Last week’s news on the judicial front was dominated by the California supreme court’s ruling on gay marriage and President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Largely unremarked was another potentially seismic decision, one made in federal court regarding Islamic law, which is called sharia.
Eastern District of Michigan judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff handed down the decision, in a case involving an alleged violation of the constitutional separation of church and state. The issue is whether a government-owned company, AIG, can market sharia-compliant insurance products. (To be sharia-compliant, an investment vehicle must be created and structured in ways that do not violate Islamic law.) In a well-reasoned and cogently argued opinion, Judge Zatkoff refused to dismiss the case prior to factual discovery....
