Some politicians in Tallahassee act shocked — shocked! — that Islamic schools, 22 by one count, are taking advantage of Florida’s taxpayer-funded private school voucher program.
Opponents have warned repeatedly that taxpayer-funded vouchers should not support religious education. But if they did, all faiths would be entitled without discrimination. Look who’s shocked now.
“The use of taxpayer-funded school vouchers to promote Sharia law likely contravenes Florida law and undermines our national security,” Attorney General James Uthmeier wrote on X.
“Schools that indoctrinate Sharia law should not be a part of our taxpayer-funded school voucher program,” posted Agriculture Commissioner Wilson Simpson.
Simpson, a former Senate president, tirelessly promoted vouchers, which have exploded into a $3 billion program. So did Uthmeier, a former top aide to Gov. Ron DeSantis. The third Cabinet member, Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, threatened to audit the Islamic schools.
Treat all faiths equally
None of them offered evidence that the schools are teaching Sharia law. But if they are, so what? They have every right to teach the fundamental law of their faith, just as Catholic schools teach catechism and yeshivas expound on the Torah and Talmud.
Sharia law is Islam’s elaborate code of conduct governing all aspects of life, including marriage and divorce. It is no conceivable threat to U.S. security. It’s nobody else’s business so long as it doesn’t find its way into secular statute books.
An example of religious doctrine that has become state law is Florida’s near-total abortion ban.
Having been eager to lavish taxpayer money on religious education and having excused how some Christian schools discriminate, it’s hypocrisy for any Florida politician to bloviate about what the Islamic schools may be teaching.
“They’ve got to take all comers — the ones they like and the ones they don’t,” says J. Brent Walker, a Florida-educated lawyer and clergyman and executive director emeritus of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. “Of course they should be able to teach Sharia, and practice it, too! And maybe even if it violates Florida law, unless there is a compelling state interest to justify saying no.”
Misuse of our millions
Tallahassee has indulged sickening misuses of tax dollars by private schools.
As columnist Scott Maxwell wrote in The Orlando Sentinel, some schools bar gay students, have fired gay teachers and rejected children from same-sex parents. Some private schools have excluded autistic children and others with physical or developmental disabilities.
In 2017, a Sentinel series found religious school classes teaching that dinosaurs populated the earth with humans and that slavery and segregation weren’t so bad.
Not one tax dollar should subsidize those gross educational malpractices.
If Tallahassee wants to stop taxpayer-funded Islamic teaching, the remedy is to cut off the public money to all religious schools.
The U.S. Supreme Court has already made it clear that the choice would have to be all or none.
More hypocrisy
The state’s islamophobia isn’t limited to vouchers.
Rep. Hillary Cassel, the Broward Democrat who turned Republican after her 2024 re-election, got headlines with House Bill 119, which she calls the “No Shari’a Act,” to ban the application of any foreign law by state courts, arbitrators or administrative agencies.
There have been no cases enforcing Sharia law against non-Muslims. But if it should happen that a divorcing couple agreed voluntarily to incorporate Jewish or Islamic law in their settlement, this bill would ban it.
That would clearly be an unconstitutional infringement on religion. There’s a landmark precedent.
In 2010, Oklahoma voters amended their Constitution to bar their courts from looking “to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures,” including Sharia. A federal court blocked enforcement, finding that it violated the First Amendment by expressing government disapproval of a religious doctrine and prohibiting religiously inspired conduct without any compelling government interest at stake.
The court pointed out that it would prohibit a judge from probating a will that incorporated elements of Islamic tradition. A federal appeals court upheld the decision.
“In fact, for some religious adherents in this country, it is a routine exercise of religious freedom to submit disputes to a religious tribunal and for civil courts to confirm their outcome,” wrote K. Hollyn Hollman, the Baptist Joint Committee’s general counsel.
Organizations opposing the Oklahoma amendment included the Center for Islamic Pluralism, the American Jewish Committee, the Union for Reform Judaism and the Baptist Joint Committee.
Rep. Cassel’s HB 119 is as offensive and as unconstitutional as that Oklahoma amendment. It’s as offensive as if the bill targeted any other religion, such as her own faith. It belongs in a wastebasket, not the House floor.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.