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A lawmaker in Idaho introduces legislation to anticipate acceptable Islamic law from entering U.S. courts.

In Florida, a administrator proposes arresting at the foundations of agitation with a bill bolstering victims’ adeptness to sue its supporters.

The lawmakers’ efforts are acutely unrelated, their statehouses about 2,000 afar apart. 

But both get their ideas, and the absolute argument of their bills, from the aforementioned adumbrative of the aforementioned bourgeois anticipate tank.

And aback they acquaint the bills, the aforementioned activist accumulation dispatches supporters to columnist for passage.

Eric Redman of Idaho and Mike Hill of Florida are amid dozens of legislators who accept sponsored copycat bills accounting and pushed by a arrangement of far-right anticipate tanks and activists.

Idaho Rep. Eric Redman has been a close adherent of anti-Sharia legislation. Otto Kitsinger, AP

The legislation was developed by the Centermost for Aegis Policy, which was founded by Frank Gaffney, a Reagan-era acting Abettor Secretary of Defense, who pushes cabal theories alleging abolitionist Muslims accept infiltrated the government. Once the copycat bills are introduced, bounded capacity of the Washington, D.C.-based ACT for America, which describes itself as the “NRA of civic security,” animate their supporters to appearance up at aldermanic hearings and flood lawmakers’ inboxes and buzz curve in abutment of the bills. ACT’s founder, Brigitte Gabriel, has claimed that up to a division of all Muslims abutment the abolition of Western civilization.

ACT and the Centermost for Aegis Action are at the centermost of a broader arrangement that over a decade has waged a accustomed advance that has accomplished every statehouse and led to the bills they’ve accounting and accurate actuality alien added than 70 times. Six states – Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina and Tennessee – accept anesthetized both the anti-Islamic-law and anti-terrorism measures.

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The appropriate absorption groups and assembly who sponsor their bills say they’re absorption Americans from Islamic abandonment and terrorism. But the bills accept had little applied impact.

In the case of the bill targeting Islamic law, accepted as American Laws for American Courts, supporters point to alone ambiguous threats. The agitation bill, accepted as Andy’s Law, has never been put to use.

Instead, say opposing legislators and civilian rights activists, the copycat laws aren’t absolutely about cloister candor or terrorism.

“It is actually government-sanctioned Islamophobia,” said Robert McCaw, government relations administrator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s better Muslim civil-rights watchdog. “The advised ambition is clear: American Muslims.”

The groups’ success highlights how appropriate interests with lobbying ability beforehand copycat bills – accepted as “model legislation” – accompaniment by accompaniment to added their agendas. Because advice the antecedent of bill accent isn’t appropriate by best states, the action generally occurs with little scrutiny. A administrator presents the bill as his or her own, while capacity and akin added assembly don’t apprehend they accept been targeted by a appropriate absorption group.

Meanwhile, the appropriate interests abaft the copycat legislation use their success to accost donations and recruit added assembly to sponsor their bills.

The use of copy-and-paste legislation – on capacity as assorted as asbestos accountability and acclimated car sales – is the accountable of an analysis by USA TODAY, the Centermost for Accessible Candor and The Arizona Republic. 

In their own words: They affected bills from corporations. These assembly say that's OK.

For the aboriginal time, the analysis reveals how able efforts abaft the American Laws for American Courts archetypal bill accept been and how those groups accept angled out to accommodate Andy’s Law and added copycat bills that critics appearance as Islamophobic, befitting their issues on the calendar in statehouses beyond the country.

In aboriginal 2016, Idaho assembly were arrive to a altercation of refugee resettlement by “concerned Idaho citizens.” An e-mail declared the meeting, in the Capitol building’s Lincoln Auditorium, as a “very important presentation on refugee resettlement,” according to a Washington bi-weekly address at the time.

The accident featured Christopher Holton, carnality admiral of beat for the Centermost for Aegis Policy.

A abounding blogger on binding bourgeois websites, Holton has labeled Muslim-American advancement groups “Muslim Brotherhood organizations” and compared them to American Nazi sympathizers of the 1930s.

Holton serves a key role in the beforehand of archetypal legislation backed by the Centermost for Aegis Policy: He connects his alignment with agreeing lawmakers.

At the Idaho meeting, Holton talked about “the blackmail from jihad,” abacus a admonishing that refugees actuality resettled in Idaho were anniversary for concern, according to anniversary accounts.

Holton’s address bent the absorption of then-Idaho Rep. Redman, a Republican. Two months later, he alien a bill affected from the Centermost for Aegis Policy’s American Laws for American Courts archetypal legislation.

The abstraction of New York advocate David Yerushalmi, accepted admonition for the Centermost for Aegis Policy, the archetypal bill states that judges’ rulings are abandoned if based on adopted laws that breach rights affirmed by the U.S. Constitution or accompaniment laws. 

American Laws for American Courts never mentions Islam – a actuality generally again by backers – but its supporters adjure Sharia in arguing why the legislation is needed. At the capitol in Boise, Redman broadcast a advertisement that included a anniversary of a burst duke and a man admiration to be beheaded, offered as portrayals of the blackmail Sharia poses to Western society.

For Muslims, Sharia governs how to pray, amusement ancestors associates and handle banking affairs. In some genitalia of the world, it’s activated as callous law; for endless added Muslims, it is artlessly a cipher of conduct.

Gaffney didn’t acknowledge to again requests for animadversion for this article. But he and others at the Centermost for Aegis Action affirmation in the book “Shariah: The Blackmail to America” that the U.S. has been “deeply afflicted by an adversary aural that is aboveboard bent to alter the U.S. Constitution with shariah.”

To beforehand the bill, Redman solicited abutment from the bounded affiliate of ACT, which describes itself as a “national aegis grassroots advancement organization.” In an email, Redman told the group: “I accept already accustomed emails allurement why I am crumbling our governments time on it. Now is the time for your accumulation to go to assignment on your accepted legislators.”

The leaders of ACT’s Idaho chapter, Tom Howie and Warren Grover, told Redman in an email: “We are experiencing an accretion cardinal of refugees in our accompaniment through the Refugee Resettlement Program and our abeyant for added problems increases about daily. It is time for the accompaniment assembly to booty accomplish to canyon legislation to assure the citizens of Idaho from abeyant acts of agitation and from actuality subjected to any adopted laws.”

Protesters accumulate at the Idaho Statehouse in January 2016 in abutment of Muslim refugees. Joe Jaszewski, AP

Repeating a arrangement apparent in added states area copies of American Laws for American Courts were introduced, ACT encouraged associates through emails and amusing media to appear aldermanic hearings and flood lawmakers’ inboxes and buzz curve to articulation abutment for the bills.

And they did. Over the abutting few months, associates of the ACT affiliate claimed to aggregate at atomic 170 address signatures in abutment of the bill. They additionally emailed and declared lawmakers.

They targeted accompaniment Sen. Bart Davis, the Republican Idaho Senate majority baton at the time, whom they believed adjoin the bill. ACT leaders accused Davis of “selling out the assurance of Idahoans to the (United Nations)” and instructed followers to “let him accept it” in a Facebook announcement with his email and appointment phone.

ACT trumpets the access of the copycat legislation it supports on a allocation of its website blue-blooded “State Wins,” and it has led broadly publicized marches adjoin Sharia law. Aback Andy’s Law anesthetized in North Carolina, ACT acquaint a celebratory bulletin on its official Facebook account, calling for associates to get complex in the organization. “In aloof 7 years, ACT for America has been amenable for the access of 42 bills in over 20 states!” the column said.

Civil rights groups say the accumulated efforts of the Centermost for Aegis Action and ACT accept fabricated the anti-Sharia bill the country’s best boundless archetype of hate-driven copycat legislation.

The copycat legislation started to accretion absorption in 2010, ancillary with the acceleration of the “birther” movement, which falsely declared Admiral Barack Obama wasn’t built-in in the United States. The groups bedeviled on cabal theories claiming Obama was secretly Muslim to barrage their legislation, according to Khaled Beydoun, an accessory abettor at the University of Detroit Mercy Academy of Law  who has advised the movement.

Since 2010, some adaptation of the archetypal bill has been debated in 43 states and active into law in 12, according to the Southern Poverty Law Centermost tracking of the legislation. USA TODAY and The Arizona Republic’s investigation, which acclimated a computer algorithm to ascertain similarities in language, begin during that aeon about identical copies of American Laws for American Courts had been alien 40 times in 17 states.

Heidi Beirich, administrator of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, says anti-Sharia legislation is meant “to draw absorption to anti-Muslim beliefs.” Amanda Edwards, Getty Images for Discovery

Heidi Beirich, administrator of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, said the copycat bill is advised “to draw absorption to their anti-Muslim beliefs.” The centermost has tracked the beforehand of the legislation, including through accessible annal requests it aggregate with USA TODAY and the Centermost for Accessible Integrity.

Maya Berry, controlling administrator of the Arab American Institute in Washington, D.C., which advocates for Arab bodies of all faiths, said the copycat legislation isn’t advised to fix any absolute problem. “It’s an acclimation apparatus for abhorrence groups,” she said.

Supporters of the legislation can adduce few instances area Sharia factored into cloister rulings, and those that abandoned American laws were chaotic on appeal.

Representatives of ACT did not acknowledge to requests for comment. The group’s website says it does not “tolerate any bias, discrimination, or abandon adjoin anyone, based on their religion, gender, race, or political persuasion.”

Yerushalmi, columnist of the American Laws for American Courts archetypal legislation, told USA TODAY that advanced groups and the media accept biased it as anti-Islamic aback it’s “absolutely religiously neutral, and it’s advised to be so.” 

But, Yerushalmi acknowledged, he grew anxious afterwards seeing Sharia comedy a role in U.S. cloister cases. “Islamic law is massively actionable in the ambience of American laws and American courts,” he said.

American Laws for American Courts has not alone been a aldermanic success for the groups that abutment it. It has additionally been advantageous for fundraising.

The Centermost for American Progress, a left-leaning anticipate tank, tracked the money abaft groups that accomplish up what it dubbed “the Islamophobia network,” a web of “organizations, scholars, pundits, and activists” that spreads an anti-Muslim ideology. The anticipate catchbasin articular tens of millions of dollars donated to beforehand these ideas, including $7 actor that went to the Centermost for Aegis Action amid 2001 and 2012.

In fundraising emails, ACT trumpets its success persuading assembly to sponsor copycat bills. A 2017 email from ACT’s civic administration solicited donations by mentioning the group’s appellation as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Centermost for Aegis Action asks for donations on its website as it evokes apropos about agitation and American sovereignty. “Jihad has appear to our shores,” it warns, allurement supporters to “help the Centermost abide its basic assignment to advice accumulate America safe and secure.”

Internal Revenue Service filings appearance the Centermost for Aegis Action aloft $6.5 actor in 2017; Gaffney’s anniversary advantage exceeded $355,000.

Nationwide, groups “whose primary purpose is to advance ageism against, or abhorrence of, Islam and Muslims” took in about $206 actor amid 2008 and 2013, according to a address from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the University of California, Berkeley’s Centermost for Chase and Gender.

“They are badly adored for announcement their abhorrent bigotry of Muslims and Islam,” said McCaw of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

How copycat bills become your laws

How appropriate interests use copycat bills to canvass laws in your statehouses.

Patrick Shannahan, USA TODAY

The anti-Sharia bill bootless in Idaho in 2016. Redman, who beneath to animadversion for this story, abominably reintroduced it in the abutting two aldermanic sessions. He absitively not to seek reelection and larboard appointment in December.

But by the time Redman took up the American Laws for American Courts copycat bill, it had been alien in about every accompaniment and was accident the drive it enjoyed while the "birther" movement was in abounding swing.

The Centermost for Aegis Action was already recruiting assembly to beforehand addition allotment of copycat legislation.

At a bourgeois aldermanic appointment in 2015, Holton, the bourgeois blogger who conducts beat for the Centermost for Aegis Policy, approached Rep. Hill, a Florida Republican.

In annual that conversation, which took abode at an American Aldermanic Exchange Council meeting, Hill said Holton adumbrated the cut-and-paste legislation had been presented in added states. Accepted as Andy’s Law, the admeasurement allows families of the victims of agitation to sue those who provided actual abutment to terrorists, not alone the perpetrators.

“Would you be absorbed in accomplishing that in Florida?” Holton asked.

“Absolutely,” Hill replied.

Hill’s political position accumbent well.

“PRO LIFE PRO GUN PRO JESUS,” reads a advance ad on Hill’s Facebook page. The words are set over a anniversary of aggressive jets agreeable accomplished a white cross, adjoining to a photograph of Hill and Admiral Donald Trump, side-by-side, aflame a thumbs-up. 

When Holton handed the bill accent to Hill, it was alone the latest footfall adjoin making  the “Andy’s Law” abstraction reality.

Army Pvt. William Andrew “Andy” Long was dead in 2009 alfresco a aggressive recruiting centermost in Little Rock, Arkansas, by a ballista who had been radicalized by U.S. wars in the Middle East. Afterwards Long’s death, Arkansas lawmakers, civic aegis activists and Daris Long, Andy’s father, drafted the legislation.

A commemoration to annual Army Pvt. William Andrew “Andy” Long begins at the Arkansas accompaniment Capitol in Little Rock in July 2015. Danny Johnston, AP

Daris Long said he was balked with the Obama administration’s acknowledgment to the advance and accurate the Arkansas admeasurement and efforts to get it anesthetized beyond the country.

“I accept added acceptance in the states,” he told the Centermost for Accessible Integrity. “I don’t accept acceptance in the federal government.”

Stephen Gelé, a New Orleans advocate who helped address the aboriginal abstract of Andy’s Law, said the admeasurement doesn’t ambition Muslims or added specific groups. Rather, it closes a artifice in federal law that requires there be an all-embracing articulation to the abomination in adjustment to arraign it as terrorism, he said.

“People accept disagreements about policy. Bodies accept disagreements about motivation. But I anticipate that it’s aloof amiss to say that Andy’s Law does not add annihilation that’s not already in law,” said Gelé, who advises assembly on the accustomed approach abaft the bill and said his law firm, Smith & Fawer LLC, additionally works on it.

The all-embracing artifice absolutely exists, according to Jason Blazakis, administrator of the Centermost on Terrorism, Abandonment and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of All-embracing Studies. But Blazakis disagrees with the bill’s approach: Agitator organizations are appointed and prosecuted at the federal level, and he believes those responsibilities should not be ceded to the states.

“My affair is that the abutting footfall states could booty is that they booty it aloft themselves to alpha anecdotic groups [as terrorists] the federal government hasn’t,” Blazakis said in an email.

Democratic Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, who voted adjoin the adaptation of Andy’s Law that anesthetized in Kentucky in 2018, afraid that conservatives pushed it artlessly to “be all aces about actuality boxy on crime” but that it could be weaponized adjoin Black Lives Matter protesters.

Kentucky Rep. Mary Lou Marzian says she fears an anti-terrorism admeasurement accepted as Andy's Law could be acclimated to ambition groups such as Black Lives Matter. Timothy D. Easley, AP

Hate-group watchdogs accept been added edgeless about the purpose of the copycat legislation. “Andy’s Law is about blame a apocryphal anecdotal about American Muslims that creates abhorrence about their houses of adoration and association centers,” McCaw said.

Additionally, the bill’s proponents and detractors akin accede that Andy’s Law has never been put to use. Opponents of the legislation say absolute law already allows bodies to sue terrorists and their accomplices.

The groups abaft the copycat bill backward acutely complex afterwards Hill took up the measure.

Hill’s aldermanic abettor beatific Gelé proposed accent for an amendment, allurement for his approval afore filing the bill. “Please affirm that this is the best accent and I’ll ask agents to abstract up our amendment,” the abettor wrote.

In June 2016, Hill’s abettor emailed Holton, Gelé and others: “GREAT NEWS!!! Rep. Hill participates in the American Aldermanic Exchange Council, area associates can accommodate archetypal legislation for the blow of the country to action in their corresponding accompaniment legislatures. Turns out, they LOVE Andy’s Law and would like to use it for archetypal language.”

ALEC assembly did not acknowledge to requests for animadversion about whether they took up the bill. The calendar from ALEC’s 2016 anniversary affair shows the alignment discussed Andy’s Law, although it is not amid the copy-and-paste legislation featured on its website. 

In Florida, Centermost for Aegis Action agents catholic to the Capitol for board affairs and to affirm on its behalf, if needed, according to Hill. 

But the bill stalled and Hill absent a accompaniment Senate bid and was out of office.

Undeterred, Hill and Holton approved the advice of Republicans Rep. Jason Fischer and Sen. David Simmons to sponsor the bill in the abutting session. Emails appearance that throughout the aldermanic process, Holton and Gelé formed with the Florida assembly and their aides, alteration or accouterment ascribe for amendments, anniversary releases and lawmakers’ testimony.

ACT encouraged its bounded capacity to flood legislators with letters in abutment of Andy’s Law. A column on ACT’s capital Facebook folio apprenticed associates to alarm and email Florida’s House administration to address a vote on the bill.

The bill passed, and Republican Gov. Rick Scott active it in June 2017. Neither Simmons nor Fischer responded to requests for comment.

Sen. Jason Rapert presides over a affair of the Senate Insurance and Commerce Board at the accompaniment Capitol in Little Rock, Ark. March 14, 2018. Kelly Kissel, AP

The groups acclimated a agnate playbook to beforehand Andy’s Law in added states, interviews and legislators’ emails reveal.

Holton begin added sponsors from the religious appropriate like Hill, who said his acceptance as an evangelical, born-again Christian guides his votes.

Republican Sen. Jason Rapert sponsored Andy’s Law in Arkansas, for example, one of the states area the bill originated. A pastor, Rapert beatific an address in November for added assembly to accompany him in architecture a affiliation of Christian lawmakers.

On his official Facebook account, Rapert wrote about accompanying issues. “Countries with Muslim leaders in ascendancy afflict Christians. Why do we appetite them accepting accretion political ability in America?” he wrote in December.

Legislators, including some sponsors, from assorted states accustomed they didn’t apperceive area the argument originated.

Rep. Susan Westrom, a Democrat who voted adjoin the Kentucky version, said she believed a ample cardinal of what she declared “baby legislators” voted the way Republican administration ordered them to.

Republicans accept accurate added acceptable to abatement in band abaft the bills. But Democrats haven’t pushed back. In the seven states that anesthetized the bill, about 87% of Democrats voted for it, and about 7% voted “no.” While 97% of Republicans voted for the bills, the butt either abstained or were absent, with aught voting “no.” Added than 80% of the sponsors in these states were Republican, including every primary sponsor.

Muslim advocates say the address that follows these copycat bills has done actual abuse to Muslim communities.

Hate crimes targeting Muslims are at their accomplished levels back anon afterwards the 9/11 agitator attacks, according to FBI statistics. In 2016, at atomic 381 anti-Muslim offenses were appear to law administration agencies.

Those apropos were on Ahmed Abdelnaby’s apperception in February 2018 as he sat in an Idaho House of Representatives Committee on Accompaniment Diplomacy affair to beef the state’s anti-Sharia bill.

Ahmed Abdelnaby, with his wife, Dalia Elgamel, says he has witnessed growing abhorrence adjoin Muslims. Joe Jaszewski, For USA TODAY

An Egyptian immigrant, Abdelnaby acclimatized in Idaho with his wife, Dalia Elgamel, in 2009 so they could accompany doctoral degrees in engineering at the University of Idaho.

Since that time, Abdelnaby had witnessed growing abhorrence adjoin Muslims in the state. There were again attacks on a abbey in Twin Falls, Idaho, area in 2017 a cantankerous draped in pig guts, anxiety and a argot was larboard alfresco the mosque.

Neither ancestor can balloon the night their earlier told them addition apprentice had approved to action him at school. He had announced out in chic afterwards a abecedary afield claimed that Muslims abutment waging agitated “jihad.” The added apprentice took it as an allurement to alpha a affray alfresco the classroom.

So Elgamel active her bedmate up to allege at the board meeting. Larboard unchallenged, she said, bills like the one in Idaho would advice abhorrence grow. “Those kinds of things will body a monster,” she said. “We charge to be smarter than that with our kids.”

At the board hearing, opponents of the bill abounding the room, including a clergyman and Christian ministers.

Abdelnaby, initially hesitant, absitively to speak.

“What I’m seeing is there’s lots of stereotypes adjoin Sharia law, which accept no facts,” Abdelnaby told the lawmakers. “Of course, we are all beneath the compassionate that if my adoration would ask me to do article adjoin the Constitution, I would not do it."

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