DN Editorial: Shari Law-less

WE DON'T often agree with what New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says or the way he often says it. But we cheer his recent response to a reporter's question about the fear that Muslim Sharia Law is undermining American jurisprudence.

"This Sharia Law business is just crap," he barked. "It's crazy."

The governor's outburst - following his nomination of a Muslim-American lawyer named Sohail Mohammed to the state Superior Court - illustrates the sheer bigotry of the anti-Sharia movement. The nomination drew immediate attacks from New Jersey conservative groups. They warned that Mohammed would base his judicial rulings not on the U.S. or New Jersey constitutions that he has sworn to uphold, but on Sharia Law. Apparently every Muslim, even one named a "Super Lawyer" by New Jersey magazine, is bound to impose the Koran from the bench.

Yep. Crap.

In the first place, most Muslims don't agree on just what Sharia Law entails. If they invoke it at all, it is usually is on private matters of prayer, diet or family. Occasionally, disputes that can't be solved within religious communities will end up in civil court, but it's not common.

So why are we now seeing this spike in fear that Muslims want to infiltrate our legal system? What has caused legislators in two dozen states to introduce bills that prohibit state judges from considering Sharia laws when making their rulings, as if this were an actual problem?

A recent report in the New York Times suggests an answer: David Yerushalmi, a New York lawyer who has claimed that whites are genetically superior to blacks, has written most of the "model" legislation that has been introduced in the states. Yerushalmi is associated with several outspoken anti-Muslim activists, including blogger Pam Geller, who helped gin up the controversy over an Islamic center being built near Ground Zero.

Geller and another of Yerushalmi's associates, Richard Spencer, just happen to be among the heroes cited in the 1,500-page manifesto written by Andrew Behring Breivik, the Norwegian whose anti-Muslim paranoia apparently drove him to kill 77 people, most of them kids, on July 22. Not that there's a connection, of course.

But it's a good time to point out, as the Jewish Anti-Defamation League did recently, that "rousing public fear by consistently vilifying the Islamic faith" can have disastrous consequences - even more severe than any threat from Sharia Law.

Tonight at 7, this editorial page joins WHYY, Azavea and others in a public workshop to introduce a contest where citizens get to redraw the map of the city, adding their voices to the redistricting process. Find out more at

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