Americans live in the Home of the Brave but sometimes you would never know it from some of their preposterous fears. Every so often, a new fear will circulate among the public like a bolt of electricity to thrill people with imaginary dread.

When I went on vacation this summer to Westport, Mass., the fear du jour was sharks, an old reliable source of panic. One was seen (supposedly) a mile out to sea, and the lifeguards closed the local beach. At that distance, the shark is unlikely to have noticed this closure, but if it did, bubbles would have come out of its smiling mouth indicating laughter.

What wusses these mortals be. It's sharks one day, bedbugs the next, various types of flu every other year and so on. These alarms take a demonstrated danger to people and blow the risk out of all proportion.

But my award for most overblown fear this summer goes to the threat of Sharia law -- or Islamic law -- being imposed in the United States. When I say threat, I use it in the "pull my other leg, it's got a bell on it" sense. As threats go, commercial aviation is more threatened by me wiggling my ears and making myself airborne.

Yet, incredibly, some Americans really do believe that President Obama is determined to introduce Sharia law, and they think the same of those Muslims associated with the controversial community center/mosque proposed near ground zero in New York City.

In a protest there last month, people carried signs painted in dripping blood-red letters that spelled "SHARIA." I get the same warning in e-mails dripping with fearful hyperbole.

These folks have the mistaken idea that Sharia law, which governs the behavior of Muslims, is all about beheadings, stonings and cutting off of hands -- all of which does pass for entertainment in countries still living in the 14th century.

The truth, of course, is that the law of Islam is interpreted differently by different cultures and nations, sometimes moderately and reasonably, sometimes barbarously, so that head-lopping Saudi Arabia is not to be compared with secular Turkey. The world is full of Muslims who are no more likely to attend a hand chopping than readers of this column are.

The folks who troll through the Quran looking for barbarities, the better to demonize the Muslim religion, might first want to study their own Bible, which also contains some gruesome punishments, including stonings.

For today's Christians, this doesn't mean that dentists and optometrists are involved in removing a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye to enforce our moral law. The danger of drawing wrong conclusions from literal readings should serve as a caution about Sharia law, too.

It is true that, in some Western countries, Sharia law has run into problems in adjusting to the overall community, notably in France and Britain. But even in Western countries, no one is suggesting that swords should be sharpened for use after the cricket match or bike race ends on the village green.

You can rest easy. Sharia law is not coming to the United States, except as a private guide to faithful Muslims. How could it? According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 78.4 percent of adults in this country are Christian. The figure for Muslims is 0.6 percent. If the Muslims miraculously overcome that numerical disadvantage, we should all rethink our position on Allah.

It is amazing how people can believe that this is "a Christian country" on one hand and think Sharia law has a chance of being imposed on the other. (In what sense this is a Christian country is arguable, but it seems to me with that all the hate flying about, it's a bit like the rancher who is all hat and no cattle, except that here it's usually all Christian and no Christian charity.)

As usual, people are worrying about the wrong things. We have our Christian ayatollahs, too, and some of them do want to have civil law reflect Biblical law in most of its particulars (stock up on your stones now). For hair-raising reading on this subject, I suggest doing an Internet search on "Christian Reconstructionism" or the theological term "theonomy." I did and found a guy defending the execution of children for the crime of being incorrigible. Lord, help us.

Will our Christian law advocates succeed in imposing their harsh statutes on the rest of us? Very unlikely, but at least they start in a place where Christianity is firmly rooted. If there were a Ladbrokes of ridiculous notions, the odds on the bet would be 100-to-1 against it happening. For Sharia law, 10,000-to-1, because that shark is a mile off the beach and then some.

Jack Kelly and Reg Henry spar on the topics of the day exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.