America is headed towards a very dark place if they choose to believe the likes of Sharon Angle, the Republican candidate for US Senate in the state of Nevada. Like so many others of her ilk, now running for public office she is able to make up statements to scare, intimidate, frighten voters into believing her acts of demagoguery are what will save this Republic or that she alone, and the rest like her have the best interests of the people of America at heart. I can’t imagine how or why anyone can think lying to make one fear their neighbor or fellow citizen is in the best interest of social order, but Angle is doing it and with gusto.
“My thoughts are these, first of all, Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don’t know how that happened in the United States,” she said. “It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States.”
This seems to be a recurring theme among racists Islamophobes, that a group of people can somehow take over the US, supplanting the US Constitution with Islamic law. Such beliefs should be enough to disqualify a person for public office because it shows an ignorance of the US political system; how detailed and involved a process it is that takes the participation of the entire electorate; that changing the Constitution cannot be imposed on people, yet Angle et.co are able to get people to fear that possibility. Simply look at the city council of Dearborn, Michigan which has no Muslim members on it to consider the possibility what Angle suggests even more ludicrous.
What did happen that Angle failed to mention is what could very well happen, no doubt has happened in her state and at every level of government power and authority; the law enforcement arm of authority over-reacted in making an arrest because someone failed to adequately satisfy the arresting officer they were obeying his/her orders fast enough and with sufficient obsequiousness to avoid arrest. This has happened if officers are responsible for any event that puts them in contact with the public in any place in America. The blogger Will Griggs has written extensively about this interaction between police and the citizens they are supposed to protect; routinely police see themselves as the sole authority when in contact with non-officers, without any allegiance to any ideology except their own. The idea that the excesses made by Dearborn police were done on behalf of Islamic law, is as irresponsible as claiming torture or police brutality is done in the name of capitalism or democracy. Moreover, the court system remedied the plaintiff’s arrest by finding them not guilty of the charges brought against them. This finding of innocence was done by a local court by the way which further undermines the spurious charge made by Angle of some vast Sharia conspiracy taking place in Dearborn. None of that matters to the forces of demagoguery like Angle who presents a focal point for other like minded racist Islamophobes who despite all the evidence of their prosperity in ways far greater than the very people they want others to fear continue to play the victim game suffering from the interminable weight of Islamic sharia investing America’s shores.
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