SHARING THE SHARIA EXPERIENCE

Villainy is afoot! People who follow Islam are coming here by the tens, maybe dozens. Some of them are fleeing theocratic oppression in their own country's. Many of them have advanced science degrees and other talents we could use to rebuild our country from the despotic theocracy that has ruined us. We don't yet know how to distinguish between the Muslem adherents who are devout and those whose connection to Islam is merely cultural. We do not know this distinction because the better-thinking among us believe in that part of Constitutional law that allows for a separation between church and state. The other 35% or so wish to choke us on the version of Christianity that the podcasters in muscle shirts wish to impose. The same podcasters in muscle shirts that are responsible for climate change doubt. Islam, as well as Mormonism and Hindu religions is a mystery to us. We'll hell, the way some of us practice Christianity is a mystery to some of us.

What is Sharia? Beats me. I had a hard enough time mis-understanding Christianity, and I grew up with it. Googling the question, a practice unused by maga, we find that Sharia is a legal and moral framework based on the Quran and Sunnah. Sort of like the 10 Commandments followed by Christians is a remnant from the old testament of the bible. Most Muslims, as well as most Christians, are content to follow these laws without imposing them on the secular institutions of government. Those who demand that secularism be erased, whatever their belief system is, are likely among that group who mostly pretend to be devout. They are like the Christians wishing to impose the 10 commandments on our school and government buildings, while in fact treating those ten holy demands as if 4 of them (and those four are somewhat fluid) as requests. If we apply historical criteria to judge Sharia, we find that they like us, enforced their moral laws more severely even a hundred years ago than they do today. I'm not sure, but maybe we could be said to evolve when it comes to religious laws. That history also warns us to beware following a national leader who thinks people who aren't  "us" can't be part of the US, or any other place where authoritarians have control of areas they should be prevented from controlling.

In a perverse way, the way bacteria have evolved to be resistant to antibiotics, Republicans have found a new existential fear to impose. Anything to do with Islam. They can no longer oppress LGBTQ. People quickly tired of ICE agents terrorizing brown-skinned people. The right has embraced Israel and are now learning how to use anti-Semitism as an epithet. Catholics can no longer be opposed, with every one of the conservatives on the Supreme Court being Catholic, and at least 5 of them Opus Dei Catholics. Islam is now the boogey-man of choice for Republicans. Funny thing: back in the day when trade was conducted in sleek Clipper Ships, there was a group of pirates operating in the Straits of Molucca who called themselves Booguis, the eponymous BOOGY-MAN. Since Indonesia is in the neighborhood, it is likely that some of those pirates were followers of Sharia. Some, no doubt might have been lapsed. English sailors would threaten their children with threats of boogey-men getting them. American conservatives threaten their children with threats of taxes benefiting these illegals!

Here we are involved in a war with brown-skinned people who, while not blameless, did not attack us. A country that wears turbans and aren't Sikh's. Another religious identity that confuses Republicans. A country that freely imposes its theocratic beliefs on the citizenry in a way that Christian nationalists have not completely achieved. Those tragic people, regardless of which side wins, will still face the question, "which direction do we go"?  Now that they can no longer look in our direction.