COMMENTARY: Courts in the United States Must Not Yield to Islamic Sharia Law

This month, a court in Germany decided a divorce case based on Islamic Sharia law, instead of German law, because the couple had been married in a predominantly Islamic country.

The ruling was the latest in a large number of court cases in Germany, in which judges have used Sharia law -- rather than German law -- to reach their decisions when either the plaintiff or the defendant was a Muslim.

The fact is that using Sharia law sets a bad precedent in Germany, because doing so encourages a dangerous encroachment of Islamic law on German jurisprudence.

According to one German legal expert, Sharia law in Germany has become far more widespread than most people realize, and this "parallel justice system" is undermining the rule of law in Germany.

We believe that it would behoove the United States to learn from Germany's experience, and not yield to Sharia law in its courts, despite the fact that some extremist Muslims living in the United States have been attempting to adopt such a phenomenon.

After all, America is primarily a Christian nation -- not an Islamic nation -- and as long as Muslims live in the United States, they must abide by America's traditional legal system.

Moreover, allowing Sharia law to prevail in American courts in cases involving Muslims, would inevitably lead to a double standard insofar as American justice is concerned.

For example, Muslim men -- according to Sharia law -- are allowed to batter their wives in an argument or when their wives do something that is unacceptable by Islamic tradition, but America's laws strictly forbid such physical assaults on women. Should this Islamic tradition mean that it is perfectly legal  for Muslim men to batter their wives in America? Of course not.

Indeed, allowing Sharia law to be used in America's courts would result in two systems of justice in the United States -- and such a dual system would greatly impede the traditional modus operandi of  jurisprudence in America.