Abstract
In 2010, voters in the state of Oklahoma passed a constitutional amendment that prohibits the Oklahoma courts from considering "Sharia Law." A great deal of the support for this amendment and similar (ongoing) legal initiatives appears to be generated by a deep-seated paranoia about Muslims and Islamic law that has taken root in many parts of the post-9/11 United States. This Article contends that the passage of this Oklahoma constitutional amendment should not have been surprising given that it is not only right-wing partisans who have felt the need to strictly demarcate and police the boundaries of the American legal system, but also liberal partisans too. Indeed, this Article argues that certain modes of American liberal legal thought actually facilitate the anti-shari'a mania currently sweeping the United States. As a result, an adequate response to this mania cannot simply rely on traditional, American-style, liberal legal theorizing. Indeed, as this Article argues and explains, some extant American liberal understandings of 'law,' 'legal systems,' and 'the rule of law' are eminently inappropriate resources in the struggle against American forms of reactionary parochialism because these liberal understandings are themselves deeply compromised by their own forms of parochialism
Recommended Citation
Jeffrey A. Redding,
What American Legal Theory Might Learn from Islamic Law: Some Lessons About 'The Rule of Law' from 'Shari'a Court' Practice in India,
83
U. Colo. L. Rev.
1027
(2012).
Available at:
https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/lawreview/vol83/iss4/3