the bases for it." It is no secret that many Christians interpret their own faith to mean that non-Christians are destined for Hell. Is this too a form of supremacism? Many advocates of the "sharia threat" also refer to taqiyya, an Arabic word that means concealing one's faith out of fear of death, to mean religiously justified lying. Not all Muslims subscribe to the theological concept of taqiyya, however. In fact, it is a minority opinion. The charge of "taqqiya" is often deployed by "sharia threat" advocates when confronted with evidence that refutes their thesis. Under this methodology one cannot trust any practicing Muslim. Even if a Muslim preaches and practices nonviolence the CSP authors would say that person is either not a true Muslim or is practicing taqiyya. They have, in fact, used this tactic against Muslim-American leaders who advocate strong civic engagement. Responding to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's assertion that the proposed Park 51 Islamic Center in New York would be a venue for interfaith dialogue, CSP's Frank Gaffney wrote in The Washington Times: "To be sure, Imam Rauf is a skilled practitioner of the Sharia tradition of taqqiya, deception for the faith." While providing a mechanism for critics to ignore any disconfirming evidence, adopting such an interpretation of taqiyya would almost certainly result in every observant Muslim being branded a liar. The authors of the CSP report are clearly aware of this, and they try to temper their conclusions: "This is not an argument for trusting or mistrusting someone in any particular instance," they write. "It is, though, an argument for professionals to be aware of these facts, to realize that they are dealing with an enemy whose doctrine allows — and at times even requires — them not to disclose fully all that they know and deliberately to misstate that which they know to be the truth." In other words, all Muslims are suspect simply by virtue of being Muslims. Biased Premises Lead to Bad Policy - Wajahat Ali The CSP report's premise is that sharia is the problem and that observance of sharia results in extremism. The authors do not acknowledge that sharia is something the extremists are attempting to claim. This purposeful misconstruction of the security issues America faces ignores multiple data points and turns all Muslims into traitors. According to a report from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, 85 percent of all terrorist victims are Muslims. The Muslim community, therefore, has good reason to ally with American interests to defeat extremists. Those who assert the most extreme definition of sharia agree with the extremists' definitions of Islam and help create an environment of alienation and distrust — which serves extremist interests, not American interests. Adopting the CSP's analysis — and the hysteria over the "sharia threat" that it is clearly intended to provoke — will prevent us from working with our natural allies and weaken our ability to protect ourselves. The war against extremism cannot be labeled as a war against Islam. Taking such a civilizational, apocalyptic view could well become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Further, we actually allow extremists to operate more freely without a clear identification of the threat and a consistent and constitutionally defensible system for recognizing and tracking extremists. It is important to recognize that Muslims are in an ongoing conversation to define what their faith will look like. They have engaged in that conversation for centuries. But the challenge of faith and modernity is not unique to Muslims, and we cannot single them out for their beliefs. Finally, it's important to note that even if the most extreme interpretation of sharia were the correct one, there is no evidence that the U.S. legal system is in any danger of adopting tenets of sharia. To put this in perspective, the extreme Christian right in America has been trying for decades to inscribe its view of America as a "Christian nation" into our laws. They have repeatedly failed in a country in which more than three-quarters of people identify as Christians. It's extremely unlikely that an extreme faction of American Muslims, a faith community that constitutes approximately 1 percent of the U.S. population, would have more success. We need to both respect constitutional freedoms and understand that the Constitution and our courts guarantee a separation between church and state. The "sharia threat" argument is so irresponsible as to almost demand a comic response, were it not for the disastrous consequences of adopting it. It's important that its claims be interrogated rigorously, in order to understand that they should not be taken seriously. |
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