Bill would stop Sharia Law

by Kevin McDermott (StL.Today)

JEFFERSON CITY • In what has become a regular ritual here, a state Senate committee heard testimony Tuesday on a bill that would prevent Sharia Law from taking over Missouri.

The Senate General Laws committee also discussed a measure that would outlaw any federal attempts to regulate firearms in Missouri.

The committee hasn’t acted on either measure, and both appear unlikely to have much chance at becoming law. But they both touch on some of the hottest ideological issues in the nation right now.

“They should call that the Tea Party Committee,” Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, D-St. Louis, a committee member, scoffed as she left the hearing.

Both bills are sponsored by Sen. Brian Nieves, R-Washington, who acknowledged that Missouri isn’t in any immediate danger of being overtaken by foreign legal theories. But he said he wants to make sure the state “keeps things the way they are.”

“Missouri’s been pretty fortunate as far as this goes,” Nieves told the committee.

The bill doesn’t specifically mention the Islamist Sharia religious law. But more than 20 states have considered similar measures in the past few years, generally tied to the ongoing debate over alleged Islamist influences in the U.S.

There’s no current mechanism under which a foreign law could apply in Missouri.

The second bill would make it illegal for any government official to attempt to enforce any federal firearms regulation in Missouri.

Nieves said the point of the bill is to “remove some of the confusion about what is or is not enforceable in term of the federal government in the state of Missouri in terms of our Second Amendment rights.”

“I think it’s timely right now,” he said. “Our Second Amendment is one of the main things being threatened.”

Gun-rights advocates have rallied nationally against talk of new federal controls in the wake of the killings of 20 children at six adults by a single gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December.

No one gave verbal testimony against either bill. Nasheed, the St. Louis Democrat, later predicted that both were dead on arrival.

“You don’t have foreign laws being implemented in the United States . . . (and) the state cannot trump federal law” on gun regulation, she said after the hearing. She called the debates “a waste of time and taxes.”

The foreign laws bill is SB267. The anti-gun-control bill is SB325.

Interfaith and solidarity groups are stronger and more numerous in the United States than hate groups, unfortunately the voices of hate tend to be louder at times, amplified by the media.

Hopefully Gohmert will pay heed to the words of the Interfaith Alliance instead of lending a deaf ear.

Interfaith Group To GOP Congressman: Stop Demonizing Islam

ThinkProgress

An interfaith group is speaking out against Rep. Louie Gohmert’s (R-TX) claim on Thursday that Americans need the Second Amendment’s protection in order to shield the nation from Sharia Law.

Speaking on a radio show called The Voice of Freedom, Gohmert insisted that “We’ve got some people who think Sharia Law should be the law of the land, forget the Constitution. But the guns are there… to make sure all of the rest of the Amendments are followed.” In response, Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, President of the Interfaith Alliance, has sent a letter to Gohmert, protesting his “continued demonization of Islam”:

I feel compelled to again remind you that the continued demonization of Islam and disenfranchisement of the American Muslim community is not only uncalled for, it is a dangerous affront to the religious freedom upon which this nation was founded and it must end. American Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom live peaceful, law-abiding lives — just like Americans from other religious groups — should not have to live in a country where their elected officials imply that they need to be kept at bay with firearms.

Furthermore, at a time when gun violence has wracked our nation with one unimaginable tragedy after another, I would hope that elected officials such as you would stay focused on real measures to prevent future needless deaths. I would hope that you would focus your attention on measures to truly balance the Second Amendment rights you so strongly defend, rather than derailing what should be a substantive policy discussion with misguided bigotry.

Gohmert has been in trouble before with the Interfaith Alliance, having also received a letter from them during his partnership with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to persecute Muslim-American government officials. Gorhmert has also during his time in Congress called for hearings on the dangers of Sharia and claimed that President Obama went to war in Libya to help Al Qaeda spreadacross the Middle East.

Rev. Gaddy also included with his letter a copy of a text titled “What is the Truth About American Muslims: Questions and Answers,” produced by Interfaith Alliance and the Religious Freedom Education Project of the First Amendment Center. Congressman Gohmert’s office did not immediately respond to an e-mailed question regarding whether or not he had read over, or plans to read, the resource.

The full text of the letter can be read after the break.

 

February 22, 2013
The Honorable Louie Gohmert
2243 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Representative Gohmert:

I write to you with great concern over your recent comments on the radio program The Voice of Freedom regarding measures to prevent gun violence. Your implication that the Second Amendment must be strongly upheld so that Americans can arm themselves against sharia, Muslim religious law, is troubling. It is all the more troubling when I recall that just last summer the organization which I serve as president, Interfaith Alliance, alongside 41 religious and civil rights groups wrote to you in protest of your demonization of prominent American Muslim government officials and community organizations. I am disappointed to see that neither your rhetoric nor your misinformed view of Islam has changed.

I hope that you will review a resource Interfaith Alliance produced in collaboration with the Religious Freedom Education Project of the First Amendment Center entitled What is the Truth About American Muslims: Questions and Answers. I have attached a copy to this letter and in particular would call your attention to questions 19-27 which focus on the nature of sharia. These questions include, “How do American Muslims follow sharia?” and “Do American Muslims want to replace the U.S. Constitution with sharia?” This resource has also been endorsed by nearly two dozen religious, civic and civil rights groups, all united to combat ignorance and bigotry against American Muslims and protect religious freedom.

I feel compelled to again remind you that the continued demonization of Islam and disenfranchisement of the American Muslim community is not only uncalled for, it is a dangerous affront to the religious freedom upon which this nation was founded and it must end. American Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom live peaceful, law-abiding lives — just like Americans from other religious groups — should not have to live in a country where their elected officials imply that they need to be kept at bay with firearms.

Furthermore, at a time when gun violence has wracked our nation with one unimaginable tragedy after another, I would hope that elected officials such as you would stay focused on real measures to prevent future needless deaths. I would hope that you would focus your attention on measures to truly balance the Second Amendment rights you so strongly defend, rather than derailing what should be a substantive policy discussion with misguided bigotry. No matter our disagreements, we as a nation need to be done forever with the thought that guns are a solution to our problems.

In my experience, the only people in the U.S. government who are concerned that there are those who think “sharia law ought to be the law of the land” are those who, like you, are misguidedly attempting to infringe upon the religious freedom of American Muslims to practice their faith. I hope that you will give a close look to the attached questions and answers guide and cease your demonization of a group of Americans who have the same right as you to be here and practice their faith.

Sincerely,

Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy
President
Interfaith Alliance

Congressman Says Americans Need Guns To Protect The Nation From Sharia Law

By Igor Volsky (ThinkProgress)

Tea Party Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) told a conservative radio show on Thursday that the GOP must oppose gun regulations to protect the country from the threat of “Sharia Law.”

Appearing on The Voice of Freedom, Gohmert said he “hoped and prayed” that Congress rejects gun safety legislation, arguing that Americans may need to use the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment to avoid succumbing to Muslims:

[The Second Amendment] is for our protection and the founders’ quotes make that very very clear and including against a government that would run amuck. We’ve got some people who think Sharia Law should be the law of the land, forget the Constitution. But the guns are there… to make sure all of the rest of the Amendments are followed.

Listen:

Gohmert has a long history of Islamaphobic remarks, most recently joining Rep. Michele Bachmannn’s (R-MN) much maligned effort to investigate the alleged infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into various departments of the U.S. government.

Sharia law ban and Muslim wives

(AlJazeera English)

When Kansas State Senator Susan Wagle voted for Senate Bill 79 that would ban Sharia law in Kansas, she said that a vote in favour of the legislation was “a vote to protect women”. “In this great country of ours, and in the state of Kansas,” Wagle said, “women have equal rights.”

Her words echoed the sentiments of many of the 33 Senators in Kansas, in March 2012, who voted in support of the law. The Bill passed and was signed into law by the Governor of Kansas. On July 1, 2012, the application of foreign or Sharia law was effectively banned in the State of Kansas.

A mere month later, in August 2012, a court in Johnson City, Kansas, faced the consequences of the ban whose intent was to “preclude[s] the courts from applying foreign law, legal codes or systems that violate the public policy of our state or federal constitutions”. It has been widely viewed as precluding courts from applying Sharia law.

Before the Johnson City District Court came the Soleimanis, both from Iran and now divorcing in Kansas. The wife, Elham Soleimani asked the court to enforce their Islamic marriage contract which stipulated a payment of $677,000 from the husband to the wife in case of divorce.

The facts of the case were a saga of love, betrayal and abuse. Faramarz Soleimani had left Iran decades ago, fleeing from the draconian changes brought on by the Islamic Revolution. With him, was his wife Zohra Bamani.

The two arrived in Kansas and opened a restaurant, obtaining amnesty in their new country so that they would not have to return to a much changed Iran. They stayed for 30 years, until Soleimani, now nearly 60 years old, got on the internet and found love again.

His new flame was Elham Moghadem, 24 years younger, living in Iran. Rapt in passion, Soleimani divorced Zohra Bamani and arrived in Iran to marry again. His second marriage took place on July 19, 2009, two years before the Sharia ban and long before either the new husband or the new wife could predict just how bad things would become between them.

In the first heady months of romance, the newly married Elham and Faramarz Soleimani revelled in wedded bliss. To prove the eternity of his devotion to his new partner, Soleimani had her name tattooed on his chest. To prove she was a loving wife, Elham tried her best to get used to Kansas.

The divorce case of the Soleimanis

Based on the story told by court records, the end came hard and fast and with an avalanche of court proceedings. On June 1, 2011, less than two years after her marriage to Soleimani – the man she had found on the internet and followed across the world – Elham filed for divorce in the courthouse in Johnson City, Kansas.

Surrounding the divorce petition were allegations and pleadings of domestic violence, assault and battery, rape and even a marital tort case for spousal abuse.

By the time she filed for divorce, Elham, the once beloved bride, was alone, destitute, living in a domestic abuse shelter and looking to American courts to help her after her marriage became a harrowing ordeal.

Her account was one of betrayal, of having been wheedled into marriage by a man who boasted about his great wealth and promised her a fairy tale life in luxurious America. What she had found instead, like so many immigrant women arriving with little known and hardly seen husbands, was a domineering and abusive old man who wished to keep her in servitude.

So, betrayed Elham relied and asked for relief from the Johnson City court on the one thing she felt was in her favour: the Islamic marriage contract (mahr) signed between the parties during their wedding in Iran.

Based on its stipulations, Elham Soleimani, the wife, could demand the payment of 1,354 gold coins (valued at $677,000) from her estranged husband in the event of divorce. With no other recourse and little prospect of help under the rules of marital property division under Kansas law, she asked the court to enforce the agreement and make her husband pay up.

She was about to be disappointed again. On August 28, 2012, nearly two months after Kansas’ much touted Sharia ban went into effect, the District Court in Johnson County refused to enforce the agreement between the parties and grant Elham Soleimani the money she believed was due from her husband under the terms of Islamic marriage contract.

One of the most significant reasons offered by the court for its refusal to do so was the religious nature of the agreement, the precise sort they felt the Kansas Legislature had wanted to ban.

Enforcing the agreement, the court concluded, would “abdicate the judiciary’s role to protect such fundamental rights, a concern that was articulated in Senate Bill No 79″. If they enforced the mahr agreement and force Soleimani to pay it, the court felt, they would be violating the ban on Sharia law in Kansas.

Here is where the court in Johnson City, Kansas, went wrong. While it is indeed true that separation of Church and State provisions under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States prevents US Courts from interpreting religious texts, the court in Kansas disregarded longstanding precedent that insists that when the stipulations of a contract are clear, its religious origins do not preclude enforcement by a US Court.

One determinative case in this regard was Avitzur v Avitzur (1983), decided in the Second District of New York, where a Jewish woman petitioned the court to force her ex-husband to obtain a religious divorce decree as they had agreed in a contract prior to their marriage.

In Avitzur, the Supreme Court of New York decided that forcing the husband, Boaz Avitzur to obtain a Jewish divorce as per the agreement between the parties was not a violation of the separation of Church and State, and that the court could enforce the agreement despite its religious origins and content.

Foreign law not banned in New York 

Unlike Kansas, the State of New York has not banned Sharia or foreign law and so it can safely be concluded that the same case decided in that state would have yielded a markedly different result.

That is indeed exactly what happened in SB v WA - decided in New York in August 2012 – after the decision was issued by the court in Johnson City, Kansas. In that case, a Muslim-American woman married to an Egyptian immigrant, who subsequently divorced in the United Arab Emirates, was able to get a mahr payment of $250,000 enforced by the court.

The court decided in favour of the wife even though the agreement, an Islamic marriage contract, was entered in a foreign country and had just as much of a theological origin as the case in Kansas.

The issue at hand in both cases, fresh after the onslaught of Sharia ban that roared through the US, is not the issue of separation of Church and State – which has a long history of American jurisprudence attached to it – but rather the issue of the status of women, specifically Muslim women under Sharia law and the role of American courts in relation to it.

The case in Kansas reveals that imposing a blanket ban that refuses to allow for the consideration of the specifics of a case or the particularities of the position of an individual Muslim female litigant like Elham Soleimani, does more harm than good.

Where no ban would have resulted in an immigrant woman being able to avail of the resources that would allow her to begin a new life in the US and rehabilitate herself from an abusive relationship, a Sharia ban enabled the opposite, leaving her with nothing and allowing her more established husband to discard her with few consequences.

While all of these facts were argued in the feverish seasons in which the Kansas Legislature along with those in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Louisiana and others debated Sharia bans, the case of the Soleimanis lays in actual terms and actual lives the reduction of their effect and the dubiousness of their purpose.

If protection of women was indeed the issue before the Kansas court, or if the facts of the case were such that the same marriage contract would provide the wife with less than what would be available to her under the marital property division statutes of American law, then it would have made perfect feminist and jurisprudential sense to strike down the agreement under the Equal Protection Clause that provides for just such situations.

This was however, not the case. Under the provisions of stipulated mahr under her Islamic marriage contract, Elham Soleimani was entitled to more than she would have received under American laws of property division that would be governed the length of the marriage and the property acquired during the two years.

But in Kansas, with its Sharia ban in effect, Elham Soleimani lost out, not because she was a woman, but because the basis on which she argued her case for a future and for empowerment was Islamic.

Rafia Zakaria is on the board of directors of Amnesty International. She is a lawyer and a Political Science PhD candidate at Indiana University.

Follow her on Twitter: @RafiaZakaria

(h/t: criticaldragon)

The Ultimate Obama-Islam-Sharia-Agenda 21-Immigration-Debt Conspiracy

by Brian Tashman, (RightWingWatch.org0

The number of right-wing conspiracy theories relating to President Obama, Islam, Sharia Law,immigration, Agenda 21 and the debt seems to be growing exponentially…but finally now there is one conspiracy theory that brings them all together.

Avi Lipkin, who on speaking tours in churches and synagogues across America says he learned secret information from his wife, whom he claims is an Israel intelligence officer. On Crosstalk with Vic Eliason of VCY America, Lipkin maintained that Obama is a Saudi plant who is out to destroy Israel and the United States:

Lipkin: Obama was made a Muslim man in Indonesia by age 11. He said, ‘I’ve got health care problems, I got economic problems in America, Muslims in Egypt and Muslims in the Muslim world, be patient, I will show you when the time comes what I am going to do to Israel.’ My wife picked up other broadcasts, for example the Saudis were saying, ‘we will have a Muslim in the White House in 2008.’ The Saudis also said, ‘Obama has three tasks: task number 1 is to destroy the Shiite threat in Iran, task number 2 is to destroy the Jewish threat Israel, task number 3 is to destroy the great Christian Satan America and turn America into a Muslim country.’

Surely you’ve heard that one before. But, you may not have known that Obama will destroy America by supporting the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in order to collapse the region’s economy after the group persecutes the country’s Christians, leading to a wave of Muslim immigration to the United States. Obama will then settle the “50-100 million” Muslim immigrants on “lands confiscated by Agenda 21,” the sustainable development initiative, and bring about Sharia law in the U.S.

Obama also built up the national debt to a point where the U.S. will need a bailout from Saudi Arabia, who will grant it with the condition that “America will surrender its Christianity.” Lipkin explains that God sent the Muslim immigrants to the U.S. to be “hunters” of Jews and Christians, forcing them to leave the U.S. and move to Israel:

Lipkin: The Muslim Brotherhood is going to end up either killing, converting to Islam or expelling the remaining Christians of Egypt. When the Christians of Egypt are gone, the economy of Egypt is gone. When the economy of Egypt is gone, the 76 Muslims who remain are going to starve to death. What do people do when they starve? They leave. Where do they go to? America. Who’s going to bring them in? Obama. Where is he going to settle them? In the lands confiscated by Agenda 21.

…

Lipkin: America will be Muslim by 2016. 2016 is the eighth year of President Obama, meaning he is going to bring in 50-100 million Muslims because it is inevitable that all these Islamic countries cannot rule, they don’t know how to rule themselves, they are completely inept, and after they kill all the Christians that remain there will not be any economy left so you’re going to have overnight 50-100 million Muslims coming in. You cannot put them in American cities, you have got to create entire new areas populated in the United States and Canada with these Muslims.

Eliason: Where Sharia law holds forth?

Lipkin: Yes! So you have Agenda 21, you have Sharia law, by the way I’m going to throw out a real wildcard now. You have all those people who talk about the American debt being insolvable, where are you going to get $14 trillion from? The answer is very simple, you don’t think the Saudis have $14 trillion in cash? They’ll give you the cash and they will say ‘we own you now, we’re going to take over America.’ And Americans will say, ‘if we don’t do this we’re going to lose our economy and we’re going to lose our dollar and everything.’ The American economic problem is not a problem if the Saudis come in and bring in their cash. The problem here is America will surrender its Christianity.

…

Lipkin: If and when a war breaks out in the Middle East between Israel and its neighbors then you will see 10, 20, 30 million, maybe more, 40, 50 million Muslims, some of them are going to rise up in a 9/11 type terrorist attacks and they are not afraid to die, they cherish death, and American law enforcement with all the best of intentions will not be capable of dealing with this. They are not going to kill 10 million, they are going to kill some and a lot of Jews and Christians are going to go into hiding and eventually a lot of them will eventually leave the United States and coming to Israel so I see this as a spatula, they leave by God, you have the hunters and these hunters are going to be the Muslims. I believe America will come out of this mess but it’s going to be a very rough time, weeks, months, before the situation is brought under control. The more Muslims you have in America the more capable they will be to wreak havoc on Jews and Christians.

Usually, this type of rhetoric, slandering a religious leader and saying he is ideologically aligned with AlQaeda terrorists is reserved for web sites like JihadWatch.

Ad criticizing Muslim chaplain at WFU draws fire

By: LISA O’DONNELL | Winston-Salem Journal, Published: May 21, 2012, Updated: May 22, 2012 – 12:09 AM

An alumnus from Wake Forest University who took out an advertisement in Monday’s Winston-Salem Journal criticizing Imam Khalid Griggs, a university chaplain, said he did so as a way of pushing his alma mater into playing host to a debate on Shariah law.

In the ad, which ran the day of Wake Forest’s graduation, Donald Woodsmall claims that Griggs is a “Shariah supremacist who believes that everyone should live under Islamic Shariah law, with Islamic law replacing all man-made laws, including the U.S. Constitution.”

Griggs did not return emails and a phone call. Brett Eaton, a spokesman for Wake Forest, said the university would not comment on the ad.

Woodsmall, a 1977 graduate of Wake Forest, is a businessman who lives near Charlottesville, Va. He has criticized the university’s decision in 2010 to hire Griggs. Griggs is also the imam of the Community Mosque on Waughtown Street.

For the past several months, Woodsmall has tried to get President Nathan Hatch to consent to a symposium on Shariah law, the moral code and religious law of Islam. Woodsmall believes Muslims who adhere to Shariah are a threat to national security.

His correspondences with Hatch have also included accusations that Griggs is following the ideology of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center.

Hatch has declined the requests for a symposium.

Woodsmall said Tuesday that he doesn’t want to get Griggs fired.

“If Wake Forest believes I’m wrong, then let’s have a symposium or debate. My goal is to educate as many people as possible, at Wake Forest and beyond, what Shariah law is and why it’s a threat to America,” Woodsmall said. “I think it’s of national importance, not just to Wake Forest but to a nation.”

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group based in Washington, called the ad a “bizarro, anti-Shariah diatribe,” of the type becoming more common since the controversy over Park 51, the so-called ground zero mosque, in New York.

Hooper criticized the Journal for running the ad.

“This is the kind of language reserved for Internet hate sites,” Hooper said. “It’s a big concern that a reputable newspaper would publish that kind of unanswered hate without giving the person targeted some kind of opportunity to respond or challenge whether it should even be published. They hope that if they throw enough mud against the wall, some of it will stick, and Muslims deal with that tactic everyday in America.”

Jeffrey Green, the Journal’s president and publisher, said: “We treated this ad the same way we do political advertising. The ad was the opinion of the individual that bought the space. He paid for it and signed his name to it.”

Woodsmall has started a Facebook page titled Alumni for a Shariah-Free Wake Forest. As of late Monday night, it had 44 “likes.”

Add one more to the loony anti-Muslim conspiracy bucket:

Kamal Saleem Uncovers Plot to Use Roe v. Wade to Bring in Sharia Law

by Brian Tashman, Right Wing Watch

At last week’s Awakening 2012 conference, phony “ex-terrorist” Kamal Saleem not only detailed a treacherous scheme by President Obama to use immigration reform to legalize terrorism, but also uncovered a liberal plot to use the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade to “bring Sharia law liberally in our face.” Responding to co-panelist Frank Gaffney’s specious allegation that there have been anywhere between fifty to seventy instances where American judges used Sharia law to decide cases, Saleem blamed the Religious Right’s most hated ruling on the supposed proliferation of Sharia law in America.

Watch:

Here’s a picture, I’m going to draw it very simply. What they’re trying to integrate into our laws is Roe v. Wade, Roe v. Wade. When they put this Islamic clause, we tracked fifty and now I’m going like there’s seventy, wow, when they establish this what happened is, they will be able to bring Sharia law liberally in our face. That’s why he said fight against those—any court that allows it we need to demonstrate outside and say no Sharia law but our constitution.

House bill: ‘In SC court, use S.C. law’

By GINA SMITH

A long list of S.C. lawmakers plans to send a message to Palmetto State courts: Don’t apply foreign laws here.

A proposed law, which a House panel will consider this month, is part of a growing movement in legislatures around the country.

Twenty other states are considering similar measures to ban judges from applying the laws of others nations, particularly in custody and marriage cases. Three states — Tennessee, Louisiana and Arizona — already have added the laws to their books. Oklahoma put it in its state Constitution in 2010, a move now being challenged in federal court.

Proponents say the S.C. measure will ensure only U.S. and S.C. laws are applied in Palmetto State courtrooms, and foreign laws do not trump constitutional rights guaranteed to Americans.

Opponents say the proposal addresses a nonexistent issue and, while not specifically naming Islamic Sharia law, and smacks of anti-Islamic sentiment. They say such bills target the practice of Sharia, a wide-ranging group of Islamic religious codes and customs that, in some countries, are enforced as law.

While Sharia law provides followers of Islam guidelines on everything from crime to politics to hygiene and food, many Muslims also disagree on its interpretation.

State Rep. Wendy Nanney, R-Greenville, the bill’s sponsor, said she introduced the proposal after speaking with several family court judges around the state about problems with child-custody cases.

“I asked them if they had issues with custody cases decided outside of the country. They all said ‘Yes,’ ” Nanney said, adding one judge told her of a custody case brought before him that originally had been handled in Venezuela. The judge, who Nanney declined to name, said he struggled to find common ground between S.C. and Venezuelan laws, and how to apply them.

“It would simplify things to say, ‘We’re in a South Carolina court, and let’s use South Carolina law.’ It’s meant to help our judges not to be pushed and pressured and prodded to enforce other countries’ laws,” Nanney said.

Nanney said her bill does not target Sharia law or any other specific foreign code or law. Her proposal has 27 House co-sponsors, including House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham, R-Lexington, and 26 other Republicans, who control the General Assembly.

A similar bill was introduced in the Senate last year by another Greenville Republican, state Sen. Mike Fair. It failed to clear the subcommittee level.

Subcommittee members sent a letter to the state’s family court judges to gauge whether Sharia or other foreign laws were impacting S.C. custody and divorce cases.

“We heard no indication from any of the judges that there was a problem,” said state Sen. Larry Martin, R-Pickens.

Liberal groups, including the S.C. Progressive Network, say the proposal is a waste of legislative time.

“I’m much more concerned with laws being imposed by aliens from the Planet Oz,” said Brett Bursey, the group’s director. “A stealth-alien invasion of the minds of our legislators is the most plausible explanation for their obsession with fixing things that aren’t broken.”

At least one national group, the New Jersey-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, which works to promote understanding of Islam, says the intent of the state proposals is devious.

“There’s no mistaking the intent of these bills. It’s to provide a mechanism for channeling and cultivating anti-Muslim sentiment,” said council attorney Gadier Abbas.

Recent versions of the bills — like South Carolina’s — do not specifically mention Sharia law, but the intent is clear, Abbas said.

“There are some misconceptions about Islam in the United States,” he said. “That, coupled with a very vocal and well-organized minority of organizations and figures that have had for their mission, for years now, to ensure Muslims are not treated as equals in the United States, is creating this new effort to bring inequality into the laws. It’s alarming.”

Abbas said there are no valid fears of foreign laws being applied in U.S. courtrooms. “Only if American law allows for it does religious tradition or foreign laws even come into play.”

But proponents of the legislation, including the American Public Policy Alliance, point to several court cases as proof that Sharia law is seeping into the U.S. court system.

In one 2009 example, a New Jersey judge denied a Muslim wife’s request for a restraining order after she claimed her husband repeatedly raped her. The court said the man thought it was his religious right to have nonconsensual sex with his wife and, therefore, he did not meet the criminal-intent standard needed to issue the restraining order.

An appellate court reversed the ruling in 2010, granting the restraining order.

In a 1996 case, a Maryland appellate court deferred to a Pakistani court in granting custody of a child to her father in Pakistan instead of her mother in Maryland. One factor mentioned in the ruling was an Islamic belief that a father gets preference in custody cases.

Newt Gingrich who has been on a racist role, calling the president of the USA the “greatest food stamp” president, and implying that Blacks are more prone to “food stamps” than other groups is also displaying his bigotry towards Muslims and Islam again. He wants any future Muslim presidential candidate to be given a “sharia test.”

Newt Gingrich: I’d Support A Muslim Running For President Only If They’d Commit To ‘Give Up Sharia’

Newt Gingrich told a South Carolina town hall audience on Tuesday that he would be open to seeing a Muslim-American run for president, as long as the candidate denounced Sharia law and didn’t seek to impose his or her views on others.

At a town hall meeting in West Columbia, S.C., a man asked Gingrich if he would ever “support a Muslim-American running for president.”

“Would you endorse…a Muslim-American, [who] could possibly be running for president, given that we had a woman running for president in Hillary Clinton, and we had a Jewish-American, in Joe Lieberman, running for vice president?” he asked.

“A truly modern person who happened to worship Allah would not be a threat,” Gingrich replied. “A person who belonged to any kind of belief in Sharia, any kind of effort to impose that on the rest of us, would be a mortal threat.”

In the past, Gingrich has repeatedly decried Sharia, a legal code derived from Islam, and called for a federal law to pre-emptively bar its use in any U.S. courts. He didn’t soften his position on Tuesday, saying his support would be contingent on a candidate’s willingness to denounce Sharia.

“I think it would depend entirely on whether they would commit in public to give up Sharia,” he said, referencing his support for the bill and drawing cheers from listeners at the event. “If they’re a modern person integrated into the modern world, and they’re prepared to recognize all religions, that’s one thing. On the other hand, if they’re the Saudis, who demand that we respect them while they refuse to allow either a Jew or a Christian to worship in Saudi Arabia, that’s something different.”

He pointed to an acquaintance as an example of a “truly modern” Muslim.

“We have a friend in Arizona who serves in the U.S. Navy, who’s a medical doctor, who’s Muslim — but he’s a totally modern person, trying to find ways to bring Islam into modernity,” Gingrich said.

Former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain said he wouldn’t be comfortableappointing a Muslim to a judgeship or cabinet position. He later apologized.

For those who don’t know, the Constitution is the law of the land. Just making sure!

Court: Oklahoma ban on Islamic law unconstitutional

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An amendment that would ban Oklahoma courts from considering international or Islamic law discriminates against religions and a Muslim community leader has the right to challenge its constitutionality, a federal appeals court said Tuesday.

The court in Denver upheld U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange‘s order blocking implementation of the amendment shortly after it was approved by 70 percent of Oklahoma voters in November 2010.

Muneer Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oklahoma, sued to block the law from taking effect, arguing that the Save Our State Amendment violated his First Amendment rights.

The amendment read, in part: “The courts shall not look to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures. Specifically, the courts shall not consider international law or Sharia law.”

Backers argued that the amendment intended to ban all religious laws, that Islamic law was merely named as an example and that it wasn’t meant as a specific attack on Muslims. The court disagreed.

“That argument conflicts with the amendment’s plain language, which mentions Sharia law in two places,” the appeals court opinion said.

The court also noted that the backers of the amendment admitted they did not know of any instance when an Oklahoma court applied Sharia law or used the legal precepts of other countries.

Awad argued that the ban on Islamic law would likely affect every aspect of his life as well as the execution of his will after his death. The appeals court pointed out that Awad made a “strong showing” of potential harm.

“When the law that voters wish to enact is likely unconstitutional, their interests do not outweigh Mr. Awad’s in having his constitutional rights protected,” the court said.