Photo by Il Primo Uomo/Flickr (Creative Commons)
A temporary restraining order will continue in effect until the end of this month blocking a controversial new Oklahoma law that, if implemented, would amend the state’s constitution to ban the use of Islamic Sharia law in the state’s courts. United Press International reported that in a hearing today, a federal judge in Oklahoma City extended an order blocking implementation of what was known on the ballot as State Question 755, approved by voters in the Nov. 2 election.
The ballot initiative was approved by an overwhelming majority – 70 percent – even though there is no known instance of Islamic law ever being cited in Oklahoma courts.
Two days after the ballot measure was approved, the director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations filed suit to stop its implementation on constitutional grounds. Today the restraining order was extended until Nov. 29, when a ruling is expected on whether the law violates the U.S. constitution.
So what to make of this complicated case unfolding halfway across the country, and what broader implications does it have beyond the Sooner State, for Muslims and non-Muslims? There have been some interesting reads lately regarding State Question 755, the questions it raises, the conversations surrounding it, and the political implications it carries.
Here are a few:
- The New York Times had a great piece last weekend examining the role that Islam (and anti-Islamic fear-mongering) played in the election, to the extent that one state lawmaker who didn’t support the measure because he thought it unnecessary was ridiculed in mailers sent out by his opponent’s campaign that showed him next to “a shadowy figure in an Arab headdress.”
- Slate recently published a good explainer on what constitutes an Islamic will. The lawsuit filed by CAIR Oklahoma’s director Muneer Awad alleges that the anti-Sharia law initiative would essentially invalidate Islamic wills, which are quite specific.
- Time published a piece the other day that pointed out what for some is already obvious: Muslims have now joined Latinos and others before them as an election-year cultural wedge minority. “The strategy of designating an alien ‘other’ for political ends is hardly new in human history, and over the centuries it has been employed with equal expediency by the left and the right,” the piece reads. Continue reading
