Yesterday, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach discussed the supposed threat of Shariah law being applied in American courts with anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney. The exchange occurred during a taping of Gaffney’s Secure Freedom Radio program at “Hold Their Feet to the Fire,” the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform’s annual radio event.
“There is an effort going on below the radar to insert Shariah law-based defenses into court cases,” Kobach claimed.
Later, Kobach expressed a desire for other states to pass “American laws for American courts” legislation that anti-Muslim activists frequently promote. This is not the first time Kobach has sounded the alarm about Shariah in the U.S. court system. In 2012, Kobach proposed an amendment to the Republican Party’s platform supporting a ban on Shariah and other foreign law. The amendment was approved despite Kobach admitting he was “not aware of any court that’s accepted the argument.”
Kobach is, perhaps, best known as the architect and defender of anti-immigrant legislation, such as Arizona’s S.B. 1070, and similar bills in cities and states across the U.S. As a member of John Ashcroft’s Justice Department, he also helped create a program that required thousands of visiting Muslim and Middle Eastern visitors to the U.S. register and be fingerprinted in a policy that amounted to racial profiling.