Faculty in the News
In the News
Newt Gingrich’s Sharia Law Stance Raises Questions
Publication date: Dec. 16, 2011
Source: International Business Times
Author: Jeremy B. White
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2012 Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich sees Islamic Sharia law as a threat facing America. An article by the International Business Times covering Gingrich's remarks quoted Raj Bhala, the Rice Distinguished Professor of Law.
The International Business Times wrote:
Calls to excise Sharia principles from the American legal system also overlook the fact that Anglo-American jurisprudence has absorbed or derived numerous ideas from Sharia, said Raj Bhala, an associate dean for international comparative law at University Kansas School of Law who teaches a class on Islamic law.
"It is intellectually incomplete and even disingenuous to talk only about insidious elements of the Sharia coming into American law when in fact there are many principles and doctrines from the sharia that we have seen now in our own legal system and which are essential ingredients in our legal system," Bhala said. "Unfortunately, in the political climate sometimes the aberrational and the extreme get stressed at the expense of the common and the agreed upon, and that's I think what's happening here."