Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Conservatives with their heads where the sun don’t shine

So what else is new?

The latest conservative absurdity is playing itself out in Tennessee where a state legislator from Murfreesboro has introduced legislation that would make following some portions of the Islamic Shariah law a felony.

The bill was provided by the Eagle Forum and, apparently, was drafted by an Arizona lawyer by the name of David Yerushalmi. This dodo represented “Stop the Madrassa” in NYC a while back in the witch hunt over the assignment of Arab American Debbie Almontaser as principal of a dual language Arabic-English elementary school. In that case, despite repeated assurances that it was a public school with no intention of teaching Islam, the group managed to get Almontaser replaced but did not stop the school from being opened anyway.

Of course the result, despite all the hysteria, was a perfectly benign public school that was part of a larger dual language school program in the city.

This time around, according to Yerushalmi, "The legislation simply states that Shariah that follows the law of jihad, which calls for the violent overthrow of the Tennessee and U.S. government, is the Shariah that is at issue.”

And you’re a lawyer? Here’s a news flash for you sport, it’s already illegal to advocate the violent overthrow of a state or the U.S. government. That would make your legislation redundant if that’s all it covers.

There are two things I’ve found conservatives good at, lying and coming up with really stupid ideas based upon complete misconceptions. This looks to me like a little engaging in the former in order to cover the extent of the latter.

The First Amendment Center has called the bill a "really distorted understanding of Shariah law."

Again, I have to ask, so what else is new? Conservatives are famous for making decisions and coming up with policies based upon really distorted understandings. Would you like a few examples? Let’s try Slavery, Segregation, Gay Marriage, Evolution, Health Care Reform, Fiscal Policy, War and Peace, Economics and so on and so forth.

The world would be a dramatically different place if they would take their heads out from their rear ends and look up THE FACTS before forming their opinions. Of course that would require reading and thinking, neither of which are skills conservatives are very good at.

No comments: