For a few days this month, it was illegal in Oklahoma for a state judge to base a court decision on Islamic religious law or consider any form of international law. It was a manufactured problem; the issue has never come up in the state’s courts. But more than 70 percent of voters in Oklahoma still approved a state constitutional amendment to that effect, apparently persuaded by anti-Islamic activists, and a few cynical politicians, that Oklahoma was about to be brought under Islam’s heel…. Islamic law, known as Shariah, is no threat to our legal system and is not in force anywhere in the United States except within a religious community, in the same manner as Jewish Halakhic law or Catholic canon law. Nonetheless, supporters of the amendment raised absurd fears that it could entangle the American courts at any minute. Rex Duncan, a Republican state representative and the author of the ballot measure, told The Los Angeles Times that Oklahoma does not yet have that problem. “But why wait until it’s in the courts?” he asked. He has also said that Muslims want to take away American liberties and freedom.
I remember being taught while a young lad that America is a melting pot, and that our strength lies in our diversity of origin and experience. Most all of us can quickly relate our familial ethnic roots- mine are Scottish, Irish, German, and Bohemian. What this really means is that, if you go back far enough, we all hail from somewhere else. None of us (save for Native Americans, of course) are truly native Americans. My family’s original name was (and I have no idea as to the original spelling) von Jareschusky. Legend holds that when my forebear got off the boat at Ellis Island, that mouthful of unpronounceable foreignness was magically transformed to “Cluth”. I have no idea about the how, why, and/or the veracity of this family legend, but it stuck, and so I have a reasonably easy to pronounce surname instead of something appropriate for a Prussian Minister of War.
My point is the vast majority of us are descended from those who at one time or another were considered different, and therefore often regarded and treated as second-class citizens less worthy of equal rights and treatment. Most of us have long since forgotten this, of course, our national distaste for history and historical context being what it is. This seems particularly true in Oklahoma, where today’s “Other” are Muslims. Not that most Oklahomans know the first thing about Islam, and I doubt most have even met a Muslim. When Oklahomans think about Islam, they probably think they learned everything they needed to know about it on 9.11. They know that Islam is a religion based on Evil and predicated on the destruction of Our Way of Life ©. They know that Muslims don’t worship a “real God”, and that they’re bent on imposing their religion and their “legal system” on us good, God-fearing Americans.
Except that none of those things are true. The truth, which was made amply clear by the recent election, is that most Oklahomans know nothing of Islam and even less of Muslims. What’s worse is that they seem not to care. What they know is that they’re not about to stand by while Muslims impose their Sharia law on the good, God-fearing, patriotic people of Oklahoma. Their “Save Our State” Amendment, presented as a defense of Our Way of Life ©, was a transparent appeal to ignorance and hatred. Islam, and by extension Muslims, were demonized by those with an axe to grind, and their shameless lies and propaganda convinced 70% of Oklahoma voters to outlaw a problem that doesn’t, and has never, existed.
Islam is not the problem in Oklahoma…or anywhere else in America. Nor are Muslims or Sharia…not that the vast majority of Oklahomans could even discuss Sharia with any degree of accuracy. No, the problem lies with those willing to fan the flames of hatred in order to push their own divisive agenda. In creating a bogeyman, they deflect attention from the very real problems this country faces, and so the intelligent, substantial debate this country so desperately needs doesn’t happen. What the haters fail to realize is that hatred and division are burdens that do nothing to advance the public discourse. All it does it misdirect the discussion and create artificial divisions that serve only to hold all of us back. In the end, the hatred and bile harms ALL of us, and particularly those relatively few peaceful Muslims who want nothing more than to be left alone and in peace. The only threat they pose is the one created in the overactive imagination of the haters and the zealots.
How sad is it that it’s going to take an injunction from a federal judge in order to right this wrong? How wrong is it that 70% of Oklahoma voters are so openly willing to codify hatred and discrimination into the state’s statutes? How pitiful is it that so many who consider themselves Christians are so willing to engage in such thoroughly un-Christian hatred and discrimination?
WE DESERVE BETTER.
