Religious Law in America: The Threat Isn't Muslims

A few weeks ago I watched two people argue about Sharia law at a kitchen table, and neither of them could have told you what Sharia law actually is. One was certain it was coming for her county. The other was certain that the first person was a bigot. Both of them were frightened, which is what struck me. The conversation had no room for the thing underneath, which was a real question about who gets to write the rules we all live under.

Interfaith America recently published a piece arguing that the threat of imposing religious law in America isn't from Muslims, and that the founders deliberately rejected the European model of religious monopoly in favor of pluralism (Interfaith America). I want to take that claim seriously and look at the record behind it, because I think the history is more interesting, and more useful for anyone trying to hold a conversation across a divide, than either side of the kitchen table tends to allow.

What Did the Founders Actually Reject?

The European model they knew was one where a state church was part of the machinery of government. Taxes supported it, offices were tied to it, and dissenters paid a price for believing differently. Virginia had its own version, and the fight to dismantle it is the clearest window we have into what the founders were thinking.

Thomas Jefferson drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1777, and the General Assembly enacted it in 1786 after James Madison's push. In his autobiography, Jefferson recalled that the legislature rejected an amendment that would have limited the statute's reach to Christians, and he wrote that the outcome was meant to comprehend "the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination." The word he used for Muslims was the one common in his day, and he put it in the same sentence as everyone else. That sentence is the pluralist argument in miniature.

George Washington said something similar in a different register. In his 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport, Rhode Island, he described a government "which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." He was not offering Jews tolerance as a favor from a dominant group. He was describing a country in which the question of whose religion counted had been taken off the table.

There is also a small, concrete detail I find hard to forget. Jefferson owned a copy of George Sale's English translation of the Qur'an, which now sits in the Library of Congress collection. A man planning a republic that could include Muslims bought the book to find out what Muslims believed. That is a very different posture from the one that treats the book as a threat to be legislated against.

What Does the Constitution Say About Religious Law?

The text is blunter than most people remember. Article VI, clause 3 of the Constitution says that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." That clause was in the original document, before any amendments, which means the framers considered religious neutrality in public office part of the basic design and not an afterthought.

The First Amendment then adds two guarantees that pull in different directions and work together: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The first keeps any tradition from becoming the law of the land. The second keeps the government from punishing a person for living by their tradition. Together they mean a Muslim, a Catholic, a Mormon, or an atheist can follow their own religious law in private life, and none of them can make it binding on a neighbor.

A third document is worth knowing. Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, negotiated in 1796 and ratified by the Senate in 1797, states that "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." People argue about how much weight a treaty clause should carry on a question like this, and I would not build a whole case on it. But the Senate read that sentence and approved it, which tells us something about how the founding generation was comfortable describing their own government.

So Where Does the Fear of Sharia Come From?

I try to start with the fear before the facts, because facts delivered to a frightened person tend to bounce off. Many Americans have only encountered Islamic law through news about other countries, where some governments do enforce a version of it. It is a short step from "that happens over there" to "that could happen here." That step feels like prudence, even when the legal system makes it close to impossible.

The Constitution is the main obstacle, but the practical obstacle is arithmetic and structure. A religious minority cannot impose its law on a country where it is a small share of the population, where the courts enforce the Establishment Clause, and where any statute has to survive both houses of Congress and a presidential signature. The fear describes a mechanism that has no working parts in the American system.

Oklahoma tested this directly. In 2010 voters approved State Question 755, a constitutional amendment that barred state courts from considering or using Sharia law. A Muslim resident of Oklahoma City, Muneer Awad, challenged it. In Awad v. Ziriax, 670 F.3d 1111 (10th Cir. 2012), the Tenth Circuit upheld the injunction against the amendment, reasoning that it singled out one religion by name and that the state had not identified any actual problem it was solving. A law written to protect the country from a religion that wasn't threatening it ended up as the clearest example of the government taking sides.

That result is the irony the Interfaith America headline points toward. The measures aimed at Muslim law were the ones that raised the constitutional problem, because they involved the state favoring and disfavoring traditions by name.

Where Is the Pressure Actually Coming From?

Here I want to be careful, because this is the point where an argument like this one turns into a different kind of partisan story, and I don't think that serves anybody. In my view, the honest observation is narrower than the headline and more durable. The temptation to write one tradition's rules into public law is strongest where one tradition is a large majority, and in the United States that tradition is Christianity. This says nothing about Christians as individuals, most of whom hold the pluralist view as deeply as anyone. It describes where the structural opportunity sits.

The Supreme Court addressed a close cousin of this question in Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980), when it struck down a Kentucky statute requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in public school classrooms. The Court found the purpose of the statute plainly religious. States have continued to pass versions of that idea since then, and the litigation over them has kept moving, so I will not try to predict where any particular case lands. What I can say is that the underlying question hasn't changed in more than four decades: can the state post one tradition's commandments on the wall of a room where children of every tradition are required to sit?

The Court also set down a principle in Larson v. Valente, 456 U.S. 228 (1982), that the clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another. That sentence works in every direction. It is the reason a state cannot ban Sharia by name, and it is the reason a state cannot elevate one church's teaching into law. A person who wants the first protection has to be willing to accept the second.

This is the symmetry I think gets lost in the shouting. The same wall that protects a Christian family from a Muslim legal code protects a Muslim family from a Christian one, and a Jewish family from either. You cannot keep the protection for yourself and remove it from others, because it works only as a shared structure.

How Do the Two Fears Compare?

It helps me to put the claims side by side, since the rhetoric on both ends tends to blur them.

The bottom row is the one I would ask you to sit with. Whichever concern feels more urgent to you, the protection is the same text, and weakening it for one group weakens it for all of them.

Why Does This Matter for How We Talk to Each Other?

I am more interested in the conversation than in winning the legal argument, because the legal argument is largely settled in the text and the conversation is not. The kitchen table is where this actually gets decided for most people.

What I have come to think is that someone who says "I'm afraid of Sharia law" is rarely making a claim about jurisprudence. They are saying something closer to "I'm afraid that the country I grew up in will stop being recognizable." That is a feeling, and it deserves a response at the level of a feeling before it deserves a citation. If you open with Awad v. Ziriax you will be right and you will lose the room.

The practice I find most useful is the one we write about often at WeaveCulture: restate the other person's concern well enough that they would say yes, that's what I mean, before you offer anything of your own. It sounds simple and it is hard, especially when the person across from you says something you consider unfair to Muslim neighbors. We go through how to build that habit in three tiers of mirroring, from beginner to advanced. The skill matters here because the fear is real even when its object is misplaced, and a listener who can say "you're worried about what happens to the shared rules of this country" has already found common ground with a person who expected a fight.

The second half of the practice is just as important and more often skipped. If you are the person defending pluralism, check whether you would apply it consistently. Would you object just as strongly to a school board posting one faith's text as you would to a ban on another's? The pluralist case only has force if it travels in both directions. People notice immediately when it doesn't, and they conclude, with some justification, that the principle was a costume for a preference.

What Does This Mean for Communities, Congregations, and Workplaces?

Most readers of a site like this one are not drafting statutes. They run a book club, sit on a school committee, lead a congregation, manage a team, or host a neighborhood group. The founders' reasoning applies there more than you might expect.

A group that wants people of different convictions to stay in the room needs a shared rule that does not belong to any one of them. That is what the Establishment Clause does at the scale of a nation, and it is also what a written set of ground rules does at the scale of a meeting. I wrote about why unstated norms fail in why written dialogue rules outperform assumed norms, and the national version of that argument is the First Amendment: a neutral, written, mutual commitment that does not require anyone to give up what they believe.

A few practical questions follow, and I offer them as questions because I don't think there is one right answer for every group:

• When your group opens or closes with a prayer or a reading, does everyone have a real way to participate or abstain without being noticed?
• If a member raises a fear about another faith, does your group have a way to hear it that doesn't turn into either agreement or a rebuke?
• Are the rules you apply to the minority view the same ones you would accept if you were the minority?

None of those require a legal degree. They require the same posture Washington described in Newport, which was to refuse sanction to bigotry without refusing a hearing to the person who feels afraid.

What Should We Be Careful About in This Argument?

I want to flag where I think this conversation can go wrong, including on my own side of it. The title of the Interfaith America piece is a strong claim, and strong claims invite a flat counterpoint: someone will say that individual extremists in any tradition exist, and that is true. Some individuals in every faith want their law to be the country's law. The point, as I read the historical and legal record, is that the American system was built to absorb that wish without acting on it, and that the system works only if it is applied evenly.

I would also say that I haven't tried to settle the contested cases here. Reasonable people disagree about where accommodation ends and establishment begins, and the courts have moved on that line over the decades. My claim is smaller: the founders deliberately chose pluralism over a monopoly, the text of the Constitution reflects that choice, and the cleanest test of whether you hold the same view is whether you would defend it for a tradition you don't share.

There is an older and gentler idea in the same neighborhood. Tolerance, in the sense of putting up with someone, has a ceiling, and I think the founders were reaching for something closer to recognition. I explored that distinction in tolerance and recognition: why surface-level civility isn't enough. A country that merely tolerates its Muslim neighbors still treats them as guests, and the Virginia statute treated them as citizens.

A Question to Take With You

If someone asked you, today, to name the religious tradition whose legal code you would least want imposed on your own family, you would probably have an answer ready. What would it take to hold the same standard for the tradition you love most? I don't think the founders thought the second half was easy, and I doubt it has gotten easier. But it may be the whole test.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Sharia law be imposed in the United States?

No legal path exists for imposing any religious code on the country. Article VI, clause 3 bars religious tests for public office, and the First Amendment prohibits an establishment of religion. A statute would also have to pass both houses of Congress and survive judicial review. Muslim Americans, like members of any faith, can follow their religious practices privately, but those practices do not become binding on others.

What happened with Oklahoma's ban on Sharia law?

Oklahoma voters approved State Question 755 in 2010, which would have barred state courts from considering Sharia law. In Awad v. Ziriax, 670 F.3d 1111 (10th Cir. 2012), the Tenth Circuit upheld an injunction against it, finding that the amendment singled out one religion and that the state had not shown a real problem it was solving.

Did the founders intend America to be a Christian nation?

The record points the other way on government structure. The Constitution contains no religious test for office, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was passed in 1786 with the intent of covering people of every belief, and Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, ratified in 1797, states that the U.S. government is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion. Many founders were personally devout Christians, and historians debate how to weigh that against their institutional choices.

What did George Washington say about religious minorities?

In his 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport, Rhode Island, Washington described a government that "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." The letter is commonly cited as an early statement that religious minorities hold rights as citizens and not as guests tolerated by a majority.

How should I respond when someone says they fear Sharia law?

Start by restating the concern in your own words until they confirm you have it right, which usually reveals a fear about losing a familiar country and not a legal claim. After that, the constitutional facts land more easily. Ask yourself also whether you would defend the same principle if the tradition in question were your own.

Last updated: 2026-10-31