Last week Peace Catalyst President Rick Love sat down with Imam Taha Hassan of the Islamic Center of San Diego. They discussed immigration, living as a Muslim in America, Sharia, and what Christians should know about interacting with Muslims. 

There’s been an anti-Sharia movement afoot in a good twenty US state legislatures starting in the late 2000s. The idea is to ban any reference to Sharia in US courts, because allegedly Islamic law is the toxic spearhead of Islam’s totalitarian ideology that aims to take over the world. According to this view, Sharia represents the greatest threat to the United States since the Cold War.

Especially since the 9/11 attacks on US soil, we Americans have struggled to come to terms with the concept of Shari’a. But our fear of Shari’a is not just about women’s rights, or even some of the prescribed punishments (hudud) for theft or adultery that seem barbaric to us – they’re rarely applied even in places like Saudi Arabia. Our real fear, understandably, is terrorism.

In this blog I describe Sharia, as seen by Muslims, as divine, flexible and comprehensive. And so in the context of the current frenzy in several states to “outlaw Sharia,” I’m arguing that 1) it’s like telling a Muslim she can’t practice her religion at all; and 2) it displays a staggering ignorance about how Islamic law actually works; and 3) there’s nothing to fear about Muslims embracing Sharia.

No one would deny that transnational terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and its affiliates or Taliban-related fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan are sworn enemies of the U.S. What I would like to highlight here is that "Islam" equals Sharia law, and Sharia law equals a system inherently bent on world domination.