Sharia, Secular,...Canon???

Sharia Law? Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, and even Glenn Beck are all telling us to be afraid. Afraid of this sharia law that will replace the secular laws that we have in the United States. Yep, forget that silly ole Constitution.

I believe that politicians are using scare tactics. They are thoughtlessly tossing out ideas that they have done little research on. I believe that is why hate crimes against Muslims is on the rise. For anyone that may be confused or afraid of these lies I would like to explain a little.

We see extremist Muslims in the Middle East. We listen to reports of abused women and how it is ok under “sharia law”. We either aren’t told or forget that most of these countries are autocratic. That is- one person who has total say in laws and how the country is ran. The media over there also can only run stories that the government agrees with. To do anything else is to ask for punishment. Sharia, the way it is written in the Quran, is actually quite compliant with American secular law. The six principles of Sharia are:

1. The right to the protection of life.

2. The right to the protection of family.

3. The right to the protection of education.

4. The right to the protection of religion.

5. The right to the protection of property (access to resources).

6. The right to the protection of human dignity.

So, you see, I do not buy into the hype that we are headed towards Sharia by allowing mosques to be built (freedom of religion). The United States is a melting pot. A little bit of everything. We are a mixture of a Republic and Democracy (Republican under Common Law, and democratic under statutory law). The People enjoy their God-given natural rights in the Republic. In a democracy, the Citizens enjoy only government granted privileges (also known as civil rights). We have three branches of government. Legislative (The House and Senate), Executive (President and VP), and Judicial (Supreme Court). These three branches keep each other in check.

Maybe if this fear starts to die down a little, someone on the left can start one about how Republicans want to overthrow secular law and adopt canon law! I mean, wanting to infringe on a woman’s right to have an abortion falls under canon law.