U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville believes that anyone “practicing” sharia law in the U.S. should be “deported immediately.”
Tuberville made the comments Wednesday during a 13-minute speech on the Senate floor alongside a poster that says, “BAN SHARIA LAW.”
Throughout the speech Tuberville mentioned that “radical Islamic extremists” were a threat to America and even stated that these extremists “want every single freedom loving American dead, bottom line
“They have proven over and over again that they’re willing to do whatever it takes to kill just one American citizen, whatever it takes and it isn’t just happening overseas,” Tuberville said. “It has been allowed to fester and is alive and well in our very own country, just waiting for the right opportunity to attack.”
Throughout the years many conservative politicians have invoked the prospect of “sharia law” taking over America as an Islamophobic and anti-Muslim trope.
In a statement to Al.com, Deputy Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, said that Tuberville’s remarks were “dangerous hatred against American Muslims” and he could learn about Islam if he took up a months-old offer to visit a Birmingham mosque.
“If Senator Tuberville ever takes up the community’s offer to visit an Alabama mosque, he will learn that Alabama Muslims are following sharia—which means the way to water—when they pray five times a day, fast in Ramadan, give in charity, and follow the laws of the land in which they live,” Mitchell said.
“Senator Tuberville will also learn that American Muslims have consistently opposed all forms of unjust violence, from terrorist attacks by Al-Qaeda and ISIS, to the genocide perpetrated by Israeli government in Gaza. This is called moral consistency, and Senator Tuberville should try it.”
Under civil law, you can make contractual arrangements for things like marriage, divorce settlements and child custody that happen to mirror shari'a law, as long as they don't conflict with state or federal law. And if that's offensive to you, all you need to do is to change state law to make such specific arrangements non-enforceable.
Some provisions of some interpretations of shari'a are offensive to me, too. Those provisions are often not all that different from views of the Christian religious right on women's and children's rights.
It's also worth noting that there's not a single shari'a law system. It varies by sect of Islam, by which school of jurisprudence even within a single sect, and in many cases, by country too.
So the short version is that this Cleetus can't tell his ass from a hole in the ground and should STFU.