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: