LR Editor Eric Dondero quoted in Philadelphia Weekly: Sharia Law comes to Pennsylvania

Excerpted, Philadelphia Weekly, "Why Does PA Care About Banishing Sharia Law?"

What you don’t know can most likely kill you. That’s at least the thought process behind a new bill that’ll be considered in the Legislature when it reconvenes next year. Rep. RoseMarie Swanger of Lebanon County has introduced House Bill 2029, which would amend Title 42 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, prohibiting “the application of foreign law which would impair constitutional rights.” And her bill is being supported by more than 40 state reps for one reason: Fighting commonwealth Islamic Jihad within the walls of state government.

Swanger writes...

“The embrace of foreign legal systems such as Sharia Law, which was inherently hostile to our constitutional liberties, is a violation of the principles on which our nation was founded.” And the bill she introduced to the state House mirrors legislation introduced and passed across Red America in recent years (Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Louisiana, Tennessee).

Jewish Left joins with Muslim CAIR to denounce the proposed Legislation

“The echoes for me are strong of Germany in the 1930s,” says Rabbi Linda Holtzman of Reconstructionist synagogue Mishkan Shalom in Roxborough, “when repeatedly, Jewish Law was brought forward and defamed in the courts as a way of defaming all Jewish tradition.”

Holtzman says this bill and others like it are used to “villainize” Muslims, and perhaps the lawmakers who signed onto this bill haven’t thought through the ramifications of banning all foreign law.

Dondero response

“My fellow Jews need to buck up,” says Eric Dondero, editor of Libertarian Republican.net, over the phone from Houston. “The big problem right now is Islam and Islamism invading our country. And if they want to continue to move in, we need to fight back. Their culture is coming here.”

Dondero, a former staffer for Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, has blogged extensively about what he calls “creeping Sharia Law” over the past several years. He says if you want to know what Sharia looks like in the United States, all you have to do is look at Europe, where he claims Muslim Europeans have “invaded” the countryside.

“They’re invading Switzerland and a Swedish island called Malmo, where the Muslims are raping all the European and Swedish women,” he says, recalling that city’s reports of lawlessness between the Jewish, Muslim and Neo-Nazi populations. And he fears that if Sharia Law isn’t banned in all states the way it was banned in his, the U.S. is next.

Editor's note - Print circulation for PW is 88,000, Alexa figures for on-line readership, roughly 30,000 visitors a day.