What Does Shari\u2019a Really Mean?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In August, Representative Joe Walsh spoke to constituents at a town hall meeting in Elk Grove, Illinois, about radical Islam, noting, \u201cIt\u2019s in Addison.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/10\/what-does-sharia-really-mean.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Does Shari\u2019a Really Mean?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In August, Representative Joe Walsh spoke to constituents at a town hall meeting in Elk Grove, Illinois, about radical Islam, noting, \u201cIt\u2019s in Addison.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/10\/what-does-sharia-really-mean.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-10-02T07:36:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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{"id":1831,"date":"2012-10-02T07:36:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-02T07:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/10\/what-does-sharia-really-mean.html"},"modified":"2012-10-02T07:36:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-02T07:36:00","slug":"what-does-sharia-really-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/10\/what-does-sharia-really-mean.html","title":{"rendered":"What Does Shari\u2019a Really Mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I<\/span>n August, Representative Joe Walsh<\/a> spoke to constituents at a town hall meeting in Elk Grove, Illinois, about radical Islam, noting, \u201cIt\u2019s in Addison. It\u2019s in Elgin. It\u2019s here.\u201d Walsh, a Republican congressman whose district includes many of Chicago\u2019s northern suburbs, called for \u201cgodly men and women in the Senate, in the Congress \u2026 [to] stand in the face of the danger of Islam in America without political correctness.\u201d The next Muslim attack against America, he warned, \u201cwill make 9\/11 look like child\u2019s play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walsh\u2019s depiction of radical Islam fits into the popular narrative that Islam is \u201ccreeping\u201d into the political and social cultures of the United States, biding its time before Islamists take over America by force. This creeping takes many forms. If you ask Michele Bachmann<\/a>, the Muslim Brotherhood might be infiltrating the U.S. government through the most unlikely of Manchurian candidates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton\u2019s chief deputy, Huma Abedin. If you ask Peter King<\/a>, shari\u2019a creep is a \u201cstealth jihad\u201d to institute hardline Islamic law in the American judicial system itself. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a powerful narrative, one that is popular among politicians and American pundits who, intentionally or not, stoke anti-shari\u2019a flames and conflate Islam with radicalism. But anti-shari\u2019a talk is not just about political bluster or website hits. The talk is actually becoming law. Since 2011, according to the Council\u00a0on\u00a0American\u00a0Islamic\u00a0Relations<\/a> (CAIR), 73 bills have been introduced in 31 states, seeking to limit or bar the use of \u201cforeign law\u201d in American courts. Most often, the phrase \u201cforeign law\u201d is a thinly veiled euphemism for shari\u2019a. In May, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed a so-called \u201cshari\u2019a bill,\u201d making his state the first to ban courts from using Islamic law when considering legal decisions. In August, Kentucky Representative Kim King pre-filed a similar bill for the 2013 congressional session.<\/p>\n

Often the American politicians who propose anti-shari\u2019a legislation, and the many journalists who report on it, reduce Islamic law to a set of anti-modern, anti-women dictates formulated in seventh-century Arabia\u2014dictates that only survive in the twenty-first century through the autocratic rule of some Muslim clerics. But for almost all American Muslims, and much of the Islamic world, shari\u2019a is not this. And shari\u2019a is so much more.
Read the rest here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"