What is really behind Greg Abbott’s ‘war on Sharia’

When connected November 19 Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for an authoritative probe into alleged “Sharia courts”, it was not based connected evidence, complaints, oregon immoderate ineligible irregularity. It was a governmental performance. There are nary Sharia courts successful Texas — lone voluntary Muslim mediation panels operating nether the aforesaid model utilized by Jewish beth din courts and Christian arbitration services.

Yet successful a missive sent to territory attorneys and sheriffs demanding an investigation, Abbott wrote that “The Constitution’s spiritual protections supply nary authorization for spiritual courts to skirt authorities and national laws simply by donning robes and pronouncing positions inconsistent with occidental civilization,” implying that Muslims were secretly gathering an alternate ineligible system.

This is not instrumentality enforcement. It is governmental theatre designed to stoke fear.

A time earlier, connected November 18, Abbott issued an enforcement bid designating the Council connected American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — the largest Muslim civilian rights organisation successful the state — arsenic a “foreign violent organisation” (FTO).

The bid cited nary crimes, nary violence, nary plot, nary prosecutorial record. It was simply a sweeping assertion that an American civilian rights radical constituted a nationalist information threat.

Lawyers instantly noted that Abbott does not person the authorization to designate FTOs; lone the US national authorities does. But again, the constituent was not ineligible accuracy.

This ineffectual bid was much astir governmental messaging than thing else. It was aimed to represent Muslim Americans and their institutions arsenic fishy and their civic engagement arsenic a information risk.

Abbott’s actions are the latest merchandise of a long-running American panic instrumentality that transforms mean Muslim beingness into a menace narrative. This panic instrumentality has been successful cognition for decades and has repeatedly weaponised Sharia for governmental gain.

For example, successful the precocious 2000s, a coordinated nationalist campaign—spearheaded by activists similar David Yerushalmi and organisations specified arsenic ACT for America—pushed legislators crossed the state to present “anti-Sharia” bills. In the aboriginal 2010s, much than 40 states considered laws barring courts from applying “foreign law”, a euphemism universally understood to mean Islamic law.

The astir utmost illustration occurred successful the US authorities of Oklahoma, wherever voters approved a law amendment explicitly banning Sharia and the exertion of planetary law. When the instrumentality was challenged successful court, a national justice blocked it.

This and different ineligible challenges exposed these measures for what they were: governmental stunts, not responses to existent ineligible problems. Yet the broader run succeeded successful normalising the thought that Muslim spiritual signifier itself is simply a nationalist information threat, paving the mode for aboriginal escalations, including Abbott’s actions successful Texas today.

Months earlier the telephone to analyse “Sharia courts”, again successful Texas, a Muslim-led existent property task was targeted with a Department of Justice (DOJ) probe and branded online arsenic a “Sharia colony”. Local residents were told that Islamic instrumentality would govern the neighbourhood, that non-Muslims would beryllium excluded, and that the improvement was portion of a creeping Islamic takeover. None of the rumours were true: the task was unfastened to everyone and sought lone to code the region’s lodging crisis.

The DOJ ended its probe aft uncovering nary illegality successful June, but successful September, Governor Abbott signed a instrumentality  banning “Sharia compounds” successful Texas.

This dynamic has played retired acold beyond Texas. In the authorities of Tennessee, opponents of a mosque successful Murfreesboro argued that Islam was not a religion and that Muslims were truthful undeserving of First Amendment protection. The statement defied centuries of law doctrine, but that didn’t matter; the constituent was to marque Muslim spiritual beingness look legally illegitimate.

In Dearborn, Michigan, a metropolis with 1 of the country’s oldest Arab and Muslim communities, viral hoaxes person repeatedly claimed the metropolis has been “taken implicit by Sharia law”. Fabricated videos, manipulated headlines, and images from different countries person been circulated to make the illusion of Islamic governance connected American soil. Fact-checks person debunked these narratives, yet the rumours person persisted.

Muslim nationalist figures person besides been targeted. During his campaign, New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani faced racist memes and conspiracy theories claiming helium was plotting to usher successful “Sharia rule” if elected. None of Mamdani’s argumentation proposals person immoderate spiritual contented whatsoever. His docket focuses connected wide transit, housing, and constabulary accountability. But to those invested successful Sharia panic, a Muslim successful nationalist bureau is ever presumed to beryllium a Trojan horse.

And it is not conscionable Republicans who person fanned these flames. Major newspapers, wide politicians, and adjacent civilian liberties institutions person repeatedly adopted the underlying framing that Islamic instrumentality is inherently foreign, inherently political, oregon inherently astatine likelihood with American values. By accepting the premise that Sharia is simply a threat, they efficaciously validate the communicative architecture of Islamophobia adjacent erstwhile they assertion to reason it.

These incidents uncover a accordant pattern: the panic surrounding Sharia is not astir law, safety, oregon law principle. It is astir bound attraction successful a state struggling with demographic change. It is astir who gets to beryllium seen arsenic American and who remains permanently suspect. The panic keeps reemerging not due to the fact that it reflects valid concerns, but due to the fact that it is utile — an instrumentality for mobilising voters, policing civic belonging, and justifying authorities surveillance.

What makes this each the much ironic is that Sharia, arsenic understood by Islamic scholars crossed centuries, bears small resemblance to the caricatures that animate US politics. In Arabic, Sharia means “a way to the water”, a metaphor for motivation and spiritual nourishment.

It is simply a wide ethical model acrophobic with justice, welfare, and accountability. Its foundational aims — the maqāṣid al-sharīʿa — revolve astir protecting life, intellect, faith, property, and quality dignity. The contented contains blase doctrines of equity (istiḥsān), nationalist involvement (maṣlaḥa), and customized (ʿurf), which run overmuch similar the equitable and contextual tools of modern communal instrumentality systems.

Far from being an alien code, Sharia shares heavy structural resonances with Western ineligible traditions. As Professor John Makdisi demonstrated successful a landmark North Carolina Law Review article, respective foundational features of English communal instrumentality carnivore striking parallels to Islamic ineligible institutions, apt transmitted done Norman Sicily. This past matters not due to the fact that it collapses distinctions betwixt ineligible systems, but due to the fact that it exposes the absurdity of the thought that Islamic instrumentality is inherently incompatible with Western governance.

The United States erstwhile understood that legacy. When the Supreme Court enclosure was unveiled successful 1935, it featured a marble frieze depicting humanity’s top lawgivers, including Prophet Muhammad, shown holding a Quran arsenic a awesome of justness and motivation authority. Today, acknowledging that elemental humanities information would itself trigger outrage.

The renewed Sharia panic is not astir Islam entering American courts; it is astir Islam entering American civic life. It is astir Muslim governmental participation, Muslim assemblage development, Muslim institutions, and Muslim practice — each recast arsenic existential threats. As the state enters different predetermination rhythm animated by anti-diversity rhetoric, anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, and attacks connected Middle East studies programmes, Sharia becomes a flexible instrumentality for a overmuch older anxiety: the fearfulness of a pluralistic America.

The information is not Sharia. The information is the governmental machinery that turns mean Muslim Americans into objects of suspicion, targets of authorities power, and props successful a civilization warfare they did not choose. If determination is thing Americans should fear, it is not Islamic law, but the weaponisation of fear.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.