The South Carolina legislature is debating a bill to halt the spread of Islamic Shariah law in state courts. Because there are no documented instances of Shariah law being forced on the good people of the Palmetto State, the bill has been criticized as superfluous, if not outright discriminatory. The bill’s sponsor, GOP state Sen. Mike Fair sat down with Think Progress this week in an effort to set the record straight. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Here’s Fair explaining the stakes if South Carolina doesn’t act:
In Columbia, South Carolina, that beautiful state house right over there…you gotta walk through its gorgeous, but no horns sounding five times a day at times of prayer, which I’m told – haven’t been to Michigan in a long time – been told that there are Islamic communities where there have […] in Dearborn, that’s exactly right, where with taxpayer dollars they’re doing certain funded, doing certain things to accommodate Islam.
Sounds like he’s really researched the issue! The good news is that the United States is in no danger of falling under the spell of a Muslim theocracy. The ACLU, which is a pretty big a fan of separation of church and state, is out with a new report this week that more or less eviscerates the myth that Shariah has unlawfully crept into American courts:
[The report] examines, in detail, the cases repeatedly cited by anti-Muslim groups as evidence of the alleged “Shariah threat” to our judicial system. The report concludes that these cases do not stand for the principles that anti-Muslim groups claim. Rather, these court cases deal with routine matters, such as religious freedom claims and contractual disputes. Courts treat these lawsuits in the same way that they deal with similar claims brought by people of other faiths. So instead of the harbingers of doom that anti-Muslim groups make them out to be, these cases illustrate that our judicial system is alive and well, and operating as it should.
There are lots of problems with the American judicial system. Fortunately, the imposition of Islamic law is not one of them. Or so I’ve been told; I haven’t been to Dearborn in a while, though.
