Proclaiming the dangers of Sharia law has become all the rage among Republicans over the past few months, while opponents denounce the movement as an effort to stoke fear of Muslims among conservative voters heading into the 2026 election.
Republican U.S. Reps. Keith Self and Chip Roy, both of Texas, launched the Sharia Free America Caucus to oppose “the alarming rise of Sharia in the United States” which they said is a “dominating force” and threat to the nation.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy
“America is facing a threat that directly attacks our Constitution and our Western values: the spread of Sharia law. From Texas to every state in this constitutional republic, instances of Sharia adherents masquerading as ‘refugees’ — and in many cases, sleeper cells connected to terrorist organizations — are threatening the American way of life,” Roy said.
Republican U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama joined the caucus and recently described Islam as “a death cult” rather than a religion.
“Islamic extremism is infiltrating the U.S. and refusing to assimilate. But what’s even darker than that — many of them are openly admitting that they are here with the intent to destroy our country and to kill Americans. They couldn’t put it any more clearer.”
Randy Fine
The sentiment is reflected in a flurry of bills recently introduced in Congress, including U.S. Rep. Randy Fine’s “No Sharia Act” and Tuberville’s “Preserving A Sharia-Free America Act.”
The Trump administration has grafted Islamophobic rhetoric into its ongoing effort to arrest, detain, re-vet and possibly deport thousands of lawfully resettled refugees, including Somali Muslims in Minnesota. And late last year, the governors of Texas and Florida designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a foreign terrorist organization.
But none of the Republican accusations against Muslims, refugees or CAIR have been accompanied by evidence of their veracity, and Sharia, while practiced in several Muslim nations, never has been established in any community in the United States.
A 2022 Cato Institute study concluded an American’s chance of dying in a terrorist attack by a refugee or immigrant to be about 1 in 4.3 million, compared to a 1-in-20,134 chance of being murdered in a domestic homicide. “In other words, the annual chance of being murdered in a normal homicide is about 316 times as great as dying in an attack committed by a foreign-born terrorist on U.S. soil.”
Hence, CAIR described Republican accusations as a “hoax” designed to instill fear and deflect attention from actual threats to freedom in the U.S. and abroad.
Robert McCaw
“Sen. Tommy Tuberville and Reps. Randy Fine and Chip Roy are not protecting the Constitution; they are betraying it. Manufacturing panic about Islam and American Muslims does nothing to defend our democracy; it only erodes it,” said Robert McCaw, government affairs director for CAIR.
“These unconstitutional proposals exist not to solve any real problem, but to sow fear — to make Americans talk fearfully about Muslims and their beliefs rather than listen to what Muslims are saying about Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its apartheid in the West Bank. This ‘Israel-first’ fear campaign is meant to distract the public from mass atrocities abroad by scapegoating Muslims at home. But it will fail.”
Others mocked Republicans’ self-proclaimed concern for the U.S. Constitution while simultaneously attempting to violate the First Amendment by banning a religion.
Mary Gay Scanlon
“No matter what hysterical rhetoric we hear from our Republican colleagues, our Constitution is clear,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania said during an anti-Sharia hearing of a House Judiciary Committee panel meeting Feb. 10.
“In this country, people have the right to hold and express whatever religious beliefs they choose or none at all. You don’t have to agree with those beliefs, but no one can use the power of the government to punish or discriminate against those who do,” she said.
U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, criticized the hypocrisy of Republicans opposed to any religion other than their own possibly having influence in the U.S.
“We live in a country so great that we don’t need the anti-Sharia and anti-Muslim legislation our friends are proposing today because our Constitution already forbids theocratic imposition and establishment of any kind, whether it is Christian white nationalism expressed in compulsory Ten Commandments displays, an Orthodox Jewish set-aside school district in New York or any effort to replace secular public law with a religious code, whether Sharia law, the Analects of Confucius, the Torah or anything else.”
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