When an Alabama Republican legislator introduced a bill to ban Shariah law and subsequently couldn’t define Shariah law, I thought we had seen the single most ignorant and problematic of the anti-Shariah efforts.
But now the Alaska GOP is giving Alabama a run for its money. In becoming the latest state legislator to seek to ban Islamic law, Alaska Republican Rep. Carl Gatto called a fringe anti-Muslim blogger to testify as an expert witness in the House Judiciary Committee.
That would be Pamela Geller. The New York-based blogger delivered a statement by phone and then took questions from Alaska legislators during the hearing Wednesday.
Geller is the blogger who spread many of the original falsehoods about the so-called “ground zero mosque” (sample headline from her “Atlas Shrugs” website: “Monster Mosque Pushes Ahead in Shadow of World Trade Center Islamic Death and Destruction”). Her blog also regularly features conspiracy theories such as the classic, “Malcolm X is Obama’s father.”
That Geller was called as an expert in anything in a deliberative body is remarkable. The Anchorage Daily News reports on her testimony:
“Geller maintained ‘surveys in the Muslim world’ show most Muslims want a unified caliphate with a ‘strict al-Qaida-like Sharia’. She spoke of Muslim polygamy, jihad in support of Sharia, and said Muslims have demanded special accommodation in U.S. schools, workplaces and government.”