NEW YORK TIMES: Don’t Fear Islamic Law in America

[GreenStormCloud]

MORE than a dozen American states are considering outlawing aspects of Shariah law. Some of these efforts would curtail Muslims from settling disputes over dietary laws and marriage through religious arbitration, while others would go even further in stigmatizing Islamic life: a bill recently passed by the Tennessee General Assembly equates Shariah with a set of rules that promote “the destruction of the national existence of the United States.”

Supporters of these bills contend that such measures are needed to protect the country against homegrown terrorism and safeguard its Judeo-Christian values. The Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has said that “Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.”

This is exactly wrong. The crusade against Shariah undermines American democracy, ignores our country’s successful history of religious tolerance and assimilation, and creates a dangerous divide between America and its fastest-growing religious minority.

More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/opinion/dont-fear-islamic-law-in-america.html?_r=3&hp

No way should any religious law replace our secular laws, and that goes double for Sharia Law. Under Sharia a man can have four wives, can divorce any by telling them three times they are divorced (texting counts), but the woman can't divorce a man. Women are denied education, to drive cars, have to be completely covered, can't leave the house without a male escort. Rape requires the testimony of four men to prove the charge.

The NYT has lost their minds in advocating Sharia Law in America.

[arcane1]

1. NYT is advocating that religious law replaces our secular laws?

I sure didn't read it that way :shrug:

[3waygeek]

3. Nor did I

maybe my secret Muslim decoder ring is on the fritz.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Shariah law in this country must yield to our secular constitutional judicial system.

Shariah has about the same effect as Orthodox Jewish Law does. (Example: You can get a civil divorce but not be allowed to remarry unless your spouse grants you a "get" in Jewish law. It's your prerogative whether or not you want to remarry but you're still divorced from your ex.)

[CJCRANE]

4. "Jewish religious law was seditious".

"The suggestion that Shariah threatens American security is disturbingly reminiscent of the accusation, in 19th-century Europe, that Jewish religious law was seditious. In 1807, Napoleon convened an assembly of rabbinic authorities to address the question of whether Jewish law prevented Jews from being loyal citizens of the republic. (They said that it did not.)

Fear that Jewish law bred disloyalty was not limited to political elites; leading European philosophers also entertained the idea. Kant argued that the particularistic nature of “Jewish legislation” made Jews “hostile to all other peoples.” And Hegel contended that Jewish dietary rules and other Mosaic laws barred Jews from identifying with their fellow Prussians and called into question their ability to be civil servants.

The German philosopher Bruno Bauer offered Jews a bargain: renounce Jewish law and be granted full legal rights. He insisted that, otherwise, laws prohibiting work on the Sabbath made it impossible for Jews to be true citizens. (Bauer conveniently ignored the fact that many fully observant Jews violated the Sabbath to fight in the Prussian wars against Napoleon.)"

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

5. Another fear campaign, and safeguarding our Judeo-Christian

values, what a joke, what values?
Values like endless war for corporate wealth?
Values like taking away our freedoms with the Patriot Act?
Values like taking away social programs that help the least among us?

[Name removed]

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