Monday night, Americans were subjected to a frontal lobotomy as a radical, terror-sympathizing, West-hating Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, drew a false equivalence on &#8220;Jessie Watters Primetime&#8221; that canon law is the same thing as sharia law.
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Last night Abdul El-Sayed sat equated Sharia law with Christian Canon law.
“I don’t begrudge you your right to practice your faith as you choose. I don’t know why the idea that I could practice my faith as I choose is a problem.”
It is a problem. 
The story below is Sharia in… <a href="https://t.co/A1UgTtrYM7">https://t.co/A1UgTtrYM7</a> <a href="https://t.co/7FMNjFmvkL">pic.twitter.com/7FMNjFmvkL</a>
— Trisha Posner (@trishaposner) <a href="https://x.com/trishaposner/status/2092371655897272661?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 25, 2026</a></blockquote>
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Just relax, people! Let sharia law shine!
Host Jessie Waters didn’t buy it, and neither should you. Because he could not be more obscenely, iniquitously wrong. These two are not the same thing. One is a filing cabinet for a church; the latter could destroy Western civilization.
Canon law is not “Christian law,” no matter how confidently the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/shorts/6c4c39a2-487d-41e3-9025-95a507370741">Blue’s Clues Bolshevik</a> says it. Protestants don’t walk around with a Vatican codebook, and the Eastern Orthodox have their own canons entirely. What El-Sayed inaccurately conflated with sharia law is the Catholic Church’s internal legal system: the 1983 Code of Canon Law, plus a pile of older tradition, that tells the Church how to run itself.
Think of it as the bylaws of a 1.4 billion-member organization that also happens to believe it was founded by God. It tells bishops how to assign priests. It governs sacraments, parish property, religious orders, and whether a Catholic marriage can be annulled inside the Church. Its harshest penalties are laicization, denial of Communion, and excommunication.
Notice what&#8217;s missing from that list: Fines. Prison. Stoning.
A bishop in Detroit cannot walk into a Michigan courtroom and demand the state enforce Canon 1398. He cannot jail you for skipping Mass, seize your house for leaving the faith, discount your court testimony as half of a man&#8217;s, execute you for converting to Judaism, or shrug while a mob stones you for premarital sex. If he tried any of it, the First Amendment and a civil court would have him in handcuffs by lunch.
The Code itself instructs the Church to defer to civil law on ordinary matters (property, guardianship, adoption, contracts), so long as those laws don&#8217;t violate divine law, and in the United States, &#8220;divine law&#8221; is not supreme law. The Constitution is. The Church can preach at you. It can withhold the Eucharist from you. It cannot become the penal code. That&#8217;s why almost nobody outside the Catholic Church has ever heard of canon law: it doesn&#8217;t reach past the pews.
But canon law works in harmony with America, because we are, whether the current moronic moment likes admitting it or not, a country built by Christians and Jews whose moral vocabulary stems straight from the Bible. Our Declaration of Independence promised the government would not take away the rights endowed to us by our Creator. Washington called religion and morality the &#8220;indispensable supports&#8221; of political life. Adams, who is probably looking down in complete horror at us right now, once said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.&#8221;
But here’s what Sharia Sayed misses: The Founders didn’t install a national church. They assumed a national conscience and then built a limited government on top of it, because they believed men were fallen and power needed a leash. Madison&#8217;s Memorial and Remonstrance, Jefferson&#8217;s Statute for Religious Freedom, the First Amendment; these were written by men steeped in scripture and allergic to theocracy.
They had just watched Europe&#8217;s centuries of throne-and-altar bloodletting and said: never again, not here, not as public law. Believe whatever you want. Build a church with the strictest internal rules imaginable…just don&#8217;t conscript the sheriff, pretty please.
Christianity and Judaism are examples of faiths that live melodiously inside that bargain. A rabbi can&#8217;t stone you in Brooklyn. A priest can&#8217;t flog you in Detroit. Their authority stops at the congregation door. The state&#8217;s law is identical for the believer and the atheist who lives next to him. That&#8217;s the deal. And canon law fits inside it. So does halakha, practiced privately. What doesn&#8217;t fit is a legal system engineered from the ground up to be the state.
Which brings us to the thing El-Sayed is trying to smuggle in under “freedom of religion”: “sharia” is not “Muslim canon law.” Stop letting him say that.
In private, sharia (religious rules) can look like piety: prayer, no pork, etc. — which the First Amendment covers, but the part he is flattening is sharia as public law: the version currently operating in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Taliban Afghanistan, and embedded in the penal codes of parts of Pakistan and beyond.
There, sharia isn’t a cute little parish pamphlet; it’s the theocratic legal system that applies to Muslim, Christian, atheist, and unlucky layover tourists alike. It’s not “my faith, my choice”; it’s “Allah’s rules, or else.”
And we&#8217;re not talking about a strongly worded letter from the diocese.
Under state sharia: apostasy and blasphemy are capital crimes. A woman&#8217;s courtroom testimony is worth half a man&#8217;s. Daughters inherit less than sons, when they inherit at all. Male guardianship isn&#8217;t chivalry; it&#8217;s a binding legal chain of command over a woman&#8217;s body and movements. Sex outside its narrow permissions is a sin that regularly ends in a death sentence, and in several jurisdictions girls&#8217; privates are cut to make sure they never enjoy any of it.
Canon law&#8217;s worst-case outcome is that you&#8217;re denied a wafer. Sharia&#8217;s worst-case outcome, where it governs, is that you&#8217;re denied a courtroom, a passport, or a pulse.
One is a church telling its members how to be Catholic. The other is a government telling an entire population how far to bend the knee, and if they don’t, they’ll cut it off.
If Sharia as state law were just &#8220;another religious law, same as any other,&#8221; Riyadh and Rome would be interchangeable. They are not.
In Iran, post-1979, the marriage age for girls dropped from 18 to nine almost overnight, women lost the right to initiate divorce and custody, hijab went from optional to compulsory, and Iran remains a world leader in executions, while the worst liberal you know chants in solidarity with the Ayatollah in a crop top. Pakistan, post-1979 Islamization, saw blasphemy prosecutions go from 14 cases in nearly 60 years to over 1,500 in the following three decades. Zina laws have, in practice, turned rape victims into defendants for failing to produce four male witnesses, and the country&#8217;s Christian population has been bled to near nothing. Afghanistan, since 2021, is the only country on earth with a formal, standing ban on girls&#8217; secondary and higher education. Where, if you refuse the marriage your family arranged for you, the penalty is stoning.
And this isn&#8217;t just a few bad regimes misreading their own religious texts. Pew&#8217;s landmark 2013 global survey found 99% of Afghan Muslims and 84% of Pakistani Muslims wanted sharia as official state law. Of those supporters, 79% in Afghanistan and 76% in Pakistan backed the death penalty for apostasy — which nets out to roughly three in four Afghans and two in three Pakistanis endorsing execution for leaving the faith. In Egypt, 74% wanted sharia codified into law, and 86% of that group backed killing converts — about 64% of Egyptian Muslims overall.
So no…these are not &#8220;a few bad actors misunderstood by Fox News!&#8221; These are states, and in several cases outright majorities, doing precisely what their legal schools prescribe.
<a href="https://x.com/TheStatesmanLtd/status/2092865064932163987">So when Trump says he’s going to ban sharia law</a>, that’s a massive win for this country. When El-Sayed says it’s somehow racist and Islamophobic to ban sharia law in this country, he’s telling you exactly how little he cares for you and the country you currently know. And when the man who has previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/abdul-el-sayed-displayed-book-written-by-extremist-tied-to-1993-world-trade-center-attack">asked a documentary crew to keep his bookshelf full of Islamic books</a> out of the frame to appear more &#8220;secular&#8221; on camera falsely equates canon law with sharia law? Let’s just say that it looks eerily similar to taqiyya, the Islamic concept that permits one to lie to advance the religion.
When you’re campaigning alongside grotesque, grisly creeps who say America deserved 9/11, sharing bookshelf space with authors tied to terrorism cases, and surrounding yourself with family members who have close ties to the Taliban and want the American empire to crumble, you don’t get to lecture the rest of us about the sanctity of religious liberty and the American way of life. You don&#8217;t get to piggyback off of America&#8217;s free-speech protections while quietly pushing a legal system that would strip those same protections from the lady writing this sentence.
I don’t want sharia law anywhere near the American frontier. I’m a woman. I would rather not need a male guardian to sign off on my passport. I would rather not inherit as the discount relative. I would rather not be entered into a courtroom as half a witness. I’d rather not be forced to wear a burqa at the beach, or a hijab at homecoming, or stoned for failing to do so.
Western law, built on a Judeo-Christian claim that every person bears an image no caliph gets to rank, tells a woman she is a full legal person. That is not bigotry against Islam. That&#8217;s why I can function in society without being stoned. El-Sayed wants you to hear “sharia law” and picture a prayer rug. I hear a statute book. And I want it banned.

Niqab

No, Canon Law And Sharia Law Are Not The Same. One Of Them Wants You Dead.

2026 midterm election

abdul el-sayed

canon law

first amendment

opinion

sharia law

A Nigerian journalist imprisoned for reporting on Christian persecution says Americans must fight the rise of Islam in the United States if they want to preserve their freedom.
Luka Binniyat issued the warning while speaking about a five-year legal battle that saw him spend over 80 days in prison after officials took issue with a story he wrote on an attack on a Christian village by Islamic militants. Binniyat, from the religiously divided, mineral-rich Nigerian state of Kaduna, is haunted by the violence he has witnessed.
“You should not allow Islam to gain root in America. They’ll come there with values that are not your own, and even if they are a minority, they will eventually try to enforce their own religion, their own beliefs over the community,” the 60-year-old Binniyat told The Daily Wire in an interview. “In Nigeria — here in the Muslim-dominated areas — Christians do not have rights.”
The warning is personal for Binniyat, who has seen firsthand the violent implementation of Sharia law. Northern Nigeria is largely Islamic, and the southern part of the country is Christian. The middle, where Binniyat has spent most of his time reporting on, is divided. What he has witnessed, he told The Daily Wire, is genocide.
“When you select a group of people for extermination, based on their race, based on their belief, or based on their ideology, you select them for mass murder. That is what genocide is all about,” he said. “That is what we&#8217;re experiencing.”
In many of the attacks he has reported on, he said the “Muslim community is not touched” while “it is the Christian community that is attacked.”
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<div id="attachment_1162877" style="width: 942px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1162877" class="size-full wp-image-1162877" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-21-at-10.36.55-AM.png" alt="" width="932" height="881" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-21-at-10.36.55-AM.png 932w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-21-at-10.36.55-AM-300x284.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-21-at-10.36.55-AM-609x576.png 609w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-21-at-10.36.55-AM-768x726.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 932px) 100vw, 932px" />World Watch Monitor.</div>
Binniyat’s use of the term genocide got him into legal trouble in October 2021, when he <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/in-nigeria-police-decry-massacres-as-wicked-but-make-no-arrests-4075998?slsuccess=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published</a> a story in The Epoch Times that quoted a local politician accusing an official of covering up attacks on Christians. The official accused Binniyat of defamation while the local politician denied making the comment.
In November 2021, officials charged him with using a computer to transmit knowingly false information &#8220;for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, ill will, or needless anxiety to another.&#8221;
The resulting legal battle, which lasted until May 2026, saw Binniyat spend months in prison. He said he was kept in a small, insect-infested prison cell with dozens of other inmates where they were forced to poop in buckets and given food Binniyat described as “punishment.”
In October 2024, Binniyat’s defense filed a “no case submission,” which was approved by the Federal High Court in Kaduna in November 2025, but no written decision was issued until May 26, 2026. His defense throughout the case was assisted by the Alliance Defending Freedom International.
The decision found that there was “no evidence to prove the essential elements of the alleged offense” and said the evidence presented against Binniyat was “manifestly unreliable,” according to ADF International.
“Luka Binniyat did nothing more than accurately quote a Nigerian legislator&#8217;s own words. This ruling is a vindication for Luka, but it should also be a wake-up call: Accurate reporting on atrocities is not a crime, and journalists covering religious persecution deserve protection, not prosecution,&#8221; Sean Nelson, senior counsel for Global Religious Freedom at Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Wire.
ADF International has another case pending before Nigeria’s Supreme Court looking to strike down its stringent blasphemy laws.
Binniyat’s case was <a href="https://www.uscirf.gov/religious-prisoners-conscience/forb-victims-database/luka-binniyat" target="_blank" rel="noopener">championed</a> by the United States Council on International Religious Freedom and other watchdog organizations, including the <a href="https://cpj.org/2021/11/nigerian-journalist-luka-binniyat-detained-over-complaint-by-kaduna-state-official/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Committee to Protect Journalists</a> and Reporters Without Borders.
“I&#8217;m walking as a free man today. Thank God for the pressure around the world that was put on the government,” he said.
Thousands of Christians across Nigeria are killed annually with many advocates faulting the government for not doing enough to crack down on the violence. The continuous state of violence led to the Trump administration labeling Nigeria as a country of particular concern in 2025, putting it under greater international scrutiny.
Several militant Islamic groups typically are behind the violence, including insurgent group Boko Haram, the largely nomadic Islamic Fulani herdsmen, and the Islamic State of West Africa.
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<div id="attachment_1162889" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1162889" class="size-full wp-image-1162889" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-1234007408.jpg" alt="TOPSHOT - The remaining wares of students of Bethel Baptist High School are seen inside the school premises as parent of abducted students wait for the return of their children whom were abducted by gunmen in the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna state, northwest Nigeria on July 14, 2021. - The girls are just two of the more than 100 Nigerian children snatched from Bethel Baptist High School nearly three weeks ago, herded by gunmen into the forests after a kidnapping raid on their dormitories.The July 5 attack in Nigeria's northwest Kaduna state was just the latest mass abduction at a school or college as kidnap gangs seeking quick ransoms zero in on soft target of young students. Armed kidnappings for ransom along highways, and from homes and businesses now make almost daily newspaper headlines in Africa's most populous country. (Photo by Kola Sulaimon / AFP) " width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-1234007408.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-1234007408-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-1234007408-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-1234007408-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />The scene outside a school where gunmen abducted children (KOLA SULAIMON/AFP via Getty Images.)</div>
While not describing himself as a typical “born-again” Christian, Binniyat said it is his mission to expose violence against Christians, even if it means writing reports critical of the government. His home state of Kaduna demonstrates a “clash of values” that could not be more different.
Binniyat said that the Muslims want to impose Sharia law on the whole middle Nigerian region over Christians who want to embrace Western values with traditional African practices sprinkled in. A Christian converting to Islam can be killed for that conviction and many of the Muslim children do not attend schooling.
“They believe in violence. They say it&#8217;s a religion of peace,” he said of Islam. “As far as we know, it is a religion of violence.”
There is one attack that he said haunts him to this day. He said he showed up on the scene and found the smoldering bodies that were burnt during an attack targeting a Christian wedding. He said he helped locals gather over 20 bodies and bury them in a mass grave.
“It is something that I don&#8217;t want to recall. You could smell the flesh of humans burning. We had to bring out bodies that were roasted like animals — children, women,” he said.
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<div id="attachment_1162891" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1162891" class="size-full wp-image-1162891" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2159375313.jpg" alt="Injured men lay in a van as they arrive for treatment after a wave of suicide attacks in the North East of Nigeria, in Maiduguri on June 29, 2024. At least 18 people were killed and 19 seriously wounded in suicide attacks targeting a wedding, a hospital and a funeral in northeastern Nigeria on June 29, authorities said. The region has been scarred by more than a decade of violence by jihadist group Boko Haram, which did not immediately claim responsibility for the string of attacks. (Photo by Audu MARTE / AFP) " width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2159375313.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2159375313-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2159375313-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2159375313-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Injured men lay in a van as they arrive for treatment after a wave of suicide attacks in Nigeria (AUDU MARTE/AFP via Getty Images.)</div>
With his legal battle over, Binniyat says he plans to continue writing on the plight of Christians, which he says has not improved during his journalism career. He said he would consider entering politics and push for policies that would provide more protection for Christians.
As someone who has seen the violence of a society dominated by militant Islam, Binniyat wants Americans to be careful.
“Americans should not take the liberty and the freedom which they are enjoying now for granted. If they allow Islam to establish a root in America, you are going to lose your country,” he said. “That is [why] I want the Americans to protect their religion, to protect their culture, and to assert their values on every immigrant that comes.”

Image (48)

He Was Jailed For Exposing Muslim Violence In Nigeria. Now, He’s Warning Americans To Fight Sharia.

alliance defending freedom

christian persecution

luka binniyat

nigeria

world

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he would &#8220;absolutely&#8221; prohibit Sharia law in the United States, joining a growing number of Republican lawmakers pushing measures aimed at preventing Islamic law from superseding American law.
&#8220;You do have pockets of it,” Trump told Glenn Beck, founder of Blaze Media. “You go to London, you go to Paris — it&#8217;s almost like their second way of life. &#8230; I would absolutely prohibit the Sharia law thing. &#8230; You have to take it out.&#8221; 
Several GOP lawmakers have similarly called for restrictions on the application of Sharia law in the United States.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), who <a href="https://emmer.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/whip-emmer-joins-sharia-free-america-caucus">joined</a> the Sharia Free America Caucus earlier this year, has said that “Sharia is completely incompatible with the American way of life and threatens the very fabric of our society.” 
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) introduced legislation in October to ban Sharia Law in the United States. 
“Sharia law is fundamentally anti-American and has no place in our country,&#8221; Tuberville said. &#8220;If you want to peacefully practice your religion, you have every right to do so under the Constitution. But if you want to come to the United States and advocate for the practice of Sharia law over U.S. law, you should not be here.”
Tuberville&#8217;s No Sharia Act would prohibit courts from enforcing judgments, decrees, or contracts based on foreign laws when doing so would violate constitutional rights. It would also bar the application of foreign law in matters including marriage, divorce, custody, adoption, and inheritance when it conflicts with U.S. law.
Some applications of Sharia have previously come into conflict with American law. In 2008, Maryland’s highest court <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/gender-justice/resource/aleem_v._aleem">refused</a> to recognize a husband’s unilateral divorce under Pakistani law incorporating Islamic law because doing so would have allowed him to avoid Maryland&#8217;s rules governing the distribution of marital property. 
Traditional interpretations of Sharia law can also differ from American law on marriage, divorce, inheritance, and the legal rights of men and women. For example, a man may have as many as four wives, while a woman may have only one husband. Men can also initiate divorce without establishing fault, while women generally face greater restrictions. In some legal proceedings, a woman’s testimony may receive less weight because of her gender, whereas American courts evaluate witnesses under the same standards regardless of sex. Sharia law also traditionally imposes stricter dress requirements on women than on men.
The debate over Sharia has also surfaced in the Michigan Senate race following renewed attention to comments Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed made as a 24-year-old medical student.
El-Sayed discussed his Islamic faith with The New York Times in 2009 while explaining his decision to use a Sharia-compliant mortgage, which was structured to avoid the payment of interest prohibited by Islamic law.
“Ultimately, the question is, when I die and I stand before God and go through everything I did in my life, I don’t want to say I did it the easy way instead of the Shariah-compliant way,&#8221; El-Sayed said. &#8220;Not because of fear but because of obligation.”
El-Sayed has repeatedly defended his adherence to Sharia while maintaining that his religious beliefs would not be imposed on others.
The renewed debate comes as the number of Muslim elected officials in the United States has grown. A total of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-disturbing-rise-of-muslim-political-power-across-america?author=Hank+Berrien&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=4&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=The+Disturbing+Rise+Of+Muslim+Political+Power+Across+America">255</a> Muslims now hold elected office across multiple levels of government.
“This record-breaking number represents far more than a statistic. It reflects an American Muslim community that is increasingly engaged, organized, and committed to serving our nation,” said Executive Director Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

President Donald J. Trump

‘You Have To Take It Out’: Trump Vows To Ban Sharia Law

donald trump

michigan senate race

politics

tommy tuberville

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed compared Sharia Law to Canon Law when he was pressed by Fox News host Jesse Watters on Monday night on a past eyebrow-raising statement about America&#8217;s opposition to Sharia.
During an interview on &#8220;Jesse Watters Primetime,&#8221; El-Sayed, a Muslim, was confronted with a statement he made in 2022 when he argued that white supremacist forces are behind the effort to prevent Sharia Law from being implemented in America.
&#8220;So getting rid of Sharia Law is white supremacy? Can you explain that one?&#8221; Watters asked.
El-Sayed replied with his own question, &#8220;Do you know what Canon Law is, Jesse? I assume you&#8217;re a Christian, right? So Canon Law is the name for Christian law. I don&#8217;t begrudge you and your right to practice your faith as you choose. I don&#8217;t know why the idea that I could practice my faith that I choose is a problem.&#8221;
&#8220;Nobody is trying to push Sharia Law on anyone else. Just like I hope nobody is trying to push Canon Law on anybody else because we live in an America where you should have the freedom of religion,&#8221; El-Sayed added.
El-Sayed&#8217;s comparison doesn&#8217;t quite match up. Canon Law is the Christian system of rules and practices set up for leaders and members within a specific church. Sharia Law, meanwhile, encompasses rituals practiced within the Muslim faith while also setting up rules for legal systems and public practices.
Extremist Muslim nations, including Iran and Afghanistan, are completely under Sharia Law for their governmental systems. The implementation of Sharia Law in these Middle East countries has led to numerous human rights violations and extreme punishments for so-called lawbreakers, which typically target and oppress women, Christians, and people who identify as LGBT.
In many Muslim-majority nations around the world, Sharia Law is incorporated into public life and used as the basis in civil law — such as for marriage and divorce — while the government adheres to more Western principles.
During his interview with Watters, El-Sayed slammed efforts to ban Sharia Law from being implemented in U.S. legal systems, calling out one bill proposed by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL). El-Sayed said that such efforts are &#8220;deliberately targeting the Muslim community because they&#8217;re different,&#8221; adding, &#8220;As if somehow Muslims are out here trying to push Sharia Law.&#8221;
&#8220;I would never want someone to push their faith on me, and I would never push my faith on somebody else,&#8221; he added. &#8220;When people preemptively go out there and start preemptively passing laws to ban something that&#8217;s not happening, what you&#8217;re trying to do is target a very small community because they&#8217;re different.&#8221;
Watters shot back, saying, &#8220;Sharia Law in Michigan is kind of scary. People don&#8217;t go for that. You know, it&#8217;s like men and women [aren&#8217;t equal], it&#8217;s like physical punishments. People don&#8217;t like that in Michigan. I&#8217;m just saying I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s a good position.&#8221;
&#8220;Nobody is pushing it,&#8221; El-Sayed said. &#8220;You know what the issue is in Michigan. The issue that people are worried about is not that someone is going to come and put Sharia Law on them. The issue in Michigan is people are worried about how they&#8217;re going to afford their gas. The issue in Michigan is how am I going to see a doctor when I get sick? How am I going to keep my job?&#8221;
In a 2009 interview with The New York Times, El-Sayed said that he had <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/abdul-el-sayed-dedicated-his-life-to-sharia-law">dedicated</a> his life to Sharia Law. In the interview, he was asked about buying his first home, and he said that he had chosen a Sharia-compliant mortgage that avoided interest, which Islamic law prohibits.
“Ultimately, the question is, when I die and I stand before God and go through everything I did in my life, I don’t want to say I did it the easy way instead of the Shariah-compliant way. Not because of fear but because of obligation,&#8221; he said.

Michigan Democratic Senate Primary Winner Abdul El-Sayed Holds News Conference Day After Primary Win

WATCH: El-Sayed Makes Bizarre Comparison When Pressed On Sharia Law

jesse watters

michigan

City council members in Dearborn, Michigan, refused to denounce Sharia law when a local pastor demanded each of them do so at a town hall meeting Tuesday.
Lorenzo Sewell, who leads 180 Church in Detroit, had told the council members earlier that the city was no longer governed by American law. &#8220;America, we have lost this city. This is a city that is no longer up under American laws; we are up under Sharia law. We will not have it anymore,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Enough is enough.&#8221; Looking at the members seated in front of him, he added: &#8220;You are only 1% of this nation. We are not a nation of Muslims.&#8221;
&#8220;None of them denounced Sharia,&#8221; Sewell told the Daily Wire. &#8220;They laughed at me.&#8221;
None of them took up his demand. The crowd&#8217;s reaction that followed made the moment feel to Sewell, like something that should not have been happening in an American city. He later told the Daily Wire that walking into the Dearborn city council meeting “felt like walking into Iran.”
Dearborn officials reject the premise. Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, speaking at the same meeting, argued that casting the city as overtaken by Muslims erases its Christian residents and those of other faiths.
Dearborn&#8217;s demographics changed how the confrontation landed. The 2020 count was the first in which the Census Bureau designated Middle Eastern and North African origins as their own category, and the results showed 54.5% of the city&#8217;s roughly 110,000 residents claiming MENA ancestry — enough to make Dearborn the first majority-Arab city in the country, the Detroit Free Press <a href="https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2023/09/26/arab-americans-now-a-majority-in-dearborn-new-census-data-shows/70929525007/?gnt-cfr=1&amp;gca-cat=p&amp;gca-uir=false&amp;gca-epti=z1175xxu003361e1175xxv002161&amp;gca-ft=173&amp;gca-ds=sophi">reported</a>.
The confrontation did not emerge abruptly. Sewell has spent years watching the same reality unfold around him in Dearborn. “I cannot go to a place right now where I’m sitting and not encounter Muslims,” he said. The encounters are ordinary and constant, he said. Gas stations, car washes, oil-change shops, the places that sell candy bars, cookies, and chips. “Multiply that by 700,000 people,” he said. “This is what people don’t understand.”
To Sewell the town hall reassured what he said to be commonplace for a long time. What struck him most was how ordinary the moment should have been. “A pastor in a Christian country talking about Jesus,” he said. “What did I do? I did what the Bible says to do.” 
Since the town hall incident, the public response has been different. People stop Sewell on the street, they call him, and send emails. Many tell him they share the same concerns about the direction of the city but are too scared to say so in public. 
Sewell noted that the video of him at the town hall went more viral than the prayer he once delivered at a presidential inauguration. He told the Daily Wire he found it crazy that a black pastor simply talking about Jesus in a place still called a Christian country would spread that far and draw that kind of reaction.
Sewell tied the town hall to what he sees as a global pattern of Christian persecution, and faulted Pope Leo XIV for how the pontiff has described the killing of Christians in Nigeria. Leo has addressed Nigeria more than once — in June 2025 he <a href="https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=66019">condemned</a> the killing of roughly 200 people in Benue State, most of them displaced families sheltering at a Catholic mission — but in November he <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/pope-leo-xiv-on-nigeria-christians-and-muslims-have-been-slaughtered">told reporters</a> that both Christians and Muslims have been slaughtered there and attributed the violence largely to terrorism and fights over land and money. That framing is what Sewell rejects. &#8220;He would never say anything against Sharia law. Never,&#8221; Sewell told the Daily Wire. &#8220;He should be an imam, not a pope.&#8221;
The Dearborn town hall ended with no council member denouncing Sharia law. The video of the exchange has continued to circulate.

Screen Shot: Dearborn TCD News

Dearborn City Council Laughs As Pastor Demands They Denounce Sharia Law

abdullah hammoud

dearborn

lorenzo sewell

pope leo xiv

As a 24-year-old medical student, Abdul El-Sayed sat down with The New York Times in 2009 to discuss buying his first home. He had chosen a Sharia-compliant mortgage for a $123,000 condominium in Ann Arbor. The arrangement avoided interest, which Islamic law prohibits. 
El-Sayed explained his decision. “Ultimately, the question is, when I die and I stand before God and go through everything I did in my life, I don’t want to say I did it the easy way instead of the Shariah-compliant way. Not because of fear but because of obligation,” he <a href="https://freebeacon.com/democrats/revealed-el-sayed-proclaimed-obligation-to-follow-sharia-law-until-the-day-he-dies/">told</a> the outlet. 
That statement, unearthed this week, now sits beside his narrow primary win last week as the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan. He would be the first Muslim elected to the chamber if he prevails in November against Republican Mike Rogers.
El-Sayed’s campaign says the commitment remains personal. Spokeswoman Roxie Richner told the Washington Free Beacon that he “personally lives by the rules of his faith, as many Americans of various faiths do,” while opposing any effort to write religious law into the laws of the country. She added that he “believes in the separation of church and state.”
The same language of personal faith appears in more recent comments. In October 2025, he <a href="https://religionnews.com/2026/08/05/abdul-el-sayed-could-be-the-first-muslim-senator-heres-what-to-know/">told</a> Religion News Service that his faith “orients me to try and be a better person” and to “treat people — all people — with dignity and humanity and respect.” He has also said he wants to “protect the kind of America where everybody can pray how they choose to pray, or choose not to pray at all.”
Yet the record shows moments when the subject of Sharia itself produced sharper reactions. During his 2018 run for Michigan governor, El-Sayed denied ever saying he was “Sharia-compliant” in an interview with Laura Loomer, then ended the conversation and scolded staff for allowing it. 
A documentary about that campaign, How To Fix A Primary, captured him directing filmmakers away from a bookshelf in his home. 
The shelves held the Quran and reportedly a volume by Sheikh Mohammed al-Ghazali, a Muslim Brotherhood member who once testified that refusal to implement Sharia is apostasy and that an Egyptian professor killed for advocating church-state separation was “without doubt” an infidel. “You’re going to want to not get these things in the shot,” El-Sayed said. “We’re trying to keep the shot secular.”
In October 2022, speaking to the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, El-Sayed linked a 2010 ballot measure that sought to ban Sharia law in state courts to the Trail of Tears, the Tulsa race massacre, and the Oklahoma City bombing, <a href="https://freebeacon.com/democrats/michigan-senate-candidate-abdul-el-sayed-compared-an-oklahoma-ban-on-sharia-law-to-the-trail-of-tears/">according</a> to The Washington Free Beacon.
“You cannot understand the challenges we face today without understanding white supremacy,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you that the same exact forces that drove native peoples from their land two centuries ago, destroyed Black Wall Street a century ago, bombed a building decades ago, and tried to ban Sharia law not a decade ago, that those forces are alive and well today.”
His personal life has long reflected the same framework. A 2006 Michigan Daily profile described him as a “particularly devout” Muslim. He proposed to Sarah Jukaku, who wears a hijab, while both were still in college because “Islamically, there are no premarital relations of any sort. No touching, no nothing. Given that, the logical solution is to get married.” 
They followed a traditional two-step Islamic marriage and lived apart, remaining chaste, for the first year. “Getting ice cream is the number one thing we do together,” he said at the time. Jukaku rarely appears at campaign events and was absent from the primary watch party. The couple has two young daughters. El-Sayed has not publicly addressed whether he expects them to follow the same rules on courtship, marriage, and modesty.
Financial disclosures show he and his wife hold between $150,000 and $425,000 in Amana Mutual Funds, which screen out companies earning more than 5 percent of revenue from interest, gambling, alcohol, tobacco, pornography, or pork. 
The late cofounder and chairman of those funds, Yaqub Mirza, was identified in a 1988 FBI memo as one of several “members and leaders of the IKHWAN,” the Arabic term for the Muslim Brotherhood. Federal agents raided Mirza’s home in 2002 as part of an investigation into the Safa Group. No charges resulted, and Amana itself faced little further scrutiny.
Familial <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senate-hearing-pulls-back-curtain-on-muslim-brotherhoods-ties-to-hamas?author=Leona+Salinas&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=8&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=The+Link+Between+Hamas+And+The+Muslim+Brotherhood+In+America%3F+Here%E2%80%99s+The+Evidence">connections</a> extend further into the network examined at a Senate hearing last week. El-Sayed’s father-in-law previously served as president of CAIR Michigan and sat on the founders committee of the Islamic Society of North America. 
Both organizations appeared in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation case, the largest terrorism financing prosecution in American history, in which the foundation and five leaders were convicted of providing material support to Hamas. CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator. A 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document recovered by the FBI described the group’s work in North America as “a grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”
In Michigan, some imams have framed the Senate race in religious terms. One, <a href="https://www.themidwesterner.news/2026/08/abdul-el-sayeds-shariah-compliant-home-mortgage-underscores-deep-devotion-to-islam/">speaking</a> at an American Muslim Diversity Association mosque in Sterling Heights in July, urged congregants to vote for “a legitimate Islamic objective,” cited a fatwa from the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, and named El-Sayed as the candidate who could become the first Muslim U.S. senator. He also mentioned Rep. Rashida Tlaib as a “sister” already representing the community in Congress.
El-Sayed’s own account of returning to faith after a period of distance revolves around his Egyptian grandmother and the character of the Prophet Muhammad.
The Daily Wire reached out to El-Sayed’s campaign for comment. No response was received prior to publication.

Democratic Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed Holds Primary Night Event In Detroit

Abdul El-Sayed Dedicated His Life To Sharia Law

council on american islamic relations

There’s a humanitarian crisis taking place in Iran. However, it’s not the news currently making international headlines — it’s far worse.
Amid internet blackouts, I have the unique opportunity to speak directly with men and women in Iran through my line of work. Through these conversations, I am offered a rare glimpse into the harsh realities facing Iranian citizens, and my heart is burdened by the latest update I received.
They tell me stories of Iranian women, behind prison walls, being abused, silenced, and erased. Detained for boldly raising their voice and fighting for freedom against a brutal regime, these women are enduring unthinkable, dehumanizing acts of violence.
Reports from activists and former detainees explain that women in detention centers are experiencing extreme sexual abuse and violence, resulting in lasting physical and psychological trauma. Some women have even had their uterus removed or have suffered severe intestinal damage requiring surgeries such as the use of a colostomy bag.
The reason behind such abuse? Extreme religious doctrine.
According to human rights reports and firsthand testimonies, abuse against Iranian women has been justified by perpetrators using distorted religious reasoning. The most disturbing allegations are claims that these men believe they are considered “blessed” for raping a woman prior to her execution.
Global headlines may be focused on airstrikes and political moves, but this disturbing reality happening to women — fellow human beings — remains unseen and unaddressed.
This hidden abuse in detention centers reflects a broader societal issue in Iran, where the lives of young girls and women are marked by deep oppression and suffering. In the eyes of the regime, women are disposable, voiceless, unintelligent, worthless, and less than.
Women in Iran are suffering from horrific abuse. If we truly care about human rights, we as Americans must condemn this violence. And if we value our own freedoms, we must open our eyes to the threat unfolding before us in our very own nation.
These realities of oppression against women all have a common thread: they are accepted and taking place under Sharia-based laws. More importantly, the same radical, dangerous system of thought is infiltrating the West at this very moment, and Americans must take notice.
As an Iranian American woman, my heart breaks for what is happening in my home country. What&#8217;s even more unsettling is to witness the recent protests in America against the war in Iran, knowing Iran&#8217;s own citizens themselves are desperate for change, even if it means war.
To stand against the war in Iran is to stand with the Iranian regime. Before taking to the streets or rallying behind a cause or a group, it’s important to understand who and what you are supporting.
In Iran, the institution of marriage is steeped in patriarchal traditions that strip women of their freedom. Women must obtain the consent of a male guardian, which is typically their father or another male relative, before they can marry. This requirement not only undermines a woman&#8217;s right to choose her partner but also reinforces a troubling hierarchy that places men in control of women&#8217;s lives.
The legal framework governing marriage in Iran is alarming. The legal age for women to marry is a mere 9 years old. This practice not only robs young girls of their childhood but also subjects them to lifelong consequences, exposing them to forced marriages, early pregnancies, and a lifelong cycle of physical and emotional abuse.
Polygamy is another stark reminder of the inequality embedded in Iranian family laws. While men can take up to four wives, women are denied the right to have multiple husbands. This creates an unbalanced dynamic, where women are often left vulnerable and without legal recourse in the face of marital discord.
The legal system further compounds these injustices. In divorce proceedings, a woman&#8217;s testimony is frequently valued less than that of a man’s, placing her at a significant disadvantage. Women face immense hurdles when seeking divorce, with limited grounds for initiation, while men can unilaterally end a marriage. Custody of children often defaults to fathers after a certain age, further marginalizing women&#8217;s roles as caregivers.
Travel restrictions add another layer of control over women’s lives. In a society where women must seek their husbands&#8217; permission to travel or obtain a passport, the very notion of independence becomes a distant dream. Similarly, inheritance laws favor men, with daughters inheriting half of what sons do, reinforcing traditional gender roles and perpetuating economic disparities.
The societal expectations placed on women are equally stifling. Cultural norms pressure women to prioritize marriage and family over personal aspirations, creating a narrative that limits their potential. Temporary marriages, often viewed as a form of legalized prostitution, further exploit women, trapping them in precarious situations where they may feel compelled to sacrifice their dignity for economic survival.
In Iran, women are considered second-class citizens. Across all political, social, and legal systems, women face restrictions in movement, employment, public life, and personal autonomy. These barriers both reflect and reinforce one of the widest gender gaps that we are witnessing in the world today.
Finally, “honor killings” are far too common in Iran. Too many Iranian women and girls have been murdered by male family members for allegedly bringing “dishonor” to their families. While technically illegal, loopholes and cultural factors exist that have led to reduced sentencing for those who fulfill the honor killing.
As an American, I value the freedoms we enjoy, such as freedom of speech and religion. However, as Islam becomes more popular and grows in influence here in America, I worry that the lines between religion and Sharia Law will become blurred.
I understand deeply the great evil that is at the root of Sharia Law, which is the law of radical Islam. The systematic abuse of women in Iran is a direct result of a misguided, cruel, and religiously motivated agenda that seeks to destroy women.
If violence against women is normalized in places like Iran under the protection of Sharia Law, couldn’t these same ideologies and practices appear in the West if left unchecked?
America must remain diligent, proceed with caution, and raise awareness of a system of thought that could quickly and quietly gain support in our nation.
***
Lily Ricci is the director of Partner Relations at <a href="https://tracking.us.nylas.com/l/4f600e385bab4d99b5c32a56ffe1d631/0/9c24f19611f790ba8b57167eb5d6c0cceb1dcf1508aa278d165f05919890af1f?cache_buster=1778585892">Iran Alive Ministries</a>, which uses satellite TV to reach the millions of lost and broken people in Iran and the rest of the Middle East.

Iranian women gathered in Brussels

The Reality Facing Iranian Women Is Worse Than You Think

DW Opinion

iran

women's rights

Ordinarily, when a man affirms that American culture and Islam are mutually exclusive, that Muslims cannot assimilate because their allegiance to Sharia law trumps everything else, and that their religion will “make people feel uncomfortable,” you can assume he’s making a case for immigration restrictions.
Then along comes Shadi Hamid, a Muslim Washington Post columnist who happily asserts all these things in an ostensible effort to make the opposite case: reassure Americans that these are qualities they should embrace.
In reality, of course, Hamid’s arguments are likely to have the opposite effect, repel even those who harbored hopes that Muslim immigrants and their descendants would be assimilable. Indeed, he spent a great part of Wednesday dealing with the hornet’s nest that his op-ed kicked off online.
But there is a clue that Hamid must have known he was being disingenuous. He made sure to throw in a caveat: his co-religionists are American now, at least in what he claims is a vague “constitutional” sense, and aren’t going anywhere anyway.
Hamid, it is important to add, is not just anyone. He is a bona fide member of the establishment.
He is not just a columnist at the Post, where he published <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/04/08/muslims-religion-republicans-assimilation/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzc1NjIwODAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzc3MDAzMTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3NzU2MjA4MDAsImp0aSI6IjI3MTYxYzU5LWJkMWMtNDdhNC05N2UxLTI3NzNiYTVmZDQ5OSIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9vcGluaW9ucy8yMDI2LzA0LzA4L211c2xpbXMtcmVsaWdpb24tcmVwdWJsaWNhbnMtYXNzaW1pbGF0aW9uLyJ9.DcfeobpFw6plIp9OnTE01ldX4KJZ2hhwn0CNLh-lnxs">the piece</a>; he is also a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, a former fellow at Stanford University, a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the director of research at its Doha Center.
In other words, Hamid has shaped the thinking on Islam’s place in America from the highest of ivory towers and now popularizes it through a regular gig at one of the country’s most prominent newspapers.
And yet, rebutting his claims is not hard. Some are untrue (he wrote that most American Muslims were “born and raised here,” earning an <a href="https://x.com/shadihamid/status/2041920238510317941">X community note</a> showing that 58% are actually immigrants), other claims are only partly so, and still others are just downright specious.
Among the main arguments were the following: America no longer has a unifying culture to conserve; assimilation means secularization, and thus degradation; and Republicans should ally themselves with unassimilated Muslims because they have anti-gay views (yes, he really makes this argument).
In his piece, Hamid writes that “America was not founded on the assumption that its citizens would eventually come to agree on foundational questions.”
The Founders would like to have a word. They created the new country precisely on the premise that, if it took in immigrants, they would have to, as Alexander Hamilton put it, “get rid of foreign and acquire American attachments.”
Not for nothing did they make E Pluribus Unum — out of many, one — the country’s motto. The evidence is far too large to go through in a piece of this size, but numerous quotes from many of the Founders to this effect can be found in <a href="https://www.heritage.org/immigration/report/patriotic-assimilation-indispensable-condition-land-immigrants#_ftn27">this comprehensive study</a> I authored more than a decade ago.
But let’s quote at least George Washington, who wrote to John Adams that his hope with immigrants was that “by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws: in a word, soon become one people.”
On the question of Sharia, Hamid avers that “practicing Muslims — despite being repeatedly asked to — can’t disavow ‘sharia’ even if they wanted to,” because it “includes guidelines on how to pray, fast and otherwise observe what it means to submit to God.”
But Sharia is a large system derived from Muslim sacred texts and their interpretation.
Many Muslim countries and clerics have interpreted things in ways that severely disadvantage more than 50% of society, women. Sharia is invoked to impose oppressive rules from dress codes to rules on inheritance, testimony, mobility, etc. I dare Hamid to show any evidence of conservative support for any of this.
Sharia is even invoked by some Muslim states in the punishment of homosexuality. Some American conservatives will rail against LGBTQ ideology when pushed on minors. But all conservatives would find the notion of throwing gays off buildings stomach-churning.
Thus, though Hamid is disingenuous throughout his arguments, he is particularly so when he says that “You’d think Republicans would sense an electoral opportunity.”
I don’t know about Republicans, but the conservative “crusade” as I understand it — and as President Donald Trump has pursued it, with universities, museums, etc. — is to conserve the unified American culture that Hamid not only repudiates but claims no longer exists (he writes in <a href="https://x.com/shadihamid/status/2042013918927667651">a tweet</a> “There is no longer any unified culture or set of supreme values that enjoy a consensus. We can lament this, but it&#8217;s a fact”).
First, as the X poster Noah Smith <a href="https://x.com/Noahpinion/status/2042017057366241560">pointed out</a>, there is plenty of evidence that “we actually agree on a lot more than politics suggests.”
But it is the Left — which denigrates this culture as much as Hamid — that has made a wartime alliance with political Islam. They sense that they both seek to deconstruct Western culture. In Europe, this is called “the Red-Green Alliance.”
To be sure, each side senses they will fall out with each other as soon as they destroy the unified culture. But medium-term alliances win wars, as World War II attests. (My money is on the Islamists crushing the silly Leftists if this dystopia ever came to pass).
The fight to save the West — against secularism, family breakdown, and the atomized individual — is real. But it presupposes that we save the unifying culture, which may be on life support yet still redeemable.
And for that I can quote evidence from one Shadi Hamid, who left no doubt in a 2016 Atlantic <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/islam-politics-exceptional/485801/">piece</a> on the Ottoman Empire that he understands that “spiritual unity” was foundational if there is a hope of establishing a legitimate political order.
That is why assimilation remains an indispensable condition in any land that takes in immigrants. Islam is one of the world’s great religions, but its practitioners don’t get a pass.
***
Mike Gonzalez is the Angeles T. Arredondo Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. His book “BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution” is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/BLM-Making-New-Marxist-Revolution/dp/1641772239">now available</a>.

TRT World Forum 2019

Shadi Hamid Makes Outlandish Claims About Islam, Assimilation, And America

Assimilation

Founding Fathers

Muslim Immigration

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed legislation expanding the state&#8217;s counterterrorism powers, allowing a handful of officials to issue domestic terror designations and implement restrictions on Sharia law.
<a href="https://www.flhouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=84224&amp;SessionId=113">HB 1471</a> prohibits Florida courts from enforcing foreign or religious law that conflicts with the U.S. Constitution and blocks foreign judgments, contracts, or legal provisions that attempt to bypass those protections.
The legislation also requires disciplinary action, including expulsion, for students who &#8220;promote terrorist violence&#8221; and allows state institutions to lose funding for violating the law&#8217;s provisions.
&#8220;To uphold the rule of law, our state must operate under one legal system, the Constitution must remain the law of the land, and we must defend our institutions from those who would harm us—especially terrorist organizations that seek to infiltrate and subvert our education system,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2041273577157136463?s=20">DeSantis said on X. </a>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
To uphold the rule of law, our state must operate under one legal system, the Constitution must remain the law of the land, and we must defend our institutions from those who would harm us—especially terrorist organizations that seek to infiltrate and subvert our education… <a href="https://t.co/dyUHJCnBux">pic.twitter.com/dyUHJCnBux</a>
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) <a href="https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2041273577157136463?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 6, 2026</a></blockquote>
Under the law, a top official at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement can designate a group as a domestic or foreign terrorist organization, subject to approval by the governor and members of his cabinet, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/desantis-florida-terrorist-groups-free-speech-0b5dfb47052a17168919a3ce3c80dead">according to the Associated Press</a>.
The measure passed both chambers of the state legislature mostly along party lines.
Florida&#8217;s bill follows a recent legal battle over DeSantis&#8217;s designation of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a controversial Muslim civil rights group, as a terrorist organization. On March 5, U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker <a href="https://www.cair.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/DeSantis-Order-Granting-PI.pdf">issued a preliminary injunction</a> blocking the order.
Sharia law represents the religious legal system and moral code of Islam, which derives mostly from the teachings of the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad. Many Muslim-majority countries apply aspects of Sharia law to their legal frameworks, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Pakistan, and Iran, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/smart-facts/what-shariah-law-n859981">according to NBC News. </a>
The Sunshine State follows other conservative-led states in enacting anti-Sharia legislation. <a href="https://belonging.berkeley.edu/islamophobia/anti-muslim-legislation-map">A University of California, Berkeley analysis</a> finds that at least 13 states, mostly located in the South, have passed and implemented anti-Sharia laws between 2010 and 2020.
In November 2025, President Donald Trump signed an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/11/designation-of-certain-muslim-brotherhood-chapters-as-foreign-terrorist-organizations-and-specially-designated-global-terrorists/">executive order</a> designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization.
&#8220;We have a responsibility to defend and reinvigorate Western Civilization, and that means protecting against creeping sharia in all its forms,&#8221; DeSantis <a href="https://x.com/RonDeSantis/status/2041286700140257368?s=20">said in a social media post. </a>
CAIR&#8217;s Florida chapter decried the legislation as &#8220;draconian&#8221; and &#8220;blatantly unconstitutional.&#8221;
&#8220;By empowering the Governor’s cabinet with new powers to designate his political opponents as terrorists without due process using secret evidence, these bills flout the basic notions of justice that all Americans expect from their government,&#8221; CAIR-Florida Interim Executive Director Hiba Rahim <a href="https://cairflorida.org/press/cair-florida-condemns-draconian-police-state-bills-awaiting-gov-desantis-signature/">said</a>.
The law is set to take effect on July 1.

Islamic Jihad Hold Gaza Rally

Red State Slams Door On Sharia Law, Ramps Up Fight Against Domestic Terrorism

DeSantis

florida

laws

Muslim

In 2019, a journalist asked Iranian Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif why people are executed in Iran for being gay. His <a href="https://www.iranhr.net/media/files/Rapport_iran_2024-WEB.pdf">response</a>: “Our society has moral principles. And we live according to these principles … That means that the law is respected, and the law is obeyed.”
Under Islamic law, homosexuality is a crime punishable by imprisonment or execution for those who violate it. One could assume the conservative Islamic regime would produce similar consequences for transgenderism. But it is, in fact, legal and religiously permissible.
In the Western world, LGBT advancements are seen as a form of liberation. But in Iran, a complex dichotomy remains — where homosexuality can lead to death, yet transgenderism is given the green light. However, the practice is not celebrated so much as it is utilized as a cure for homosexuality. And in some cases, it is involuntary.
Transgenderism in Iran first surfaced in the 1980s. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founding supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, issued a fatwa — a religious decree — to legalize transgenderism, with the requirement that they are diagnosed with gender dysphoria and undergo surgery for sex changes. <a href="https://iranwire.com/en/women/124596-influential-iranian-women-maryam-khatoonpour-molkara-1950-2012/">Maryam Khatoon Molkara</a>, an Iranian transgender activist, is credited as the driving force of the movement. After years of writing letters and persisting with Khomeini, even visiting his home to plead his case, Molkara convinced the supreme leader to authorize transgender surgery in 1987.
Khomeini determined there was nothing in religious law that condemned transgenderism; rather, it could medically serve as a correction for the mental disorder.
A religious cleric, Hojatolislam Muhammad Mehdi Kariminia, famously <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7259057.stm">said</a> an operation is no more a sin than &#8220;changing wheat to flour to bread.&#8221;
He said, &#8220;Islam has a cure for people suffering from this problem. If they want to change their gender, the path is open.&#8221;
But Kariminia clarified his stance on homosexuality. &#8220;The discussion is fundamentally separate &#8230; Absolutely not related. Homosexuals are doing something unnatural and against religion,&#8221; Kariminia added.
However, ongoing reports suggest transgenderism in Iran may at times be exploited. Put plainly, some may be forced to transition.
A New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/world/middleeast/iran-transgender-surgery.html">article</a> published in October 2025 highlights the paradox: “For 40 years Iran has performed more gender transition surgeries than many other nations, largely a result of pressuring gay and gender-nonconforming citizens to undergo unwanted operations or risk the death penalty.”
The United Nations also expressed its concerns in a 2023 <a href="https://docs.un.org/en/CCPR/C/IRN/CO/4">report</a> that gay and lesbian Iranians are being &#8220;pressured into undergoing gender reassignment surgery without their free consent.”
An Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/a66b2167bb1744e6b12ba8ff1ef97c21">article</a> from 2018 stated that transgender surgery in Iran aims to cure the &#8220;disease,&#8221; and that those who &#8220;choose not to undergo surgery and get new documents can face arrest by police for dressing in a way that contradicts their government-recognized gender.”
As one of the few Muslim countries that offer these surgeries, Iran seems to be capitalizing on the endeavor: &#8220;Now, faced with an economy crippled by war and sanctions, the Islamic Republic is promoting its expertise to a global audience, hoping to attract transgender foreigners with the promise of inexpensive surgeries packaged with luxury hotel stays and sightseeing tours,&#8221; the Times noted.
According to the website of the medical company IranMedTour, compared to the cost of a transgender procedure in the United States (which can be $45,000), transgender surgery in Iran is much lower, with prices less than $12,000. &#8220;Other companies advertise procedures at government hospitals for as low as $4,500.”
The goal, according to the outlet citing Iranian media, is to raise over $7 billion annually in medical tourism.
What started as a plea for &#8220;transgender rights&#8221; from Molkara has turned into a compulsory crackdown on homosexuality and a vending machine bringing in cash from the rest of the world.

Trans_Gay_Fate_Iran

You Can Be Trans In Iran, But Being Gay Might Get You Killed

Global Politics

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In a viral video, a 12-year-old Texas boy took a stand for religious neutrality after his local school district allowed a Muslim outreach group with alleged ties to anti-Christian ideology to distribute Islamic materials — including head coverings and Sharia law pamphlets — to students during school hours.
Leland Saunders, a resident of Farmersville, delivered a blistering rebuke to the Wylie Independent School District board following a February 2 incident at Wylie East High School. The controversy erupted after an outside organization called &#8220;Why Islam&#8221; was permitted to set up a massive promotional booth during the lunch period to celebrate &#8220;World Hijab Day.&#8221;
According to reports, the group handed out copies of the Quran and hijabs to female students. Most concerning to parents, however, was the distribution of literature advocating for Sharia law. The &#8220;Why Islam&#8221; organization is owned by the Islamic Circle of North America, a group whose website reportedly openly attacks &#8220;Pauline theology&#8221; and denies the divinity of Jesus Christ. &#8220;
According to a review by <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/school-blames-procedural-breakdown-for-group-passing-out-qurans.html">The Christian Post</a>, &#8220;the Why Islam website promotes anti-Christian ideology that includes statements <a href="https://www.whyislam.org/jesus-pbuh/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">declaring  </a>Jesus is &#8216;not the Son of God&#8217; and an <a href="https://www.whyislam.org/pauline-theology/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">entire page</a> devoted to criticism of New Testament teaching, or what the website terms &#8216;Pauline theology.'&#8221;
While the district scrambled to frame the incident as a mere &#8220;procedural breakdown,&#8221; young Leland Saunders wasn&#8217;t buying the bureaucratic excuses.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
A 12-year-old from Farmersville, Texas, pushes back after Muslims handed out “hijabs, Qurans and Sharia law pamphlets” at his public school.
&#8220;Even if participation was voluntary, handing out religious texts during school hours crosses the line&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/7oiXRG0DPt">pic.twitter.com/7oiXRG0DPt</a>
— Chaya’s Clan (@ChayasClan) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChayasClan/status/2024764129848815647?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 20, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Public schools serve students from many different religious backgrounds, and students who have no religious beliefs at all,&#8221; Saunders said. &#8220;Because of that, I believe our schools must remain neutral when it comes to religious promotion during the school day.&#8221;
The 12-year-old highlighted the double standard often found in modern public education, questioning whether the same platform would be afforded to other faith groups.
&#8220;If one religious organization is allowed to distribute materials, would every religious or ideological group be allowed to be given the same opportunity?&#8221; Saunders asked. &#8220;If so, how will that be managed fairly? If not, how is that even equal treatment?&#8221;
The incident first gained national attention after a viral video posted by Marco Hunter-Lopez, president of the school’s Republican Club, exposed the outreach effort, the Christian Post reported. Hunter-Lopez noted that while colleges and secular clubs are common fixtures at the school, he had never seen a Christian church allowed to hand out Bibles in the cafeteria. &#8220;They were giving out hijabs to girls throughout the high school, and they were giving our Qurans, and they also had pamphlets about Sharia law,&#8221; he <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/wylie-isd-investigates-how-why-islam-group-set-up-on-campus-without-approval/">said</a>.
Wylie ISD officials have since admitted that &#8220;district protocols for guest speakers and student club interactions were not followed.&#8221; A staff member was briefly placed on leave but has since returned to work. While Board President Bill Howard issued an apology, promising to &#8220;earn your trust back,&#8221; the district’s &#8220;Wylie Way&#8221; values are under intense scrutiny by families who say the school crossed the line from education into religious indoctrination.
For Leland Saunders, the mission was simple: to protect the boundary between the classroom and religion. &#8220;This is about maintaining neutrality, fairness, and a religious boundary from education and religion,&#8221; he concluded.

Islamic Sharia law and legal system concept

WATCH: 12-Year-Old Shreds School Board After Sharia Pamphlets Handed Out

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Monday that he was investigating whether a development project linked to a Dubai-based company was going to be a “sharia city.”  
Paxton, a Republican, said he was taking action to examine a development underway in Kaufman, Texas, about 34 miles southeast of Dallas. The development drew attention after an American subsidiary of the Dubai-based SEE Holdings purchased thousands of acres of land near Kaufman, and claims circulated that up to 20,000 foreign nationals would be moving there. 
“There will be no ‘sharia city’ in Texas under my watch,” Paxton said. “While you’re on American soil, you will obey America’s laws. I have launched this investigation to determine the nature of this development in Kaufman County and will be thoroughly investigating this matter for any unlawful actions.” 
The land was purchased in connection with the Delaware-based Kaufman Solar, Paxton <a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-announces-investigation-potentially-illegal-sharia-city-development">said</a>. Paxton has requested information from SEE Holdings and Kaufman Solar, including communications with the city and government officials, the relationship between the two companies, and details on the planned development. 
Paxton’s investigation comes after The Daily Caller published a <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2026/02/04/kaufman-solar-llc-texas-plano-epic-sustainable-city-dubai-saudi-middle-east/">report</a> noting concerns from residents that there could be up to 20,000 foreign nationals coming to the “sustainable” development.
Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) told The Daily Caller that SEE Holdings contacted him about the development. 
“The group reached out to me, and I said under no circumstances would we accept any planned community that included mosques or religious buildings or schools. Twenty thousand foreigners is news to me, but that would also be a nonstarter, obviously,” he told the outlet. 
“If they were from New York and not Dubai, then we likely wouldn’t be concerned, but considering what our neighboring counties have been through, they’re going to have to actively involve the community to get buy-in, and that has yet to happen,” he added. 
Kaufman Solar is a limited liability company registered in Delaware that was founded in August 2022. Its registered agent is the Delaware-based Nextera Registered Agency, and <a href="https://kaufmancountytx.new.swagit.com/videos/320652">minutes</a> from Kaufman County commissioner meetings show that NextEra Energy Resources represented Kaufman Solar during talks with city officials. 
The Daily Wire reached out to SEE Holdings and NextEra Energy Resources. They did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 
After publication, NextEra Energy Resources told The Daily Wire that neither it &#8220;nor Kaufman Solar is affiliated with or involved in the proposed sustainable city development in Kaufman County.&#8221;
Last year, Paxton launched a similar investigation into EPIC City, a planned Muslim community in northern Texas. Paxton sued in December to stop construction of the city, alleging that developers violated state securities laws. The developers have denied any wrongdoing. 
“The leaders behind EPIC City have engaged in a radical plot to destroy hundreds of acres of beautiful Texas land and line their own pockets,” Paxton said. “I will relentlessly bring the full force of the law against anyone who thinks they can ignore the rules and hurt Texans.”
In recent months, Republican lawmakers have <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/republicans-take-stand-against-sharia-law-with-new-house-caucus">stepped up calls</a> for the need to ban Sharia law in the United States. Last week, House Republicans launched the Sharia Free America Caucus, saying that Islamic law was incompatible with the Constitution.

US-POLITICS-CONSERVATIVES

Probe Launched Into ‘Sharia City’ Plan On U.S. Soil: ‘You Obey America’s Laws’

Islamic-Centered Community Was Planned On U.S. Soil Until A Republican Exposed It

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