What Sharia Is…And Isn’t
The Center for American Progress hosted a panel yesterday on Sharia law, featuring three people the far right would call Sharia apologists (or worse). But as panelist Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, pointed out, “I’m not a sharia apologist, I’m a religious freedom apologist.” Also on the panel were Professor Asifa Quraishi, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and Faiz Shakir, Editor of Think Progress and Vice President of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The panel focused on debunking the myth of some sort of Sharia usurping of the U.S. Constitution. Briefly put, that sort of takeover would require a Constitutional amendment, which itself requires the support of two-thirds of each chamber of Congress (or a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures), and then ratification by three-fourths of the states. So unless hundreds of Congressmen are secretly in favor of thrashing the first amendment, this scenario just ain’t that likely.
The civil tone of the event, and the presence of panelists who actually know real-life Muslims—or who are Muslim themselves—stood in stark contrast to a panel I went to at the Faith and Freedom Conference back in early June. At that event a woman asked if Obama could raise the Muslim flag over the White House. Despite the fact that there’s no such thing as a “Muslim flag,” making the whole thing technically impossible, one of the panelists answered, “Yes he can and that’s their plan!”
Concluding the CAP event, Shakir encouraged people who are genuinely interested in this issue to continue learning about it and not settle for the opinions of self-styled ‘experts’ with dangerous political aims. Events like yesterday’s that contribute informative, nuanced information to counter the junk analysis currently populating our political discourse are an important step.
(Cross-posted on Faith in Public Life’s blog, Bold Faith Type)
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