In recent years, the concern over Islam in America has become ever more prominent. There is heated disagreement between those who view multiculturalism as a source of American strength and those who see rising Islamic influence as incompatible with the American tradition.
In the months leading up to his assassination, Charlie Kirk repeatedly warned of what he saw as Islam’s challenge to the “American way of life.” He spoke out against Sharia enclaves, called Islam incompatible “with Western civilization,” and warned that Islamists were conquering America “militarily and demographically.” Since his death, the debate has only accelerated.
Since 2001, immigration from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, and other Muslim-majority countries has grown America’s Muslim population from under 2 million to around 4.5 million today, by some estimates, with the number of mosques surging from around 1,200 to 3,000 over the same period. Muslim communities are averaging 2.5 children per woman, outpacing the 1.6 national average.
Many new arrivals have assimilated. But others have built something entirely foreign to the American experience: parallel, Sharia-dominated enclaves, which strikingly mirror blueprints crafted by the Muslim Brotherhood over 40 years ago.
Hamtramck, Michigan, once an archetypal working-class American town, recently became the first city in the country governed entirely by a Muslim city council, mayor, police chief, and city manager. Muslim and far-left politicians in Paterson, New Jersey, have joined together to rename streets, raise Islamic flags, and promote Sharia law, which are the religious rules and principles based on the teachings of the Quran and Muhammad.
In Texas, Islam has surged, enabled by rapid immigration and sustained by infrastructure funded by Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood, and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Similar examples of Islamic infiltration can be seen across red and blue states, big cities, and even small towns.
Sharia law in America is the predictable consequence of a fast-growing, devout Muslim population at home. Some organizations that lead global Islamism have called for it explicitly. The goal was first articulated in "Towards a Global Strategy for Islamic Policy" (also known as "The Project"), a 1982 Muslim Brotherhood document that laid out a plan for global domination — including over all Christians and Jews — through the stealth infiltration of Western institutions.
This first piece, of a multipart series about American Islam, aims to explain the Sharia project — its theology, its history, and its clash with the American constitutional order.
This essay will address four critical questions:
What is Sharia, and what are the Muslim disagreements over it?
What fueled the more radical version of Sharia that is advancing across the West today?
How does Sharia supremacism clash with America’s founding principles?
Is its advance reversible?
_WHAT IS SHARIA?_
The word "Sharia" is Arabic for "the correct path." It is derived from two primary sources: the Quran, which Muslims hold as the authoritative word of God, and the Sunnah, a vast collection of sayings and practices attributed to the Prophet Mohamed. Two lesser secondary sources – the Ijma and Qiyas – establish Sharia through the consensus of Muslim legal scholars. Taken together, these sources form a body of guidance that has been studied and debated for over a millennium.
The major schools of Islamic jurisprudence — Hanafi, Maliki, Shafiʽi, Jaʽfari (dominant in Shia Iran), and Hanbali — differ in notable ways. The Hanbali school, prominent in Saudi Arabia, gave rise to the more violent, Jihadist-leaning Wahhabi and Salafi branches that would eventually influence Osama bin Laden.
Reformist voices have articulated a different interpretation: former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid defined Sharia as a pluralistic, personal form of spiritual guidance entirely compatible with Western thought. Traditional Sufi scholars have emphasized Sharia as a call to inward transformation rather than political domination.
Sharia supremacists, however — most prominently the Muslim Brotherhood — reject reformist interpretations as apostasy, demanding a strict, legalistic reading instead. Several of its core tenets are worth examining:
The doctrine of abrogation (Naskh) holds that earlier, more peaceful Quranic verses are nullified by later, more violent ones — meaning that passages calling for coexistence carry less theological weight than those commanding conquest.
On the question of women, Sharia supremacism mandates that adultery is a capital offense, that female genital mutilation is obligatory, that husbands may beat their wives, that women (according to some interpretations) must cover the entire body while in public except for the face and hands, that men may marry up to four wives and keep additional concubines, that proving rape requires four male Muslim witnesses, and that girls may be married as young as eight or nine.
Apostasy — leaving the faith — merits the death penalty, and "honor" killings of apostate or disobedient family members are sanctioned.
Jihad is not a personal, inward struggle, but is armed warfare aimed at the total submission of unbelievers. This jihad also includes immigration (hijrah) to other countries for the purposes of conquest.
Sharia places the sovereignty of Allah over all Western constitutions and democratic processes.
It leaves no room for religious tolerance: “People of the Book” (Quran 9:29) — Christians and Jews — are to be fought until they pay the “jizya” poll tax and are reduced to second-class status.
Some Muslim apologists attempt to deflect from criticisms of Sharia supremacism by arguing that violent extremism is hardly unique to its adherents and that Christian and Jewish theology is, in fact, more violent than the Quran. They point to the Israelite conquest of Canaan and the Catholic Church-sanctioned Crusades.
These comparisons, however, collapse under scrutiny. The Crusades, with their brutality, came over one thousand years after Christ's death, and followed four centuries of Islamic destruction of thousands of churches and conquest — by the sword — of formerly Christian lands, including North Africa and Spain.
Most importantly, mainstream Christian and Jewish theologians today do not assert that scripture justifies the kind of universal violence and intolerance that Sharia supremacists and Islamic leadership actively promote.
_HOW SHARIA BECAME A PROBLEM_
To understand how Sharia supremacism became a global force in the 21st century, one must begin in the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. In 1923, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded the Republic of Turkey, modeling his new regime not on the principles of the deceased Ottoman caliphate, but on liberal Western values.
Many of Atatürk’s detractors viewed the Ottoman Empire (founded 1299) as a model Islamic caliphate, with religious and political power deeply intertwined. At its peak, the Ottoman Sultans — or Caliphs — had controlled an empire spanning Egypt, modern-day Turkey, and parts of the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans.
However, the power of Islamic militaries in general and the Ottomans in particular began to erode after devastating military defeats. While some believed the Ottoman collapse after World War I signaled the need for a different political system, others urged a return to the past.
Among the dissenters of the new Western Turkish experiment was Hassan al-Banna, an Egyptian imam and schoolteacher who founded the Muslim Brotherhood – the Society of Muslim Brothers — in 1928. Where Atatürk saw modernization, al-Banna saw the repudiation of Islam’s historic character by corrupt Western influences. He fused literalist Islamic thought with Nazi ideology and Jew hatred, corresponding with Adolf Hitler and copying many of the ideas in Mein Kampf into Arabic, with a new title: My Jihad.
Al-Banna concurred with later groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS on the ultimate goal — a global Islamic caliphate — but disagreed on the method for achieving it. While they preferred violent jihad, al-Banna chose civilizational jihad (although his group would later carry out political assassinations, including that of Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud El Nokrashy Pasha in 1948). His was a long game to soften the West through infiltration and demographic expansion.
Following his assassination in 1949 and a subsequent crackdown by Egyptian authorities, the Brotherhood expanded into Europe and then the United States.
Beginning in the 1970s, oil-rich Gulf states — suddenly flush with petrodollars — began funding Islamic fundamentalism on an enormous scale, supporting mosques, institutions, and educational programs for millions of students, especially in the Muslim world. This strategy of “Petro-Islam” aimed to counter, first, Soviet power and later Western power, and to protect their wealthy, monarchical systems from socialist and nationalist movements.
This cash infusion countered the trend of secularization begun in Turkey and fueled the rise of fundamentalist Islamist movements, including in Egypt, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.
In America, the institutional foothold was formed quietly. The Muslim Students Association was founded in 1963; the North American Islamic Trust in 1973; the Islamic Society of North America in 1981; the Institute of Islamic Thought in Virginia in the same year; and the Council on American-Islamic Relations in 1994.
The Trust came to control hundreds of American mosques and properties. And the strategic vision behind these institutions was spelled out in two internal Muslim Brotherhood documents — “The Project” (1982) and the Explanatory Memorandum (1993).
The first document, written by exiled disciples of al-Banna, called for Muslims to establish parallel Islamic structures, use Palestine to fuel global jihadist cells, temporarily ally with Marxist and leftist groups, and reject all cooperation with Jews. The second document outlined a strategy to destroy the West through the “process of settlement” (i.e., immigration and colonization). Both shared the same long-term goal: global Sharia dominance.
While al-Banna has been dead for over 75 years, his influence looms large. In early 2025, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, arguably the most influential Muslim politician in America today, attended services at a Brooklyn mosque long linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
To this day, Brotherhood members and their adherents in America recite al-Banna’s motto: “God is our objective, the Quran is our Constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our way, and death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations.”
_COMPATIBILITY WITH THE CONSTITUTION_
With a growing Islamic population that is devout, religious, and funded by global Islamic movements, it's worth examining the question: Is this movement compatible with the US Constitution? And more so, does it threaten our constitutional order?
The Founding Fathers built a republic that made possible the freedoms and prosperity Americans enjoy today. It was rooted in foundational principles such as individual rights deriving from God, not government, and the idea that government existed to protect these divine rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Many American Muslims claim these ideals. Sharia supremacism, however, directly repudiates them and sets itself against America’s founding principles.
Because it is rooted in Islamic civilizational assumptions, Sharia stands at odds with the Constitution, which emanated from centuries of Western philosophy, Protestant Christianity, and English common law.
Sharia’s command to execute apostates and blasphemers violates constitutional protections for life, religious freedom, free speech, and due process. Its strategy of exploiting free-speech protections to build parallel institutions and manufacture public acceptance of its religious practices deliberately weaponizes the US Constitution's freedoms against itself.
And its mandate that Islamic law as interpreted by Muslim clerics must govern the state leaves no room for popular sovereignty, religious liberty, and minority protections. This all-encompassing view is seen in countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, and Afghanistan, where criticism of Islam is criminalized, and Christian churches are either banned outright or severely restricted. It is shared by millions of Muslims in Europe, including nearly half of Muslims under 40 in Germany who say they prefer Sharia law.
While many of the Founding Fathers professed Christianity, they understood the perils of dictating a particular form of Christianity at the federal level. They had learned from both the bloody religious wars of Europe and the experience of the Pilgrims, who fled to America after being persecuted by the Church of England.
By prohibiting a nationally sanctioned denomination, they were acknowledging individuals’ freedom of conscience and protecting the republic against the kind of theocratic domination that Sharia supremacists now openly advocate and many Western leaders tolerate.
George Washington said America was willing to receive “Muslims, Jews, Christians of any sect, or…atheists” to enjoy “all of our rights and privileges.” But Washington’s invitation came with conditions. He would have rejected, unequivocally, any system that weaponized religion to undermine Constitutional rights.
Both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson owned and studied Qurans, which gave them greater insight into the Muslim Barbary powers against which the newly born United States, under President Jefferson, fought its first foreign war. In a 1786 letter to John Jay, Jefferson recounted what the Muslim ambassador of Tripoli told him and Adams directly: that the Quran gave Muslim nations the “right and duty” to wage war on all non-Muslims, and that any Muslim killed in battle “was sure to go to Paradise.”
The Founders would have been alarmed by Sharia enclaves such as those in Islamberg, NY, Gwynn Oak, MD, and the planned EPIC City (The Meadows) in Plano, Texas, which critics fear will apply Sharia law to settle disputes and operate as bases for illegal or seditious activity.
They also likely would have opposed the use of taxpayer money to fund Islamic indoctrination through Islamic chapels, rituals, and observance of Muslim holy days in public schools in states such as Tennessee and Texas.
And they would have seen as an existential threat efforts from the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) to coordinate unofficial Sharia courts, issue fatwas for the execution of blasphemers and apostates, and operate a national Sharia hotline. For the Founders, the success of the fledgling Republic hinged on a virtuous, educated people and an enduring legal framework.
_CREEPING INFLUENCE_
Chief advocates of Sharia Supremacism claim that a worldwide Islamic caliphate is inevitable, just as the Marxist-Leninists believed communism was destined to conquer the world. They share the vision of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, spoken in 1979: “We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry ‘Allahu Akbar’ resounds over the whole world.” Like the communists, they believe that history is on their side and that the defeat of all enemies is assured.
But a growing number of Americans are awakening to Sharia’s existential threat and are pushing back. In March, 95 percent of Texas Republicans supported a ballot proposition to ban Sharia law. Representative Chip Roy (R-TX), who sounded the alarm on Islam during his campaign for Texas Attorney General, put it bluntly: "America will not survive, and the West will not survive if we do not stop the march of Islam in Texas."
Last December, Roy joined fellow Texas Congressman Keith Self and Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) to launch the Sharia Free America Caucus, which has since grown to around sixty members across twenty-five states. In February, the caucus held a critical hearing including testimony from Islam expert Robert Spencer — who has refused to be silenced, despite media attacks and a 2017 assassination attempt.
At a second hearing in May, journalist Amy Mekelburg testified that the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies in over 8,000 Islamic nonprofits have erected a parallel infrastructure of “mosques, seminaries, schools, sharia banks, sharia courts, sharia clinics, charities, media, and political networks…where Muslims live cradle to grave under full Sharia.”
Legal and legislative pressure is mounting. Last year, both Texas and Florida designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations, and the Trump administration designated certain branches of the Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations.
Even some Muslims are resisting the expansion of radical Islamic groups: in January, the United Arab Emirates slashed scholarships for its own youth to study in British schools over fears that the Muslim Brotherhood was radicalizing its students on British university campuses.
Sharia supremacists admire totalitarian despots and despise Judeo-Christian values, the rights awarded by the US Constitution, and individual liberties. While the threat is severe and the window of resistance is narrowing, their triumph is not inevitable.
Whether America can preserve its constitutional order and cultural identity in the face of that challenge may become one of the defining questions of the 21st century.
