TN 's anti-shariah law heats up One-News Now

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TN's anti-sharia debate heats up

Chad Groening - OneNewsNow - 3/3/2011 4:00:00 AM

A radical Islamic group is pressuring Tennessee lawmakers to drop legislation aimed at keeping sharia law out of The Volunteer State.





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According to The Tennessean, the anti-sharia initiative has been introduced in the Senate by State Senator Bill Ketron, and in the Assembly by State Representative Judd Matheny. The twin bills are aimed at providing a powerful counter-terrorism tool to state and local law enforcement by allowing for civil and/or criminal penalties against anyone providing material support or resources to terrorist organizations.

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But recently the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a front group for the terrorist organization Hamas, held a news conference attempting to use scare tactics to convince the legislators to drop the bill.

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Guy Rodgers is executive director of Act! for America, which supports the legislation. CAIR, he says, has terrorist ties. "They are an organization that supports terrorist types of activities, such as through Hamas, and they're an organization that supports sharia," he says.

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According to the Act! for America spokesman, CAIR's national communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, has made statements indicative of that stance.

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"He wished that the government of America would be Islamic sometime in the future," says Rodgers. "So as we are taking on sharia law and its consequence, which is terrorism, not surprisingly these people are standing up -- they're screaming, they're yelling, they're saying it's a violation of freedom of religion. It's not."

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Rodgers says his organization believes the Tennessee legislation has been written to withstand constitutional scrutiny.