In the past year, a group of conservative pundits and analysts branded Shariah as a growing threat to the United States, part of a strategy extremists are using to transform the US into an Islamic caliphate.
On the Internet, which is awash in hysterical warnings about Shariah, Pamela Geller of the influential conservative blog Atlas Shrugs warns of “creeping Shariah” in the US.
“It’s a drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. The mosque-ing of the workplace where you’re imposing prayer times on union contracts, non-Muslim workers have to lengthen their day: it’s wrong,” she told the New York Times.
Geller’s comments prompted the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to write that “a Martian takeover of New Jersey is more likely than the imposition of a caliphate, or of Muslim law, on America.” He added: “Only a true paranoid could look at America as it is today and see the creeping takeover of caliphate ideology.”
Last year, The Center for Security Policy, a think-tank run by Frank Gaffney, issued a report to Congress that alleged to outline the threat of Shariah, and called it a “legal-political-military doctrine” that compels Muslims to seek to establish an Islamic state in the US.
The report’s conclusion, that any Muslim adhering to Shariah would be obligated to help overthrow the US, necessitates that the American national security apparatus treats every religious Muslim as a potential national security threat.
The bill itself was written by David Yerushalmi, the “Shariah expert” Gaffney had consulted for his report.
While the report did not appear to have much influence on the federal level, Shariah panic continues, and now Republicans in at least 15 states are seeking a ban on Shariah.
Tennessee actually considered making adherence to Shariah a felony and treating it the way the federal government treats material support for terrorism before the sponsor of the bill met with local Muslims who explained the law would literally criminalize being a Muslim.
What is shocking is that even national-level politicians are supporting the blame game. Former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and potential presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has called for “a federal law that says Shariah cannot be recognized by any court in the US.”
Finally, in an effort to quash some of the anti-Shariah hysteria, the Center for American Progress (CAP) released a brief this week, entitled “Understanding Sharia Law: Conservatives’ Skewed Ideas Need Debunking.”
Cowritten by Matthew Duss and Wajahat Ali, the authors state: “Misleading reports authored by conservative pundits, without credentials in the study of Islam, characterize Shariah as totalitarian in nature and a threat to freedom ... This deeply flawed conclusion would cast suspicion on all Muslims who practice any aspect of their faith, as the text is primarily concerned with correct religious practice ... Adopting a flawed analysis and integrating it into policy would direct limited resources away from actual threats to the United States and bolster an anti-Muslim narrative that extremist groups find useful in recruiting."
The CAP brief dissects the misinformation, “which risks alienating our best allies in the effort against radicalization — our fellow Americans who are Muslim.”
“It is a great hope of mine that this (hype regarding Shariah) will get old, but it seems it won’t. A number of actors and organizations on the right are treating Shariah as a threat rather than focusing on a particular extreme interpretation of Shariah,” Matthew Duss told Arab News on phone. “Even worse, it is targeting observant practicing Muslims, simply by virtue of their religion. It’s saying that people who follow Shariah are a threat to America …. And that is all practicing Muslims."
The aim of the Duss-Ali paper at CAP is to serve as a type of antidote for the misinformation about Shariah awash throughout the US.
“Our goal is to have a "go to" document for people who want to rebut and refute charges against Shariah. We intended this document to be a tool to help correct the errors and the misperceptions about Shariah,” said Duss.
The authors hope is that the brief will serve to explain what Shariah really is and demonstrate how a misrepresentation and misunderstanding of Shariah — such as the one put forth in Gaffney’s report and taken up by others — will both harm America’s national security interests and threaten our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.
The full report is available at: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/03/pdf/sharia_law.pdf
