It looks like the field of 2012 GOP candidates are quickly setting up their boogeyman – Sharia law. For years now there has been noise on the right that Sharia law is taking over the country and now that noise is getting louder.
Over at Ben Smith’s blog, he has gathered a sampling of what the GOP 2012 candidates are saying about this. My personal favorite is from Newt:
Newt Gingrich, on sharia: “We should have a federal law that says sharia law cannot be recognized by any court in the United States,” Gingrich said to a standing ovation from the audience. The law will let judges know, Gingrich said, that “no judge will remain in office that tried to use sharia law.”
Newt’s partly right, except for the fact that he is isolating this law to a single religion – something that would surely fail the Constitution test. Instead a law saying that judges should rule upon the law and the use of any religion in their rulings is grounds for removal from office would be a much better statement and one that would stand up against the first amendment.
But there’s another issue here; one that doesn’t seem to be gaining the attention it should. That issue is sovereignty. Look at Newt’s statement again. He didn’t limit it to “federal courts”, but rather said “any court in the United States”. That means it would also apply to municipal and mayor’s court. So what if we have a town that is composed of a majority of Muslims. A Muslim man runs for Mayor and one of his platforms is to use Sharia law in his rulings in Mayor’s court. This man wins by a huge margin. Shouldn’t the sovereignty of that local government be respected and that mayor allowed to enact what he campaigned and won on?
This is a serious question I would love to see Newt asked, especially with the sovereignty issue being so hot in recent years.
In all honesty I don’t take any of these candidates statements seriously. We are just repeating what we saw in the 2004 election – win by fear. It’s really all the GOP has to run on. If they can sell to the American people the false notion that somehow the “evil Muslims” are invading our country, shredding our constitution and rewriting our laws then they know they can peel off a bunch of those soccer moms and timid independents. Hopefully the left can deliver on the message of just how crazy this is, but I’m not very optimistic on that. Instead we will probably see a battle brew over which party can be the most intolerant and conspiracy crazy.