It started innocently enough. Northsider Assma Ali posted on Facebook that she had been sworn in as municipal judge in Benoit, Mississippi, a tiny rural Delta town, population 365. (Benoit is French for “blessed.”)
Then the Internet took over. Within days, Ali found herself in the middle of an international social media firestorm. She was accused of lying about being a judge. Then she was accused of plotting to impose Sharia law on Mississippi. All because she is Muslim and wears a hijab, something akin to the scarves southern women used to wear until they fell out of fashion.
Municipal judges handle such decidedly non-revolutionary matters as traffic tickets, misdemeanors and violations of city ordinances. At the suggestion of my friend Al Underwood, I called Ali last week to hear her side of the story.
What I heard on the other end of the phone was a very American intelligent young woman with an ebullient personality who was amazed at being thrown into the midst of an Internet viral incident.
Her post started going viral just as she was going into a trial. Like tennis GOAT Novak Djokovic who used an unfriendly crowd to spur him to fight harder, the injustice of it spurred Ali to win her court case.
Ali was born near Bakersfield, California. Her parents immigrated from Yemen. She came to Mississippi by way of Louisiana, attended Mississippi College School of Law — recently renamed Mississippi Christian University School of Law — and was admitted to the Mississippi Bar in 2017. She eventually opened her own law practice in the Jackson area.
Benoit needed a municipal judge. Ali knew the newly appointed city attorney through mutual friends and was asked if she was interested in the job. She was. That should have been about the end of the story.
Instead, Ali posted the news on Facebook without naming the town. Friends began sharing the post. Then strangers started sharing her photograph. Because Benoit hadn't been identified, rumors began circulating that she had been appointed a judge in Ridgeland or Lumberton. Neither was true. Ali hid her original Facebook post, which only made matters worse. Some people interpreted its disappearance as evidence that the whole thing had been a hoax."Why are people mad at me?" Ali remembers wondering as messages began pouring in.
By Monday morning she realized what had happened. First came accusations that she wasn't really a judge. Then came the Sharia law crowd. One viral post described her as America's first "Yemeni Sharia Hijabi judge." State Sen. Michael McClendon of Hernando called on Benoit to remove her and wrote, "I believe in God we trust, not Muhammad." He subsequently proposed a "Don't Sharia Mississippi Act," including a ban on courtroom head coverings.
Agriculture Commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Andy Gipson joined the broader uproar, promising to ban Sharia law and "the influence of Islam" if elected governor.
There's just one problem. Mississippi already banned courts from applying foreign law when it conflicts with state or federal constitutional rights in 2015 — when Gipson himself was serving in the Legislature. Apparently, Sharia law is so dangerous that we need to ban it twice.
I asked Ali about all this. "How am I gonna impose Sharia law?" she said. "I don't even know what Sharia law is. I was born and raised in America."
There is another small obstacle to the alleged Islamic takeover of Benoit: The United States Constitution. Municipal judges don't make laws. They apply them.
Ali made exactly that point Saturday in an interview with CNN's Victor Blackwell. "As a municipal court judge, we don't make laws," she said. She pledged to enforce the U.S. Constitution and said there was no place for Sharia law in her courtroom. That should settle the matter.
Of course, it didn't. Ali told me she had turned down perhaps 15 or 20 media requests before finally agreeing to CNN, thinking that if people actually heard from her, perhaps the controversy would subside. It didn't.
Some critics simply moved on to new reasons for distrusting her. That's the trouble with social media mobs. Facts seldom extinguish them. They just find new fuel. Ali's story is also a fascinating example of how modern social media can turn a routine event in a town of 350 people into international news within a matter of days.
Ali told me the controversy has been particularly damaging to her immigration-law practice. Her clients are often immigrants who are already nervous about dealing with the government. Suddenly their lawyer's photograph was all over the Internet surrounded by accusations and controversy.
"Did it hurt me? Oh, yeah, it did," she told me. "It sure did." Yet there is a wonderful irony to the whole episode. Ali says her appointment became news throughout the Middle East because she is a woman of Yemeni ancestry who became a judge in America.
News organizations including Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya interviewed her. In parts of the world where women's professional opportunities remain limited, her appointment was celebrated. Meanwhile, some Americans were horrified because the new judge wears a hijab.
Ali told me she wears the traditional Muslim head covering for modesty. It is a personal religious choice. Some Muslim women wear one. Others don't. "If I didn't have the hijab on and I had my hair, I don't think people would have had a problem with it," she said.
I suspect she's right. There is something about unfamiliar symbols that can set people off. A woman wearing a head scarf suddenly becomes not a California-born American lawyer who graduated from a Mississippi law school, but a symbol onto which people project all their fears about Islam, immigration and cultural change. We ought to be better than that.
I'm a Christian. Ali is a Muslim. We have some profound theological disagreements. That's fine. America was designed to accommodate profound religious disagreements.
Article VI of the Constitution says there shall be no religious test for public office. The First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion. Those protections aren't just for Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians. They apply to Muslims, Jews, Hindus, atheists and everybody else. That's the deal.
The American concept of separation of church and state has a good source, Jesus Christ, who said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto God what is God’s.”
For those fearing an Islamic takeover in Mississippi, bear in mind that Muslims constitute less than one percent of the Mississippi population.
Judge Ali should be judged the old-fashioned way: by how well she does her job. If she starts chopping off hands for parking tickets, I'll be the first to write about it. Until then, give her a chance.
Demagoguery has a long, sordid history in our state. It needs to stay as history.
