Today, one of the more popular conspiracies that the Right has ginned up out of whole cloth is of a worldwide Islamofascist movement that endangers our lives and our “freedoms.” They claim that Muslims are infiltrating America at all levels of government in order overthrow the Constitution and Christianity. They claim once Muslims have control they will behead anyone who will not submit Allah and Sharia Law.
Yet across the country, Republican politicians are promoting laws to ban Sharia Law as if it were an imminent threat to the rights and liberties of ordinary Americans. Bans that were promoted primarily by an organization run by a White Supremacist based out of Arizona:
Last week, legislators in Tennessee introduced a radical bill that would make “material support” for Islamic law punishable by 15 years in prison. The proposal marks a dramatic new step in the conservative campaign against Muslim-Americans. If passed, critics say even seemingly benign activities like re-painting the exterior of a mosque or bringing food to a potluck could be classified as a felony.
The Tennessee bill, SB 1028, didn’t come out of nowhere. Though it’s the first of its kind, the bill is part of a wave of related measures that would ban state courts from enforcing Sharia law. […] Since early 2010, such legislation has been considered in at least 15 states. … [T]he surge of legislation across the country is largely due to the work of one man: David Yerushalmi, an Arizona-based white supremacist who has previously called for a “war against Islam” and tried to criminalize adherence to the Muslim faith.
That’s right. A white supremacist is behind the Republican Party’s rash of Sharia Law bans.
Yerushalmi, a lawyer, is the founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), which has been called a “hate group” by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). His draft legislation served as the foundation for the Tennessee bill, and at least half a dozen other anti-Islam measures—including two bills that were signed into law last year in Louisiana and Tennessee. […]
But it’s not just Muslims who draw Yerushalmi’s scorn. In a 2006 essay for SANE entitled On Race: A Tentative Discussion (pdf), Yerushalmi argued that whites are genetically superior to blacks. “Some races perform better in sports, some better in mathematical problem solving, some better in language, some better in Western societies and some better in tribal ones,” he wrote.
Yerushalmi has suggested that Caucasians are inherently more receptive to republican forms of government than blacks—an argument that’s consistent with SANE’s mission statement, which emphasizes that “America was the handiwork of faithful Christians, mostly men, and almost entirely white.” […]
Despite his racist views, Yerushalmi has been warmly received by mainstream conservatives; his work has appeared in the National Review and Andrew Breitbart’s Big Peace. He’s been lauded in the pages of the Washington Times. And in 2008, he published a paper on the perils of Sharia-compliant finance that compelled Sen. Minority Whip John Kyl (R-Ariz.) to write a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Chris Cox.
Yes, folks, this is where your New Republican Tea Party gets its ideas for legislation to defend “our freedoms:” from bigoted, hateful white supremacists.
Such crazy beliefs, fostered by lies, falsehoods and paranoia, spread by right wing media both large (Hi there Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly and oh, you too Glenn Beck) and small, have little relation to any facts that such a threat exists. But as we all learned in the Bush era, the Right creates their own realities, and freedom of religion means that Muslims should be harassed and threatened and intimidated when they seek to pray in public, like other Americans do all the time. Just watch this video for proof of the insanity:
Conservatives and right wing true believer have always sought to divide and polarize Americans by inflating outside threats to America that often have little basis in fact. Through this process they seek to invoke extreme nativist and nationalistic behavior based on those alleged threats. They then seek to identify conservativism as the true defender of America against these imagined or enhanced threats.
The process is a simple one. They invent a fantasy of a conspiracy out to destroy their way of life. From the Fifties through the Eighties they magnified the a worldwide Red menace, i.e., the threat of communism taking over the entire globe and forming a one world atheist government. Well, at least the Soviet Union did have nukes that threatened us, just as ours threatened them, though as history now shows the Soviets were never as much of a threat as the CIA and the Military made them out to be.
And, of course who can forget the nefarious Aztlan movement, a group of Hispanic radicals who allegedly hope to reclaim California and the American Southwest for Mexico. “Dirty, illegal, alien, criminal and terrorist” immigrants” were not enough of a threat, so they had to invent a mythical invasion conspiracy that, sadly, too many people take way too seriously.
Well, the threat of Muslims coming to America to impose Sharia Law on our country and forcibly convert us all to Islam is one more to add to the pile of manure conservatives use to frighten Americans into voting for republican extremists against their own economic interests. In truth, there is no mass movement by anyone whom I am aware of to impose Sharia Law on the US in any state or by the Federal government.
Yet millions of Fox Nuts and Dittoheads, without a shred of evidence , are irrationally convinced that we are inundated by a massive Islamic conspiracy to make America a Muslim Nation covered by Sharia Law. Most of them don’t even know that there are competing versions of Sharia law, that Sharia law in Muslim countries is not enforced the same way and that most Muslim governments apply secular laws that have no elements of “Sharia” law at all:
Sharia developed several hundred years after the Prophet Mohammed’s death in 632 CE as the Islamic empire expanded to the edge of North Africa in the West and to China in the East. Since the Prophet Mohammed was considered the most pious of all believers, his life and ways became a model for all other Muslims and were collected by scholars into what is known as the hadith. As each locality tried to reconcile local customs and Islam, hadith literature grew and developed into distinct schools of Islamic thought: the Sunni schools, Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanafi; and the Shiite school, Ja’fari. Named after the scholars that inspired them, they differ in the weight each applies to the sources from which sharia is derived, the Quran, hadith, Islamic scholars, and consensus of the community. The Hanbali school, known for following the most Orthodox form of Islam, is embraced in Saudi Arabia and by the Taliban. The Hanafi school, known for being the most liberal and the most focused on reason and analogy, is dominant among Sunnis in Central Asia, Egypt, Pakistan, India, China, Turkey, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. The Maliki school is dominant in North Africa and the Shafi’i school in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, and Yemen. Shia Muslims follow the Ja’fari school, most notably in Shia-dominant Iran. The distinctions have more impact on the legal systems in each country, however, than on individual Muslims, as many do not adhere to one school in their personal lives.
Nor do they understand the major differences and differences and antagonisms between between competing sects of Islam, such as the hatreds between Sunni and Shia, much less Sufis, Wahhabis, and Bahais.
Sunni Muslims are followers of the Hanifa, Shafi, Hanibal and Malik Schools. […]
Shi’ism is broken into three main sects. The Twelve-Imam (Persia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Syria); the Zaydis (Yemen); the Ismailis (India, Iran, Syria, and East Africa). Each group has differences of doctrine. […]
Suffis are a Muslim sect that have set aside the literal meaning of the words of Muhammad for a supposed spiritual interpretation. Their system is a Muslim adaptation of the Indian Vedantic philosophy. They believe that only Allah exists. All visible things are really distinct from Him. There is no real difference between good and evil. Allah fixes the will of man. In fact, transmigration is accepted. The principal occupation of the Suffi is meditation on the unity of God and the remembrance of God’s name so as to obtain absolution.
Of course, the complexity of Islam is too difficult to contemplate for many of the people who swallow the “Sharia Law” conspiracy theory. They tend to focus on the most extreme and fundamentalist sects of Islam, such as the Wahhabis who control religious practice in Saudi Arabia as part of a deal made between the Saudi Royal family and the Wahhabist religious leaders.
Wahhabism [Wahabism] is a reform movement that began 200 years ago to rid Islamic societies of cultural practices and interpretation that had been acquired over the centuries. The followers of Abdul Wahab (1703-1792) began as a movement to cleanse the Arab bedouin from the influence of Sufism. […]
The teaching of ul-Wahhab was founded on that of Ibn Taimiyya (1263-1328), who was of the school of Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Copies of some of Ibn Taimiyya’s works made by ul-Wahhab are now extant in Europe, and show a close study of the writer. Ibn Taimiyya, although a Hanbalite by training, refused to be bound by any of the four schools, and claimed the power of a mujtahid, i.e. of one who can give independent decisions. These decisions were based on the Koran, which, like Ibn Hazm, he accepted in a literal sense, on the Sunna and Qiyds (analogy). He protested strongly against all the innovations of later times, and denounced as idolatry the visiting of the sacred shrines and the invocation of the saints or of Mahomet himself. He was also a bitter opponent of the Sufis of his day.
The Wahhabites also believe in the literal sense of the Koran and the necessity of deducing one’s duty from it apart from the decisions of the four schools.
Under Al Saud rule, governments, especially during the Wahhabi revival in the 1920s, have shown their capacity and readiness to enforce compliance with Islamic laws and interpretations of Islamic values on themselves and others. The literal interpretations of what constitutes right behavior according to the Quran and hadith have given the Wahhabis the sobriquet of “Muslim Calvinists.” To the Wahhabis, for example, performance of prayer that is punctual, ritually correct, and communally performed not only is urged but publicly required of men. Consumption of wine is forbidden to the believer because wine is literally forbidden in the Quran. Under the Wahhabis, however, the ban extended to all intoxicating drinks and other stimulants, including tobacco. Modest dress is prescribed for both men and women in accordance with the Quran, but the Wahhabis specify the type of clothing that should be worn, especially by women, and forbid the wearing of silk and gold, although the latter ban has been enforced only sporadically. Music and dancing have also been forbidden by the Wahhabis at times, as have loud laughter and demonstrative weeping, particularly at funerals.
In short, the Right in America has elevated the status of the most extreme, fundamentalist sect of Islam to be the only face of Islam. The many moderate Muslims are just erased out of existence, just as for fundamentalist Christians, other Christian sects which do not accept the fundamentalists’ literal and extreme version of Christianity are not real Christians.
It should come as no surprise that most of the 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia or that one of the major investors in News Corp (the holding company that owns Fox News), outside of the Murdoch family, is a Saudi Royal, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
It should also come as no surprise that many American companies are heavily invested in Saudi Arabia and other middle Eastern nations with oil, and Big Oil in particular is determined to see that America continues to rely upon fossil fuels despite the cost, the inevitable wars in to which America has been drawn to defend those companies’ interests.
How best to encourage the continuing American involvement in the Middle East (which serves the interests of Big Oil, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the American Military Industrial Complex) than to posit a conspiracy theory that America is under attack from Sharia Law? Yet, the truth is that there is no more danger of Sharia Law being imposed on Americans than there is of Roman Catholic Canon Law or Jewish Law.
In “What Sharia law actually means,” Salon’s Justin Elliott offers a basic explanation of what Sharia law is, how it comes into play in U.S. courts, and the myths associated with efforts to ban its use in U.S. courts (including the New York state marital rape case that is becoming the McDonald’s-scalding-coffee case of the ban Sharia law movement). Elliott, generally identified as a left-of-center writer, is presenting a high-level view for lay readers, but his bottom line — that Sharia law necessarily comes into play in U.S. courts (as does Jewish law and canon law, among others) and that the Constitution both prohibits a ban on its use and provides full protection against Sharia law displacing U.S. law — is not inconsistent with what you’ll find on Volokh Conspiracy, a respected blog of the right-of-center legal academy. At Volokh Conspiracy, see “Why American Courts Should Sometimes Consider Islamic Court Rulings and Islamic Law,”and commentary on the recent Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals case on the subject, “Court Rejects Claim that AIG’s Use of Sharia-Compliant Financing Violates the Establishment Clause. (A search of “Sharia” on the Volokh homepage will yield lots more.)
Who can forget the overblown outrage about building an Islamic community center 4 blocks away from the site of Ground Zero in New York last year. Or the opposition to a mosque in Murfeesboro, Tennessee. Both were based on paranoia and fear and lies about the Muslim Americans seeking to build places for their faith community.
How soon before some publicity crazed Tea Party Republican announces a crusade against “Islamists” and “Sharia Law sympathizers” in our federal and local governments (like the one against alleged “communists” led by Joe McCarthy back in the “good old days”)? Probably sooner than we think.
