John McGuire is in the House anti-Sharia caucus

And he's been very quiet about it.

VA-05’s congressman has joined the Sharia Free America Caucus, a new-ish group of House Republicans that one Islamic advocacy organization designated a hate group. McGuire is also a co-sponsor of H.R. 5512, the No Shari’a Act, which would, in its own words, “prohibit the application of Shari’a in the United States where such application would violate constitutional rights, and for other purposes.”

This isn’t so much a solution in search of a problem as it is a solution designed to make you think there’s a problem.

What’s this caucus now?

The Shari’a Free America Caucus was conceived by two Texas congressman at, of all places, the White House Christmas party. (I mean, who doesn’t celebrate the holidays by dreaming up ways to persecute other religions?) It now has some 60 members, including McGuire.

As one Christian conservative in Illinois put it, the caucus “has everything to do with exposing Sharia and protecting women and girls from financial, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse.”

Maybe. The template for HB 5512 is 15-year-old draft legislation written by a Brooklyn lawyer who admitted at the time that its purpose had nothing to do with the law—it was to get people asking “what is Sharia?” Oklahoma put that version, tastefully named “Save Our State,” before voters. Seventy percent approved it. A federal court struck it down for violating the First Amendment.

The Shari’a Free America Caucus has other proposals. One would bar foreign nationals who adhere to Sharia law from entering or remaining in the United States. Another would halt all immigration until security reforms are in place. Another would remove tax-exempt status from organizations with alleged ties to terrorist groups, including CAIR, the one that designated the caucus a hate group.

The putative problem…

Sharia is Islamic religious guidance derived from the Quran and other writings. It covers two distinct domains; one is religious practice (prayer schedules, dietary rules, marriage, etc.). This is the domain that most American Muslims actually engage with.

The other domain covers public laws. This is what exists exists in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and parts of Nigeria, where courts impose corporal punishment, restrict women’s rights, and treat apostasy as a crime.

What HB 5512’s supporters say they’re worried about is this domain having legal force in the United States. Their best real-world example seems to be a New Jersey court ruling from 2008 in which a judge denied a Muslim woman a restraining order against her husband, citing the man’s religious beliefs.

…is not a problem.

Sharia law has no legal power in the United States and never will; the Establishment Clause prohibits any religious system from being imposed as state law.

Besides, American courts already treat Islamic arbitration and contracts the same way they treat Jewish and Catholic religious law: They enforce voluntary agreements, void coerced ones, and apply constitutional standards. The cases where women have been harmed are real but rare, already remediable under existing law, and not unique to Islam. Indeed, an appellate court overturned that New Jersey ruling. The system worked.

McGuire’s district includes the Islamic Society of Central Virginia, a mosque in Charlottesville that’s been around for decades. There are no documented instances of Sharia law being applied in any VA-05 court. It’s never come up at any of McGuire’s town halls, including the ones where his team is clearly planting questions.

Incidentally, when he was a state senator, McGuire was the only state senator to vote against raising the marriage age to 18.

And there’s no justification—no legal one, at any rate—for singling out Sharia. As one interfaith group that works on domestic violence put it, “If Sharia is unconstitutional, so would be the religious codes, doctrines, and theological frameworks of all faith traditions, including the Jewish Halacha, the Catholic Code of Canon Law, the Presbyterian Principles of Order and Government, and the United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline.”

CAIR has invited every caucus member to visit a mosque in their district. As far as I can tell, McGuire’s office has not responded.