Islamophobia 2013: Lawmaking that makes me mourn for our democracy

Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City) is a former teacher and the daughter of a Baptist pastor. Governor Mary Fallin signed Kern's anti-Islam bill into law in  April 2013.

Wishful thinking, I know, but one would hope a history of personal prejudice might disuade other lawmakers from endorsing her bill, but apparently not.

In 2011, Kern was reprimanded by the Oklahoma House for disparaging women and ethnic minorities. As reported by The Oklahoman, "During a debate Wednesday night on the House of Representatives floor, Kern said minorities earn less than white people and women
earn less than men because they don't work as hard and have less initiative."

In 2008, Kern expressed her view that, "Gays are an even bigger threat than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat."

Her bill's easily identifiable genesis in a hate movement also had no impact on the legislative process.

In 2010, Oklahoma voters overwhelmingly approved the “Save Our State Amendment,” a state constitutional amendment that specifically banned judges from considering Islamic religious principles.

In 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld a lower court's decision to block amendment's implementation. The lower court had agreed with arguments that the amendment would unconstitutionally disfavor an entire faith and deny Oklahoma's Muslims access to the judicial system on the same terms as every other citizen.

While the legal issues were being settled, legislators went back to the drawing board to find a way to achieve the goal of vilifying Islam without breaking the law.

The resulting bill was Kern's HB 1060. 

It’s wording is clearly lifted from American Laws for American Courts (ALAC). Kern acknowledged that her 2011 bill was copied almost word-for-word from the ALAC template, which was authored by a man known for writing “most of the fundamental differences between the races are genetic."

Further, reporting revealed that she consulted with the Center for Security Policy (CSP) on her 2011 bill and “some of the momentum for her bill comes from the work of Brigitte Gabriel.” I have documented the Islamophobic nature of both CSP and Brigitte Gabriel.

Like many legislators using ALAC, Kern has argued that her bill does not single out Muslims or Islam. However, as Kern herself pointed out, “Because of the careful planning and thought behind ALAC's wording, from a practical standpoint, it is effective in preventing the enforcement of any foreign law—including Shariah law—that would violate U.S. and state constitutional liberties or state public policy.”

I am all for protecting constitutional liberties, maybe Oklahoma could pass something to protect its citizens from the NSA. Instead, elected officials there choose to pursue a fantastical hobgoblin and reward a prejudiced lawmaker and her prejudiced bill with a seal of approval.   

Islamophobia 2013: "It is, in laymans terms," not the Islamic apocalypse

In March, Tennessee state legislators Sen. Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro) and Rep. Judd Matheny (R-Tullahoma) discovered that a Muslim footbath had apparently been stealthily installed during renovations to Tennessee’s state Capitol building.

A concerned Ketron went and spoke to the Senate clerk about it.

 

Legislative administration director Connie Ridley explained away the possible apocalypse of Islamic pre-prayer hygiene rituals by clarifying the purpose of the suspected foot cleansing device: “It is, in layman's terms, a mop sink."

 

Ketron and Matheny have a history of puzzling efforts to protect America. Not allowing the Constitution to get in the way of what struck them as a good idea, the two men had previously introduced legislation that would have effectively banned being a Muslim in Tennessee.

 

(Saylor note: This is the first in a brief series of posts running from now until the end of the year examining some of the incidents, and issues that came up regarding Islamophobia in America in 2013.)

 

 

UPI Ouside View Column "CAIR: Column promotes crass stereotypes of Muslims"

(Piece I wrote published recently by UPI)

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 (UPI) -- American ideals embrace the notion of freedom of religion. Our realities can be somewhat different. A recent article distributed by UPI ("Mosques -- Smiling dens of iniquity?" by James Zumwalt) shows that the willingness to promote crass religious stereotypes remains a serious issue.

Anti-Semitism has long been a stain on our national dignity. A U.S. Army manual written for World War I recruits alleged that Jews were more likely to "malinger" than others. Signs could be found around the nation proudly announcing "No dogs. No Jews." Henry Ford, of automotive fame, authored "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem."

Anti-Catholic sentiment also has a lengthy history. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era", James McPherson reports on suspicion of Catholic immigrants in the 1800s saying: "Most of these new Americans worshipped in Roman Catholic churches. Their growing presence filled some Protestant Americans with alarm. Numerous nativist organizations sprang up as the first line of resistance in what became a long and painful retreat toward acceptance of cultural pluralism."

Thus it comes as no surprise that 37 groups dedicated to spreading anti-Islam prejudice in the United States enjoyed access to at least $119,662,719 in total revenue between 2008 and 2011, according to "Legislating Fear," a new report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

CAIR's report says that Islamophobia in the United States has resulted in a certain willingness to undermine the U.S. Constitution.

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution prohibits any "religious test" for public office. However, in 2010 Time reported that "twenty-eight percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court" and that "nearly one-third of the country thinks adherents of Islam should be barred from running for president."

Herman Cain, at one point the front-runner for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, manifested a version of this sentiment when he said that to serve in his administration he would require loyalty oaths from Muslims.

In 2010 Oklahoma voters approved SQ 755, a state constitutional amendment banning judges in that state from considering Islamic religious principles in their rulings. In practice this would have prohibited a judge from probating an Islamic will. In the voting booth, Oklahomans were told that Islamic religious principles are "based on two principal sources, the Koran and the teaching of Mohammed."

The First Amendment clearly prohibits any such government interference in the free exercise of a religion. For this reason a CAIR staff person in Oklahoma challenged the law in court. In 2013 a federal judge struck the amendment down as unconstitutional.

Oklahoma's bill wasn't unique. In 2011 and 2012, 78 bills or amendments designed to vilify Islamic religious practices were introduced in the legislatures of 29 states and the U.S. Congress. Seventy-three of the bills were introduced solely by Republicans.

Anti-Islam bills are now law in seven states.

There are other indicators that Islamophobia is a societal issue in America.

In September 2011, the Public Religion Research Institute noted, "Forty-seven percent of Americans agree that Islam is at odds with American values, and 48 percent disagree." PRRI later reported that the number of Americans who say Muslims are working to subvert the Constitution rose from 23 percent in February 2012 to 30 percent in September 2012.

While these facts are disconcerting, they are nothing new. Just a Jews, Catholics and others stood up to prejudice, so, too, are Muslims. In fact, Muslims benefit from the lessons these other faith traditions learned in their struggles against prejudice.

America's Muslims also recognize that while the lens of prejudice may be on us today, it will eventually turn elsewhere. We want to make sure our struggle is a benefit to this next group and our nation as a whole.

Our nation has historically evolved for the better. The shame of the three-fifths compromise, by which southern and northern states agreed to count slaves as partial human beings for the purposes of the distribution of taxes and representation in Congress, was removed from the Constitution. Equally, the 15th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are inspiring reminders that our nation evolves. It took until 1920, 144 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, to pass a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote, but we got there.

For this reason people of conscience must continually remind themselves that the specters of bigotry, discrimination and second-class citizenship are omnipresent.

The People and Groups Behind Anti-Islam Legislation

David Yerushalmi, is an attorney with U.S. Islamophobia network inner core groups the Center for Security Policy and the American Freedom Law Center. He is confident in his hatred of Islam. Writing in the American Spectator in 2006 Yerushaml asserted, “Our greatest enemy today is Islam. The only Islam appearing in any formal way around the world is one that seeks a world Caliphate through murder, terror and fear.” Yerushalmi is also a founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence, a group that once advanced a policy advocated incarceration for “adherence to Islam.”

 

Outside of his anti-Islam activism Yerushalmi is notable for writing, "There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote." According to an article in New York Jewish Week in 2007, Yerushalmi also says he finds truth in the view that Jews destroy their host nations like a fatal parasite.

 

He is also the author of American Laws for American Courts (ALAC), the template for many anti-Islam bills introduced across the nation.

 

He wrote the bill for the American Public Policy Alliance (APPA). While the organization has a professional-looking website, its Washington, D.C. address is a UPS Store. APPA has a minor Facebook presence, with less than 100 friends as of early 2013.

 

Yerushalmi’s bill is then pushed at the state-level by groups like ACT! for America, the Eagle Forum and to a lesser extent Pamela Geller’s Stop the Islamization of America.

 

In its 2011 IRS filings, ACT! for America includes among the organization’s accomplishments a total membership of 175,000 people, 635 chapters, and 40,000 Facebook fans. The group also celebrates its role in the passage of anti-Islam bills in Arizona and Tennessee. Also among its accomplishments ACT! lists the distribution of thousands of “Sharia Law for Non-Muslim” [sic] pamphlets and the hosting of multiple events at which participants were inaccurately taught “how the Islamic doctrine of abrogation, which is the annulling of contradictory passages in the Koran, has annulled up to 124 peaceful and superseded them with violent and jihadist verses aimed at non-Muslims.”

 

In 2008, ACT! for America founder Brigitte Gabriel told the Australian Jewish News: "Every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim." Speaking at the Intelligence Summit in Washington, D.C. on February 19, 2006, Gabriel told the audience, “America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify the real enemy. Islam.”

 

In a newsletter the Eagle Forum told its supporters, “Sharia law is becoming part of the American landscape as Christianity is being systematically removed. Christian students are being told they cannot pray at school activities or even pray in front of American institutions, while public school students adopt Muslim names, pray on prayer rugs and celebrate Ramadan under a state-mandated curriculum," according to the Houston Chronicle. Tennessee’s anti-Islam bill was given to legislators by Tennessee Eagle Forum President Bobbie Patray. Texas Eagle Forum president Pat Carlson testified in favor of that state’s anti-Islam bill.

 

In December 2012, an Alaska ethics panel recommended that Karen Sawyer, former chief of staff to state Rep. Carl Gatto, be fired after it found “she used state resources to help an anti-Islamic group.” The panel also recommended that Sawyer never be allowed to work for the legislature again. Sawyer resigned before she could be fired. According to the panel’s findings, Sawyer allowed David Heckert of Stop Islamization of America to “use the Wasilla legislative information office and equipment for work related to his organization.” It also found that Sawyer used state equipment to help plan activities related to a 2011 group conference, and that she failed to file a timely disclosure showing she was a member of the group's board in 2011 and 2012.” The Associated Press also noted that the panel found that SIOA’s "main mission appeared to be promoting their organization and its mission with HB88 [Alaska’s anti-Islam bill] as a validation point."

 

Summed up, one man with a history of anti-Islam prejudice writes a bill for a group that appears to exist only on the internet which is then pushed by organizations committed to spreading fear and prejudice about Islam.

Is Struggling for Civil Rights the Pursuit of Happiness?

Is Struggling for Civil Rights the Pursuit of Happiness? 
38th Annual ICNA-MAS Convention, May 26, 2013
(Speech as written.)

Salaam alaykum. Peace be unto you. Good afternoon.

My mother was born and raised in Scotland. She met and married my father, a U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant, in England. She came to the United States in the late 1960’s.

As she tells it, her first major impression of America was looking out of an airpalne’s window and seeing fires burning along the Detroit skyline.

That was a time of great unhappiness in our nation. The 1967 riot in Detroit resulted in 43 dead and 467 injured people. Damage estimates at the time ranged from 40-60 million dollars.

The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders’ 1968 report, the result of an investigation of civil unrest such as the Detroit riot, has a very famous passage:

"Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal."

So our question today, “Is Struggling for Civil Rights the Pursuit of Happiness?” becomes easy to answer.

Happiness is difficult in an unjust, unequal society.

Happiness, Rights and the Revolution
Our nation’s founder’s embodied this reality.

Everyone knows the famous lines from the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But I want you to hear what comes after that:

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

So, in laying out their justification for breaking from the British Empire, the Founder’s argue that government needs to be organized in a fashion most likely to allow those living under it the most safety and happiness.

If you read further, you will find a list of issues that the Founder’s had with King George’s rule, among those is this:

“He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.”

So the Founder’s took the incredible step of breaking with King George’s government in part due to his “invasions on the rights of the people” and sought a new form of government more likely to “effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Happiness is difficult in an unjust society.

Struggling for civil rights might not always be the pursuit of our own individual happiness, but it is definitely a larger pursuit of peace and therefore happiness for larger communities.

For individuals being able to live in peace and security is the foundation of happiness.

If we live in fear of having our basic rights violated at any time, and we are not secure in the knowledge that our children are safe as well from having their rights violated, then no amount of education, success and wealth can ever make up for the lack of basic rights or enable us to build happy and content lives.

Nothing that I have said so far is surprising, shocking or particularly a revelation.

Upholding the Constitution
But here is a key, and for this gathering, crucial reality, that may surprise you:

American Muslims are on the front lines of protecting the Constitution ideals of a just and equal society.

There are people who, selling anti-Muslim stereotypes and fear, seek to return America to a legal system that treats one group of Americans as different from other. People who seek two societies—separate and unequal.

Worse, if you pay attention to Islamophobes like Pamela Geller or David Yerushalmi, there are those who appear to seek the rebirth of South African apartheid with religion as its new targeted class.

Indulge me, please, while I offer proof of what I just said.

Anti-Islam Legislation
First, we will look at efforts to legislate government-sanctioned discrimination against Muslims.

In 2011 and 2012, 78 bills or amendments aimed at interfering with Islamic religious practices were considered in 29 states and the U.S. Congress.

Sixty-two of these bills contained language that was extracted from Islamophobe David Yerushalmi’s American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) model legislation.

(As an aside: An internet search of “David Yerushalmi” returns results demonstrating his call for a “WAR AGAINST ISLAM and all the Muslim faithful.” You will also see his anti-woman, anti-black and similarly biased comments on the first results page. It is reasonable to be alarmed that a man so central to that anti-Islam hate movement in the United States is able to have real impact on legislators.)

73 of these bills were introduced solely by Republicans. Not just fringe legislators, but in too many cases this included state-level GOP party leadership.

Bills were signed into law in Arizona, Kansas, South Dakota, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

I want you to be clear that this anti-Sharia movement is really a cover for Islamophobic sentiment.

In Tennessee, the original bill’s definition of “Sharia” was, in practical terms, the entire religious tradition of Islam. It stated that “Sharia” encompasses all content derived from “any of the authoritative schools of Islamic jurisprudence of Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali, Ja’afariya, or Salafi.”

They wanted to make being a Muslim illegal in Tennessee.

South Dakota anti-Islam bill sponsor Phil Jensen (R-District 33) told an audience, “It is alarming how many of our sisters and daughters who attend American universities are now marrying Muslim men.”

As you may have already concluded, these legislators frequently have no idea what they are talking about.

The Star Assistant in Alabama reported, “But no one—not even Sen. Gerald Allen, who sponsored the bill—can point to examples of Muslims trying to have Islamic law recognized in Alabama courts.”

Allen could not even define Sharia. When asked he said, “I don’t have my file in front of me.”

When pressed about why the Alabama bill’s definition of sharia matched one found in Wikipedia, Allen’s legislative staff “confirmed that the definition was in fact pulled from Wikipedia.”iv

Now college students that I know tell me that Wikipedia is not a valid citation in their papers. I find it intriguing that it is, however, a valid source for things that may become the law of the land.

Texas legislator Leo Berman said his bill was necessary because he had heard, but apparently had not actually tried to confirm, that one American town was allowing judges to use sharia. “I heard it on a radio station here on my way into the Capitol one day. I don’t know Dearborn, Michigan but I heard it [Sharia law is accepted there] on the radio. Isn’t that true?”

Missouri Speaker of the House Stephen Tilley also “could not provide an example of foreign law trumping domestic law in Missouri courts,” reported Politicalmo.com. The article noted that Tilley’s office later issued a statement outlining one case in New Jersey, but that poor ruling--which in fact received no support from Muslim groups because it involved a man claiming it was his religious right to rape his wife--was rightfully overturned by a higher court.

CAIR is in the forefront of efforts to reject legislating government-sanctioned discrimination against Muslims. The Constitution is the law of the land and we like it that way. We agree with people of the Jewish and Catholic faiths, who already have an established tradition of using religious mediation, that, within the law, we are free to make choices in accordance with our faith.

In accordance with Islam, my marriage contract required me to pay a mahr to my wife. Why anyone would be upset with a woman getting money that is hers to invest as she sees fit, I have no clue.

In accordance with Islam, my home financing involves no interest. Similarly, my financial investment strategy avoids putting money into gambling, pornography and weapons manufacturing. I have no idea why anyone would think such things are a threat to American democracy.

So let’s turn back to the anti-Islam legislation.

CAIR’s lawsuit against Oklahoma’s anti-Islam constitutional amendment asserts that the law would violate the First Amendment, which says no law can be passed that promotes or vilifies a particular religion, and the Supremacy clause, which says the Constitution is and will remain the highest law of the land.

Interestingly, CAIR gets accused of trying to subvert the Constitution while we are making these arguments this constitutionally-subversive legislation.

So far, four federal judges have ruled in our favor and that law is on hold.

An appeals court ruling on the legal challenge concluded in part that arguments, “that the proposed state amendment expressly condemns [the plaintiff’s] religion and exposes him and other Muslims in Oklahoma to disfavored treatment -- suffices to establish the kind of direct injury-in-fact necessary to create Establishment Clause standing.” The ruling also notes, "Appellants [those representing the state of Oklahoma] do not identify any actual problem the challenged amendment seeks to solve. Indeed, they admitted at the preliminary injunction hearing that they did not know of even a single instance where an Oklahoma court had applied Sharia law or used the legal precepts of other nations or cultures..."

Mainstream Candidates Willing to Subject Muslims to Unequal Treatment 
As a second example that Muslims need to defend our faith in order to secure the Constitution’s ideals of securing each person’s equal right to liberty let’s look at the recent presidential election.

Herman Cain was for a while the frontrunner for the GOP’s presidential nomination.

Speaking to Christianity Today on March 11, 2011, Cain said that followers of the “Muslim religion” have “an objective to convert all infidels or kill them.”

Cain also said that Muslims who wanted to serve in his administration would have to take loyalty oaths. He explained to Fox News host Glenn Beck that he would not require similar oaths from Mormons or Catholics, “Because there is a greater dangerous part of the Muslim faith than there is in these other religions.”

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says there is no “religious test” for public office.

So, here we have a man, a frontrunner, committing to undermining the Constitution. Did he get tossed from the stage?

No.

He got applause.

Rick Santorum, also a frontrunner for a time, endorsed religious profiling during one of the GOP presidential debates, saying, "Obviously, Muslims would be someone you'd look at." In January, 2012 journalists brought attention to a lengthy Islamophobic rant Santorum gave in 2007 at David Horowitz’s “Second Annual Academic Freedom Conference.” Santorum asserted that in order to “win” against a vaguely-defined Muslim enemy Americans must “…educate, engage, evangelize and eradicate."

A former Speaker of the U.S. House, Newt Gingrich, yet another onetime frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, told an audience that he feared that by the time his grandchildren reach his age “they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”vii (I am not sure what that means either.) According to Gingrich sharia is a "mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States."

The good news here? Even the Republican-party nominating process, which in my opinion pushes candidates too far right to win a mainstream presidential election ultimately rejected this kind of extremism. That’s good, but each man was in turn the frontrunner.

Optimism Can Reign Supreme 
Threats to each person’s equal right to liberty are not new to America.

In fact, the Constitution as originally enacted treated black people as three-fifths of a human being and left them as property. Women were denied the seemingly basic equal treatment of getting to cast a vote in a presidential election until 1920. Those insults to humanitarian principle were rectified.

Even after slavery was ended, African-Americans were subjected to horrible treatment and discriminatory laws.

They did not hide.

Rev. Martin Luther King was wire-tapped by federal authorities. In an FBI memo, he was called the “most dangerous and effective negro leader in America.” J. Edgar Hoover called him a “degenerate.”

Today, those same federal authorities get King’s birthday off as a Federal Holiday.

I look to Japanese Americans as a prime inspiration and source of hope. Like Muslims, as a group they were blamed for an attack on this country. They were placed in internment camps. We likely have them to thank as the reason we were not similarly treated. They were vocal. They organized and after forty years of their hard work, the government acknowledged that what was done to them was wrong.

In fact, we inherit a rich tradition of standing up for an America that is based on a level playing field. Catholics were discriminated against. Jews were discriminated against. Mormons have been discriminated against. Each in turn has pushed back.

Today, it is our turn to push back.

I guarantee you that bias and efforts to treat someone as an enemy other will shift. We must push back to honor those before us and to ensure that the next targeted group does not say, “The Muslims failed us.”

The Ultimate Rebuke 
So. Happiness is difficult in an unjust society. American Muslims are on the frontlines of helping ensure our nation does not take a wrong turn and become an unjust, unequal society.

There is one final benefit to consider.

In his counter terrorism speech on Thursday, President Obama said, “Indeed, the success of American Muslims, and our determination to guard against any encroachment on their civil liberties, is the ultimate rebuke to those who say we are at war with Islam.”

The way we, as Muslims, defend those liberties, for ourselves and everyone else is our ultimate rebuke to the Islamophobes.

Anti-Islam Legislation Updates

Sharia law ban heads to Senate

[Saylor note: From an article discussing a bill that is advancing in North Carolina.]

Corey Saylor with the Council on American-Islamic Relations called the proposal "anti-Islamic."

"Anyone who believes foreign law can replace the Constitution is misguided," he said. "The Supremacy Clause ensures that the Constitution will always remain our nation’s law. American Muslims like it that way, as it ensures every individual’s right to worship or not as they see fit."

"That is why CAIR’s lawsuit against an anti-Islam bill in Oklahoma argues First Amendment and Supremacy Clause issues," Saylor said in a statement. "Four federal judges have ruled in our favor so far, so we are confident we are upholding the Constitution.

"Frankly, supporters of anti-Islam legislation, such as HB 695, are undermining its protections," he added.

Anti-Shariah movement changes tactics and gains success

Omar Sacirbey | May 16, 2013

(RNS) When Oklahoma voters overwhelmingly approved a 2010 ballot measure that prohibits state courts from considering Islamic law, or Shariah, the Council of American-Islamic Relations filed a lawsuit within two days challenging the constitutionality of the measure, and won.

But when Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed a similar measure, one that its sponsor said would forbid Shariah, on April 19 of this year, no legal challenges were mounted.

Why the change?

The biggest difference is that the older bill — and others like it — singled out Islam and Shariah, but also raised concerns that they could affect Catholic canon law or Jewish law. Many early anti-Shariah bills also made references to international or foreign law, which worried businesses that the new bills would undermine contracts and trade with foreign companies.

The new bills, however, are more vague and mention only foreign laws, with no references to Shariah or Islam. They also make specific exceptions for international trade. All of that makes them harder to challenge as a violation of religious freedom.

“These bills don’t have any real-world effect. Their only purpose is to allow people to vilify Islam,” said Corey Saylor, CAIR’s legislative affairs director, of the more recent bills.

The change in language seems to have helped such bills advance in several states. And while these bills no longer single out Shariah, it is often understood that Shariah is the target, which many legislators make no secret of.

The driving force behind these new versions of anti-Shariah laws is “anti-Muslim bigotry plain and simple,” said Daniel Mach of the American Civil Liberties Union, speaking on a panel in Washington Thursday (May 16). To those agitating for such measures, “Islam is the face of the enemy,” he said.

To date, Oklahoma is the sixth state — joining Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, South Dakota, and Tennessee — to adopt a law prohibiting courts from using foreign or international law, with some exceptions, in their decisions.

This year, at least 36 anti-foreign law bills have been proposed in 15 states, down from 51 bills in 23 states in 2011. While most of this year’s anti-foreign law bills have failed, several others, have advanced:

• A North Carolina legislative committee on Wednesday sent a bill to the House that would prohibit consideration of foreign laws in custody and other family law cases.
• On May 9, the Missouri legislature passed an anti-foreign law bill that goes next to Gov. Jay Nixon, who has until July 14 to decide whether he will sign or veto it. Nixon, a Democrat, has not indicated what he will do, and did not reply to a request for comment.
• In Alabama, Indiana and Texas, anti-foreign law bills have made it through the state senates, and are now either in house committees or awaiting full floor votes.
• An anti-foreign law bill in Florida that needed a two-thirds majority to pass fell one vote short, 25-14. Besides Florida, anti-foreign law bills have been introduced but were defeated, died, or are languishing in Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Despite the losses, David Yerushalmi, the Washington-based lawyer who drafted template legislation used for the anti-Shariah and anti-foreign law bills, said the anti-Shariah movement “is growing every day” and expects more states to adopt such bills in the future.


“People see the threat and also know that a bill that simply protects U.S. citizens and residents from constitutionally offensive foreign laws and judgments can only be a good thing,” Yerushalmi said.

But CAIR’s Saylor said that victory may prove elusive for the anti-Shariah forces. By stripping all references to Islamic law, the anti-Shariah movement has failed to restrict Muslim religious rights. “In terms of substance, it’s already been beaten,” he said.

Nevertheless, some observers worry that even these watered-down bills could still be interpreted in ways that impinge on Muslims’ religious freedom.

For example, according to the Gavel to Gavel website that covers state legislatures, many of the new anti-foreign law bills specify that the prohibition on courts using foreign laws applies only to certain case types, such as family law or domestic relations. Shariah, as well as Jewish law, is widely used in these types of cases.

“While the foreign law bans are certainly less of a frontal assault on religious freedom than the anti-Shariah bills, they continue to raise concerns about bias towards minority faiths,” said Faiza Patel, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

“The bans cast a cloud of uncertainty over a myriad of arrangements, including family and business-related matters, simply because they have foreign or religious origins.”

She added that some bans on foreign law seem to require judges to reject any foreign law or judgment that comes from a country that does not protect rights in the same way the United States does, even if the case being considered does not raise any rights concerns.

“This could deprive many Jewish and Muslim couples of a wide range of benefits — lower tax rates, immigration benefits for foreign partners and the ability to make life-and-death decisions on behalf of each other in medical emergencies,” Patel said.

Even CAIR won’t rule out the possibility of future legal challenges.

“If someone tries to use these laws to undermine a person’s religious rights, we’re keeping all of our legal options on the table,” Saylor said.

Video: CAIR Reps Discuss Religious Freedom in CBS Interfaith Special

Becoming the Trustworthy: Upholding Our Constitution, Defending Our Faith

(Speech given at CAIR-San Diego on November 10, 2012.)

Salaam alaykum. Peace be unto you. Good evening.

Before we begin our discussion, I want to offer some good news.

The day before the 2012 presidential election there were 11 members of Congress routinely making use of anti-Muslim themes. (The full report on the electoral fate of the anti-Muslim caucus can be seen here.)

Four of them will not be returning to Congress in January.

Florida’s Allen West, who claims Islam is not a religion and asserts that Muslims are a “fifth column,” lost his race. Be assured that Muslims played a role in bringing about that electoral defeat.

Similarly, Illinois’s Joe Walsh, who cast suspicion on all Muslims, and Minnesota’s Chip Cravaack, who asserted that a mainstream Muslim organization was a terrorist group, lost their races.

Finally, Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina retired. A few years ago she held a press conference where she alleged that Muslim interns on Capitol Hill were spies. You may also recall her 2003 warning about a previously unnoticed security threat because, "You know, look at who runs all the convenience stores across the country. Every little town you go into, you know?”

I have one other item of good news. Islam’s favorability rating, last time it was polled in 2010, stood at 30 percent according to Pew Research Center.

As of August, 2012 Congress’s favorability rating is 10 percent.

We are still more popular than Congress.

Upholding the Constitution

 

We here tonight are among those who are on the front lines of protecting the Constitution from people who, selling anti-Muslim stereotypes and fear, seek to return America to a legal system that treats one group of Americans as different from others.

 

Worse, if you pay attention to Islamophobes like Pamela Geller or David Yerushalmi, there are those who appear to seek the rebirth of South African apartheid with religion as its new targeted class.

Indulge me, please, while I offer proof of what I just said.

Anti-Islam Legislation

First, we will look at efforts to legislate government-sanctioned discrimination against Muslims.

 

In 2011 and 2012, 78 bills or amendments aimed at interfering with Islamic religious practices were considered in 31 states and the U.S. Congress.

 

Sixty-two of these bills contained language that was extracted from Islamophobe David Yerushalmi’s American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) model legislation.

 

(As an aside: An internet search of “David Yerushalmi” returns results demonstrating his call for a “WAR AGAINST ISLAM and all the Muslim faithful.” You will also see his anti-woman, anti-black and similarly biased comments on the first results page. It is reasonable to be alarmed that a man so central to that anti-Islam hate movement in the United States is able to have real impact on legislators.)

 

73 of these bills were introduced solely by Republicans. Not just fringe legislators, but in too many cases this included state-level GOP party leadership.

 

Bills were signed into law in Arizona, Kansas, South Dakota, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

 

I want you to be clear that this anti-Sharia movement is really a cover for Islamophobic sentiment.

 

In Tennessee, the original bill’s definition of “Sharia” was, in practical terms, the entire religious tradition of Islam.  It stated that “Sharia” encompasses all content derived from “any of the authoritative schools of Islamic jurisprudence of Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali, Ja’afariya, or Salafi.”

They wanted to make being a Muslim illegal in Tennessee.

South Dakota anti-Islam bill sponsor Phil Jensen (R-District 33) told an audience, “It is alarming how many of our sisters and daughters who attend American universities are now marrying Muslim men.”

In Pennsylvania, the bill itself included no mention of Islam. However, in a memo to all House members urging them to co-sponsor the bill, Rep. Rosemarie Swanger (R-District 102) falsely claimed that Sharia is "inherently hostile to our constitutional liberties."

Later, Swanger claimed she “had no idea how [the memo] was going to be written” and that it was never circulated. Swanger also claimed that it was leaked by “someone who is not my friend.”(iv)

 Her claim strains credibility, given that the memo, with Swanger’s signature, was easily found on the Pennsylvania state legislature’s website.

 

As you may have already concluded, these legislators frequently have no idea what they are talking about.

 

The Star Assistant in Alabama reported, “But no one—not even Sen. Gerald Allen, who sponsored the bill—can point to examples of Muslims trying to have Islamic law recognized in Alabama courts.”(viii)

That inability to point to actual examples is a pattern by the way.

Allen could not even define Sharia. When asked he said, “I don’t have my file in front of me.”

When pressed about why the Alabama bill’s definition of sharia matched one found in Wikipedia, Allen’s legislative staff “confirmed that the definition was in fact pulled from Wikipedia.”

Now college students that I know tell me that Wikipedia is not a valid citation in their papers. I find it intriguing that it is, however, a valid source for things that may become the law of the land.

 

Texas legislator Leo Berman said his bill was necessary because he had heard, but apparently had not actually tried to confirm, that one American town was allowing judges to use sharia. “I heard it on a radio station here on my way into the Capitol one day. I don’t know Dearborn, Michigan but I heard it [Sharia law is accepted there] on the radio. Isn’t that true?”

The Kansas City Star’s Jason Noble reported that anti-Islam bill sponsors, “Missouri Reps. Paul Curtman and Don Wells agree there’s no evidence that state courts are judging cases based on Islamic principles of foreign laws.” Challenged again a month later, Curtman still could not provide an example.

 

Missouri Speaker of the House Stephen Tilley also “could not provide an example of foreign law trumping domestic law in Missouri courts,” reported Politicalmo.com. The article noted that Tilley’s office later issued a statement outlining one case in New Jersey, but that poor ruling--which in fact received no support from Muslim groups because it involved a man claiming it was his religious right to rape his wife--was rightfully overturned by a higher court.

 

The news here is fairly straightforward: Yes, they have passed anti-Islam laws in six states. Yes, they will try again in 2013. But by upholding the Constitution, we can preserve everyone’s liberty.

 

CAIR is in the forefront of asserting this principle of free religious exercise. The Constitution is the law of the land and we like it that way. We agree with people of the Jewish and Catholic faiths, who already have an established tradition of using religious mediation, that, within the law, we are free to make choices in accordance with our faith.

 

In accordance with Islam, my marriage contract required me to pay a mahr to my wife. Why anyone would be upset with a woman getting money up front that is hers to invest as she sees fit I have no clue.

 

In accordance with Islam, my home financing involves no interest. Similarly, my financial investment strategy avoids putting money into gambling, pornography and weapons manufacturing. I have no idea why anyone would think such things are a threat to American democracy.

So let’s turn back to the anti-Islam legislation.      

CAIR’s lawsuit against Oklahoma’s anti-Islam constitutional amendment asserts that the law would violate the First Amendment, which says no law can be passed that promotes or vilifies a particular religion, and the Supremacy clause, which says the Constitution is and will remain the highest law of the land. Interestingly, CAIR gets accused of trying to subvert the Constitution while we are making these arguments this constitutionally-subversive legislation.

So far, four federal judges have ruled in our favor and that law is on hold.

An appeals court ruling on the legal challenge concluded in part that arguments, “that the proposed state amendment expressly condemns [the plaintiff’s] religion and exposes him and other Muslims in Oklahoma to disfavored treatment -- suffices to establish the kind of direct injury-in-fact necessary to create Establishment Clause standing.” The ruling also notes, "Appellants [those representing the state of Oklahoma] do not identify any actual problem the challenged amendment seeks to solve. Indeed, they admitted at the preliminary injunction hearing that they did not know of even a single instance where an Oklahoma court had applied Sharia law or used the legal precepts of other nations or cultures..."

 

In Minnesota, the legislator who was going to introduce an anti-Islam bill pulled the idea within hours of a CAIR-led press conference.

 

Similarly, in New Jersey a law maker withdrew an anti-Islam bill and met with Muslim community leaders following CAIR’s intervention. In other states including Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan, CAIR played a crucial role in efforts that succeeded in ending proposed limits on American religious freedom.

 

Recently, a hearing on an anti-Islam bill in Pennsylvania was cancelled after CAIR, along with Christian and Jewish partner groups, began to raise concerns about it.

Mainstream Candidates Willing to Subject Muslims to Unequal Treatment

As a second example that Muslims need to defend our faith in order to uphold the Constitution let’s look at the recent presidential election.

Herman Cain was for a while the frontrunner for the GOP’s presidential nomination.

Speaking to Christianity Today on March 11, 2011, Cain said that followers of the “Muslim religion” have “an objective to convert all infidels or kill them.”

Cain also said that Muslims who wanted to serve in his administration would have to take loyalty oaths. He explained to Fox News host Glenn Beck that he would not require similar oaths from Mormons or Catholics, “Because there is a greater dangerous part of the Muslim faith than there is in these other religions.”

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says there is no “religious test” for public office.

So, here we have a man, a frontrunner, committing to undermining the Constitution. Did he get tossed from the stage?

No.

He got applause. 

Rick Santorum, also a frontrunner for a time, endorsed religious profiling during one of the GOP presidential debates, saying, "Obviously, Muslims would be someone you'd look at." In January, 2012 journalists brought attention to a lengthy Islamophobic rant Santorum gave in 2007 at David Horowitz’s “Second Annual Academic Freedom Conference.” Santorum asserted that in order to “win” against a vaguely-defined Muslim enemy Americans must “…educate, engage, evangelize and eradicate."

A former Speaker of the U.S. House, Newt Gingrich, yet another onetime frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, told an audience that he feared that by the time his grandchildren reach his age “they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”According to Gingrich sharia is a "mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States."

The good news here? Even the Republican-party nominating process, which as we have heard in the news lately, pushes candidates too far right to win a mainstream presidential election ultimately rejected this kind of extremism. That’s good, but each man was in turn the frontrunner.

Other Attempts to Strip Muslims of Equal Treatment Under the Law

Public groups also seek to strip Muslims of equal protection under the Constitution.

According to Brian Fischer of the Islamophobic American Family Association the First Amendment does not apply to Muslims. “Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam,” Fisher wrote in a blog post.

Similar to Fischer, a lawyer opposing a mosque expansion in Murfreesboro, Tenn. argued in court that Islam is not a religion and is therefore not protected by the First Amendment. Lawyers representing the Federal government submitted a brief to the judge in that case arguing that yes, Islam actually is a religion. We appreciated that, but reasonable people find that it was even needed to be somewhat surreal.

 

The Oak Initiative, a group whose name pops up more than once in association with anti-Islam legislation, says through its mouthpiece retired Lieutenant General William G. "Jerry" Boykin, that "[Islam] should not be protected under the First Amendment" and that there should be "no mosques in America."

 

The Family Leader, an Iowa-based Christian conservative group, asked GOP presidential candidates to sign a “marriage vow” pledge that proclaimed their opposition to “Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human-rights forms of totalitarian control.”

 

In its original form, the pledge also contained troubling language regarding Africa-Americans: ‘Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.”

Michelle Bachman, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry signed the pledge.

Rep. Peter King’s Anti-Muslim Hearings

As a final example, I will point to a use of one of our nation’s highest public forums--the halls of the U.S. Congress--as a place to justify different treatment of Muslims.

 

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) held a series of five anti-Muslim hearings in Congress in 2011 and 2012.

For seven years prior to the first hearing, King had maintained that “80%, 85% of the mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists" and that average Muslims "are loyal," but "don't come forward, they don't tell the police what they know. They won't turn in their own.”

Throughout the hearings, CAIR was among those in the forefront of exposing King’s record of anti-Muslim statements and false allegations against our community.

King spent a lot of the first hearing attacking CAIR, which tells me we were doing a good job. They do not attack you when you are not relevant.

Afterward, CAIR produced the only comprehensive study of the first four hearings and exposed the truth: after eight years, four hearings and 18 witnesses, King failed to produce the promised evidence to support his stigmatization of America’s Muslims.

Not a single witness attempted to factually validate the allegation of a Muslim community run by extremists.  Five of the six law enforcement representatives who testified did not support King’s assertion that Muslims do not cooperate with law enforcement. Instead, these witnesses described “strong relationships” with Somali Muslims, “strong bonds” with the American Muslim community and “outreach and engagement with Muslim communities.”

The Targeting of Islamic Places of Worship

Sadly, in a move that mirrors past efforts targeting African-American churches with acts of intimidation, our places of worship have become targets of hate.

 

Ramadan 2012—which started on Friday, July 20 and ended at sun down on Saturday, August 18—saw one of the worst spikes of anti-Muslim incidents in over a decade.

 

In the first seven months of 2012, there were 10 incidents in which Muslim places of worship were targeted. In thirteen days in August, the days immediately after theshocking murders of Sikh worshippers in Wisconsin, there were 8 incidents inwhich Muslim places of worship were targeted.

Incidents in Illinois included shots fired at a mosque in Morton Grove and an acid bomb thrown at an Islamic school in Lombard. In other states, a mosque was burned to the ground in Joplin, Mo., vandals sprayed an Oklahoma mosque with paintballs, pigs legs were thrown at a mosque-site in California, and a firebomb was thrown at a Muslim family's home in Panama City, Fla.

 In August, a CAIR team went on a national tour to support communities targeted by hatred and bigotry. First, they traveled to Joplin to meet with law enforcement officials and community leaders about the fire that destroyed the mosque. Then they were in Murfreesboro, Tenn., for the opening of a mosque that has been targeted for years by a campaign of Islamophobia. Finally, CAIR staffers went to Wisconsin to meet with Muslim community leaders and to pay a condolence visit to the Milwaukee-area Sikh temple that was targeted in a white supremacist's killing spree.

Optimism Can Reign Supreme

Threats to equal treatment are not new to America.

 

In fact, the Constitution as originally enacted treated black people as three-fifths of a human being and left them as property. Women were denied the seemingly basic equal treatment of getting to cast a vote in a presidential election until 1920. Those insults to humanitarian principle were rectified.

 

Even after slavery was ended, African-Americans were subjected to horrible treatment and discriminatory laws.

 

They did not hide.

 

Rev. Martin Luther King was wire-tapped by federal authorities. In an FBI memo, he was called the “most dangerous and effective negro leader in America.” J. Edgar Hoover called him a “degenerate.”

Today, they get King’s birthday off as a Federal Holiday.

 

I look to Japanese Americans as a prime inspiration and source of hope. Like Muslims, as a group they were blamed for an attack on this country. They were placed in internment camps. We likely have them to thank as the reason we were not similarly treated. They were vocal. They organized and after forty years of their hard work, the government acknowledged that what was done to them was wrong.

 

In fact, we inherit a rich tradition of standing up for an America that is based on a level playing field. Catholics were discriminated against. Jews were discriminated against. Mormons have been discriminated against. Each in turn has pushed back.

Today, it is our turn to push back.

I guarantee you that bias and efforts to treat someone as an enemy other will shift. We must push back to honor those before us and to ensure that the next targeted group does not say, “The Muslims failed us.”

 

The Trustworthy

A final thought. Before he became a prophet, Muhammad (peace be upon him) was known as Al-Ameen, the Trustworthy. He did not lie. He kept his word.

 

We as Muslims must consider this. Most Americans were introduced to our faith on 9/11 watching an airplanes slam into buildings. That was followed by repeated media images of crazy men in caves threatening Americans with a violent, brutal death.

 

We in this room know that such monstrosities are heretical. They are incompatible with any understanding of Islam. We know Islam compels us to be trustworthy.

 

But I wonder how many of our neighbors retain that image of planes and crazy in their deeper emotional places and are unsure if we are trustworthy. They may harbor, even unwanted, a concern that maybe the bigots who claim Muslims are an existential threat to America are right.

 

We must, each as an individual and in partnership with institutions like CAIR, strive to become known in America as the Trustworthy. We do that by upholding the Constitution for everyone. We do that by being a benefit to them and preventing harm from coming to them.

 

I know you are committed to this idea. I pray you will join us putting faith into action.

Thank you.