Shariah In The U.S.A.

Unlike Esquire, I don't believe America is under imminent threat from the spread of shariah, or that radical Islamism is slowly creeping under the nation's consciousness, spreading its venomous roots without our knowing it. I chalk his fear up to the conservative's typical tendency to see impending and apocalyptic threats everywhere and anywhere to the status quo. (You can see a similar impulse in Sharron Angle's hilarious 1993 letter to Harry Reid about the End Of Days that the Clinton tax hikes will no doubt bring to the polity. Right.)

I don't think there's anything wrong with opposing change as a principle; I've read enough Burkean texts exposing the limits of human agency to appreciate the stand. But we, as humans, are also cursed with the logic of scarcity, and if we think our greatest threat comes from a creeping Islamofascism in this country, we'll likely do things -- like pass absolutely pointless, political stunts like the anti-shariah law Newt Gingrich has proposed -- that will hog up time for genuinely useful legislation (it exists! I tell you, those bills exist! Cap and trade, anyone? Comprehensive immigration reform? No?)

I do have two thoughts I wanted to discuss: first, re: shariah, Esquire earlier said he generally opposed its notion that God should be recognized as the fount of all laws. But what does that mean for, say, Sarah Palin's recent claim that one can trace a straight line from America's Constitution to the Ten Commandments and Judeo-Christian principles? Forget that Palin said it; it's an opinion widely expressed among conservative circles, e.g. the Constitution is "divinely inspired," or that limited government is a uniquely Christian notion (as Dinesh D'Souza has argued)? What's the difference here and the logic of shariah, other than we're talking different gods? (I'm not trying to be a smart ass here; I'm genuinely trying to tease out some principles on religion/state jurisprudence.)

There was a woman quoted in The New York Times last week who said she had no problem with freedom of religion, except -- and this was a whopper of an exception -- she didn't consider Islam a "religion." Instead, she saw it as a political ideology wrapped in divine pretenses. OK, but what religion doesn't lead its followers to certain political decisions? Couldn't you make a similar charge against Catholics that they can't be trusted with power because they only do the bidding of the Pope? (Wait -- don't tell me, people did make this argument? You don't say.)

Second thought: My bigger problem with focusing on Islam like it's the return of Darth Vader is that it leads certain activists to hold Muslims to higher standards than other communities. We frequently hear about the various crimes committed against women that are routinely accepted, even sanctioned, in traditional Muslim communities. But we rarely hear that a pattern of abuse and domination against women has been the modus operandi of human history and has changed only recently, and that too only in select nations in the Western world blessed with immense national wealth.

If this debate follows this pattern, it also tends to view Muslims chiefly as people who regard religion as the foundation of their personality. That may no doubt be true for certain Muslims, but I reckon -- and this is based just on anecdotal experience -- that a fair number of Muslims place their religion alongside a plethora of other concerns and identity markers (gender, age, family, culture, language, nationalism, politics).

This isn't an argument for cultural relativism, so please don't throw that little bugaboo at me. I'm all for accepting certain universal truths that cross over all cultures, and I'm sure you'll find plenty of activists within Muslim countries who agree with that. But liberalism -- and by this, I mean classical liberalism, of Locke and Mill -- has a nasty habit of proclaiming on the one hand that all people are created equal, but then, in the fine print, poking and prodding certain communities and saying "you're not ready for it." We see this logic in Locke's works, for instance, when he talks about what kinds of rigorous education humans need to fully practice rationality (and, thus, exercise full political rights), thus undercutting the democracy of his idea of government by consent.

It just seems silly to me that on the one hand, we, as a country, are supposed to be fighting for burgeoning democracies in two Muslim-majority countries, and on the other, supposed to believe that this religion and many of its proponents believe a philosophy that is fundamentally anti-democratic. It's also ironic that both the Afghan and Iraqi Constitutions -- you know, the ones we have spent billions of dollars and had thousands of troops die for -- recognize Islam as the chief inspiration for all their laws. (Or do I exaggerate?)