Alabama approves law to prohibit sharia
I almost missed this, but there's good news in the deep south:
Alabama voters passed a constitutional amendment Tuesday to prohibit the use of foreign laws in state courts. Republican state Sen. Gerald Allen, who is also a Baptist deacon, sponsored the amendment. He proposed a similar measure in 2011. It never made the ballot since it made specific mention of Islamic Sharia law, which was deemed a violation of the Constitution. A similar measure was also rejected in Oklahoma last year for the same reason, though the judge who struck it down acknowledged that if the term “Sharia” was removed it could solve the problem. [...]Very good. They've done the right thing, and proven the state's changed a lot since the days when racism and slavery were a serious problem there.
This time around, Allen’s new bill made no mention of the Islamic term specifically, and he was confident it would appeal to voters' conservative values. “It took several times to rewrite the bill itself, to make sure it was correct and to make sure it would be constitutional,” Allen said on Alabama Public Radio last week. “We as a legislature felt like it’s important to bring this before the people of Alabama to let their voice be heard because we’re living in a changing world."
Labels: islam, United States
