A bill designed to prevent Kansas courts or government agencies from making decisions based on Islamic or other foreign legal codes cleared the state legislature overwhelmingly.
The State Senate approved the bill Friday on a 33-3 vote. The House had approved it, 120-0, earlier in the week.
The measure goes next to Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican who hasn’t said whether he’ll sign or veto the measure.
The measure doesn’t mention Sharia law by name. Instead, it says that courts, administrative agencies and state tribunals cannot base rulings on any foreign law or legal system that would not grant the parties the same rights guaranteed by state and US constitutions.
But several supporters specifically cited the potential use of Sharia law in Kansas as their concern. Though there are no known cases in which a Kansas judge has based a ruling on Islamic law, supporters of the bill cited a pending case in which a man seeking to divorce his wife has asked for property to be divided under a marriage contract signed in line with Sharia law.
The bill’s supporters said it simply ensures that legal decisions will protect long-cherished liberties, such as freedom of speech and religion and the right to equal treatment under the law.
Sen. Susan Wagle, a Republican, also said a vote for the legislation was a vote to protect women. “In this great country of ours and in the state of Kansas, women have equal rights,” Wagle said during the Senate debate. “They stone women to death in countries that have Sharia law.”
The bill passed both chambers by wide margins because even some legislators who were skeptical of it believed it was broad and bland enough that it didn’t represent a specific political attack on Muslims.
“We don’t have any intolerance in this bill. Nobody’s stripped of their freedom of religion,” said Sen. Ty Masterson, a Republican. “This is talking about the law — American law, American courts.”
But several senators noted that supporters of the bill singled out Sharia law in talking about it. “This bill will put Kansas in a light that says we are intolerant of any other faith,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Tim Owens, a Republican who was one of only three senators to vote against the bill. “I would not be able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning if I didn’t stand up and say I don’t want to be that kind of person and I don’t want to be in a community or a state that is that way.”
Rep. Peggy Mast, a Republican, held a news conference last Thursday to highlight the divorce case, in which Hussein Hamdeh, a Wichita State University physics professor, filed for a divorce in November 2010 from his wife, Hala.
Their Islamic marriage contract, made in Lebanon, promised her a $5,000 payment should they split. He argued that the contract settled property issues, while Islamic law limited spousal maintenance payments to her to three months. Her attorney said in a court document that following Islamic law would leave her “destitute.”
Several senators questioned whether the legislation is necessary, arguing Kansas judges and officials already must adhere to the US and state constitutions.
Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) agreed. He derided the bill as “anti-unicorn” legislation, meaning it took out after something that doesn’t exist. “All it does is increase hostility toward Islam and suspicion of Muslims,” Hooper said.
After different versions of the bill passed each chamber, some lawyers spoke out to say the legislation could undermine international trade by Kansas firms because it would prevent the enforcement of contracts signed with foreign legal strictures. The conference committee ironing out the differences between the two bills then inserted language to specifically exempt business-to-business transactions in which foreign laws are cited.
The national campaign against Sharia law began about four years ago with inaccurate news reports about judges applying Sharia law in court decisions. There were also false stories going the rounds saying that Dearborn, Michigan, which has a large Arab population (heavily Christian), had adopted Sharia law in a city ordinance.
In 2010, bills were introduced in some state legislatures to solve this “problem” by forbidding the use of Sharia in those states’ courts. In Oklahoma, the bill proposed a constitutional amendment, which was overwhelmingly approved at a referendum in the fall with little debate but 70 percent voter backing. That gave the anti-Sharia movement a giant boost and considerable attention—although the Oklahoma amendment was subsequently ruled unconstitutional.
As of this year, there are 41 such bills being pursued in 23 states, according to a tally by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
But aside from Oklahoma, only five states have actually passed such legislation—Kansas and South Dakota this year, Arizona last year and Tennessee and Louisiana in 2010. Unlike Oklahoma, the laws in those five states do not mention Sharia by name; that is what got the Oklahoma amendment in trouble as it was cast as biased against one faith and a violation of the constitutional freedom of the religion. The five other states have approved statutes banning the use of all foreign laws in their courts.
Opponents say that is simply window-dressing or gloss intended to obscure the true goal of assailing Islam.
Lawyers say US courts cannot and do not use foreign law to consider guilt or innocence. But they often cite a foreign law in ruling, for example, on an inheritance case when the deceased’s will was drawn up abroad under another country’s laws.
Stephen Gele, the leader of the American Public Policy Alliance, says there are egregious court cases that have shown Sharia is a threat in the US, with foreign judgments on divorces and child custody allowed to stand.
“It’s probably a small percentage of a court’s docket, but certainly, if you’re the woman who lost her child to Pakistan, it’s important to you,” he said, citing a case in which he said a mother lost custody because of a foreign ruling that a US court enforced.
Others who have read the case said the American judge enforced the Pakistani court ruling only after determining that it was in conformance with US law. In other words, the Pakistani court decision was not enforced because it was superior to US law but because it was in agreement with US law.