Disorder in The Court

On the heels of the Ground Zero Mosque controversy that attracted national and even international attention voters in the state of Oklahoma passed a controversial referendum on Election Day. The “Save our State” initiative approved by 70 percent of Oklahoma voters amends the state constitution to prohibits state courts from recognizing sharia — Islamic law — as legitimate and factoring it into laws or court decisions. Less than a week later a judge issued an injunction against implementing the ballot results in response to a lawsuit brought by Muneer Awad head of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). A national debate on sharia’s place in American society was thus opened even wider with no sign of it subsiding anytime soon.

Most of America’s mainstream political academic and media establishment have been dismissive of the notion that American Muslims who comprise only approximately 2 percent of the population will in any way threaten other Americans with their adherence to their religion’s sacred law. Prominent Jewish journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic wrote “A Martian takeover of New Jersey is more likely than the imposition of a caliphate or of Muslim law on America.”

Countering the prevalent passive attitude in the face of the spread of sharia — as the Muslim population and political clout grow in the US — is a growing chorus of sharia critics. Among the most influential sections of that chorus are the authors of the recently released book Shariah: The Threat to America. The book was published by a team of respected national security and intelligence experts including former military and government officials as well as a host of other analysts.

The authors refer to themselves as “Team B” a moniker that hearkens back to a group of experts who reported to the CIA in the 1970s that the Soviet threat was far greater than was generally believed.