Eugene Robinson has an excellent column picking up on the similarities between Newt Gingrich‘s embrace of once-fringe Islamophobic conspiracy theories and garden variety McCarthyism. Towards the end, he makes an important point about a case often-cited by Gingrich and other Islamophobes as proof that adoption of Taliban-style sharia law is imminent:
Andrew Silow-Carroll, the editor in chief of the New Jersey Jewish News, cited that case in a column last month blasting Gingrich’s “sharia-phobia.” Silow-Carroll pointed out two things: First, the system worked — the judge made a boneheaded call, and he was overturned. Second, our system already allows some civil matters — but not crimes — to be settled through other means of arbitration. “Among those alternative mechanisms is the beit din, or rabbinic law court,” Silow-Carroll wrote. “Every day, Jews go before batei din to arbitrate real estate deals, nasty divorces and business disputes.”
If Newt were aware of this, would he blow a gasket? Somehow, I doubt it. His objection seems to be faith-specific.
A couple of things. It’s likely that some conservative observant American Muslim communities will seek to do something similar, and yes, these requests will be greeted by a disproportionate level of alarm and hysteria. A few months ago in an interview, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero, offered the existence of those arbitration practices as an example of the U.S. being “sharia compliant.”
While I don’t really have too many issues with some civil matters being handled by religious authorities if those involved choose to do so, I don’t think that any religious custom should be allowed just because it happens to be a religious custom. I would for example, shed few tears if this particular Jewish practice were prohibited.
