Muslim Group Starts Texas Campaign to Preserve Shariah

A Muslim group is launching a television advertising campaign in Texas to counter legislative attempts to prohibit creation of a separate judicial system to enforce Shariah, according to the Houston Chronicle.

 

“We have the right to practice our faith,” Naeem Baig, a spokesman for the Islamic Circle of North America, said in story published Wednesday.
 

The ad campaign in Houston, which is home to the largest Muslim population in the state, seeks to rally opposition to the Texas Eagle Forum, whose former president Pat Carlson has said U.S. Muslims are engaged in “stealthy jihad” by quietly trying to form a parallel judicial system based on Shariah.

The conservative group says a separate set of laws for Muslims could eventually force women to wear burkas, or even worse, condone honor killings.

The Eagle Forum last year tried but failed to push legislation through that would ban recognition of foreign law in state courts. But some Texas lawmakers consider the issue important enough to take up before the legislature convenes next January.

“It’s ridiculous that we even have to address this, but we don’t have a choice,” Mustafa Carroll, executive director of the Houston chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the Chronicle.

The council is working with the Islamic Circle of North America to rally religious opposition to the legislative effort.