AZ's Law and Sharia Law

As I write this, the legislature in the state of AZ has passed a law (currently awaiting the Governor's signature or veto) which would essentially make it illegal for a law to substantially interfere with someone's religious beliefs.

This is essentially in large part in response to several recent cases (in other states) such as a New Mexico photographer who refused to take pictures of a lesbian couple's 'commitment ceremony', a Washington state florist who refused to provide flowers for a same sex wedding and a Colorado baker who was threatened with a fine and jail time for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.

And I have spoken volumes on my opinion of such laws, and also of the fact that if you take one passage from Leviticus and use it to claim a religious justification for not serving gays while still happily serving the nuptial needs of couples on a second marriage and couples who have (overwhelmingly, according to statistical probability) fornicated prior to marriage, and have chosen this one passage as more important than the actual words of the guy after whom your religion is named in telling you how to love your neighbor and treat him well even if he is not the pinnacle of acceptance in society, then you are cherry picking your religious texts in order to justify your own personal bigotry, rather than taking a stand for some higher principle.

But nevertheless, something else occurred to me, too.  Just like the Louisiana lawmakers who were SHOCKED to discover that the "state funded vouchers to be used for religious private schools" law applied just as well to Muslim religious schools as to Christian ones, so too this law could have consequences that the supporters of the law might be shocked to discover:

Muslim Sharia law.  In the Venn diagram of politics, there is almost certainly a huge overlap between the supporters of the new law in AZ and the group of people regularly fear mongering that Muslims are trying to get Sharia law installed here.

Well guess what, the AZ law would further that cause, because what the law essentially says is that you can violate a whole host of other laws if following that law would violate your religious beliefs.  Which essentially means if there's an aspect of Sharia law which we as non Muslim Americans might find abhorrent, the state of AZ would not be in a position to enforce the law because the religious beliefs behind Sharia law would be violated.

It amazes me that the same people who think Sharia law would be the worst thing ever to happen to this country are, by and large, the same people who think that nothing could possibly be better for this country than legislating from the Bible, even though to those of us on the outside of both religions, there's very little difference to be seen between the two options.

It also amazes me how many times these sorts of laws come back to bite the lawmakers in the butt.  Here's how this plays out if Gov. Jan Brewer opts to sign this bill (last year she vetoed a similar bill, but is looking like she might be considering signing this one):

1)  Within a year or two, some case involving Sharia law comes up in AZ, someone doing something that's required under Sharia law but in violation of state law.

2)  AZ state courts find that due to this new law, the devout Muslims must be allowed to follow their religious beliefs.

3)  AZ legislators (by and large the same ones who thought this law was just ducky when it was intended to allow Christians to discriminate against gay people) will try to pass a reactionary law restricting Sharia law.

4)  That reactionary law is challenged and ultimately struck down as violating the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

5)  End result, either AZ voluntarily takes down it's new law, because they "never imagined anyone could use it to support Sharia!" or else Sharia gets a strong foothold in AZ.


Amazingly, the lawmakers here do not see this and will be just as blindsided as their LA brethren, now fuming because state money is going to Muslim religious schools, and they can do nothing about it.