CBSMiami reports 'Anti-Foreign Law Bill Can't Pass Senate'

By Staff Writer | CBSMiami  | May 3, 2013  | [Original Article]

TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami) – A bill that would have banned Islamic, or Sharia Law, along with other foreign laws from being applied in state courts died in the legislature Friday.

Senate President Don Gaetz on Friday declared the bill (HB 351) “resolved” after its sponsor decided not to ask for the unanimous vote required to move the bill forward. It had failed a previous procedural vote on Thursday. The House approved the legislation on a 79-39 vote last month.

The bill is similar in scope to bills in a handful of other states. The push for the bills began a few years ago when extremist wings of political parties began to spread the word that Sharia Law could be creeping into the United States.

The theory has been pushed by Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann and others. Bachmann has repeatedly said in the past that President Barack Obama wants to institute Sharia Law in the United States, even though President Obama isn't Muslim.

Florida’s law doesn't mention a specific set of foreign laws and instead targets foreign laws in general. But the need for such a law doesn't seem to be needed, according to the Florida Bar Association. No case could be found where a Florida court applied foreign law.

It led critics to call the foreign law ban a solution to a “phantom menace.”

Read more on this 'phantom menace' phenomenon here.

Poll: GOP really dislikes Muslims

By Alex Seitz-Wald | Salon | August 23, 2012 | [Original Article]

"Anyone wondering why Rep. Michele Bachmann would launch a witch hunt against Muslims or why the Republican Party would add a plank to its platform opposing Shariah law need look no further than a new poll conducted by the Arab American Institute.

The poll, released today, asked Americans for their views on various religious groups, as well as on Arabs and Arab-Americans. It also asked respondents how confident they would be that a Muslim or Arab-American holding a position of influence in government could do their job without letting “ethnic loyalty … influence their decision-making.”..."

"... Not surprisingly, those who said they knew a Muslim-American or Arab-American held significantly more positive views than those who said they didn’t know any. Interestingly, a full 60 percent of both Republicans and Democrats said they don’t personally know someone who is Arab or Muslim.

The poll was conducted by JZ Analytics, the firm run by John Zogby, the brother of Jim, who is the head of the Arab American Institute. The online survey of 1,052 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted between Aug. 15 and 16, and had a confidence interval of 95 percent and margin of error +/- 3.1 percentage points."

Jonathan Kay: North America is safe from Sharia

By Jonathan Kay | NationalPost | August 21, 2012 | [Original Article] 

"In a recent Daily Beast article, I criticized right-wing American activists who have become convinced that a network of influential Washington insiders is secretly conspiring to turn the United States into a Muslim theocracy governed by the laws of Shariah. The launching off point for my article was the recent letter-writing campaign by Michelle Bachmann, and four other GOP congressional representatives, aimed at sniffing out alleged Muslim Brotherhood operatives. But I also profiled American Center for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney, who served as an assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration...

 ...In recent years, Gaffney has become an influential guru for Bachmann and other anti-shariah activists, and I held up his claims as an example of what I regard as paranoia. For example, his web site, muslimbrotherhoodinamerica, suggests that America is under attack from “a stealthy and pre-violent form of warfare aimed at destroying our constitutional form of democratic government and free society,” and that this secret force is the reason that America is “no closer to victory in the so-called ‘war on terror’ than we were on 9/11.” I wrote that Gaffney’s overall message, while well-intentioned, essentially amounts to a conspiracy theory — with the Muslim Brotherhood cast as arch-villain...

...That 1991 memo exemplifies the truth that there always will be isolated extremists within Western societies — whether Islamists, or white supremicists (like the Milwaukee shooter) who spend their days dreaming of revolutions that are never going to happen. When we discover them, they should be investigated and prosecuted. But I’d urge Mr. Gaffney not to puff up their revolutionary delusions to such a point that they become fuel for witch hunts."

The Muslims Are Everywhere! A Response to Michele Bachmann

By Rabia Chaudry | TheHuffingtonPost | August 2, 2012 | [Original Article]

"I confess, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, until recently I didn't believe your theories of an Islamic infiltration of the U.S. government...

...But I was wrong. I realized this when, a few days ago, I sat in the Pentagon with a couple of hundred other Muslims and listened to a rousing speech on the beauty of fasting in Ramadan by the Ambassador of South Africa to the U.S., his Eminence Ebrahim Rasool. He recited Quran and narrated hadith in the Pentagon... All of it right inside the Pentagon...

... I returned home with a book entitled "Muslim Veterans of American Wars." It lists the names of hundreds of American Muslim servicemen and women who fought in every war going back to the Revolutionary War. Yes, there were Muslims who fought in the Revolutionary War. And the War of 1812. And the Civil War, WWI and WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War and in our current global War on Terror. As Americans, for America..." [Read More]

...So there you have it, undeniable evidence that Muslims are indeed everywhere and the Islamification of America must therefore be well underway. We serve and work in nearly every government and private sector in the United States. American Muslims are law enforcement officers, athletes (including an American hijabi Olympic athlete!), artists and musicians, teachers,judges, business owners, you name it. We're driving your cabs, giving you root canals, ruling on your lawsuits, pumping your gas, making your gyros. And all the while innocent Americans are the mercy of our sharia-infested, Muslim Brotherhood-inspired whims. Truly the stuff of nightmares..."

Michele Bachmann's McCarthyite Witch Hunt Against Muslims, 'Sharia Law'

By Robert Dreyfuss | TheNation.com | July 23, 2012 | [Original Article] 

"I’d call Frank Gaffney an intellectual bomb-thrower—but, he’s not an intellectual. Instead, he treats politics and national security the way James Holmes treats movie-theater patrons: don’t worry about aiming, just shoot to kill. Fortunately for his victims, Gaffney mostly fires duds, such as the ones he’s been shooting lately at Huma Abedin, an aide to Hillary Clinton, whom Gaffney calls an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood...

...Gaffney, of course, is the extreme-right-wing chief of something called the Center for Security Policy. AsRightWeb and SourceWatch report, Gaffney is involved in, connected to, or cited by anti-Muslim crazies who oppose mosque-building, generated volumes of conspiracy theories, and he was even cited by the Norwegian terrorist who killed scores of campers in 2011. How far right? For years I’ve watched Gaffney’s Islamophobic and ultrahawkish antics, including a long-running battle he’s had with Grover Norquist, the taxophobic head of Americans for Tax Reform...[Read More]

...In her jihad against Abedin, Bachmann spewed out a stream of letters to half a dozen top US officials, including John Brennan, Obama’s top adviser on terrorism; the director of National Intelligence; and many others. To get a flavor of the letters, I urge you to read one or two. Among them: a letter to the deputy inspector general of the State Department...

Fortunately, rather than rely on pro-Obama, obviously Muslim-tainted sources to rebut Bachmann, we can quote a speech from Senator McCain on the Senate floor"

"These allegations about Huma and the report from which they are drawn are nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable woman, a dedicated American and a loyal public servant."

Bachmann's paranoia strikes deep

By Daniel Ruth | TampaBayTimes | July 24, 2012 | [Original Article]

"It would be too easy, too convenient to dismiss the ramblings of Rep. Michele Bachmann as the rants of a cravenly ambitious politician all too willing to cater to the paranoid lemmings of her tea party followers.

But it still doesn't diminish the harm Bachmann's latest paroxysm of fearmongering has caused to loyal Americans whose only crime has been the vagaries of birth and/or the choice of religion.

...Bachmann — unburdened by fairness, or truth or reality — decided to impugn the patriotism of Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and fellow Rep. Keith Ellison.

Abedin and Ellison are Muslim, evidence enough for Bachmann and fellow members of her unhinged Tailgunner Caucus, which also includes Florida's Rep. Tom Rooney... [Read More]

...he notion that evildoers are trying to infiltrate the State Department was all the rage 60 years when McCarthy attempted the same, unsubstantiated witch hunt...

...What Murrow had to say about McCarthy in 1954 applies just as pointedly to Bachmann's bigotry and racism"

"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular"

Michele Bachmann’s anti-Muslim paranoia

By Juliette Kayyem | Articles.Boston | July 19, 2012 | [Original Article]

...It is simply not enough to mock the Bachmann crusade against the “civilizational jihad” festering in federal government. Much more than the recent and desperate accusations that President Obama needs to be “more American,” the charges against those in government — appointees, civil servants, and advisers — are far more dangerous. They are intended not so much to root out the enemy in our midst, but to raise suspicions against Americans simply by demanding the hunt.

In five separate letters to the Departments of State, Justice, Homeland Security, and Defense, as well as the director of National Intelligence, Bachmann’s congressional allies detail their objections about Islam’s influence on America’s policy. These policies include the relatively benign outreach efforts with Muslim organizations and apologies for the Koran burnings in Afghanistan. But it really isn’t policies that the Bachmann cabal is worried about. It’s the people...

In government, such a request for the kind of information the letters demand — Joe McCarthy would be proud — will require each agency to track the strange claims and interview personnel. It will distract from a focus on the nation’s security. But that’s the point. It is the search that matters.

Bachmann's former campaign manager joins chorus condemning her anti-Muslim remarks

By Jillian Rayfield | LearnForward.MSNBC | July 19, 2012 | [Original Article]

"On Wednesday, Michele Bachmann's former campaign manager decried her accusation that Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. In a letter on FoxNew.com, Ed Rollins wrote, "I am fully aware that she sometimes has difficulty with her facts, but this is downright vicious and reaches the late Senator Joe McCarthy level."

Bachmann (R-MN) and four other members of Congress wrote a letter last month accusing Abedin of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and possibly using her position as a senior aide to the Secretary of State to influence policy...[Read More]

...But John Fugelsang, a political comedian, had a different take, arguing that Bachmann's accusations were "actually rather deliberate. She is going to raise money from saying what she said. And she will earn the ire of her colleagues. Yes, even John Boehner condemned her, but the fact is they need her because she makes them look so measured and reasonable."