GOP Platform Embraces Shariah Panic
As Todd Akin weathers the storm of disapproval in heroic right wing fashion, tied to the mast and ears plugged with wax, Republicans in Tampa are busily putting the finishing touches on a batshit insane 2012 platform, featuring total criminalization of abortion and the paranoid xenophobic fantasy that Islamic law is about to take over the courtrooms of America: GOP Embraces Anti-Shariah.
While leaders like Speaker Boehner and Sen. John McCain were rightly praised for taking a strong stand against Rep. Michele Bachmann’s witch hunt against Muslims in the U.S. government, don’t give the party of Lincoln a pass on Islamophobia just yet. In Tampa this week, GOP leaders adopted a plank to their platform supporting a ban on foreign law and aimed at Shariah, the Islamic religious law that many conservatives insist is secretly insinuating itself in the U.S. The platform still has to be approved by the entire convention in a vote next week, but generally, most things approved by the platform committee make it into the final platform.
TPM’s Ryan Reilly reports that the man behind the effort to add the amendment is none other than Kris Kobach, Kansas’ secretary of state who moonlights as an anti-immigration activist. Kobach wrote Arizona’s infamous SB-1070 “papers please” immigration law, and advised a handful of other states on their similar laws cracking down on undocumented migrants. Kobach is (or at least was during the primary) an adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, and likely the man behind Romney’s “self-deportation” immigration policy.
But Kobach is nothing if not prolific, and apparently he has now taken up the fight against Shariah. Critics charge that just as the threat of undocumented immigration is used to justify discrimination against Hispanics, the spectre of Shariah is used to justify discrimination against Muslims.