High Country News: What the anti-Shariah rallies point to
“I think it’s shrewd on the part of Brigitte Gabriel (founder of ACT for America) to point to the extreme views on women that the more conservative elements of Islam hold,” says Fred Clarkson, a senior fellow at the Massachusetts-based progressive think-tank Political Research Associates and the author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy. “But it’s an empty gesture. Nobody is trying to impose Shariah law (in the U.S.)…This kind of stoking of paranoia and taking a stand against a problem that doesn’t exist — it’s political theater.”