The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has officially asked the Republican Party to reject a newly-adopted platform plank that includes a section supporting a ban on foreign law, which its sponsor admits targets the religious principles of American Muslims.
In their plea to the GOP, CAIR noted that the plank appears to be modeled on dozens of bills introduced in state legislatures nationwide based on draft legislation promoted by David Yerushalmi, an infamous Islamophobe with a history of bigoted statements targeting women, African Americans and people of the Jewish faith.
On Tuesday, the anti-Islam plank was adopted without argument or debate during a meeting of the Republican Party’s platform committee. The policy statement was introduced by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an anti-immigration activist who also wrote Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 “papers please” law.
The Kansas law Kobach spoke of at the platform committee meeting, which CAIR challenged as unconstitutional and discriminatory, was derived from Yerushalmi’s template and legislator’s in that state acknowledged that the bill targeted Muslims.
Of that bill, Sen. Chris Steineger, a Kansas City Republican, said: “[T]his was not presented as protecting the Kansas Constitution. The proponents of this measure, clearly by the literature they gave me and by the video link they directed me to, they presented this as protecting us against Sharia law. Despite the fact that this doesn’t mention Sharia, that’s how this whole issue was presented.”
For more information, you can refer to:
Senate OKs Bill to Ban Foreign Laws
Kansas Legislature Passes Discriminatory Anti-Muslim Bill
Video: Kansas Anti-Sharia Law Promotes Discrimination (CAIR)