Sharia Law in America WTF

[Billo_Really]

The True Story of Sharia in American Courts

Abed Awad June 13, 2012

---

The Kansas law is hardly unique. Since 2010, when Oklahoma voters first passed a constitutional amendment prohibiting judges from considering international law in their decisions, two dozen states have proposed or passed similar legislation. (The Oklahoma statute was struck down this past January, with a federal court ruling that lawmakers failed to “identify any actual problem the challenged amendment seeks to solve.”) Richard Thompson, a former Michigan prosecutor and president of the right-wing Thomas More Law Center—whose website cites “Confronting the Threat of Islam” as a key part of its advocacy—recently admitted that “Sharia law is the thing people think about” when it comes to such bans.

Sharia, or Islamic law, is a complex system of moral codes that governs all aspects of Muslim life. More than simply “law” in the prescriptive sense, it is also the methodology through which Muslims engage with foundational religious texts to search for the divine will. For devout Muslims, Sharia governs everything from the way they eat to how they treat animals and protect the environment, to how they do business, how they marry and how their estate is distributed after death. Although the emergence of the nation-state did away with the premodern methodology of Sharia, its current manifestations are either a source of legislation or actual state law in many Muslim countries.

The True Story of Sharia in American Courts | The Nation

They need to assimilate into the melting pot of America! If they don't like it here they can move or go home or go to eurabia...

If you think Sharia Law has a chance of making its way into US courts, then you really don't believe in this country or its judicial system. You really think we're that weak?

 

[American_Jihad]

The True Story of Sharia in American Courts

Abed Awad June 13, 2012

---

The Kansas law is hardly unique. Since 2010, when Oklahoma voters first passed a constitutional amendment prohibiting judges from considering international law in their decisions, two dozen states have proposed or passed similar legislation. (The Oklahoma statute was struck down this past January, with a federal court ruling that lawmakers failed to “identify any actual problem the challenged amendment seeks to solve.”) Richard Thompson, a former Michigan prosecutor and president of the right-wing Thomas More Law Center—whose website cites “Confronting the Threat of Islam” as a key part of its advocacy—recently admitted that “Sharia law is the thing people think about” when it comes to such bans.

Sharia, or Islamic law, is a complex system of moral codes that governs all aspects of Muslim life. More than simply “law” in the prescriptive sense, it is also the methodology through which Muslims engage with foundational religious texts to search for the divine will. For devout Muslims, Sharia governs everything from the way they eat to how they treat animals and protect the environment, to how they do business, how they marry and how their estate is distributed after death. Although the emergence of the nation-state did away with the premodern methodology of Sharia, its current manifestations are either a source of legislation or actual state law in many Muslim countries.

The True Story of Sharia in American Courts | The Nation

They need to assimilate into the melting pot of America! If they don't like it here they can move or go home or go to eurabia...

If you think Sharia Law has a chance of making its way into US courts, then you really don't believe in this country or its judicial system. You really think we're that weak?

With a lot of progressive/liberal cocksuckers like you, judges, professors, and lackadaisical Americans who are clueless, ah Ya...

 

[Billo_Really]

With a lot of progressive/liberal cocksuckers like you, judges, professors, and lackadaisical Americans who are clueless, ah Ya...

Now you're admitting you don't think conservatives got the chops to stop that from happening.

 

[American_Jihad]

With a lot of progressive/liberal cocksuckers like you, judges, professors, and lackadaisical Americans who are clueless, ah Ya...

Now you're admitting you don't think conservatives got the chops to stop that from happening.

So your not denying that your a progressive/liberal cocksucker...

 

[Billo_Really]

So your not denying that your a progressive/liberal cocksucker...

You got reality issues.

 

[American_Jihad]

The Huffington Post Whitewashes Sharia

9/1/12
By Pamela Geller


Last November, the Huffington Post published a piece that so fully displays the Islamic supremacist/enemedia strategy to full-on whitewash sharia and sell it to the American public that it is worth revisiting now -- especially since their agenda has advanced on all fronts since then, and the voices of truth are increasingly silenced and shut out of the public discourse.

Big broadcast news and print media offer Islamic supremacists and their leftist shills unfettered access to defame, lie about, smear, and give misleading information about freedom's fiercest defenders, without giving the victims of these vicious defamation campaigns the opportunity to rebut the false charges. This is twenty-first-century Goebbels-style propaganda. Islamic supremacists and their useful idiots on the left are given enormous power -- the kind of influence and access to deceive and mislead the American people that Nazi propagandists were given in Germany. The fact that people like Robert Spencer and me have any influence at all is a testament to the American people, who love freedom and seek out the truth.

---


Sharia does. But Rashid claims that "Shariah forbids that it be imposed on any unwilling person. Islam's founder, Prophet Muhammad, demonstrated that Shariah may only be applied if people willingly apply it to themselves--never through forced government implementation." Apparently he would have us believe that anyone can opt out at any time? A thief can decide that he isn't willing to have his hand cut off? An adulteress can say, "No, thank you, I would prefer not to be stoned to death"? Can non-Muslims say, "I'd prefer not to be a dhimmi, and would like to have equal rights with the Muslims, please"?

Look at the two premier sharia states in the world today: Saudi Arabia and Iran. Both are repressive, coercive, authoritarian regimes with dismal human rights records. Nor do the oppressed Shi'ite minority in Saudi Arabia or the oppressed Bahá'ís in Iran ever get asked if they are willing before sharia restrictions are imposed upon them. If they dare to complain, life gets even worse for them.

But Rashid insists that sharia requires "absolute justice." The trick here is that sharia's idea of justice and Western principles of justice are very different. Under sharia, Muslims deny the freedom of speech, execute apostates from Islam, cut clitorises, beat and honor-kill women, and deny basic rights to non-Muslims, and more -- and they call it all justice.

---

Read more: Articles: The Huffington Post Whitewashes Sharia

 

[LAfrique]

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has signed legislation blocking courts from recognizing Islamic Sharia law...

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed legislation late the week of May 25, 2012 titled “Concerning the protection of rights granted under the Constitution" which prohibits Kansas state courts from recognizing foreign laws including Islamic Sharia law.

Brownback signs bill that caused sharia flap

Posted: May 25, 2012 - 6:19am
By Andy Marso

Gov. Sam Brownback signed a bill this week aimed at keeping Kansas courts or governmental agencies from basing decisions on Islamic or other foreign legal codes.

The bill says courts or other tribunals can’t base rulings on any foreign legal system that wouldn’t grant rights guaranteed by the state and U.S. constitutions.

Brownback signs bill that caused sharia flap | CJOnline.com

I never understand why something like this even becomes an issue: This is the US, and it should be obvious that those who come to the US ought to live by US laws. And same goes for anyone who wishes to live in another nation/country: The laws of your host nation, not your own law, rules!

 

[High_Gravity]

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has signed legislation blocking courts from recognizing Islamic Sharia law...

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed legislation late the week of May 25, 2012 titled “Concerning the protection of rights granted under the Constitution" which prohibits Kansas state courts from recognizing foreign laws including Islamic Sharia law.

Brownback signs bill that caused sharia flap

Posted: May 25, 2012 - 6:19am
By Andy Marso

Gov. Sam Brownback signed a bill this week aimed at keeping Kansas courts or governmental agencies from basing decisions on Islamic or other foreign legal codes.

The bill says courts or other tribunals can’t base rulings on any foreign legal system that wouldn’t grant rights guaranteed by the state and U.S. constitutions.

Brownback signs bill that caused sharia flap | CJOnline.com

I never understand why something like this even becomes an issue: This is the US, and it should be obvious that those who come to the US ought to live by US laws. And same goes for anyone who wishes to live in another nation/country: The laws of your host nation, not your own law, rules!

Hmm, not a bad post.

 

[bobcollum]

With all the extra Muslims it would inevitably kill, you'd think the right would want them to be able to practice it in America.

 

[American_Jihad]

With all the extra Muslims it would inevitably kill, you'd think the right would want them to be able to practice it in America.

Where just trying to protect our progressive/liberal, LGBT, and atheist friends...

 

[American_Jihad]

Sharia versus Freedom

October 19, 2012 By Jamie Glazov

---

FP: What is Sharia and why is it relevant to US foreign and domestic affairs?

Bostom: According to the most authoritative twentieth-century Western Islamic legal scholar, Joseph Schacht (d. 1969), the Sharia, or “clear path to be followed,” is the “canon law of Islam,” which “denotes all the individual prescriptions composing it.” Schacht traces the use of the term Sharia to Koranic verses such as 45:18, 42:13, 42:21, and 5:48, noting an “old definition” of the Sharia by the seminal Koranic commentator and early Muslim historian Tabari (d. 923), as comprising the law of inheritance, various commandments and prohibitions, and the so-called hadd punishments. These latter draconian punishments, defined by the Muslim prophet Muhammad either in the Koran or in the hadith (the canonical collections of Muhammad’s deeds and pronouncements), included: (lethal) stoning for adultery; death for apostasy; death for highway robbery when accompanied by murder of the robbery victim; for simple highway robbery, the loss of hands and feet; for simple theft, cutting off of the right hand; for “fornication,” a hundred lashes; for drinking wine, eighty lashes. As Schacht further notes, Sharia ultimately evolved to become “understood [as] the totality of Allah’s commandments relating to the activities of man.” The holistic Sharia, he continues, is nothing less than Islam’s quintessence, “the Sharia is the most characteristic phenomenon of Islamic thought and forms the nucleus of Islam itself.” Schacht then delineates additional salient characteristics of the Sharia which have created historically insurmountable obstacles to its reform, through our present era.

Allah’s law is not to be penetrated by the intelligence . . . i.e., man has to accept it without criticism…It comprises without restriction, as an infallible doctrine of duties the whole of the reli*gious, political, social, domestic and private life of those who profess Islam, and the activities of the tolerated members of other faiths so far as they may not be detrimental to Islam.

---
Sharia versus Freedom

 

[Political Junky]

Meanwhile, Christianity is busy influencing American law.

 

[Katzndogz]

Christianity has always influenced American law, and English law and French law and a host of other laws. Christian law is not the same as or equal to shariah law.

 

[Wyld Kard]

Obama Administration Sets Stage For Sharia Law In America
Saturday, November 3, 2012



One of the most terrifying things that Americans could expect from a second term of Barack Obama is not the economic downturn that we are already experiencing. It’s not another ‘Fast and Furious’ scandal. Rather it appears that more and more the Obama administration, specifically the Department of Justice, is turning a blind eye to attempts to introduce aspects of sharia law into the legal system. Last week Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), a member of the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution questioned Assistant Attorney General of the DOJ Civil Rights Division Thomas Perez on the First Amendment and specifically he was asking in regards to criminalizing those who speak out against any religion.

Franks’ questions were prompted by a Daily Caller article from late last year in which Perez was quoted as warmly embracing the proposals of Islamist advocates in a meeting at George Washington University, among them a request for “a legal declaration that U.S. citizens’ criticism of Islam constitutes racial discrimination.”

Perez reportedly ended the meeting with an enthusiastic closing speech and was quoted as saying, “I sat here the entire time, taking notes…I have some very concrete thoughts … in the aftermath of this.”

Rep. Franks asked,
“Will you tell us here today that this Administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?”
Mr. Perez would not answer with a simple yes or no. In fact, though he was asked four times he still would not answer the question posed to him.

So why the targeting of Perez by Franks? William Bigelow writes,
Last October, at George Washington University, there was a meeting between DOJ officials, including Perez, and Islamist advocates against free speech. Representatives from the Islamist side included Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). The ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding trial in 2008, as well as functioning as a Muslim Brotherhood Front. The leader of the Islamist attack was Sahar Aziz, an Egyptian-born American lawyer and Fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a Muslim advocacy group based in Michigan.

At the meeting, the Islamists lobbied for:
Cutbacks in U.S. anti-terror training
Limits on the power of terrorism investigators
Changes in agent training manuals
A legal declaration that criticism of Islam in the United States should be considered racial discrimination.

Aziz said that the word “Muslim” has become “racialized” and, once American criticism of Islam was silenced, the effect would be to “take [federal] money away from local police departments and fusion centers who are spying on all of us.”
Niether the DOJ nor Perez had any response. It tells us very clearly that the Obama DOJ doesn’t care at all for real free speech. The implementation of Sharia law would completely undermine the U.S. Constitution.

The Obama administration obviously care that homosexuals can spout off about Christianity. They must believe that Muslims are OK to mock, openly ridicule and attack Christians, but look out if it should come to speech against Islam and pointing out its errors or false prophet!

 

[American_Jihad]

Obama Administration Sets Stage For Sharia Law In America
Saturday, November 3, 2012



One of the most terrifying things that Americans could expect from a second term of Barack Obama is not the economic downturn that we are already experiencing. It’s not another ‘Fast and Furious’ scandal. Rather it appears that more and more the Obama administration, specifically the Department of Justice, is turning a blind eye to attempts to introduce aspects of sharia law into the legal system. Last week Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), a member of the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution questioned Assistant Attorney General of the DOJ Civil Rights Division Thomas Perez on the First Amendment and specifically he was asking in regards to criminalizing those who speak out against any religion.

Franks’ questions were prompted by a Daily Caller article from late last year in which Perez was quoted as warmly embracing the proposals of Islamist advocates in a meeting at George Washington University, among them a request for “a legal declaration that U.S. citizens’ criticism of Islam constitutes racial discrimination.”

Perez reportedly ended the meeting with an enthusiastic closing speech and was quoted as saying, “I sat here the entire time, taking notes…I have some very concrete thoughts … in the aftermath of this.”

Rep. Franks asked,
“Will you tell us here today that this Administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?”
Mr. Perez would not answer with a simple yes or no. In fact, though he was asked four times he still would not answer the question posed to him.

So why the targeting of Perez by Franks? William Bigelow writes,
Last October, at George Washington University, there was a meeting between DOJ officials, including Perez, and Islamist advocates against free speech. Representatives from the Islamist side included Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). The ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding trial in 2008, as well as functioning as a Muslim Brotherhood Front. The leader of the Islamist attack was Sahar Aziz, an Egyptian-born American lawyer and Fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a Muslim advocacy group based in Michigan.

At the meeting, the Islamists lobbied for:
Cutbacks in U.S. anti-terror training
Limits on the power of terrorism investigators
Changes in agent training manuals
A legal declaration that criticism of Islam in the United States should be considered racial discrimination.

Aziz said that the word “Muslim” has become “racialized” and, once American criticism of Islam was silenced, the effect would be to “take [federal] money away from local police departments and fusion centers who are spying on all of us.”
Niether the DOJ nor Perez had any response. It tells us very clearly that the Obama DOJ doesn’t care at all for real free speech. The implementation of Sharia law would completely undermine the U.S. Constitution.

The Obama administration obviously care that homosexuals can spout off about Christianity. They must believe that Muslims are OK to mock, openly ridicule and attack Christians, but look out if it should come to speech against Islam and pointing out its errors or false prophet!

 

[GlobeOtter]

Title of the article has nothing to do with the content. A Muslim advocacy group coming up with a wish list is a better title.
I don't see why the president should waste anytime responding to every group who thinks they can change the law. Let em come up with the wish lists that won't do squat

 

[American_Jihad]

Florida and Oklahoma Vote for Freedom

April 12, 2013
By Robert Spencer

Florida and Oklahoma just passed legislation restricting the use of foreign law in state courtrooms, and many other states are considering similar laws.

...

Sharia is also political and supremacist, mandating a society in which non-Muslims would not enjoy equality of rights with Muslims. And that is the focus of anti-Sharia laws: to prevent this authoritarian and oppressive political and social system from eroding the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. It is plainly disingenuous to claim that anti-Sharia laws would infringe upon Muslims’ First Amendment rights to practice their religion. As Thomas Jefferson said, it doesn’t matter whether my neighbor believes in one god or seventeen; it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. It is only when my neighbor believes that his god commands him to pick my pocket or break my leg that his beliefs become a matter of concern for those who do not share them. No one wants to restrict individual Muslim religious practice, or even cares about it. The purpose of anti-Sharia laws is not to stop Muslims from getting married in Islamic religious ceremonies and the like, but to stop the political and supremacist aspects of Islam that infringe upon the rights and freedoms of non-Muslims.

The Islamic state, as delineated by Sharia, encroaches on the basic rights of non-Muslims. It would be a sad irony for non-Muslims to oppose anti-Sharia laws and thereby abet their own subjugation.

Florida and Oklahoma Vote for Freedom | FrontPage Magazine

 

[Connery]

Florida and Oklahoma Vote for Freedom

April 12, 2013
By Robert Spencer

Florida and Oklahoma just passed legislation restricting the use of foreign law in state courtrooms, and many other states are considering similar laws.

...

Sharia is also political and supremacist, mandating a society in which non-Muslims would not enjoy equality of rights with Muslims. And that is the focus of anti-Sharia laws: to prevent this authoritarian and oppressive political and social system from eroding the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. It is plainly disingenuous to claim that anti-Sharia laws would infringe upon Muslims’ First Amendment rights to practice their religion. As Thomas Jefferson said, it doesn’t matter whether my neighbor believes in one god or seventeen; it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. It is only when my neighbor believes that his god commands him to pick my pocket or break my leg that his beliefs become a matter of concern for those who do not share them. No one wants to restrict individual Muslim religious practice, or even cares about it. The purpose of anti-Sharia laws is not to stop Muslims from getting married in Islamic religious ceremonies and the like, but to stop the political and supremacist aspects of Islam that infringe upon the rights and freedoms of non-Muslims.

The Islamic state, as delineated by Sharia, encroaches on the basic rights of non-Muslims. It would be a sad irony for non-Muslims to oppose anti-Sharia laws and thereby abet their own subjugation.

Florida and Oklahoma Vote for Freedom | FrontPage Magazine

^^^
Nothing more than fear mongering bullshit......

No one can be legally bound by religious law because religious laws cannot be espoused by the government. If the parties agree to it, religious laws cannot conflict with criminal or civil laws under the First Amendment, it would be enforceable within the religious community. "(See Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. 679 (1872) (“All who united themselves to such a body [the general church] do so with an implied consent to [its] government, and are bound to submit to it.”)."

Foreign or religious law can and should be used in certain situations. "For example, parties to a contract enjoy a great deal of leeway to establish binding agreements requiring contractual disputes to be submitted to arbitration. In their arbitration agreement, the disputing parties can bind themselves to use a particular arbitrator. Courts have held that arbitration agreements providing for what is commonly referred to as “biblically based mediation” (relying on specified principles of the Christian Bible) are enforceable."

There have been attempts to use sharia law where domestic relations are at issue. For example, "sharia in domestic courts is S.D. v. M.J.R., a New Jersey domestic violence case. In that dispute, a Muslim wife filed for a restraining order against her husband after several instances of physical abuse and non-consensual sexual intercourse. Though the trial court found that the defendant had engaged in sexual acts that were clearly against his wife’s wishes, it did not grant a final restraining order because the husband lacked the requisite criminal intent to commit sexual assault. This decision was based on the theory that the defendant acted based on his religious belief that a husband may demand to have intercourse with his wife whenever he desired. On appeal, the New Jersey Appellate Division overturned the trial court’s decision and remanded the case to the lower court for entry of a final restraining order. Noting that the case involved “a conflict between the criminal law and religious precepts,” the appellate court held that the defendant knowingly engaged in non-consensual sexual intercourse and thus could not be excused for his religious beliefs."

Also, the government is prohibited from interfering with religious activities. "Proposals to ban sharia raise a serious dilemma for legal scholars and jurists because the composition of sharia remains debated among various Islamic sects and scholars. Without an authoritative body of law with specific parameters, courts may find themselves faced with a need to determine the precise principles of sharia and thus offer judgment on the content of a religious doctrine, which is generally impermissible under the First Amendment."

"In 1872, the Court recognized that matters of religious doctrine should be determined within the authority of the particular church and should be separate from any secular legal interpretation: The law knows no heresy, and is committed to the support of no dogma, the establishment of no sect. … "

All who united themselves to such a body [the general church] do so with an implied consent to [its] government, and are bound to submit to it. But it would be a vain consent and would lead to total subversion of such religious bodies, if any one aggrieved by one of their decisions could appeal to the secular courts and have them [sic] reversed. It is of the essence of these religious unions, and of their right to establish tribunals for the decision of questions arising among themselves, that those decisions should be binding in all cases of ecclesiastical cognizance, subject only to such appeals as the organism itself provides for*.

Thus, the Court established the principle that determinations of church doctrine and practice were to be free of government control well before it had even developed other aspects of its First Amendment jurisprudence. That general principle has since been cited by the Court in a number of First Amendment cases involving challenges of government interference in internal church matters."

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41824.pdf

*(see Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. 679 (1872), quoted in Presbyterian Church v. Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church, 393 U.S. 440, 446 (1969). See also Gonzalez v. Archbishop, 280 U.S. 1 (1929) (“In the absence of fraud, collusion, or arbitrariness, the decisions of the proper church tribunals on matters purely ecclesiastical, although affecting civil rights, are accepted in litigation before the secular courts as conclusive, because the parties in interest made them so by contract or otherwise.”).

 

[American_Jihad]

Florida and Oklahoma Vote for Freedom

April 12, 2013
By Robert Spencer

Florida and Oklahoma just passed legislation restricting the use of foreign law in state courtrooms, and many other states are considering similar laws.

...

Sharia is also political and supremacist, mandating a society in which non-Muslims would not enjoy equality of rights with Muslims. And that is the focus of anti-Sharia laws: to prevent this authoritarian and oppressive political and social system from eroding the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. It is plainly disingenuous to claim that anti-Sharia laws would infringe upon Muslims’ First Amendment rights to practice their religion. As Thomas Jefferson said, it doesn’t matter whether my neighbor believes in one god or seventeen; it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. It is only when my neighbor believes that his god commands him to pick my pocket or break my leg that his beliefs become a matter of concern for those who do not share them. No one wants to restrict individual Muslim religious practice, or even cares about it. The purpose of anti-Sharia laws is not to stop Muslims from getting married in Islamic religious ceremonies and the like, but to stop the political and supremacist aspects of Islam that infringe upon the rights and freedoms of non-Muslims.

The Islamic state, as delineated by Sharia, encroaches on the basic rights of non-Muslims. It would be a sad irony for non-Muslims to oppose anti-Sharia laws and thereby abet their own subjugation.

Florida and Oklahoma Vote for Freedom | FrontPage Magazine

^^^
Nothing more than fear mongering bullshit......

No one can be legally bound by religious law because religious laws cannot be espoused by the government. If the parties agree to it, religious laws cannot conflict with criminal or civil laws under the First Amendment, it would be enforceable within the religious community. "(See Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. 679 (1872) (“All who united themselves to such a body [the general church] do so with an implied consent to [its] government, and are bound to submit to it.”)."

Foreign or religious law can and should be used in certain situations. "For example, parties to a contract enjoy a great deal of leeway to establish binding agreements requiring contractual disputes to be submitted to arbitration. In their arbitration agreement, the disputing parties can bind themselves to use a particular arbitrator. Courts have held that arbitration agreements providing for what is commonly referred to as “biblically based mediation” (relying on specified principles of the Christian Bible) are enforceable."

There have been attempts to use sharia law where domestic relations are at issue. For example, "sharia in domestic courts is S.D. v. M.J.R., a New Jersey domestic violence case. In that dispute, a Muslim wife filed for a restraining order against her husband after several instances of physical abuse and non-consensual sexual intercourse. Though the trial court found that the defendant had engaged in sexual acts that were clearly against his wife’s wishes, it did not grant a final restraining order because the husband lacked the requisite criminal intent to commit sexual assault. This decision was based on the theory that the defendant acted based on his religious belief that a husband may demand to have intercourse with his wife whenever he desired. On appeal, the New Jersey Appellate Division overturned the trial court’s decision and remanded the case to the lower court for entry of a final restraining order. Noting that the case involved “a conflict between the criminal law and religious precepts,” the appellate court held that the defendant knowingly engaged in non-consensual sexual intercourse and thus could not be excused for his religious beliefs."

Also, the government is prohibited from interfering with religious activities. "Proposals to ban sharia raise a serious dilemma for legal scholars and jurists because the composition of sharia remains debated among various Islamic sects and scholars. Without an authoritative body of law with specific parameters, courts may find themselves faced with a need to determine the precise principles of sharia and thus offer judgment on the content of a religious doctrine, which is generally impermissible under the First Amendment."

"In 1872, the Court recognized that matters of religious doctrine should be determined within the authority of the particular church and should be separate from any secular legal interpretation: The law knows no heresy, and is committed to the support of no dogma, the establishment of no sect. … "

All who united themselves to such a body [the general church] do so with an implied consent to [its] government, and are bound to submit to it. But it would be a vain consent and would lead to total subversion of such religious bodies, if any one aggrieved by one of their decisions could appeal to the secular courts and have them [sic] reversed. It is of the essence of these religious unions, and of their right to establish tribunals for the decision of questions arising among themselves, that those decisions should be binding in all cases of ecclesiastical cognizance, subject only to such appeals as the organism itself provides for*.

Thus, the Court established the principle that determinations of church doctrine and practice were to be free of government control well before it had even developed other aspects of its First Amendment jurisprudence. That general principle has since been cited by the Court in a number of First Amendment cases involving challenges of government interference in internal church matters."

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41824.pdf

*(see Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. 679 (1872), quoted in Presbyterian Church v. Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church, 393 U.S. 440, 446 (1969). See also Gonzalez v. Archbishop, 280 U.S. 1 (1929) (“In the absence of fraud, collusion, or arbitrariness, the decisions of the proper church tribunals on matters purely ecclesiastical, although affecting civil rights, are accepted in litigation before the secular courts as conclusive, because the parties in interest made them so by contract or otherwise.”).

That sounds like some dribble you'd hear @ debate politics...

 

[yidnar]

"The unmistakable and un-American bigotry espoused by the sponsors of these bills should be repudiated by Americans of all faiths."

Food for thought . . . .

damn you libbs are hypocrites when it comes to the separation of church and state !! maybe you only believe in separation of Christians and state.