A form of Islamic law has taken force in Texas, right next door to Louisiana where Gov. Bobby Jindal has warned of Muslim immigrants who refuse to adopt Western culture.
An Islamic Tribunal of four attorneys is operating in Dallas where it issues voluntary rulings on civil disputes, Breitbart Texas reported Tuesday.
Taher El-badawi, one of the lawyers who call themselves "judges," told the conservative website that the tribunal applies Shariah law to litigants who voluntarily accept their rulings on disputes involving family and business issues. Keep reading
Under Texas civil law a divorce granted by this tribunal would not be legal even if both parties agreed to the divorce. Texas is a common law state and couples who live together as man and wife are legally recognized having contracted a common law marriage. If they separate, they must obtain a divorce from a Texas civil court in order to remarry. Couples who do not obtain a divorce can be charged with bigamy if they remarry.
The creation of its own legal system based upon Sharia law by the Muslim immigrant community in Dallas does raise a host of questions. Among these questions is "Does the freedom to practice one's religion in the United States extend to creating a separate legal system?" Are we observing in Texas what Bobby Jindal has characterized as "colonization"? Jindal is not original in his use of this term. The following excerpt was taken from a Wikipedia article on colonization:
A number of scholars and analysts describe contemporary Muslim immigration to Europe as a process of colonization. Rauf Ceylan describes the Turkish communities of Germany as "ethnic colonies".[5] Robert S. Leiken describes Muslim immigrant communities in Europe as "something like a Muslim internal colony," in which the immigrant becomes "not so much a member of British society as a colonial of his clan and village".[6] Hans Magnus Enzensberger also uses the language of colonization. Christopher Caldwell writes that "'colonization' well describes the influx of the past half-century".[5] First, because of the scale of the phenomenon, and, more significantly according to Caldwell, because the "terms" of the transformation are "set by the immigrants".[5]
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