USA TODAY International Edition
Laws that can help ‘build a monster’
Bills targeting Sharia law, terrorism have powerful networks behind them
A lawmaker in Idaho introduced legislation to prevent traditional Islamic Sharia law from infiltrating U.S. courts.
In Florida, a legislator proposed striking at the foundations of terrorism with a bill bolstering victims’ ability to sue its supporters.
The lawmakers’ efforts are seemingly unrelated, their statehouses almost 2,000 miles apart.
But both get their ideas, and the text of their bills, from the same representative of the same right-wing think tank.
And when they introduced the bills, the same activist group dispatches supporters to press for passage.
Eric Redman of Idaho and Mike Hill of Florida are among dozens of legislators who have sponsored copycat bills written and pushed by a network of far-right think tanks and activists.
The legislation was developed by the Center for Security Policy, which was founded by Frank Gaffney, a Reagan-era acting assistant secretary of Defense who pushes conspiracy theories alleging radical Muslims have infiltrated the government. Once the copycat bills are introduced, local chapters of the Washington, D.C.-based ACT for America, which describes itself as the “NRA of national security,” encourage their supporters to show up at legislative hearings and flood lawmakers’ inboxes and phone lines in support of the bills. ACT’s founder, Brigitte Gabriel, has claimed that up to a quarter of all Muslims support the destruction of Western civilization.
ACT and the Center for Security Policy are at the center of a broad
er network that over a decade has waged a successful campaign that has reached every statehouse and led to the bills they’ve written and supported being introduced more than 70 times. Six states – Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina and Tennessee – have passed both anti-Sharia and anti-terrorism measures.
The special interest groups and lawmakers who sponsor their bills said they’re protecting Americans from Islamic extremism and terrorism. But the bills have had little practical impact.
In the case of the bill targeting Sharia law, known as American Laws for American Courts, supporters point to only vague threats. The terrorism bill, known as Andy’s Law, has never been put to use.
Instead, opponents and civil rights activists said, the copycat laws aren’t really about court integrity or terrorism.
“It is literally government-sanctioned Islamophobia,” said Robert McCaw, government relations director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil-rights watchdog. “The intended target is clear: American Muslims.”
The groups’ success highlights how special interests with lobbying power spread copycat bills – known as “model legislation” – state by state to further their agendas. Because disclosing the source of bill language isn’t required by most states, the process often occurs with little scrutiny. A legislator presents the bill as his or her own, while constituents and even other lawmakers don’t realize they have been targeted by a special interest group.
Meanwhile, the special interests behind the copycat legislation use their success to solicit donations and recruit other lawmakers to sponsor their bills.
The use of copy-and-paste legislation – on topics as varied as asbestos liability and used car sales – is the subject of an investigation by USA TODAY, the Center for Public Integrity and The Arizona Republic.
USA TODAY and the Republic found that at least 10,000 bills almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in the past eight years, and more than 2,100 of those bills were signed into law. In a separate analysis, the Center for Public Integrity identified tens of thousands of bills with identical phrases, then traced the origins of that language in dozens of those bills across the country.
‘Tool for hate groups’
In early 2016, Idaho lawmakers were invited to a discussion of refugee resettlement by “concerned Idaho citizens.” An email described the meeting, in the Capitol building’s Lincoln Auditorium, as a “very important presentation on refugee resettlement,” according to a Washington newspaper report.
The meeting wasn’t about helping refugees. It was about warning that they posed a threat to the state.
The event featured Christopher Holton, vice president of outreach for the Center for Security Policy. A prolific blogger on fringe right-wing websites, Holton has labeled Muslim American advocacy groups “Muslim Brotherhood organizations” and compared them to American Nazi sympathizers of the 1930s.
Holton serves a key role in the spread of model legislation backed by the Center for Security Policy: He connects his organization with like-minded lawmakers. At the Idaho meeting, Holton talked about “the threat from jihad,” adding a warning that refugees being resettled in Idaho were cause for concern, according to news accounts.
Holton’s rhetoric caught the attention of then-Idaho Rep. Redman, a Republican. Two months later, he introduced a bill copied from the Center for Security Policy’s American Laws for American Courts model legislation.
The brainchild of New York attorney David Yerushalmi, general counsel for the Center for Security Policy, the model bill states that judges’ rulings are void if based on foreign laws that violate rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution or state laws.
American Laws for American Courts never mentions Islam – a fact often repeated by backers – but its supporters invoke Sharia in arguing why the legislation is needed. At the capitol in Boise, Redman circulated a handout that included a picture of a severed hand and a man kneeling to be beheaded, offered as portrayals of the threat Sharia poses to Western society.
For Muslims, Sharia governs how to pray, treat family members and handle financial affairs. In some parts of the world, it’s enforced as draconian law; for countless other Muslims, it is simply a code of conduct.
Gaffney didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment for this article. But he and others at the Center for Security Policy claim in the book “Shariah: The Threat to America” that the United States has been “deeply influenced by an enemy within that is openly determined to replace the U.S. Constitution with Shariah.”
To push the bill, Redman solicited support from the local chapter of ACT, which describes itself as a “national security grassroots advocacy organization.”
Repeating a pattern seen in other states where copies of American Laws for American Courts were introduced, ACT encouraged members through emails and social media to attend legislative hearings and flood lawmakers’ inboxes and phone lines.
ACT trumpets the passage of the copycat legislation it supports on a portion of its website titled “State Wins,” and it has led widely publicized marches against Sharia. When Andy’s Law passed in North Carolina, ACT posted a celebratory message on its official Facebook account, calling for members to get involved in the organization. “In just 7 years, ACT for America has been responsible for the passage of 42 bills in over 20 states!” the post said.
Representatives of ACT did not respond to requests for comment. The group’s website says it does not “tolerate any bias, discrimination, or violence against anyone, based on their religion, gender, race, or political persuasion.”
The anti-Sharia bill failed in Idaho in 2016. Redman, who declined to comment for this story, unsuccessfully reintroduced it in the next two legislative sessions. He decided not to seek reelection and left office in December.
Meanwhile, the Center for Security Policy was already recruiting lawmakers to push another piece of copycat legislation.
The birth of Andy’s Law
Army Pvt. William Andrew “Andy” Long was killed in 2009 outside a military recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas, by a shooter who had been radicalized by U.S. wars in the Middle East. After Long’s death, Arkansas lawmakers, national security activists and Daris Long, Andy’s father, drafted legislation known as Andy’s Law, the measure allows families of the victims of terrorism to sue those who provided material support to terrorists, not merely the perpetrators.
Stephen Gelé, a New Orleans attorney who helped write the original draft of Andy’s Law, said the measure doesn’t target Muslims or other specific groups. Rather, it closes a loophole in federal law that requires there be an international link to the crime in order to prosecute it as terrorism, he said.
Hate-group watchdogs have been more blunt about the purpose of the copycat legislation. “Andy’s Law is about pushing a false narrative about American Muslims that creates fear about their houses of worship and community centers,” McCaw said.
The bill’s proponents and detractors alike agree that Andy’s Law has never been put to use. And opponents of the legislation say existing law already allows people to sue terrorists and their accomplices.
Groups behind the bill stayed intensely involved after the measure was taken up by Hill, a Florida Republican, in 2016. Hill and Holton of the Center for Security Policy sought the help of Republicans Rep. Jason Fischer and Sen. David Simmons to sponsor the bill. Emails show that throughout the legislative process, Holton and Gelé worked with the Florida lawmakers and their aides, editing or providing input for amendments, news releases and lawmakers’ testimony. ACT encouraged its local chapters to flood legislators with messages in support of Andy’s Law.
The bill passed, and Republican Gov. Rick Scott signed it in June 2017. Neither Simmons nor Fischer responded to requests for comment.
Communities feel the pain
Muslim advocates say the rhetoric that follows these copycat bills has done tangible harm to Muslim communities.
Hate crimes targeting Muslims are at their highest levels since immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to FBI statistics. In 2016, at least 381 anti-Muslim offenses were reported to law enforcement agencies.
Those concerns were on Ahmed Abdelnaby’s mind in February 2018 as he sat in an Idaho House of Representatives Committee on State Affairs meeting to protest the state’s anti-Sharia bill.
An Egyptian immigrant, Abdelnaby settled in Idaho with his wife, Dalia Elgamel, in 2009 so they could pursue doctoral degrees in engineering at the University of Idaho.
Neither can forget the night their eldest child told them another student had tried to fight him at school. He had spoken out in class after a teacher incorrectly claimed that Muslims support waging violent “jihad.” The other student took it as an invitation to start a brawl outside the classroom.
So Elgamel signed her husband up to speak at the committee meeting. Left unchallenged, she said, bills like the one in Idaho would help hate grow. “Those kinds of things will build a monster,” she said. “We need to be smarter than that with our kids.”
At the committee hearing, opponents of the bill filled the room, including a rabbi and Christian ministers. Abdelnaby, initially hesitant, decided to speak.
“What I’m seeing is there’s lots of stereotypes against Sharia law, which have no facts,” Abdelnaby told the lawmakers. “Of course, we are all under the understanding that if my religion would ask me to do something against the Constitution, I would not do it.”
“It is literally government-sanctioned Islamophobia. The intended target is clear: American Muslims.”
Robert McCaw, a government relations director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations