Why Does Minnesota Need a Sharia-Free Caucus?

Many Americans assume our current debate over Sharia law is a recent phenomenon, born from the waves of mass migration over the past several decades.

It isn't.

This debate is as old as the Republic itself. In fact, the conflict between the West and Sharia long predates the founding of the United States. For centuries, Western nations have confronted regimes that claimed religious authority as justification for conquest, subjugation, and injustice.

The United States encountered that reality almost immediately after winning its independence.

Fresh out of the revolution, America found itself under attack by the Barbary States of North Africa. These were not isolated pirates operating outside the law; they were government-sanctioned pirates. American merchant vessels were captured, sailors were murdered or enslaved, and ransoms were demanded from a nation barely finding its footing. By 1801, those tribute payments consumed nearly one-fifth of the federal government's revenue.

Thomas Jefferson came to understand that America was not facing ordinary piracy. Tripoli's ambassador openly justified attacks on American ships under Sharia, explaining that war against non-believers was both a right and a duty. Jefferson recognized that tribute would never purchase peace. As a result, America's first military campaign beyond its shores was fought against those who invoked Sharia to justify attacking, enslaving, and extorting Americans. 

225 years later, we face the same problem. 

Around the world, Sharia has repeatedly been invoked by governments to justify atrocities - domestic violence, child marriage, slavery, honor killings, and worse. Those practices are fundamentally incompatible with American life. Patriots and those of conscience must now stand against this pervasive political ideology.

In Minnesota specifically, decades of Democrat control and sanctuary policies have made us a magnet for mass Third World migration. We have watched those out-of-control immigration policies make our neighborhoods less safe, housing unaffordable, and completely degrade our social programs.

We are witnessing changes that would have been almost unimaginable just decades ago. Five times each day, the Islamic call to prayer echoes over loudspeakers in parts of Minneapolis. More recently, the Osseo Area School District considered plans for dedicated Muslim prayer rooms and foot-washing stations at Park Center High School. In nearby Michigan, Dearborn Public Schools have adopted halal-certified meat as the standard for school meals, making a ritual prayer a required part of the preparation of food served in a public school system.

These are all symptoms of a much larger transformation taking place across our state. Minnesota is no longer the place many of us grew up in. We've witnessed violent Somali youth gangs terrorize neighborhoods, watched hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars lost to fraud, then used to fund Al-Shabaab terrorists, and seen close-knit communities like St. Cloud fundamentally transformed by unchecked mass migration. For too long, we have allowed our “leaders” to treat these changes as inevitable and anyone who questioned them as intolerant and bigoted. They are wrong.

These examples point to a larger problem. Our institutions are increasingly bending to accommodate practices rooted in civic and legal traditions foreign to our own. When our leaders lose confidence in the values that built our state, it should come as no surprise that the identity of Minnesota begins to change with it.

The only way to rebuild our state into the Minnesota Nice high-trust society that we once knew is to embrace the Western values that built it. That starts by ensuring that our judicial system remains firmly rooted in American constitutional law.

That is why this caucus will work to advance legislation ensuring that Minnesota courts recognize one supreme legal authority: the Constitution of the United States & the Constitution of Minnesota.

Every generation is called upon to defend the principles that made America exceptional. Our generation is no different. We all have a responsibility to draw a line in the sand and defend our values. If we do not stand now, we will be overtaken by this oppressive and radical ideology.

The Legislature has a duty to protect Minnesotans. We will do our part to ensure that this barbaric and radical ideology, called Sharia, which is totally incompatible with American values, never advances in Minnesota law.

That is the mission of this Sharia-Free Minnesota Caucus

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