“As of June, 2011, there were forty-seven bills in twenty-one states that were seeking to ban the use of Shari‘a and/or any category of international law." Spearheaded by the Louisiana and Tennessee legislatures, nearly half of the country’s states entertained the idea of banning Islamic law. One state, Wyoming, even engaged the idea of prohibiting its courts from citing other states that might permit the use of Shari‘a law. In addition to crippling the ability of judges and juries to engage the religious and cultural dimensions of Muslim subjects coming before the courts, anti-Shari‘a legislation conflicts with the Establishment Clause and, perhaps more acutely, the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, thereby endangering the rights of Muslim Americans to freely practice their religion of choice.

QUESTION: Worth investigating whether any of these bills actually passed or were all defeated by constitutional challenges.

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 308