ABSTRACT
In the fall of 2010, 70 percent of Oklahoma voters approved the ‘Save Our State’ amendment to the state constitution explicitly rendering sharia1 invalid in
Oklahoma courts. The core of the amendment states: ‘Specifically, the courts shall not look at international law or Sharia law’ in making decisions (Oklahoma House of Representatives and Senate 2010). The amendment’s implication is clear: US law will remain supreme until and unless it is displaced by another legal system. Because the law of the USA ought to be upheld as supreme, other legal orders must be legislatively excluded. Perhaps even more interesting, the amendment implied that without such intervention, the US judiciary was in danger of inadvertently becoming the instrument of invasion by foreign law. Central to this and other political and legal comments about sharia, it is Islamic law and not Islam that is identified as the object of concern. Ostensibly, then, it does not pose a threat to First Amendment rights to religious freedom, as it is law and not religion that such discourses target.
