ROBERT SPENCER:COURT BLOCKS OKLAHOMA SHARIA BAN
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/11/10/court-blocks-oklahoma-sharia-ban/
In yet another indication of the increasing alienation of the political elites from the popular will, U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange on Monday granted a temporary restraining order blocking Oklahoma’s brand-new anti-Sharia law. Seventy percent of Oklahomans voted for the measure, but who cares? The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) argued that the measure was “anti-Islam,” and that was enough to prevail in today’s multiculturalist environment. As Abraham Lincoln put it long ago, “The people…have ceased to be their own rulers.”
Muneer Awad, executive director of the Oklahoma CAIR chapter, sought the restraining order on the grounds that the law stigmatized Islam. The involvement of CAIR in the legal challenge to Oklahoma’s law ought to have raised red flags for Judge Miles-LaGrange and others involved with the case. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. In 2007 CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case. Several of its former officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. Two of its other officials have made Islamic supremacist statements. CAIR also was involved in the Flying Imams’ intimidation suit against the passengers who reported their suspicious behavior.
But if she knew about any of that, it made no difference to Miles-LaGrange. CAIR immediately began thumping its chest at this victory over the popular will, saying: “CAIR says the ballot measure would infringe on the constitutional rights of ordinary Oklahomans — including the right to wear religious head scarves in driver’s license photographs, choose Islamic marriage contracts, implement Islamic wills, or to be buried according to one’s religious beliefs.”
But in this CAIR was, yet again, lying. The Oklahoma law forbids lawmakers from legislating for Oklahomans as a whole using Sharia rather than American law. It does not forbid private individuals from getting married or writing wills in any way they wish. The idea of the Oklahoma Sharia ban is to prevent judges from making decisions based on a legal system that contradicts the principles of American law in numerous particulars. But as the campaign season went on and especially after the law passed, the opposition to the law grew steadily more shrill and its claims more outlandish.
The first reaction from Islamic supremacists and their Leftist allies was ridicule. Asma Uddin, editor of Altmuslimah.com and an attorney for The Becket Fund mocked the measure in the Huffington Post: “Judging by how Oklahoma voted in the recent election, one might conclude that despite its tiny Muslim population, Oklahoma was on the verge of becoming an Islamic caliphate in Middle America….Sadly, the notion of shariah, or Islam, ‘taking over’ America in a manner somewhat akin to the Seed Pods from The Return of the Body Snatchers seems to be infecting segments of the national political discourse, despite its inherent absurdity.”
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