{"id":93280,"date":"2011-05-19T13:05:41","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T13:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=5338"},"modified":"2011-05-19T13:05:41","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T13:05:41","slug":"letter-from-america-fear-stoked-by-fake-sharia-threat-violates-real-civil-liberties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=93280","title":{"rendered":"Letter from America: Fear stoked by fake Sharia threat violates real civil liberties"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conservative politicians in the US must subscribe to a pretty standard set of talking points to pass muster with the party\u2019s base. Big government is bad, taxes should be low, and guns are a God-given right. Lately, serious conservative candidates — including former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich<\/a> — have been lining up to establish their credibility as hardliners on a new litmus test: creeping Sharia law (and Sharia law is almost always accompanied in such political discourse by the heavily loaded adjective “creeping<\/a>“).<\/p>\n

The idea sounds ridiculous but the political calculation is quite clever: It\u2019s easy to appear tough on a threat that doesn\u2019t really exist.<\/p>\n

In a perverse cycle of feedback, politicians and talk-show hosts have concocted the peril, then played into citizens\u2019 fears that we need leaders strong enough to protect us from it. The ACLU has counted two-dozen states<\/a> that have adopted or weighed anti-Sharia laws. Last November, more than 70 per cent of voters in Oklahoma cast ballots<\/a> for an amendment to the state constitution barring enforcement of Sharia within its borders.<\/p>\n

And who wouldn\u2019t vote for something called the \u201cSave Our State Amendment<\/a>\u201d?<\/p>\n

In practical terms, the Sharia hysteria serves as a convenient distraction from more legitimate (and intractable) political issues like high unemployment and rising gas prices. Sacrificed in the process has been a core constitutional value many of these voters may regret degrading once America has moved on to a non-religious internal threat (Mexican immigrants? liberation theologists? climate activists?).<\/p>\n

These voters seem to have confused the First Amendment\u2019s protections for religious liberty. The issue is not just that government can\u2019t establish a single religion; it also can\u2019t single out a religion for special harassment.<\/p>\n

A sensible federal judge temporarily blocked<\/a> the Oklahoma amendment in November after a local Muslim-American man, Muneer Awad, filed suit against it. The ACLU is representing Awad<\/a>, the executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations<\/a>. As the case goes before an appeals judge, religious and civil liberties groups lining up against the law<\/a> now include the Anti-Defamation League<\/a>, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty<\/a>, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOklahoma doesn\u2019t need a special amendment to protect it from government-imposed Islamic law,\u201d said Rev. Barry W Lynn, executive director of Americans United, in a statement. \u201cThe First Amendment already does that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we all know that Sharia has no chance of taking over Oklahoma,\u201d he added. \u201cThis entire incident has been a sad example of politically motivated religious intolerance.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ACLU this week also released a new report — Nothing to Fear: Debunking the Mythical \u2018Sharia Threat’<\/a> — in response to \u201cstudy findings<\/a>”\u00a0from fear-baiting groups that purport to be tracking Sharia\u2019s infiltration into the US court system.<\/p>\n

The LA Times, meanwhile, mocked the fear as the \u201clatest case of US paranoia.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike the belief that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States, the fear that Islamic law will become a touchstone of American justice is delusional,\u201d wrote the newspaper\u2019s editorial board. \u201cWhat is depressing is how widespread it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like the belief that Obama isn\u2019t a citizen, this rumour has also been gleefully stoked by politicians. The 70 per cent of Oklahoma voters worried about \u201csaving\u201d their state from Sharia — despite the fact that no cases of the threat exist there — might be wiser to worry about why their politicians would encourage them to infringe on their neighbour\u2019s rights, and what they stand to gain from doing so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emily Badger:<\/strong> Letter from America: Fear stoked by fake Sharia threat violates real civil liberties<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":530,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[356,14170,60,6851],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93280"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/530"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}