What’s With All This Shariya Law Hysteria?

Really. What’s with it? How did it all get started? Whose best interests does it serve?

Social conservatives are just in a dither about how those Muslims are going to impose Shariya Law on America. How Americans are going to have to stone each other for not observing this or that Muslim rite, and how we will be forced to cut off the hands of convicted thieves.

You know, Shariya Law stuff.

There’s this legislator in Oklahoma who is submitting a bill to ban “any law, rule, legal code or system" not rooted in the Constitution of Oklahoma or the United States.” No, read about it here, I’m serious. The whole reason for the bill is to prevent the establishment of Shariya Law, the judicial system of orthodox Muslims like the Taliban. You know, the people we are in a shooting war with in Afghanistan.

How they think Shariya Law would ever become the law of the land here in America is beyond wonderment. Establishment of any religion, Christian or otherwise, is specifically forbidden by the 1^st Amendment to the Constitution. It could never happen, and the ban has already been taken care of.

So why do these yahoos think that Shariya Law is the next big thing here in America? How do they think it is at all possible?

Could it be that social and evangelical conservatives are, themselves, trying to invoke their own form of Shariya Law and have had some success with that? Anti-choice bills have become the law in several states. Anti-choice bills are essentially philosophically based on the notion that life begins at conception, a notion that has no scientific basis at all. A notion that is entirely based on religious belief. And what about state constitutional amendments passed, including here in Texas, that forbids gays and lesbians from being legally married? What’s the basis for that? I’ll tell you what these laws are based on.

Leviticus 18:22:

“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”

So you see, laws based on religious belief are here with us now. Indeed, America has a long tradition of suppression and control based on religious belief. The evangelical right do it all the time so it stands to reason that Muslims, fanatical Muslims, will one day take over and impose their religion on all America.

So so, these people think anyway.