

GAFFNEY: American laws for American courts

Preserving the Constitution means rejecting Shariah

- The Washington Times - Monday, January 23, 2012

Shortly before Newt Gingrich's decisive victory in South Carolina last week, he was asked a critical question by a Palmetto State voter: Would he support a Muslim candidate for president? The former speaker of the House answered in a way that was both characteristically insightful and profoundly helpful with respect to one of the most serious challenges our country faces at the moment.

Mr. Gingrich responded by saying it depends on a critical factor: Is the candidate "a modern person who happens to worship Allah"? Or is he "a person who belonged to any kind of belief in Shariah, any kind of effort to impose that on the rest of us"? Mr. Gingrich observed that the former would not be a problem, while the latter would be a "mortal threat." The Georgia Republican went on to assert the need for federal legislation that would prevent Shariah from being applied in U.S. courts.





The Muslim Brotherhood in America calls this "civilization jihad." It seeks through, for example, the use of Shariah in U.S. courts to insinuate their program here at the expense of our constitutional rights and state public policy.

A sense of how far along we are in this process was provided by a study conducted last year by the Center for Security Policy. Titled "Shariah in American Courts," it examined a small microcosm of U.S. jurisprudence. Its findings were alarming: Out of a sample of 50 cases, in 27 instances in 23 states, the courts involved allowed the use of Shariah to adjudicate the dispute.

In almost all of the cases, that outcome was at the expense of the constitutional rights of American women or children. Under Shariah, they simply do not enjoy the same stature and are not entitled to the same freedoms they are under U.S. law.

In November 2010, 70 percent of the voters of Oklahoma approved an amendment to the state constitution that would have barred Shariah from being used in Oklahoma's courts. No sooner had the balloting ended than the local franchise of CAIR - an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial - asked for an injunction on the grounds that such a prohibition would violate Muslims' constitutional rights. A federal judge agreed, and the ruling was recently upheld by an appellate court.

Fortunately, those who concur with Mr. Gingrich on the nature of the threat posed by Shariah and want to prevent its further penetration into this country have another option. Three states - Tennessee, Louisiana and Arizona - have already enacted a statute known as American Laws for American Courts (ALAC). It prohibits the use of any foreign law in the state's courts that would interfere with U.S. constitutional rights or state public policy.


The Muslim Brotherhood and its friends desperately hope to stave off the further enactment of American Laws for American Courts. They recognize that it can effectively thwart a key part of their civilizational jihad in this country. They also have seen that wherever ALAC is considered, more and more of our countrymen are becoming aware of the problem Mr. Gingrich has helped define: the threat from Shariah and the need to keep its adherents from imposing that toxic, anti-constitutional doctrine on the rest of us, whether by stealth in our courts (among other places) or through terrifying violence.

For all these reasons, we should ensure that neither Shariah nor any other form of foreign or transnational law is allowed to trump our constitutional rights. To the Muslim Brotherhood's fury, ALAC is a way of doing it in a constitutionally sound and highly teachable way.

