![]() A federal judge blocked the Oklahoma amendment after a representative of the Council on American- Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group, sued the state, claiming the law was an unconstitutional infringement on religious freedom.ĭavid Yerushalmi has quietly led a national movement. The legal impact of the movement is unclear. Yerushalmi’s legislation in half a dozen new states, while reviving measures that were tabled in others. “It’s purely a political wedge to create fear and hysteria.”Īnti-Shariah organizers are pressing ahead with plans to introduce versions of Mr. “The fact is there is no Shariah takeover in America,” said Salam Al-Marayati, the president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, one of several Muslim organizations that have begun a counteroffensive. The anti-Shariah campaign, they say, appears to be an end in itself, aimed at keeping Muslims on the margins of American life. The more tangible effect of the movement, opponents say, is the spread of an alarmist message about Islam - the same kind of rhetoric that appears to have influenced Anders Behring Breivik, the suspect in the deadly dual attacks in Norway on July 22. “Before the train gets too far down the tracks, it’s time to put up the block,” said Guy Rodgers, the executive director of ACT for America, one of the leading organizations promoting the legislation drafted by Mr. Instead, they say, Muslims could eventually gain the kind of foothold seen in Europe, where multicultural policies have allowed for what critics contend is an overaccommodation of Islamic law. ![]() Even its leaders concede that American Muslims are not coalescing en masse to advance Islamic law. Yet, for all its fervor, the movement is arguably directed at a problem more imagined than real. James Woolsey, a former director of the C.I.A., and the Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann, who this month signed a pledge to reject Islamic law, likening it to “totalitarian control.” Yerushalmi’s views are prominent Washington figures like R. ![]() Yerushalmi has written privately financed reports, filed lawsuits against the government and drafted the model legislation that recently swept through the country - all with the effect of casting Shariah as one of the greatest threats to American freedom since the cold war. Working with a cadre of conservative public-policy institutes and former military and intelligence officials, Mr. Yerushalmi has come to exercise a striking influence over American public discourse about Shariah. Despite his lack of formal training in Islamic law, Mr. In fact, it is the product of an orchestrated drive that began five years ago in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in the office of a little-known lawyer, David Yerushalmi, a 56-year-old Hasidic Jew with a history of controversial statements about race, immigration and Islam. But the campaign’s air of grass-roots spontaneity, which has been carefully promoted by advocates, shrouds its more deliberate origins. And in June, Tennessee passed an antiterrorism law that, in its original iteration, would have empowered the attorney general to designate Islamic groups suspected of terror activity as “Shariah organizations.”Ī confluence of factors has fueled the anti-Shariah movement, most notably the controversy over the proposed Islamic center near ground zero in New York, concerns about homegrown terrorism and the rise of the Tea Party. Voters in Oklahoma overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment last November that bans the use of Islamic law in court. The statutes have been enacted in three states so far. Since last year, more than two dozen states have considered measures to restrict judges from consulting Shariah, or foreign and religious laws more generally. Similar warnings are being issued across the country as Republican presidential candidates, elected officials and activists mobilize against what they describe as the menace of Islamic law in the United States. Womick, 53, said with a sudden pause, “this is not what I call ‘Do unto others what you’d have them do unto you.’ ” He declared that Shariah, the Islamic code that guides Muslim beliefs and actions, is not just an expression of faith but a political and legal system that seeks world domination. The representative, a former fighter pilot named Rick Womick, said he had been studying the Koran. But when a Republican representative took the Statehouse floor during a recent hearing, he warned of a new threat to his constituents’ way of life: Islamic law. NASHVILLE - Tennessee’s latest woes include high unemployment, continuing foreclosures and a battle over collective-bargaining rights for teachers.
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