State Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, and state Rep. Judd Matheny, R-Tullahoma, have introduced a bill that would make it a felony to adhere to Sharia law in the state of Tennessee — punishable by 15 years in jail. The facially unconstitutional law would make Tennessee the leading state in the Union in the denial of freedom of religion.
The law declares Sharia to be a danger to homeland security and includes any adherence to Sharia (including feet washing and prayers) as prohibited acts.
Matheny is the House speaker pro tempore and actually says that he is defending the U.S. Constitution by denying religious practices to citizens.
The law was reportedly drafted by David Yerushalmi, an Ariz.-based attorney who runs the Society of Americans for National Existence, a nonprofit that says following Shariah is treasonous. The article below reports that Yerushalmi has “close ties to Frank Gaffney, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy.”
Yerushalmi has been denounced as a “facsict” by writers like Richard Silverstein, who quotes Yerushalmi on such notable comments as this:
One must admit readily that the radical liberal Jew is a fact of the West and a destructive one…Indeed, Jews in the main have turned their backs on the belief in G-d and His commandments as a book of laws for a particular and chosen people…What interest does America have in a strong Israel? If your answer is democracy in a liberal or western sense, know you have sided with the Palestinians of Hamas.
The bill is little more than an anti-Islamic screed. It includes such “findings” as:
The knowing adherence to sharia and to foreign sharia authorities is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the United States government and the government of this state through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the United States and Tennessee Constitutions by the likely use of imminent criminal violence and terrorism with the aim of imposing sharia on the people of this state.
It misstates critical aspects of the Islamic faith:
Sharia in particular includes a war doctrine known as jihad, which is an organic, intrinsic and central feature of the laws and traditions of sharia due to a consensus among sharia authorities throughout the ages
Jihad is in fact a general term that does not mean violent overthrow but a wide range of religious based charity and service, according to experts on Islam.
The bill is SB 1028 in the Senate and HB 1353 in the House. It treats mere adherence to Sharia as tantamount to terrorism, and includes a provision giving the state attorney general the power to designate a sharia-following organization in the same way that the U.S. Attorney General declares an organization to be a terrorist organization:
(1) The attorney general and reporter is authorized to designate an organization as a sharia organization in accordance with this subsection (a) if the attorney general and reporter finds that:
(A) The organization knowingly adheres to sharia;
(B) The organization engages in, or retains the capability and intent to engage in, an act of terrorism as defined in § 39-13-803; and
(C) The act of terrorism of the organization threatens the security or public safety of this state’s residents.
Here is the law: SB1028
There are few sites more critical of the abuses of Sharia law than this blog. If you search Sharia on this site, you will bring up an endless array of shocking abuses. However, the way to fight such abuse is not to become equally authoritarian and hateful. Most of these abuses are concentrated in radical Islamic governments. Sharia law is far broader in its application and interpretation.
It is highly ironic to see politicians advocating a bill criminalizing religious practices in the name of protecting a Constitution created to protect religious freedoms. One would have to go pretty far from our shores to find how to implement such laws. For example, Saudi Arabia outlaws places of worship of other religions and, of course, the Taliban regularly punishes those who practice other religions.
In the end, these legislators will simply expend taxpayer money to defend a law that has been unconstitutional since the establishment of this Republic.
Source: Tennessean
Jonathan Turley
Hallelujah brothers, now hand me that rattle snake cause i feel like dancin
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, February 24, 2011 at 5:04 pm
gingerbaker,
I think what you point out is that the real enemy is fundamentalist religious extremism.
It’s dangerous to society in any flavor.
##########################################
What greater danger might there be for the profession of law to be so greatly of deception that its practitioners have become deceived into not recognizing, as biophysical fact, that the adversarial practice of law is of the most superstitious, primitive fundamentalist religious extremism that may ever exist?
In the November 21, 2007 Door County Advocate, was published a paid advertisement Public Safety Announcement regarding my observation that the adversarial system of justice is an unconstitutional religious establishment.
Local people did respond to that advertisement and I have been talking with people in Door County about their experiences and the damage done to them by the Adversarial System.
I alone have the formal education, the necessary Doctoral Dissertation, and the required standing as a Registered Professional Engineer which I find are necessary in order that my work outrank the whole of the adversarial law establishment in terms of demonstrable scientific validity. None of the people with whom I talk have a smidgen of the scientific authority which my doctorate, my dissertation, and my Professional Engineer Registration accord to me.
I do not come to hurt or damage the law profession, for it is doing massive harm and damage to itself, and that damage is now posing a terrible threat to the rest of society.
All that is needed is simple, kind, gentle dialogic conversation to resolve the enigma told in Judge Harold J. Rothwax, “Guilty: The Collapse of Criminal Justice,” Philip K. Howard, “The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America,” and Judge Andrew P. Napalitano, “Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When The Government Breaks Its Own Laws?” and David J. Lieberman, Ph.D., “Never Be Lied To Again,” and Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockikngbird,” and Marshall B Rosenberg, Ph.D., “Speak Peace in a World of Conflict,” and Rik Scarce, “Contempt of Court: A Scholar’s Battle for Free Speech From Behind Bars,” and Catherine Crier, “The Case Against Lawyers,” and Dr. Edwin Vierira, “How to Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary,” and Catherine Crier, “Contempt: How the Right is Wronging American Justice,” and I have more names of lawyers and books which have concerns which my work may plausibly resolve.
I have run my work by Arthur Schwartz, Esq., General Counsel of the National Society of Professional Engineers without finding an objection on his part. The one and only lawyer to whom I plan to pay attention regarding the engineering propriety of my work is Arthur Schwartz. For his understanding regarding engineering and the law, I pay considerable dues to the National Society of Professional Engineers, and I plan to get my money’s worth from my NSPE dues.
Shall we begin to communicate within a framework of kindness, respect, and the burgeoning issues of public safety posed by the Adversarial Principle?
Sooner or later, truth will be heard, for it is speaking now.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Legislate.
Ginger,
That ruling was overturned.
http://jonathanturley.org/2010/10/29/too-sooner-for-sharia-oklahoma-legislators-seek-to-bar-application-of-sharia-law-in-state-courts/
(It’s talked about midway through the Professor’s post).
As Buddha said, the enemy is not any specific fundamentalism, it’s ALL fundamentalism. Let’s worry about the stuff that’s actually having an effect on America, then we can deal with the rest of the world.
“Alas, there is a finding in psychology that often comes to the attention of Dr. Harris, and it goes something like this, “If you are told something often enough, you will come to believe it, no matter what it is,” (no matter how irrational or destructive it is).”
Well Rev. (which explains a lot), that’s just high irony of the juiciest sort considering that your postulate about the a value of legal dispute resolution via adversarial due process is both irrational and destructive as
1) legal dispute resolution via adversarial due process is the alternative process to personal self-help adversarial dispute resolution which results in the tyranny of the strong over the weak and often violence and
2) that such an alternative to self-help dispute resolution somehow creates adversity (adversity which in fact is caused simply by human nature, human interaction and circumstance) when what legal dispute resolution via adversarial due process does is remove the potential for violence from adversity and is thus a cornerstone of maintaining civilization over anarchy and tyranny.
You have adopted the very mechanism of propaganda (“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”- Joseph Goebbels) to spread your irrational idea.
Even going so far as to take out a paid ad.
You know, Fred Phelps hates fags and hides behind religion too.
Hate, like tyranny and anarchy, is inherently destructive to society.
That you both choose to hide your destructive ideas behind religion comes as no surprise. But please, appeal to your inappropriate authority some more using circular logic, belief instead of empirical fact, distortions and lies and try to pass it off as science. You might be able to pass that off as religion, but science it isn’t. And while you’re at it, please compare yourself to Galileo, Einstein or Hawking again.
That’s just hysterically funny.
RE: Mike Appleton, February 24, 2011 at 4:41 pm
Dr. Harris:
Some professions fall under professional regulation statutory schemes. Lawyers fall under a different regulatory category. They are nonetheless regulated.
#############################################
Unfortunately or Fortunately (take your pick), I am a vastly better research scientist than many folks are likely to imagine ever being possible.
The law profession is only regulated by itself except as the Court of Public Opinion weighs in its verdicts. I have read the Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules and the whole of the relevant documents which I find appertain to law and its self-regulation.
The predicament I find, as a bioengineer, is that the law, being a law only unto itself save for that Court of Public Opinion, is simply the standard dilemma of absolute power necessarily turning into absolute tyranny for want of any practical preventive.
I planted my “Public Safety Announcement” in the Door County Advocate long before I knew about the Turley Blawg. When I understood enough of the nature of the Adversarial System, by November, 2007, to recognize how my work would likely be received, I set about to “plant some seeds” in anticipation of my work being met with blanket total prejudice, and set about to find a way to establish a form of connection with the law profession such that I might get a tiny peek into the structure of the law profession sufficient that I could have even the tiniest of chances to find someone who might allow for the possibility of looking into my research and its findings.
When that little red-light incident happened and I found that Officer Joseph Bilodeau had mistakenly decided that I had realized I was at fault (something I will never realize after making a video tape of the traffic light timing and making reasonably accurate measurements of the intersection to validate my having observed that, though the timing “was close,” I did not, as a matter of fact, violate that red light. Because the red light incident was a triviality in that no one was injured, it gave me an opportunity to study the process of false conviction at rather small personal risk. And study the false conviction process, indeed I have done.
As an instance, when I contacted then City Attorney, James Downey, to find out what to do about the false police report of Officer Bilodeau, Downey told me that I had a choice between telling one of the two lies he told me I would have to tell. I told him, in effect, that, as a matter of conscience, I would not tell any lie of any sort. Downey then lied to me by telling me that I had to enter a plea. Knowing that the judge is required to enter a “not guilty plea” if a defendant refuses to enter a plea, I told Downey, “If I have to enter a plea, my plea will be ‘Contempt of Court’ ” Whereupon Downey almost instantly “hung up” on me.
I have the courage to stand up for the real rule of law, the rule of law which allows lawyer and client to act in accord with law without working to destroy one another.
I seek to do my share, as a citizen and as a professional engineer to help the profession of law become a profession about which no one will ever again consider thinking, “First, let us kill all the lawyers.”
There is a way, I know what it is, I understand it, and I am available pro bono.
rafflaw,
“In Georgia, having a uterus may soon become dangerous.”
Thankfully, I have no future plans on visiting GA. I’d really hate like hell to have to have a hysterectomy at this point in time.
henman,
In Georgia, having a uterus may soon become dangerous.
gingerbaker,
I think what you point out is that the real enemy is fundamentalist religious extremism.
It’s dangerous to society in any flavor.
Look out, Hammurabi, you’re next!
Raff- re: “The Uterus Police”- Is possession of a uterus a felony or a misdemeanor?
Jim- Good stuff!
I don’t share your optimism. In Britain, there are 85 Sharia courts abrogating the rights of Muslim women, however “voluntarily” they may want to give up those liberties. There is at least one instance of a UK Sharia court adjudicating a knife stabbing.
There is at least one case in the U.S. of a Muslim man getting away with a crime against his wife, for which he would normally be convicted, because a judge felt he had to respect his religious sensibilities.
There a lot of areas where Sharia law demeans women, gays, and infidels which will be in gray areas, and will be protected by what I feel ( I admit to large amounts of bias) has long been an overly generous interpretation of the establishment clause. It is going to be very interesting to see how right-wing religious clowns react to Muslims demanding the same types of deference, and more, that Christians have enjoyed for many years.
Many people feel that Islam will react to modern democratic society as Christianity did, and will assimilate. I don’t see much indication that this is happening. The prominence in the U.S. of fundamentalist or evangelical Christian factions is what the rest of the world is seeing with Islam, which already enjoys very large fundamentalist minorities and indeed majorities in many places. Bastions of moderate Islam, like Indonesia are at risk of losing their liberalism with the rise of the fundamentalist factions.
These elements are politically aggressive, have very high birth rates, and do not assimilate well at all. Eventually, we will be seeing a real battle for extremely generous religious accommodations here, I think, and then the Christianists will ally with the Islamists toward that end – a right for theocratic determination, if not an outright theocracy. A Sarah Palin will be the liberal on the ticket. 😉
The following text is the text of an advertisement printed in a newspaper of general record, the Door County Advocate, Vol. 146, No. 70, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2007, on page 11A.
Paid Advertisement
Public Safety Announcement from Rev. J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E.
(Wisconsin Professional Engineer No. 34016, Town of Nasewaupee, Door County, Wisconsin)
This announcement is the work of a Wisconsin Professional Engineer and is of the engineer’s professional engineering. Dr. Harris finds that he is licensed in the public safety interest by the State of Wisconsin, and finds that Wisconsin law prohibits a professional engineer from using deception in the practice of Professional Engineering, and Dr. Harris also finds that Wisconsin law requires that a professional engineer call attention to endangerment of the public safety.
Dr. Harris holds B.S. (High Honors) and Ph.D. degrees in bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His doctoral dissertation is titled, “Mental Health and Mental Illness: Cause, Purpose, Cure, and Prevention; A Bioengineering Perspective (1998).
Dr. Harris is a Life Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and is a member of the National Society of Professional Engineers, the Wisconsin Society of Professional Engineers, the Biomedical Engineering Society, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Sturgeon Bay Ministerial Association.
To Dr. Harris, engineering is the solving of practical problems, efficiently, economically, and effectively, using scientific principles, and bioengineering is engineering applied to the phenomenon of life, and life consists of what is alive and its substrate, and that is the whole entirety of creation as it exists. Thus, Dr. Harris finds he is licensed by the State of Wisconsin to inquire into the public safety aspects of anything and everything, and is required to make a diligent effort to inform those who need to know of any and every endangerment to public safety as he is able to scientifically identify, doing so with all due diligence.
Four times since moving back to Door County, Dr. Harris has encountered the adversarial justice system established in Door County. Each time, Dr. Harris has increasingly, subjectively experienced being treated by justice establishment personnel as though he was something akin to vile, stinking, putrid filth. Given his consistent observation that the personnel of the justice establishment are good people, who intend to do what is good and proper, Dr. Harris had long pondered and studied why it seems that good people are often unable to avoid really hurtful and damaging conduct directed toward both self and others.
In the understanding of Dr. Harris, the late Dr. Albert Ellis developed what he called “Rational-Emotive Therapy” (RET). In RET, life is as simple as “ABC” if A stands for Activating events, B stands for (sometimes irrational) Beliefs, and C stands for Consequences or Conduct. Beliefs which are not irrational lead to constructive outcomes, and beliefs which are irrational tend to lead to destructive and damaging outcomes, so Dr. Harris finds.
Perhaps Will Rogers said it about as well as anyone can, “It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.” Dr. Harris finds that what is actually real does not trouble us; rather, sincerely believing that falsehood is truth is what seems to really mess up people. Alas, there is a finding in psychology that often comes to the attention of Dr. Harris, and it goes something like this, “If you are told something often enough, you will come to believe it, no matter what it is,” (no matter how irrational or destructive it is). Dr Harris finds that this says nothing about any person, but perhaps speaks volumes about the structure of human society as seen from a scientifically-valid bioengineering-oriented public safety viewpoint.
It is the finding of Dr. Harris, based on his life work, that the present-day adversarial justice system is tantamount to an unconstitutional established organized religion which, when the death penalty is used, is of the blood-sacrifice sort, and that the adversarial system is, in his considered, scientific, view, an atrocity in the form of a catastrophic crime against human biology; and yet no one is at fault nor to blame for this condition. Nonetheless, Dr. Harris find that the adversarial system is damaging to, and destructive of, the public safety.
“An eye for an eye.” will eventually make everyone blind if many people close an eye and imagine it to have been taken by someone else. The late Dr. Martin Cooperman described “the defeating process” as the proclivity of people to act hurtfully in response to having been, or having felt, hurt. Yet the research of Dr. Harris shows that no one can apparently describe even a single mistake made which could have truthfully have been avoided through any actually achievable process. This finding, clearly shown in the doctoral dissertation of Dr. Harris, which remains perfectly without refutation, may be sufficient for people to begin to turn right-side up, present day, topsy-turvy human society. It has become very clear to Dr. Harris, that, if no mistake ever made could truthfully have been avoided through any actually achievable process, then conventional punishment of people for making mistakes is purely of abuse. More of what causes a problem only makes the problem worse, as Dr. Harris has long observed. Absent finding even one mistake made which truthfully could have been avoided, is it not manifestly obvious that no one can ever truthfully or actually have been, or ever be, at fault for anything? Sincerity is not truthfulness.
Is any form of intentionally destructive human behavior ever anything other than the conduct that results from mistakenly or sincerely held irrational or false or mistaken beliefs? Dr. Harris finds that creativity had a beginning and all that exists now is the limit of what creativity has yet been able to create.
Anyone interested in the possibility of working together with Dr. Harris and others to learn how we may better learn to live in harmony with the beauty of creation that is the nature of Door County may call Dr. Harris at (920) 746-1464, or write to him at 3635 Zirbel Rd., Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235-9433.
This paid advertisement has been authorized by Rev. J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E.
[Note: The above-listed telephone number, (920) 746-1464, is no longer in use by Dr. Harris]
Yeah, Mike. That excessive entanglement is a tough row to hoe.
Dr. Harris:
Some professions fall under professional regulation statutory schemes. Lawyers fall under a different regulatory category. They are nonetheless regulated.
A blanket prohibition is unconstitutional. Period. Certain provisions would undoubtedly be held unenforceable based upon constitutional, statutory and public policy grounds in this country. But that is a matter to be approached on a case by case basis. I know of no reason that Muslim businessmen, for example could not enter into commercial transactions which provide for the resolution of any disputes in accordance with sharia legal principles.
RE: rcampbell, February 24, 2011 at 2:14 pm
Are not the laws on state and federal books which discriminate against gays, including marriage, and/or which in any way restricts access or conduct of the legal medical procedure called abortion solely based on Christian dogma? In the interest of passing Constitutional hurdles, is it not required that this proposed law ban the implementation or influence of ALL religious faiths in our secular laws?
#############################################
I happen to belong to a Christian Church, Hope United Church of Christ, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. We have had openly-gay minister(s). Hope Church is an Open and Affirming Congregation within the United Church of Christ. We are Christian and we have no doctrine or dogma which discriminates against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Transsexual, Two-spirited, Queer, Questioning, or any other such divisive category or classification of humanity.
Some “Christians” may be sincere, and not yet fully informed as to what the message of Jesus means now.
As a member of a United Church of Christ congregation, as a citizen of the State of Wisconsin, and in accord with my conscience, I find that the Anglo-AmericanAdversarial System of Jurisprudence, as presently constituted, is a religious cult which is acting as though properly usurping my rights of conscience which are the essence of the core of my life as a covenant relationship with that which gives life to the living.
Pretending to be a function of government, the Adversarial System is accountable only to its priesthood. It is totally without government regulation save as it claims to be our government. Attorneys are members of the Bar Associations, private religious cults at best, bereft of government oversight as the members of the bar who rise to become supreme court judges are within the Cult of the Bar.
In the manner of all government-regulated professions, I am licensed by the State of Wisconsin, as are physicians, surgeons, barbers, and a quick count suggests to me that there are about 131 regulated and licensed professions in Wisconsin from Accountant to Wholesale Distributor of Prescription Drugs.
The list of Wisconsin Regulated and Licensed Professions may be found at:
http://www.drl.state.wi.us/profession_list.asp?locid=0
If you believe that The Law is a regulated and licensed profession in Wisconsin, why is it nowhere to be found on the list of regulated and licensed professions?
The Cult of the Bar has a dogma, one which, when reduced to its simplest form that I can yet find, is, “The Dogma of The Bar is Not A Dogma.”
I have observed the Anglo-American Adversarial System of Jurisprudence to be of the form of a religious cult for many years, gradually studying it before becoming ready to put at risk the rest of my life in consequence of being falsely found in contempt of court.
I placed a “Paid Advertisement, Public Safety Announcement in a newspaper of general record, the Door County Advocate, in Vol. 146, No. 70, Wednesday, November 21, 2007, which was printed on page 11A of said newspaper edition. In the next comment which I here post, I will include the exact text of that Public Safety Announcement as originally published.
It is more than three years since I published that Public Safety Announcement, and a few people have told me, quietly, that they read it, and those who so told me said things of the form of, “It’s about time someone did that.”
I have a hunch, not verified, that members of the Door County Bar read it; it was printed adjacent to the Editorial Page, page 10A, where it would be hard to miss for anyone who reads the Door County Advocate with care.
I do not accept being bullied by anyone, regardless of whatever personal consequences may result to me for my refusal to tolerate any trace of any hint of bullying which I find I am able to accurately recognize.
The Law and the Law Profession are neither regulated nor licensed by the State of Wisconsin.
I have asked many people about their sense of law being a regulated profession in Wisconsin, and have yet to find anyone, including any lawyer or attorney-at-law who was willing or able to correctly tell me about how the profession of law is, and is only, a law unto itself; save for the Court of Public Opinion.
It is to the only valid court in the whole land of which I am aware, that I endeavor to plead my case.
None but the Court of Public Opinion has lawful jurisdiction.
Buddha,
And, of course, those 2 brilliant republican, Tennessee lawmakers, state Sen. Bill Ketron and state Rep. Judd Matheny, are smart enough to understand the points in your post to rcampbell (2:27pm).
They had to turn to a dude in Arizona to get the initial bill written for them. So now Arizona is writing bills for Tennessee and Utah is dictating political recalls for Wisconsin … the Republican Party’s new view on States Rights.
Thank god for the internet … 15 years ago we ordinary folk might have suspected there were hordes of crazies occupying elected offices across the nation … now we can prove it.
I personally like pete’s comment on another thread … it was a short, sweet quip and I just spent 45 minutes looking for it and somehow missed it … apologies to pete.
Ginger,
Excuse me, I misread your post. Let me offer my apologies.
The thing is, we already have a system in place for resolving the conflict between religion and government. It works for fundamentalists of all stripes. We prosecute Mormon polygamists (assuming they’re the kind that ‘marries’ young girls) with the same fervor that we prosecute “honor killings.” Parts Sharia law may be antithetical to the U.S. legal system, but so are parts of Brahmanism, Mosaic law, Catholic doctrine, etc. The difference is that Muslims are the ‘other’ de jour.
rc,
That would be one way to give it a greater chance of success as it would meet easily one of the prongs of the Lemon test, namely a valid secular purpose namely bolstering the 1st Amendment protection of separation of church and state. However, the second prong is problematic as it is must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion. This prong could however be met with careful rewording of the proposal that was non-sectarian in banning any religious based laws. The third prong is still the most difficult to meet and that is avoiding excessive entanglement. With non-sectarian language with prong is approachable but not a given. It would be a matter of proposed levels of interaction in keeping legislation religiously neutral and would those interactions interfere with the right to free exercise in a burdensome way.
Are not the laws on state and federal books which discriminate against gays, including marriage, and/or which in any way restricts access or conduct of the legal medical procedure called abortion solely based on Christian dogma? In the interest of passing Constitutional hurdles, is it not required that this proposed law ban the implementation or influence of ALL religious faiths in our secular laws?