Who’s Behind the GOP’s Anti-Sharia Law Crusade? A White Supremacist

David Yerushalmi doesn't just hate Muslims. He hates everyone who's not white.

By Jamilah King Mar 03, 2011

Last month Colorlines.com took a note from Think Progress and rounded up the 13 states that have introduced useless bills to ban Sharia law. Oklahoma’s voter-approved constitutional amendment, which was later overturned by a federal judge, is the most commonly cited among the crop. But Tennessee has since joined the list after lawmakers there introduced SB 1028, a radical bill that Tim Murphy at Mother Jones writes could make benign activities like re-painting the exterior of a mosque or bringing food to a potluck felony crimes.

Murphy notes that all these bills have one common thread: they originate with white supremacist David Yerushalmi, an Arizona-based lawyer and founder of SANE (Society for Americans fro National Excellence) who’s previously called for a "war against Islam." But it’s not just Muslims who Yerushalmi is after. He’s also criticized the universal suffrage movement, at one point saying, "there’s a reason the founding fathers did not give women of black slaves the right to vote." Murphy writes:

In a 2006 essay for SANE entitled On Race: A Tentative Discussion (pdf), Yerushalmi argued that whites are genetically superior to blacks. "Some races perform better in sports, some better in mathematical problem solving, some better in language, some better in Western societies and some better in tribal ones," he wrote.

Yerushalmi has suggested that Caucasians are inherently more receptive to republican forms of government than blacks–an argument that’s consistent with SANE’s mission statement, which emphasizes that "America was the handiwork of faithful Christians, mostly men, and almost entirely white." And in an article published at the website Intellectual Conservative, Yerushalmi, who is Jewish, suggests that liberal Jews "destroy their host nations like a fatal parasite." Unsurprisingly, then, Yerushalmi offered the lone Jewish defense of Mel Gibson, after the actor’s anti-Semitic tirade in 2006. Gibson, he wrote, was simply noting the "undeniable Jewish liberal influence on western affairs in the direction of a World State."