Hours after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of a Muslim woman who was denied a job at Abercrombie and Fitch because she wears the hijab, the world wide web was filled with countless posts bemoaning the triumph of sharia law. The frenzy about sharia law, led by bigoted anti-Muslim bloggers and Republican politicians, is irrational and dangerous.

Ensuring that Americans do not have to choose between a job and their faith is not an application of sharia law; it is a triumph of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which stems from the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 

Outside Islamic theocracies, sharia is an ethical framework that Muslims perceive as a lifestyle. Islam is not unique in having religious rules. For example, Christianity has the Mosaic Law, the Ten Commandments (inherited from Judaism), as well as the teachings of Christ, which are known as the New Covenant. Judaism has Halakha, Jewish religious laws. Hinduism has the Manu Smriti, a book that governs society.

In the United States, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It protects the free practice of religion, but bans the establishment of a religion by the government.  

Fears of sharia law are delusional. There has not been a single incident where a court or governmental entity enforced sharia law in place of our existing secular laws. Religious accommodations to Muslims are an extension of the freedoms granted by the First Amendment. All religious groups in this country, especially Christians, are accommodated by governmental entities; hence, Dec. 25 is federal holiday. 

Delusions are fueled by lies. Fabricated stories are the main driver behind the phobia of sharia law. Conservative websites have played on Americans’ fears and convinced their audience that there are sharia pockets around the country, where Muslims live above the law and have training camps for fundamentalists. 

Even politicians and popular mainstream media personalities have perpetuated these myths. During the 2010 election cycle, Tea Party star and Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle claimed that Dearborn is under Islamic law, not the rule of the Constitution. Fox News commentators, including Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and former commentator Glenn Beck, have exhausted thousands of hours of airtime on warning that sharia law is coming to America.

Ideologues and fake patriots who benefit from spreading fears are the driving force behind creating the perception that sharia is coming to destroy America. 

Eight states have passed bans on sharia law. Outlawing Islamic law in American courts and governmental entities has been proposed in 34 states since 2010. Many of these states are suffering unemployment, decaying infrastructure, failing schools and other major economic and social problems. But legislators have found the time to ban a religious law from being adopted by the government, even though the Constitution made it clear 228 years ago that government cannot establish a religion.

Measures to spread fear of sharia law, including state bans, ignite flames of bigotry and bring harm to the Muslim American community. If too many people wrongly perceive sharia law as a danger to our Constitutional democracy, and that Muslims want to spread sharia law, then they’ll perceive Muslims as a threat to this country. When a group of people is painted with a broad brush and collectively loathed, the results are often unpleasant. Let’s not forget “Kristallnacht”, a coordinated attack on Jews that took place Nov. 9 and 10, 1938 in Germany and Austria, and what happened in the years that followed.

Over the past few months, three young Muslim Americans, who were ideal citizens, were shot in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. A mosque was burned down in Houston, Texas. Hundreds of protesters turned up with guns in front of a mosque in Phoenix, Arizona. Even in Southeast Michigan, where the large Muslim population should be enough to debunk the myths about the community, a man was attacked in front of his family at a Dearborn Kroger; and a customer assaulted two 7-Eleven employees because of their Muslim faith.

Our fellow Americans should be assured that Muslims do not want to impose sharia law on them. Ironically, the self-proclaimed Christians warning against sharia are the ones trying to force their religious ways on the American public with the “religious freedom” acts that would open the door for discrimination in the name of religion. It is those religious fundamentalists of the Republican Party who are trying to deny women reproductive healthcare and reject measures to combat global warming in the name of Christianity.

The hijab’s triumph in the Supreme Court is a victory for America and the Constitution, the supreme law of this land.