I think it’s just a recent manifestation of xenophobia. There have always been some people in the mainstream that are worried that some group is secretly infiltrating society with plans on taking over - Jews, Catholics, blacks, immigrants, gays, communists. Muslims are just a current boogeyman.
There has been a trend in the multicultural arena to allow various ethnic groups to use their traditional social means to settle personal disputes and even sentencing in minor criminal matters. In Canada, for example, natives are allowed to use healing circles or a council or elders in some cases.
The trouble is that many of these processes are not “equal opportunity”. If the option is there, then it is obvous when one side chooses not to follow that process (i.e. women in divorce under sharia law) and can result is ostracization and other social repercussions - so women may feel forced to agree to something to their detriment. The province of Ontario was heavily criticized for allowing sharia arbitration well before 9/11.
Similarly, native healing circles may be dominated by a defendant’s friends and relatives. In a small community, the chief’s brother (to pick an old example) may get off with a very light community sentence for beating his girlfriend to a pulp.
So the question is - which is more sensitive verus fair - allowing social groups to use their traditional methods to settle issues, or forcing everyone to use a standard process with fixed standards of conduct?
Let’s move this over to Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I don’t have a Lexis account to do the right search, so I will instead use a WAG hypothesis.
Immigration from Muslim nations into Western Europe has caused some tensions, and with a few cases (cartoons in Denmark, an assassination in Holland, honor killings in Sweden, riots in Paris) they issues got big enough to hit the US papers.
Those US papers typically gloss over a few facts in the reporting, until people start fearing a Muslim takeover of Western Europe. Do enough of it, and writers can crank out some potboilers such as Tom Kratman’s Caliphate: http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1416555455/1416555455.htm
After awhile, the general public in the US starts to worry about the same issues coming to our shores. They then focus on Sharia Law as the thing to stop, as a way to really say that we don’t want that culture in our nation.
Please share this insight with Rick Perry, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Pat Buchanan, Michele Bachmann, and Gary North.
Oh, and this is also the National Day of Prayer in America. Just thought you’d like to know.
On the contrary. Pretty much every theocratic action in the U.S. within memory*, (perhaps within history), has originated from among conservative political forces. There may be some conservatives who are opposed to theocracy, (generally when it is a different religion from their own), but it is not a hallmark of the conservative tradition in the U.S.
- “In God We Trust” on currency, re-establishing school prayer, teaching Creationism in schools, faith-based initiative funding, etc. That most of these efforts have failed was never due to conservative opposition.
Actually, it is very factual. The very fact that the legislatures of nearly half the states have gone out of their way to introduce (occasionally passing) laws prohibiting anything resembling the use of Sharia while there has never been any similar movement to prohibit Catholic marriage tribunals or Jewish Bet Din demonstrates that fact. A dodge that they were afraid of “courts” not legislatures fails on the point that it has never been an issue in courts, except when the legislative acts have been challenged for trying to make laws concerning the establishment of religion.
It’s your belief that women get approximately equal treatment under Sharia law as under civil law in the UK?
Did you read what I said?
Now the commies are dead we need a new boogie man, Muslims are it.
Thank you for bringing up that there is a valid questioning of the proposition of allowing group-traditional dispute-resolution methods (meaning not just Muslim but Amish, Native, Hassid, etc.) to be “voluntarily” adopted.
OTOH, I get the feeling that that is not the same thing as what’s on the minds of a lot of people who are in fear that Sharia law will be implemented and that advicate the passage of bills explicitly instructing courts to allow no decision based on Sharia (or for that matter in some cases, made by reference to any non-American precedent).
So one valid question about fairness in applying equal protection vs. cultural sensitivity gets conflated into a threat of having Sharia imposed upon the whole of society.
muh-muh-muh-MYYYYYY Sharia! muh-muh-muh-MYYYYYY Sharia!
(Sure, I’m ashamed of myself. But I’ll get over it.)
You seemed to be saying that there’s comparable chance for coercion whether or not sharia law is being applied, and therefore coercion to adjudicate a divorce under sharia is not a matter for concern.
I don’t practice that Sharia
I don’t have no crystal ball . . .
It’s not a concern specific to adjudication of a divorce under sharia. I didn’t say it wasn’t a matter of concern.
People love to riled up about the latest bogeyman, and it’s a lot easier to add fuel to the fire when you can make it personal. “John F. Kennedy is going to go to Mass on Sundays” lacks the fear value of “John F Kennedy is going to implement Vatican orders on the US!!”
We hear it about everything- it’s not just that the gays are going to get married. It’s that they are going to destroy marriage (and presumably yours is in that.) It’s not just that Mexicans want to work jobs, they want to turn American into Azatlan and force everyone to speak Spanish.
I think there is a very small number of extremist Muslims who genuinely believe in spreading their religious-political system throughout the world by any means necessary who essentially have the Crusader mentality (after all, that is what jihad is). I’m sure that the most radical Muslims would indeed want to implement Sharia law in a foreign nation.
But their goals are completely incommensurable with their means. In order to implement Sharia law, extremists have to win elections, introduce bills, and get them passed in their communities. Most of these extremists are viewed with suspicion even in their own communities and nations…let alone Western countries. They’re simply not very good at getting public support for their ideas.
I mean, most people right now are indifferent to or look at the Sharia law “implementation” as somewhat of a joke. But let’s say that Sharia law really was being implemented, and our government was in fact in the process of being taken over by extremist religious elements. In that case, everyone in the United States would recognize the reality of the situation and take steps to oppose it.
So the more the Sharia law implementers take action, the more opposition they will encounter. So even assuming that there are people who truly wish to “implement Sharia law,” there’s nothing that they can really do to make it practical, at least in a gradual way through the political system.
The political system in the U.S. is so entrenched in the two-party system that not even a “normal” third party can be viable. How is “Sharia” ever going to become even a third party?
That’s why I believe the fears are mostly manufactured by the media in a way to get people scared so they’ll come out and vote in the next election. Because indifference is worse than hate. =)
It seems to me (and this is me agreeing with you) that the problem isn’t that “sharia law is potentially a tool for the oppression of women”, it’s that “women are being oppressed, regardless of the tools used (be they coerced agreements in standard divorce court or coerced agreement to sharia-law arbitration)”.
True. But it’s also true that conservative nutcakes are prone to fits of hysteria. Death panels, sharia law, long form birth certificates are contemporary symptoms. Black helicopters, world government and the fluoridation of water are panic buttons of the past. Allen West and Joe McCarthy both claimed to have list of commies in the government: their gullible supporters responded with rapture. This isn’t stuff that’s amenable to factual correction: those with weak character have emotional needs that override sober decision making processes.
On the OP, Newt Gingrich ostensibly takes the threat of Sharia Law very seriously. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/us/politics/in-shariah-gingrich-sees-mortal-threat-to-us.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all “I believe Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it,” Mr. Gingrich said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington in July 2010 devoted to what he suggested were the hidden dangers of Islamic radicalism. “I think it’s that straightforward and that real.” And furthermore: . “The left’s refusal to tell the truth about the Islamist threat is a natural parallel to the 70-year pattern of left-wing intellectuals refusing to tell the truth about communism and the Soviet Union,” Mr. Gingrich said. So the difference between 1960 and 2012 is that leading politicians have mainstreamed the crazy. Not all conservatives do this of course. After Governor Chris Christie (R) nominated a conservative jurist who happened to be a Muslim, the swamps freaked. Instead of pulling a Romney and cutting the guy off at the knees, Christie threw off the gloves: “Sharia law has nothing to do with this at all. It’s crazy. It’s crazy,” Christie said at a press conference Wednesday. “The guy’s an American citizen who has been an admitted lawyer to practice in the state of New Jersey, swearing an oath to uphold the laws of New Jersey, the constitution of the state of New Jersey, and the Constitution of the United States of America . . . .This Sharia law business is crap. It’s just crazy. And I’m tired of dealing with the crazies.” I’m tired of dealing with the crazies too. Yahoo News: Latest and Breaking News, Headlines, Live Updates, and More
Yes. Upon reading the thread title/OP, one of my first thoughts was “psychological projection”. Most of the people I see who think there’s a real threat of the imposition of Sharia law on Western society are the sort who want to impose “Christian values” on society instead. They are projecting their own agenda onto others.
I don’t mean to break up the whole “conservatives are stupid and evil” vibe, but since the OP originally asked this question in GQ, I thought I’d at least make a good faith effort to try to give a sincere, non-partisan answer.
As I understand it, the concern with the implementation of sharia law came about mostly post-9/11. Specifically, one of Al Qaeda and (the late) Osama bin Laden’s central tenets is that they oppose man-made laws, and want to replace them with a hardline, worldwide caliphate founded on sharia law. So the opposition to sharia law seems to be intertwined with the fear of terrorism.
And here’s how another conservative writer described it back in 2005:
So if I was trying to trace the fear of sharia to a single event, I’d have to go back to the 9/11 attacks. Because one of aQ’s goals is to overthrow democracy and impose sharia law, lots of people seem to associate sharia law with terrorism.
And just for the sake of clarity, I don’t think anyone is actually suggesting that sharia law will be legislated and implemented any minute. I think, as suggested in the NY Times article linked above, it’s a fear of a creeping, stealthy sharia law. In other words, the idea seems to be that we’re sliding down a slippery slope, and the further we get down that slope, the more difficult it will be to turn back that momentum.
Please note that I oppose sharia law – except in cases in which the participants voluntarily submit to it, which I think is totally up to them – but I think fear of sharia law in the US is overblown. So please don’t look to me to defend it.