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Is Sharia Law in Texas Such a Bad Thing?
I was so much hoping to get a Q&A lined up with Rep. Jeff Leach of Plano on the subject of Sharia Law in Texas. He’s got a bill that would prohibit family court rulings based on foreign legal codes if that violated our own constitutional protections.
These kinds of bills and state constitutional amendments have popped in several states and have been adopted in a bunch. They’re widely accepted as trying to keep the Islamic legal code at bay.
A story in the Houston Chronicle mentioned Leach’s bill in its coverage of the anti-Muslim furor at the Capitol last week. Excerpt, referencing Mustafaa Carroll, the executive director of the Houston chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations commenting on Leach’s bill:
“We feel it’s a red herring and it’s just meant to mar the community,” Carroll said of House Bill 562 by Rep. Jeff Leach, R- Plano.
Leach, however, welcomed the group to the Capitol on Thursday when tweeted, “All Texans are welcome at YOUR Capitol – and all Texans are always welcome in my office. Come one. Come all!”
I did my reading on the anti-Sharia movement, including a profile of its intellectual progenitor, a Hasidic Jew from New York. Fabulously interesting how Jews and evangelical Christians buddy up on these things. The latest state to ban intrusion of foreign legal codes was Alabama, in November. Some critics there thought it was pointless and political grandstanding to get Christian votes.
One take on the anti-Sharia movement, from the Wall Street Journal:
The movement is motivated largely by a handful of organizations that claim Islamic Sharia law and, to a lesser degree, laws of other nations, are creeping into courtrooms and American life, especially in divorces and child-custody disputes. Sharia, loosely defined as a set of moral and religious principles in Islam, is woven into the legal systems of many Muslim nations. It covers issues ranging from what to eat and drink to structuring a loan to setting up an inheritance and divorce, among other things.
I so much was interested in Leach’s assessment, because of the demographics of his district, in Collin County. The Religion Census estimated the county’s Muslim population at more than 23,000 in 2010 — one of the top 20 concentrations in the U.S.
Alas, Leach’s office says things are too busy this week for him to pull away for the Q&A I was trying to line up. Darn. I wanted to hear what his constituents say about his bill — Muslims and Christians both. And I wanted his take on some of the wild stuff I saw on the Internet, like the depiction of a “Lone Star Mecca” taking shape right under our noses.
Source: dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com