The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has come to the aid of Oklahoma, attempting to rectify a flagrant trespass of the American Constitution.
Last November, a bill titled “Save Our State” aimed to amend the state’s constitution to prevent any court from relying on international or Sharia law, specifically, when making legal decisions. It overwhelmingly passed the statewide ballot initiative with 70 percent of voters in favor.
Supporters of the bill have insisted the nature of Sharia law, being such a threatening presence, compels us to take whatever preventative measures available to ensure our protection from it. That is blatant fear mongering and should not be tolerated as impetus for legislative action.
Furthermore, to ignore prejudicial factors embedded in the rhetoric endorsing the bill would be to assume that somehow Islam, Sharia law and terrorism don’t fall into the same category for, well, roughly 70 percent of Oklahomans.
Former state representative Rex Duncan, a co-sponsor of the bill, described the measure as a “preemptive strike to make sure that liberal judges don’t take the bench in an effort to use their position to undermine [America’s] founding principles.”
This bill has become the lightning rod of criticism and condemnation from the rest of America — and rightly so. It exemplifies the very essence of digressive politics, hidden behind the veil of populism.
Muslim Oklahomans, who have withstood 10 years of prejudice since 9/11, are now being legislatively discriminated against. This is the truly hurtful part of the bill. Our inability to empathize with people different from the boot-wearin’, loud-talkin’, good-ol’-boy Oklahoman is shameful, and the fact that we took action to prepare ourselves from their takeover is ludicrous.
Many emotional letters have been published in the state’s leading newspaper, The Oklahoman, in which supporters of the ban have decried the 10th Circuit, blaming such nonsense on activist judges. One letter was titled “If People Don’t Like Our Laws, They Can Leave,” and I think that really captures the problematic attitude.
The truth is, most 10th Circuit justices were appointed by George W. Bush and fall pretty far to the right. The fact that they did place an injunction on the ban is credit to just how outlandish and unconstitutional this ban is.
The Constitution stands as a safeguard against this kind of legislation — an abuse of a minority by a majority — and the courts are charged with upholding it. A more precise example: If 99 percent of Americans wanted to enslave 1 percent, they would not be allowed to do so because the 13th Amendment prevents slavery.
But, let’s really explore a potentially more troubling aspect of the ban: Our legislature found it necessary to waste the time and money of Oklahoma taxpayers to pursue such erroneous policy.
More Oklahomans should be seething that even a second of time was spent “protecting” us from something that would only happen if our state was suddenly inundated with radical Muslims and the federal government sat idly by as Sharia law was enacted and upheld.
At a time when jobs, education and the general welfare of our state is on the chopping block, we’d rather debate Sharia law in the halls of our leaders, the newspaper’s opinion sections and our academic institutions.
There is no threat, whatsoever, of Oklahomans living under Sharia law.
We have the worst roads in the nation; we are ranked 43rd in the nation in K-12 education spending; we have the third-highest incarceration rate, and we are facing a $500 million budget shortfall for 2012. Those are some pretty serious issues.
Nevertheless, in one of our young state’s more trying times, we found it necessary to send out a loud and resounding message to the rest of the country and to the world that we never will tolerate Sharia law.
The ideology leading to the conception of this bill, the rhetoric employed to support it and the justifications after its passage epitomize the kind of politics that contribute nothing to the common good but detract from our state’s integrity.