Today in National Review Online, I have a piece on why fears of “creeping Sharia” are not only misplaced but dangerous:
Unhinged rhetoric, if long enough tolerated, will eventually impose real costs. The National Conference of State Legislatures says anti-Sharia measures already have been considered in 20 states, and Oklahoma, Arizona, Louisiana, and Tennessee have all enacted such measures. These bills put religious contracts on an unequal footing with secular ones without extending any new constitutional or legal protections to women in Muslim communities. Their conservative advocates embarrass the very name of “religious liberty” and endanger our national security.
Anti-Muslim bigots and their public apologists must be vigorously opposed by Americans who recognize the value of a religious voice in the public square and the imperative that all Americans be treated equally under the law, whether they are religious or irreligious, Christian, Muslim, or Jew.
The article follows Rob Vischer’s excellent article on the same subject in our March issue
June 13th, 2012 | 2:34 pm
The comments left on the NRO website in response to the article are rather pungent. The basic idea seems to be Sharia=every bad thing that every Muslim person/country has ever done, and therefore we must ban Sharia.
I can’t see this issue going away as long as this is the general level of knowledge of our people.
And the crazy immoral things being done in Muslim majority countries claiming the mandate of God means that the Average Joe in America is not going to believe all the explanations about how Sharia is just a normal set of Godly rules governing good people in their families and businesses. For now, Sharia means honor killings, female genital mutilation, Christians being bombed or sent to jail for “blasphemy”, little girls being driven from schools, and suicide bombers thinking they are going to heaven while they kill innocent people.
It will be a very tough sell to get people to think Sharia is just as American as apple pie. I feel very sorry for the normal Muslim people who just want to get on with their lives, but I don’t see how things will change any time soon.
June 14th, 2012 | 10:39 am
The difficulties associated with such laws apply, not only to contracts, but to questions of personal status and succession.
Consider the case of two Algerian citizens, who go through a form of marriage in Algeria and subsequently come to reside, or acquire property, in the United States. Suppose an American court is called on to adjudicate on the validity of that marriage. Hitherto, every court in the civilised world would apply their personal law, the law of Algeria, which happens to be Sharia Law. Is it seriously suggested this question should be decided by the laws of Arizona or Tennessee?
Again, by the law of all nations, succession to movables, wherever situated, is governed by the personal law of the deceased, the law of his or her citizenship or domicile at the time of death. Suppose the deceased is the national of country, where Sharia is the law of the land and ownss US assets, say a bank account, Treasury bonds and other investments. What law, if not Sharia, is to govern the ranking of creditors or of beneficiaries?
Similar questions can arise around the validity of wills, the age of majority, legitimacy, guardianship, divorce and others too numerous to mention.
Have no jurists voiced their concerns?
June 14th, 2012 | 7:21 pm
Perhaps what concerns informed Americans is the predisposition to Sharia law in American law schools and yet an increasingly shrill hostility to almost anything related to the beliefs and laws and cultures of Christianity. That was my experience in law school. And if Sharia conflicts with the Constitutional principles established by the Founders? Of course the American demographic has never been more complex (a better word than diverse or multicultural since the latter two instantaneously put one is a “morally inferior” position). But what will be the legal baseline from which there will be judicial or statuatory variance? And how can we possibly have this conversation while ignoring the ascendance of new and soon-to-be institutionalized definitions of marriage from the secular extreme. Is there an emotional component here? You bet there is. And there is literally nothing wrong with that given the deference to emotionalism regarding social justice or civil rights issues for example. And there is a larger context. How many more times since the 1950s are we going to make fundamental changes in our values and institutions without having anything that resembles vigorous thought expressed in the rough eloquence of democratic debate. Sometimes a conservative elite can sound a lot like a leftist elite. And that’s troubling.
June 15th, 2012 | 8:52 am
David P. Goldman, formerly a Deputy Editor at FT, has an important response at
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/06/14/the-sad-silence-about-muslim-wife-beating/
The dialogue in the comments is worth reading.
June 16th, 2012 | 10:19 pm
I might have thought my rebuttal to Mr. Schmitz’s essay might provide some contribution to this discussion, given my role in the model legislation which is at the epicenter of this debate. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/302929/re-sharia-mr-schmitz-wrong-law-too-andrew-c-mccarthy
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