"We Don't Need to Invite Foreign Law Into Idaho"

A county that is 95 percent white (like many of America's counties, to be fair) is drawing national attention now that some of its state's political leaders refused to comply with a national child support law because they feared it would compel them to follow Sharia law.

A week before the debate in the Idaho Senate, the Bonneville County Republican Central Committee (BCRCC) distributed a newsletter containing an opinion piece called "Islam in Idaho." Presumably because of the backlash the essay caused, it can not be found on the BCRCC's website or Facebook page.

In the essay, BCRCC executive director Becky Prestwich assumed 10 percent of all Muslims are radicals, asserted that Muslims are being taught to behave violently against infidels, and urged constituents to contact their lawmakers to "do something about it ... before it's too late" (as quoted in these articles from The Idaho Statesman and The Idaho State Journal).

Bonneville County, which contains the city of Idaho Falls, does not lay claim to a mosque, though the county's Islamic Society website says prayers are held in local residence, and a new mosque 50 miles away opened in Pocatello last year.

While the number of Muslims in Idaho has been growing, there have been no recent acts of terrorism committed by Muslims in the state. Local leaders, Christian, Muslim and agnostic, deplored the letter and one professor called it "the same garbage that we've been hearing forever."

It's true.  

Throughout the history of the country and the world, in-groups have been threatened by out-groups. Think KKK, the anti-immigrant leagues of the 1920s, even the Alien and Seditions Acts the government passed during World War II. Prestwich is just one more in a long line of Americans who have exaggerated the threat implied by a harmless minority.

Even if her assertions about the percentage of Muslims who support violence are true - and research shows they're not - Prestwich fails because she provides no realistic way for constituents to defend themselves. She encourages them to contact her legislators - but then what?

The Pew Research Center study cited above shows that eight percent of American Muslims might consider suicide bombing acceptable to defend Islam in some cases. Even if eight percent of Idaho Muslim do feel that way, so what? Lawmakers can't legislate their beliefs. And Muslims wouldn't need to defend Islam if people like Prestwich weren't attacking it.