South Carolina Mulls Ban on Sharia Law

South Carolina lawmakers are considering a bill that would explicitly state that "foreign law" could not be enforced in the Palmetto State—the latest in a series of laws that some critics say are really just trying to preemptively ban sharia law, Talking Points Memo reports. State Sen. Michael Fair, who introduced the bill, said that "there are some localities around the country that have imposed sharia law in lieu of local laws."

Fair says the bill is necessary to re-establish the primacy of state law in those cases, but he says the bill doesn't target Muslims specifically. "We're big on religious freedom, but we also understand that civil law and criminal law in this country and in the state of South Carolina is not religious law," Fair said. "If we were to ID this as anti-sharia law and statute, then we're being guilty of one of the things we're trying not to do." Oklahoma and Wyoming have tried and failed to implement Sharia bans.
(More South Carolina stories.)