Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Ban Sharia law, it violates the first amendment, and so does this ban

Judge blocks Oklahoma's ban on Islamic law

This ban seems both redundant and unconstitutional.

On the redundant side, I see the ban as a preventive measure to protect against the imposition of Sharia law on a non-Muslim population. Redundant because such an action would violate the first amendment. The ban is as pointless as a ban on slavery; the Constitution has that taken care of.

But the ban was too wide, potentially covering even personal matters, such as wills or contracts. In that case, it's clear government overreach by restricting personal decisions without even a hint of a public safety element or even protection of potentially vulnerable parties. For examples: I cannot write a contract for an illegal service such as murder and mentally disabled and underage people may be required to have the consent of a caretaker for some contracts.

Beyond the government overreach angle, which I don't put much stock in anyway, since too often it seems that 'government overreach' is just a derogatory term for "regulations which protect people from the abuses of others", there is the first amendment. Government cannot establish, or prohibit, a religion. As I've said elsewhere, the Christian-based Islamaphobia which uses a Christian theocracy as a way to block Islamic theocracy, is actually the very thing which would allow it, since to allow Christian theocracy would mean destroying the first amendment, which is the main protection against an Islamic theocracy. Or as I put it elsewhere: Is the American Tea Party a radical Islamist front?

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