Anti-Shariah Bill Defeated in Oklahoma Senate
he Oklahoma state Senate voted down a bill that would have prohibited state judges from considering foreign laws, including religious laws, in their decisions.
State Rep. Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City) submitted House Bill 1552 last year after a similar law approved by voters in a 2010 referendum was ruled unconstitutional.
Oklahoma’s House of Representatives approved the new bill by a vote of 76-3 in 2011, but it wasn’t heard in a Senate committee until this year. The Senate Rules Committee rejected the bill Thursday (April 5) in a 9-6 vote.
The bill was widely considered to have targeted Shariah, or Islamic law, as have other bills in several other state legislatures.
“Our state has come a long way when you consider that people overwhelmingly supported a similar bill in 2010, and now such a bill can’t even make it onto the floor of the Senate,” said Muneer Awad, director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations.