North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory has signed a new bill into law that prohibits judges in the state from considering sharia in their rulings.
The bill, which easily passed both houses of the legislature uses language that targets any foreign laws, without specifically mentioning Sharia and thus will probably avoid what happened in Oklahoma, where a Democrat appointed Federal judge ruled the Oklahoma law unconstitutional on th egrounds it was discriminatory.
There are similar laws now in Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, South Dakota, and Tennessee with several other states pending, including Alabama, where the legislature approved a constitutional amendment for the state's voters to approve in 2014.
Muslim brotherhood front CAIR was in the forefront of a campaign to get Governor McCrory to veto the bill.They called a 'national action alert' urging Muslims to e-mail the governor:
This “foreign law” bill is a thinly-veiled attack on the state’s Muslim population, that only serves to marginalize Muslims and to deny them equal rights and equal access to the courts enjoyed by other religious groups.
To anyone whom knows anything about sharia law, this is ridiculous. Under sharia, women are essentially property. There is no age limit for a girl to be married off, wife beating is acceptable, a woman's testimony is worth half of a man's and in some cases like rape inadmissible unless there are two male Muslim witnesses. Women have no custody rights to their children in the case of divorce ( which can be done on any pretext by a husband even using three text messages), marital rape is legal, non-Muslims are not allowed to testify in court, and homosexual behavior calls for the death sentence. Far from denying Muslims equal rights and access to the courts, banning sharia from consideration in America's courts ensures it.
It's also necessary to codify this because a number of judges have taken it into their heads to acquit Muslims of crimes like marital rape,child abduction and wife beating because they have ruled that the perpetrators cannot be convicted due to 'cultural norms' and their religious principles.
Another aspect of this has to do with Islam itself. In Britain, where sharia is mandatory for family matters and has the same force as British common law, Muslim women have not only seen their legal rights eroded steadily by the use of sharia courts but it has contributed to the UK's Muslim communities becoming almost a state within a state.
If CAIR and anyone else want to live under sharia, well and good. There are a number of countries where where sharia is the basis of law and the time I checked,our pots and our airports were still functioning.
But this is America, where our laws and Constitution ensure protections that are incompatible with sharia law. To live here in America is to accept that.
It's also necessary to codify this because a number of judges have taken it into their heads to acquit Muslims of crimes like marital rape,child abduction and wife beating because they have ruled that the perpetrators cannot be convicted due to 'cultural norms' and their religious principles.
ReplyDeleteThat's true. There was a single in case in New Jersey - S.D. v. M.J.R. that dealt with this. It was reversed on appeal.
Name another case. Seriously find another instance of this ever happening that would justify your use of the plural "judges".
Ironically, these anti-sharia decisions hurt multinational corporations the most. For example, Exxon depends on them when making contract law with the Saudis. Exxon was handed $400 million back in 2003 after a judge instructed the jury to base their decision on sharia law. They won't be able to do that anything more, and anything that hurts multinational corporations is fine by me. So thanks!
'seriously' ?
ReplyDeleteHere's a list and evaluation of about fifty of such cases..and it's by no means all inclusive.
Also, since we already have an example of what sharia law leads to in the UK, that gives rise to another question, "Jim".
Why do you hate women?
And why would you want laws honored in America that clearly contradict our Constitution?
Likewise, the Exxon case was decided not on the basis of sharia per se, but on the well established legal principle that corporations doing business in a foreign company are subject to the laws of that country.
Not only wouldn't widespread adoption of laws like North Carolina's have no effect on the decision you mention, but since the laws mentioned in this piece only concern laws applied here in America, your mentioning the Exxon case makes no sense whatsoever!
As for why you hate companies simply because they do business in other countries...I won't even bother addressing that.
'Seriously."
Re the "report" on the supposed 50 cases where Shariah law was applied, see http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2011/10/28/wnd-pimps-old-fraudulent-sharia-law-study/:
ReplyDelete"every single example in the report actually shows the opposite of what the authors conclude. Case after case cited in the report actually involved the courts refusing to impose laws from Muslim countries. The bigots from the Center for Security Policy seem to think that any case that involves an Arab or a Muslim is a case of the courts imposing Sharia law.... This report is not merely badly researched and badly prepared, it is an outright fraud. No one who actually reads the rulings could reach anything but the opposite conclusion from the one they intend to foster. Nearly every single case they offer argues against their conclusion."
See that site for Mr. Brayton's persuasive detailed analysis of four of these cases, showing that the CSP report is grossly wrong in its claims that courts are imposing Shariah law.
There are at least two issues to consider here. One is whether religious "law" of any kind should be applied by American courts. The other is whether the court should ever apply foreign law - that is, the laws of other nations.
The Constitution forbids courts from applying religious law. It is unnecessary for any state to outlaw this, because the Constitutional law on this, which applies to state courts, already prevents it (despite the erroneous claims of the report discussed above). For instance, if a court is asked to decide whether food labeled under religious laws meets the standards under those religious laws, the court is forbidden to make that decision. Or if a court is asked to decide whether child custody or property disputes are being handled in accord with religious law, the court cannot make those decisions. Where an odd court has strayed into religious decision-making, they have been over-ruled by higher courts.
Foreign law is a different matter. American courts already refuse to apply foreign law where that law violates our legal principles.See the example cited at http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2011/10/28/wnd-pimps-old-fraudulent-sharia-law-study, where a Michigan court (far from applying Shariah law as the report alleges) refused to recognize an Indian divorce on the grounds that the divorce proceeding provided no due process for the wife.
But in order to apply American law to some situations, like marriage and divorce and child custody, and in order to decide some other issues, like whether a person is a citizen of another country, American courts must recognize a person's status as decided under foreign law, where that law does not violate our legal principles. It would be crazy for American courts to refuse to recognize marriage or citizenship status in someone's country of origin. That would mean, for example, that a person residing in the U.S. who was married under the law of a foreign nation would have to get remarried here in order to be legally considered married. Someone with child custody from a divorce settlement in another country would have no legal right to custody of their own children. And if a person is a citizen of another country, but no citizenship status under another country's laws is recognized, how does this country apply immigration quotas and treaties?
So it is necessary in some situations to apply foreign law, and it is already forbidden to apply Shariah law. When state legislators don't even understand the difference between the two, and don't understand what court are constitutionally required to do, it makes them especially bad at proposing laws on these matters.
Hello John,
ReplyDeleteFirst let me complement you on not hiding behind anonymity, as so many people at your end of the spectrum do.
Let's examine what you're presenting here. You have one broken link from a failed stand up comic whose claim to fame is that Rachel Maddow's MSNBC clown show and that Chuck Norris decided to have mercy and not hand his head to him on CSPAN. Then you have a second link to the same 'free thought blog' from 2 1/2 years ago where your friend takes aim at WND (admittedly an easy target) under the tag 'Islamophobia' and cherry picks 4 cases, which he is careful not to refer to by actual case name and which he thoroughly mischaracterizes.
I welcome anyone to read the report, prepared with the active assistance of the eminent lawyer David Yerusalami and decide for themselves whether it is 'poorly researched' and 'put out by a bunch of bigots' as your friend maintains.
I have a feeling you didn't read the report yourself. If you had, you would have noted a few pages of information on the Association of Muslim Jurists In America (AMJA), an organization that has significant ties to the Muslim Brotherhood,has a number of representatives at prominent law schools and is quite open about their goal of establishing the legitimacy of sharia here in America.
And they have some powerful allies. No less than Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has weighed in about how foreign law and sharia needs to be considered in U.S. jurisprudence, and how respect for a Qu'ran should trump the First Amendment. And President Obama's new Justice Elena Kagan who lied openly during her confirmation hearings is also very sharia friendly as evidenced by her conduct while on the Harvard faculty.
You're correct - most of these cases have been overturned at the appellate level. But that means that some dysfunctional judge accepted these arguments at some point. Given these facts, it seems it's necessary to have the confirm what you say you believe in (that sharia law should not be used in America) just for clarity's sake.The same goes for any kind of foreign law. It only need apply when we are talking about reciprocity, or the acceptance of some foreign monetary judgments in our courts. As you may know, America and a number of foreign countries have treaties on these matters, so your point there is well taken. But unfortunately, the Breyers and Kagans of the world make it necessary to phrase these necessary laws in this fashion.
OT, surprised you've heard of Sonny Landreth.Outside of the South and in certain circles of the music biz, he remains an undiscovered treasure!