Must-read story on the sharia scare: Jewish law could be next

In the “must read” category, check out Ron Kampeas’ story headlined “Anti-Sharia Laws Stir Concerns that Halachah Could Be Next.”

Ron looks at the still-growing movement in states across the country to ban sharia, or Islamic law, a movement that the ADL’s Abe Foxman called "camouflaged bigotry.”

Proponents of such legislation play on absurd fears of an Islamic plan to take over the legal system of the United States.

Ron writes: “If the state legislative initiatives targeting sharia are successful, they would gut a central tenet of American Jewish religious communal life: The ability under U.S. law to resolve differences according to halachah, or Jewish religious law.”

That’s why both major Orthodox Jewish groups – the Orthodox Union and Agudath Israel of America –  are worried about the impact of this anti-Islam surge.

Oklahoma has already passed a referendum on the issue and similar measures are under consideration in 13 other states.

And guess what: it’s not enough to argue, as some Jewish proponents of sharia scare stories do, that halachah and Christian canon law are somehow different from sharia, so banning it a matter of national self defense, not bigotry. These are the same kinds of theories about religious conspiracies to take over nations that were used against Jews for centuries – and undoubtedly will be used again if the anti-sharia surge continues.

But I don’t expect Jews who support these legislative efforts to respond to logic; my guess is that they’re the same folks who put out emails yesterday insisting that President Barack Obama is depressed because his “friend” Osama bin-Laden is dead.