Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, called on state law enforcement to investigate “sharia courts,” the Muslim Brotherhood and Council on American-Islamic Relations in a pair of letters, which he released on Wednesday and Thursday.
On Nov. 20, Abbott asked the Texas Department of Public Safety to probe the latter two organizations, two days after he designated them as foreign terror groups.
“The goal is to identify, disrupt and eradicate terrorist organizations engaged in criminal activities in Texas,” the governor stated on Thursday. “We will target threats of violence, intimidation and harassment of our citizens.”
He added that the state “will also focus on individuals or groups who unlawfully impose sharia law, which violates the Texas Constitution and state statutes.”
On Nov. 19, the Texas governor wrote to district attorneys and sheriffs in North Texas, the state attorney general and the Texas Department of Public Safety to “alert them of possible criminal violations by sharia tribunals masquerading as legal courts,” calling “for investigations into these entities purporting to enforce Sharia law.”
Abbott said “certain entities” in the state might “be masquerading as legal ‘courts’ staffed with ‘judges’ issuing orders that purportedly carry the authority to bind individuals to Islamic codes, thereby preempting state and federal laws.”
“The U.S. Constitution’s religious protections provide no authority for religious courts to skirt state and federal laws simply by donning robes and pronouncing positions inconsistent with Western civilization,” he wrote. “I urge you, therefore, to investigate efforts by entities purporting to illegally enforce sharia law in Texas.”
“Legal disputes in Texas must be decided based on American law rooted in the fundamental principles of American due process, not according to sharia law dispensed in modern-day star chambers,” he added.
Abbott wrote that “a Presbyterian session, a Catholic bishop, a Jewish beit din—all may inquire into wrongdoing and correct their members to preserve the purity, peace and good order of a congregation,” but that “it is different entirely, however, for religious groups to set up courts purporting to replace actual courts of law to evade neutral and generally applicable laws.”
An “Islamic Tribunal” in Dallas, which self-identifies as “a unique institution of its kind in the United States of America,” tries to replace American law, according to the governor.
“Despite suggesting that submission to its jurisdiction is voluntary, the tribunal commands that all ‘Muslims here in American are obligated to find a way to solve conflicts and disputes according to the principles of Islamic law,’ and it steers them away from ‘the courts of the United States of America’” that “‘are costly and consist of ineffective lawyers,’” Abbott wrote.
On social media, the governor noted that it was “great” that CAIR was threatening to sue the state for being designated a terror organization.
“The lawsuits will open the doors to all of their financial transactions and funding. To all of their dealings and misdeeds,” he wrote. “The attorney general will have a heyday.”
