In the spring of 2019, social media users commenced sharing memes and messages that celebrated the state of North Carolina’s purported choice to “ban Sharia law” and render it a “criminal offense.”
The text of the memes typically followed one of the formulas: “North Carolina has banned Islamic Sharia law and regards [sic] it as crooked because it should be … allow’s make [the ban] nationwide!” “North Carolina has banned Islamic ‘Sharia regulation’ inside the nation, regarding it now as a crook offense.”
In 2013, North Carolina’s national legislature passed a law that prohibited county courts from applying “foreign law,” which implicitly included Sharia, the Islamic machine of jurisprudence, in their family-law topics.
It no longer declared or designed Sharia “a criminal offense,” a designation that might make no sense anyway because Sharia is a religiously-based felony device, not a discrete act. Furthermore, the regulation exceeded almost six years before a wave of social media postings, which many customers understood to be describing the latest activities.
In July 2013, the North Carolina General Assembly voted seventy to five-37 to ratify House Bill 522, a regulation that prohibited courts and other state bodies from making use of “overseas law” in family law subjects, including divorce and infant-custody cases. The text of the bill examines:
Critics of the law characterized it as useless because North Carolina courts had not been called upon to use Sharia regulation standards within the first area, as well as being prompted by anti-Muslim sentiment. Republican North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory opposed HB 522; however did not veto it, and the bill became law in August 2013, going into effect the following month.
The memes that spread on social media in March and April 2019 had a foundation; however, they had been woefully missing in context. HB 522 did not criminalize Sharia nor even limit its use through courts in all circumstances. Rather, the 2013 law barred state courts and agencies from using “overseas regulation” (which would consist of Sharia) in divorce, child custody, and other family-law disputes.
That fact becomes a lot extra nuanced than the memes that proclaimed, “North Carolina has banned Islamic ‘Sharia law’ in the state, regarding it now as a criminal offense.” Those memes also failed to inform readers that the regulation in question was exceeded in 2013, almost six years before the wave of social media sharing in the spring of 2019.
