The Man Behind the Anti-Shariah Movement
Tennessee’s latest woes include high unemployment, continuing foreclosures and a battle over collective-bargaining rights for teachers. But when a Republican representative took the Statehouse floor during a recent hearing, he warned of a new threat to his constituents’ way of life: Islamic law.
The representative, a former fighter pilot named Rick Womick, said he had been studying the Koran. He declared that Shariah, the Islamic code that guides Muslim beliefs and actions, is not just an expression of faith but a political and legal system that seeks world domination. “Folks,” Mr. Womick, 53, said with a sudden pause, “this is not what I call ‘Do unto others what you’d have them do unto you.’ ”
Similar warnings are being issued across the country as Republican presidential candidates, elected officials and activists mobilize against what they describe as the menace of Islamic law in the United States.
Since last year, more than two dozen states have considered measures to restrict judges from consulting Shariah, or foreign and religious laws more generally. The statutes have been enacted in three states so far.
Voters in Oklahoma overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment last November that bans the use of Islamic law in court. And in June, Tennessee passed an antiterrorism law that, in its original iteration, would have empowered the attorney general to designate Islamic groups suspected of terror activity as “Shariah organizations.”
A confluence of factors has fueled the anti-Shariah movement, most notably the controversy over the proposed Islamic center near ground zero in New York, concerns about homegrown terrorism and the rise of the Tea Party. But the campaign’s air of grass-roots spontaneity, which has been carefully promoted by advocates, shrouds its more deliberate origins.
In fact, it is the product of an orchestrated drive that began five years ago in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in the office of a little-known lawyer, David Yerushalmi, a 56-year-old Hasidic Jew with a history of controversial statements about race, immigration and Islam. Despite his lack of formal training in Islamic law, Mr. Yerushalmi has come to exercise a striking influence over American public discourse about Shariah.
Working with a cadre of conservative public-policy institutes and former military and intelligence officials, Mr. Yerushalmi has written privately financed reports, filed lawsuits against the government and drafted the model legislation that recently swept through the country — all with the effect of casting Shariah as one of the greatest threats to American freedom since the cold war.
The message has caught on. Among those now echoing Mr. Yerushalmi’s views are prominent Washington figures like R. James Woolsey, a former director of the C.I.A., and the Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann, who this month signed a pledge to reject Islamic law, likening it to “totalitarian control.”
Mendy Hecht
This article is so blatantly biased, Mr. Yerushalmi could probably sue the Slimes for libel and win. They may as well write that “a conniving hook-nosed cackling Jew is pulling off the Jewish machinations of history again.” This is caricature-evoking bigotry at its worst–but perfectly normal for “the paper of record.”
no one special
Is this good for Jews?
BE CROWNED WITH SUCCESS !!!
GREAT WORK ! May HaShem bless you with success in your battle to save the Medina Shel Chessed.
noah
just because mr yerushalmi is a chassidic jew — is ‘one of us’ — does not mean that his political leanings or statements are true, just, or even decent. if you’re upset by the tone of this piece, i would urge you to read his website and articles that he’s written. you may agree with him, you may not, but just basing your view on a post on crownheights.info is pretty sad.
my thoughts on this are as follows:
after reading a number of his essays on islam and sharia law, it strikes me as quite hypocritical for a chassidic jew — a person who strictly adheres to halacha — to consider anybody who adheres to sharia a traitor to the us government. this sounds awfully similar to the reasons stated by russian government for placing the previous rebbe is prison (lehavdil)!
we’re lucky to live in a medina shel chesed — a society like non other before where we can live the way we want to live as jews. while islamic extremism is a threat to our way of life, making islam illegal as david proposes would be a step backwards for our country as a whole.
i’m not saying i have the answer, just that i don’t believe he does. and i believe that he may cause more harm than good both for the us government as well as the sheim shamayim.
boruch
Noah, our way of life doesn’t conflict with American law, American values or the US Constitution whereas Islamic fundamentalism does. Period.
crown heights mother
I agree wholeheartedly with Noah. Yerushalmi is a dangerous racist. Read what he’s written.
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to 5: if you will take halacha at face value without context, it goes american values and american law.
we have according to halacha the obligation to execute any non-jew who steals or is immoral. etc.
Is halacha against american values? yes.
but that is not within context.
Sharia, for islam is equal with halacha.
most recognize that it is simply a way of life the same way halacha.
There are radicals that say to kill based on sharia, just as there are radicals that say to kill non-jews (including babies) according to halacha (recent controversy within israel)