The state of Oklahoma voted to uphold a law that would exclude consideration for Islamic and international laws in state court decisions. Having no applicable cases in the past where the integration of Islam or international law was a problem, many onlookers shrug their shoulders and ask: what's the point?
The United States Constitution already forbids the integration of church and state, and that codicil seemed to do the trick for a few hundred years. This time, it seems that conservatives in Oklahoma really want to make sure that them Muslims ain't fratrinizin' with their country.
It is clearly a problem created in the anxious mind of an Islamophobic South, where fearmongering against Muslims is becoming a sick obsession. Daily, more credit is given to politicians and public figures who advocate for Muslim hating and who continue to badger a mostly innocuous religion.
In that sense, it seems that it is instead another religious group involving itself in state law matters: the Christian right.
It presents us with a frustrating paradox when one group, in the majority, decides to discredit another under the pretext of preventing the same crime that they are in the midst of committing. In other words, the only culprits in this case are the Islamophobic Christians who are trying to use the law to satisfy their anxieties.
Not only is it an injustice to Muslims, but numerous politicians have used this ubiquitous fear to conduct smear campaigns against opponents in political races.
Cory Williams, an Oklahoma house representative, received flak when his Republican opponent sent out mail fliers with a photoshopped image of Williams next to a shadowy Muslim figure; the back of the flier read that Williams was an accomplice to "an international movement, supported by militant Muslims and liberals."
Such child's play does not even deserve an intelligent response.
To exploit popular fear and ignorance as a political weapon is completely unethical, and it often leaves The Bigger Man with the short end of the stick. Fanatical mobs that buy into their political nonsense seem to be in it for the opportunity to blame their problems on easy targets.
It defies the old-time notion of fair politics when the only way that one feels that they can win is to lie, as they round up fickle American minds to pursue their reactionary agenda. It becomes difficult to believe that our country's leaders believe in such angry smear campaigns while they can walk past their household mirrors, into which they might have gazed to see the real problem.
But to make this a political problem would only continue to subtract from the issue at hand: that Muslims are being blackballed and ridiculed for their religious beliefs.
They currently make films that begin with even more subtle oppression against a religion, and then there is a holocaust.
We should continue to leave religion out of the law, as it clearly states in the First Amendment; that means you too, Christianity.
