Hundreds across the US rallied yesterday in 'Marches against Shariah', protesting the perceived threat of radical Islam to American civilisation.
About two dozen 'Marches against Shariah' took place yesterday in cities across the US, according to RNS. The marches were organised by ACT (American Congress for Truth) for America, which describes itself as a 'grassroots national security organization' that vows to defend America's founding 'western values' and 'protect America from terrorism'.
The civil rights legal advocacy group Southern Poverty Law Center classifies ACT as a hate-group, and the largest grassroots anti-Muslim group in the US with a claimed membership of 280,000.
At a rally outside a Muslim centre of worship in Dallas, Texas, one speaker Jim Gilles described Muslims as 'perverted, demonic, sex-crazed...sick perverts' who 'rape their goats'.
Anti-Sharia rallies also took place in cities like Boston, Chicago, Denver and Seattle. Counter-protests, affirming solidarity with the Islamic community, also took place.
Shariah is the Islamic religious law derived from the Quran and the traditions of the prophet Mohammed. One key ACT initiative is its lobbying for 'American Laws for American Courts': legislation which seeks to ban the use of Shariah in US civil courts.
A lawyer and spokesman for the Richardson Islamic centre in Dallas, Khalid Hamideh, said the notion that Muslims sought to impose Shariah law on America was 'absolute nonsense'.
ACT for America denies being anti-Muslim, saying its enemy is the anti-western 'radical Islam', though its founder Brigitte Gabriel is accused of neglecting such nuance in the past.
She is reported as saying in 2007 that a devout Muslim 'cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America'. A sign at the Dallas rally declared that 'Every real Muslim is a Jihadist!'
More than 100 US religious and civil liberties groups denounced the rallies as disingenuously fear-mongering, and condemned the protests in a letter to the mayors of host cities.
