05.26.12
White, right wing and paranoid in Kansas
Proving only that putting Republicans in power is dangerous because they do paranoid as well as predatory things antithetical to what the country once stood for, Kansas governor Sam Brownback signed into law the state GOP’s anti-shariah bill.
Republican Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed a bill aimed at keeping state courts and agencies from using Islamic or other non-U.S. laws when making decisions, his office said on Friday, drawing criticism from a national Muslim group.
The law has been dubbed the “Shariah bill” because critics say it targets the Islamic legal code …
About 20 states [all under GOP governance] have considered similar legislation but the Kansas law is the only one signed in recent weeks, Council on American Islamic spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said.
“It’s unfortunate the governor chose to pander to the growing Islam-phobia in our society that has led to introduction of similar unconstitutional and un-American legislation in dozens of state legislatures,” Hooper said.
Hooper said legislators have often referred to Shariah law in supporting such legislation, but he said they take the word out of the bill to stave off legal challenges. The Kansas bill does not mention Shariah.
The Islam-o-Phobe most responsible for the national campaign to get anti-Shariah legislation passed into law in red states is birther Frank Gaffney, the man lampooned in the excerpt from the Tom Tomorrow cartoon, above.
Gaffney is also a prime mover in the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy and a vocal part of the Bomb Iran/ballistic missile defense lobby. Over the past few years he’s been in the blog on a frequent basis, every time for activities connected with electromagnetic pulse doom and whipping up fear, confusion and hysteria over the imagined creeping threat of shariah law in this country.
While we won’t be around to read future histories of the country, those who write them won’t be kind because of the likes of Frank Gaffney and the extremists of the Republican Party. They are a symptom the country is ungovernable and immune to reason, now in a demonstrable decline.
The debate in Kansas over the anti-Shariah bill showed a few state Republicans making slight noises over how they were ashamed to have been part of it. However, when they had the opportunity to do something they chose not to, going with the crazy crowd, lacking spine over fears of lost careers for the sins of common human decency, ethics and principles.
The official party of true blue American bigots wins one for the patron saints of intolerance and the setting of notoriously bad examples.
Frank Gaffney — from the archives.
Anti-shariah and Islam-o-Phobe crazy — from the archives.
User Hostile said,
May 26, 2012 at 10:39 am
Which leaves the obvious question: What about the pernicious foreign influence of the Bible? Surely they realize that legislation applies to this too?
George Smith said,
May 26, 2012 at 12:43 pm
No, Christians interpreting and making law — like picking on teh gays and women — is because Jesus said it was OK. Or have you not been keeping up with the parables of American Jesus?