The following is a Q&A with Christina Abraham, director of civil rights for the Council on Islamic-American Relations Chicago, regarding states that are proposing laws that would make following Sharia, Islamic law, illegal.
Question: What is Sharia Law and how closely is it followed by Muslims?
Answer: Although there is no universally agreed upon definition of Sharia Law, the simplest way to describe it is the religious law created by three sources: the Quran (the holy book for Muslims), the Sunna (a compilation of the prophet Muhammad’s sayings and actions as recorded by various scholars), and a vast body of jurisprudence (case law) that developed in the 1400 years that Muslims have existed. It can be likened to Judaic law in that it is voluminous and complex. It is not uniformed – in other words, there is not one universally accepted idea of what constitutes Sharia law because it’s based on interpretation of sources (mainly the Quran and Sunna), in addition to the custom and practice of the adherents in the society doing the interpreting. Some Muslims follow it more closely than others. For a practicing Muslim, Sharia law affects day to day decisions that can range from entering into business transactions, getting married, or praying, eating and fasting.
Question: Why are people proposing the laws against it? Is it misunderstanding?
Answer: People are proposing laws against it because they mistakenly believe that Sharia law would be 1) antithetical to American values (they associate it with honor killings, for example); and 2) because they think it would threaten the Constitution. I say “mistakenly believe” out of courtesy. I do think that some proponents of the anti-Sharia legislation we are seeing know that Sharia law is not a threat but see such legislation as an opportunity to earn brownie points from conservative voters by appearing to be “protectors” of our liberty in the face of the “threat of Islam and Muslims.”
Question: How many states have tried to propose such a law? Any success yet?
Answer: I’m not sure of the exact number of states that have proposed anti-Sharia legislation. I know of Oklahoma, Tennessee and Florida for sure, but have heard that there were others. It has only been passed in one place: Oklahoma, but fortunately a federal court judge imposed an order prohibiting the state from enforcing it because it violated the First Amendment.
Question: Are anti-Sharia laws a violation of freedom of religion?
Answer: I think anti-Sharia laws are a violation of the First Amendment. Because Sharia law governs the day to day religious practices of Muslims, prohibiting it is by definition a constriction of religious liberty. To be sure, there are instances in which religious liberty must give way to national interests – when it is an especially important (compelling) issue for the government, and there is no other way the government can address the issue except to constrict the religious liberty of a group. However, the anti-Sharia laws that have been proposed do not address any compelling government issues. No Muslim has ever gone into a U.S. court and asked that the court allow him/her to do something under Sharia law that is antithetical to our nation’s values. And even if someone did, for some odd reason, do so, the Constitution has a built-in defense to that in the Supremacy Clause – no law is more supreme than the Constitution. So there is no reason, other than discrimination, to enact anti-Sharia laws in our states.
