شَرِيعَةsharīʿaLiterally “the path to the water.” In Islam, God’s guidance for how to live.
You have probably heard that Muslims want to bring Sharia law to the United States. Here is what Sharia actually is, where governments enforce it today, who commits violence in the name of Islam and Christianity, where the American fear came from, and what the evidence shows. Every number links to its source.
Plate 1
Who Lives Where, and Where Sharia Has Legal Force
Christians are the majority in 120 countries and Muslims in 53.1 Switch the map between majority religion, where Sharia has legal force, and where extremist groups operate. Tap any country for its numbers.
2.27 billionChristians, 28.8 percent of the world in 2020.1
1.91 billionPeople with no religion, 24.2 percent.1
5.5 millionMuslims in the United States, about 1 in 60 Americans.11
Christian majorityMuslim majorityOther religion or none, majorityLighter shade: largest group, under halfSharia in national criminal lawIn some regionsFamily law onlyShapes national criminal lawCriminal law in some regionsFamily law only, for MuslimsNo Sharia in state lawIslamist-identified extremist groupChristian-identified extremist groupEach pin marks the center of a group’s main area of operation.
Swipe sideways to see the whole map. Tap a country or pin for details.
View the Map as a Table
Country
Christian
Muslim
Largest Group
Sharia in State Law
Religion shares are Pew Research Center estimates for 2020.1 Eleven microstates and Greenland, which Pew does not cover, use the CIA World Factbook’s final edition.12 Sharia status follows the U.S. State Department’s 2023 religious freedom reports and later news.3 Countries not classified had no Sharia courts or Sharia-based laws in the sources used. Map outlines: Natural Earth.13
Definitions
What Sharia Actually Is
Sharia is the Arabic word for a path, originally the worn path to a watering place.1415 Muslims use it to mean God’s guidance for how to live. It is not a single book of laws, and no government owns it.
sharīʿa and fiqh
The Ideal and the Human Attempt
Sharia is the ideal. Fiqh, which means “understanding,” is the human and fallible effort to work out what that ideal requires. In the Council on Foreign Relations’ summary, human interpretations of sharia, or fiqh, are the basis of Islamic law today.14 Because fiqh is human, scholars disagree, and the disagreement is built into the system.
Hanafi: Turkey, the Balkans, Central and South Asia.
Maliki: North and West Africa.
Shafi’i: Southeast Asia and Yemen.
Hanbali: Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Ja’fari: the main Shia school, in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon.1416
In 2005, about 200 Muslim scholars from 50 countries formally recognized eight schools of law as valid.17
what it covers
Mostly Daily Religious Life
Classical law manuals run from ritual washing and prayer through fasting, charity, marriage, inheritance, contracts, and trade.15 Georgetown professor Jonathan A. C. Brown estimates that less than 2 percent of a typical manual deals with the fixed criminal punishments called hudud.2
maqāṣid al-sharīʿa
What the Law Is For
The scholar al-Ghazali (died 1111) taught that the law exists to protect five things: religion, life, intellect, family lineage, and property. Al-Shatibi (died 1388) built a full theory of interpretation on those goals. Later scholars added dignity and honor.18
in the United States
What It Looks Like Next Door
For an American Muslim, following Sharia usually means daily prayer, fasting in Ramadan, eating halal food, giving to charity, signing a religious marriage contract alongside a state marriage license, and writing a will under state law. All of it is voluntary and happens inside U.S. law, the same way observant Jews follow halakha and Catholics follow canon law.
Law
Where Governments Enforce Sharia Today
Sharia has some legal force in about 45 countries, in very different ways. In most of them it covers only Muslims’ marriage, divorce, and inheritance. About a dozen use it for criminal law.314See this on the map.
Criminal Law, Nationwide (13)
Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Libya and Somalia have such laws on paper, but how far the state enforces them is unclear.3
Penalties can include flogging, amputation, and death for apostasy or blasphemy. Several governments rarely or never carry out the harshest ones: Mauritania has not carried out a stoning in more than 30 years, Brunei has a moratorium on executions, and Pakistan has never executed anyone for blasphemy. The United Arab Emirates removed flogging from its federal law in 2020 and 2021.3 In 2024 the Taliban added a 35-article vice and virtue law enforced by morality inspectors.19
Criminal Law, Some Regions (3)
Nigeria: 12 northern states have Sharia penal codes, generally applied only to Muslims. Indonesia: only Aceh province, where offenses such as drinking and extramarital sex are punished with public caning. Malaysia: every state runs Sharia courts for Muslims.3 In 2024 Malaysia’s Federal Court struck down 16 provisions of Kelantan state’s Sharia criminal code as beyond the state’s powers.20
Family Law Only, for Muslims (29)
Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Greece, India, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mali, Morocco, Oman, the Palestinian territories, the Philippines, Senegal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, and Tunisia.3
Israel runs ten Sharia courts, nine regional courts and a court of appeals, staffed by judges who are Ministry of Justice employees, alongside rabbinical, church, and Druze courts for other communities.213 India applies a 1937 law to Muslim marriage, divorce, and inheritance. In Greece, muftis in Thrace decide family cases only if every party consents in writing.3
Muslim-Majority, Secular Law (15)
Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, and very likely Niger and Sierra Leone. None has Sharia courts.3
What These Laws Do to People
Religiously coercive laws do real harm, and saying so is not prejudice. In 2019, 79 countries had blasphemy laws and 22 had apostasy laws.22 At least eight countries punish eating in public during Ramadan; Morocco convicted 74 people for it in 2023.3 These laws fall on women, on religious minorities such as Pakistan’s Ahmadis, and on Muslims who dissent.
Blasphemy laws are not unique to Muslim-majority countries. In the same count, 14 countries in Europe and 12 in the Americas had them.22
What Muslims Around the World Say
In Pew’s 2013 survey of Muslims in 39 countries, support for making Sharia the official law ranged from 8 percent in Azerbaijan to 99 percent in Afghanistan. Most supporters wanted it to apply only to Muslims and mainly to family and property disputes; in only 5 of 21 countries did at least half of supporters want it applied to everyone.23
Support for harsh penalties is real in some places. Among supporters, 89 percent in Pakistan favored stoning for adultery. Support for executing people who leave Islam ranged from 86 percent in Egypt to 4 percent in Kazakhstan.23
Scripture
The Text and Its Readers
Every scripture has passages that sound violent when read alone. Extremists and anti-Muslim activists read them the same way: one verse, cut away from the verses around it. Here is what that method leaves out.
The Verse Both Sides Quote
Quran 9:5, the “Sword Verse”
“Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush.”
Translation: Marmaduke Pickthall, 1930, public domain.24
The Setting
Muslim tradition places this chapter around 630 and 631 CE. It addresses specific Arab tribes that had broken their treaties with the early Muslim community, after a four-month grace period.25
The Verses Around It
The verse before it exempts everyone who kept their treaty. The verse after it says that if any of the idolaters “seeketh thy protection,” protect him and “convey him to his place of safety.”24
How Classical Scholars Read It
They disagreed. Some treated it as overriding earlier verses that urged patience and peace. Others limited it to the treaty-breaking tribes of the Prophet’s own time.25
How Extremists Use It
Osama bin Laden’s 1998 declaration opened by quoting it, then called for killing Americans, civilian and military.26
How Anti-Muslim Activists Use It
They quote 9:5 alone and leave out 9:4 and 9:6. It is the same method.
A Comparable Passage in the Bible
Deuteronomy 21:18 to 21
“If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son … all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die.”
The rabbis attached conditions so strict that the Talmud records the view that such a case never happened and never will. One rabbi dissented and said he had seen one.28 The Mishnah calls a court that executes once in seven years “destructive,” and one rabbi said once in seventy.29
How Christian Tradition Reads It
Mainstream Protestant and Catholic teaching holds that ancient Israel’s civil laws have expired. The Westminster Confession of 1646 calls them “not obliging any other now,” and Thomas Aquinas wrote that they were annulled by the coming of Christ.3031
Who Reads It Literally Today
Christian Reconstructionists. R. J. Rushdoony’s 1973 Institutes of Biblical Law argued that Old Testament civil law should govern modern nations, including executing blasphemers and “incorrigible” juvenile delinquents.32
Verses Most People Never Hear
Quran 2:256
“There is no compulsion in religion.”
Quran 2:190
“Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities.”
Quran 5:32
“Whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.” It closely parallels a teaching in the Mishnah, the core text of Jewish law.33
Quran 60:8
God does not forbid kindness and justice toward those “who warred not against you on account of religion and drove you not out from your homes.”24
A Hard Verse, Read Honestly
Quran 4:34 says that men are “in charge of women” and that with wives whose rebellion they fear, husbands should “admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them.”24 Most classical jurists read the last step as allowing a husband to strike his wife as a last resort. Many limited it to a light, symbolic act, and some discouraged it altogether. Many modern scholars reinterpret the verb or hold that it cannot override the Quran’s ethic of kindness in marriage.34 The next verse sends a troubled marriage to arbitration, with an arbiter from each family.
The Bible has comparable texts. Deuteronomy 22:20 to 21 orders a bride stoned if she is found not to be a virgin.27 The fair comparison is how each tradition limits such texts, not whether its texts are gentle.
Safeguards Built Into Classical Islamic Law
Judges were told to avert the fixed punishments whenever there was doubt.35
Adultery required four eyewitnesses to the act itself, and an accuser who fell short was flogged for slander (Quran 24:4).242
A confession could be withdrawn at any time, which canceled the punishment.2
Ottoman court records show one stoning for adultery in Istanbul, in 1680, across more than four centuries of Ottoman rule there.36
Classical jurists applied Quran 5:33, the harshest penalty verse, to armed robbers and people who terrorized the public. Scholar Sherman Jackson calls it the tradition’s law against what we now call terrorism.37
Governments and armed groups that carry out stonings today are reviving a punishment that classical courts almost never imposed.
The Extremist Reading Is the New One
Islam
Salafi-Jihadism, Built in the 20th Century
Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones (1964) argued that Muslim societies had fallen back into pre-Islamic ignorance and needed a vanguard to restore God’s rule. Muhammad Abd al-Salam Faraj’s The Neglected Duty (1981) called for war on Muslim rulers; his group assassinated Egypt’s president that year. Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State built on both.3839
Jihadists quote older scholars such as Ibn Taymiyya selectively while rejecting the classical schools’ system of scholarly authority. Most Salafi Muslims reject violence.38
Christianity
Reconstructionism and Dominion, Built in the 1970s
Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law (1973) called for Old Testament civil law, with its death penalties, to govern modern societies.32 The Seven Mountains Mandate, popularized after 2000, calls Christians to take dominion over seven spheres of society, government included.40
Most Reformed Christians reject Reconstructionism, and its leading thinkers said it must come by persuasion, not force. It is not a terrorist movement. The parallel is the claim to be restoring an “original” law.
Violence
Extremists Claim Both Faiths
Violence in the name of God is real in Islam and in Christianity. In both, it comes from a small minority that mainstream believers and scholars reject.
5,582Terrorism deaths worldwide in 2025, the fewest since 2007.4
70%Of those deaths were caused by four jihadist groups: the Islamic State, JNIM, the Pakistani Taliban, and al-Shabaab.4
82 to 97%Of terrorism victims from 2007 to 2011 were Muslims, where the victims’ religion could be determined.5
121 and 137People killed in the U.S. since 9/11 by jihadist attackers and by far-right attackers.41
Even the largest jihadist groups count their fighters in the thousands. JNIM, the biggest group in Africa’s Sahel, has an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 members,42 out of more than 2 billion Muslims. See every group on the map.
Islamist-Identified Extremist Groups
Islamic State (core, Iraq and Syria)Syria (central desert, northeast, Idlib area) and IraqWeakened but active: up to 3,000 fighters in Syria and low hundreds in Iraq (UN, July 2026)
The Islamic State is a Sunni Salafi-jihadist group that declared a caliphate across Iraq and Syria in 2014, lost that territory by 2019, and continues as an insurgency and a global network of affiliates.
Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP)Lake Chad Basin: northeast Nigeria, Niger, Chad and CameroonActive: the most active Islamic State affiliate in the first half of 2026 (UN)
Islamic State West Africa Province split from Boko Haram in 2016 and is now the Islamic State's most active affiliate, waging an insurgency around Lake Chad.
Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K)Afghanistan (north and east) and the Pakistan border regionsActive but weakened: rebuilding capacity for infrequent mass-casualty attacks (UN, 2026)
Islamic State Khorasan Province is the Islamic State's South and Central Asian branch, known for mass-casualty attacks on Shia and Hazara civilians, the Taliban, and targets abroad including in Iran and Russia.
Islamic State Sahel Province (formerly Islamic State in the Greater Sahara)Niger, Mali (Gao and Menaka), Burkina Faso and northwest NigeriaActive and growing: about 2,000 members (UN, 2026)
Islamic State Sahel Province is an Islamic State affiliate fighting Sahel governments and its al-Qaeda rival JNIM, with Niger as its main area of operations.
Islamic State SomaliaPuntland, Somalia (Cal Miskaat mountains, Bari region)Weakened: 150 to 250 fighters under counter-terrorism pressure (UN, 2026)
Islamic State Somalia is a small Islamic State branch in the mountains of Puntland that has been pushed back by a Puntland military campaign begun in December 2024.
Islamic State Mozambique (Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jama'a)Cabo Delgado Province, northern MozambiqueActive: an estimated 400 to 500 fighters (UN, 2026)
Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jama'a, recognized by the Islamic State as its Mozambique branch, has waged an insurgency in northern Mozambique since 2017.
Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), Islamic State Central Africa ProvinceEastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (North Kivu, Ituri, expanding north) and the Uganda borderActive and expanding: 1,500 to 2,000 members; over 400 deaths in January to May 2026 (UN)
The Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan-origin rebel group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, is among the deadliest attackers of civilians in eastern Congo, including worshippers in churches.
Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM)Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and BeninActive and expanding: 7,000 to 8,000 members; major Mali offensive from 25 April 2026 (UN)
Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin is al-Qaeda's Sahel coalition, formed in 2017, and was the world's second-deadliest terrorist group in 2025 with 1,274 deaths.
Al-ShabaabSouth-central Somalia, with cross-border attacks in KenyaActive: holds territory in south-central Somalia; fourth-deadliest group in 2025 (GTI)
Al-Shabaab is al-Qaeda's Somali affiliate, active since 2006, which combines insurgency and terrorism with parallel governance and taxation in the areas it controls.
Boko Haram (Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad)Northeast Nigeria (Borno State) and the Lake Chad BasinActive and resurgent in 2026 (UN)
Boko Haram is a Nigerian jihadist group that launched an insurgency in 2009 and is notorious for mass killings and mass abductions of civilians.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)Southern and central Yemen (Abyan, Shabwah, Marib)Active and strengthening amid a security vacuum in southern Yemen (UN, 2026)
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is al-Qaeda's Yemen-based branch, which the UN describes as the affiliate most committed to attacks abroad.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)Idlib and northwest Syria; led the December 2024 offensive on DamascusDefunct: dissolved in 2025 and absorbed into Syria's new state; U.S. FTO designation revoked 8 July 2025; removed from the UN sanctions list 27 February 2026
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former al-Qaeda affiliate that later broke with the network, led the December 2024 offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad and then dissolved into the new Syrian state.
Taliban (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan)AfghanistanGoverning Afghanistan since August 2021; recognized by Russia in July 2025
The Taliban is a Deobandi Islamist movement that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, fought a twenty-year insurgency, and has governed the country again since August 2021.
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and former tribal areas of Pakistan, with bases in AfghanistanActive and escalating: third-deadliest group in 2025 with 637 deaths (GTI)
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan is a Deobandi militant alliance founded in 2007 that seeks to overthrow Pakistan's government and was the deadliest terrorist group in Pakistan in 2025.
HamasGaza StripSeverely weakened: Gaza ceasefire in effect since 10 October 2025; disarmament unresolved in 2026
Hamas is a Sunni Palestinian Islamist movement and militia that governed Gaza from 2007 and led the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that set off the Gaza war.
HezbollahLebanon (south, Bekaa Valley, southern Beirut suburbs)Active but weakened: renewed war with Israel from March 2026, followed by U.S.-mediated truces; disarmament unresolved
Hezbollah is an Iran-backed Lebanese Shia Islamist party and militia, founded in the early 1980s, that has fought repeated wars with Israel.
Houthis (Ansar Allah)Northwestern Yemen including Sanaa, and the Red SeaActive: de facto authority in much of northern Yemen; redesignated a U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization effective 5 March 2025
The Houthis, or Ansar Allah, are an Iran-backed Zaydi Shia Islamist movement that seized Sanaa in 2014 and have attacked Red Sea shipping and Israel since late 2023.
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT)Pakistan (Punjab) and KashmirActive: the U.S. added its front group, The Resistance Front, to its FTO listing in July 2025
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba is a Pakistan-based Salafi militant group blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and the U.S. holds its front group responsible for the April 2025 Pahalgam attack that killed 26 people.
Jemaah Islamiyah (JI)Indonesia (Java), with past cells in Malaysia, Singapore and the PhilippinesDissolution announced 30 June 2024; disbandment continuing without splinter groups (UN, February 2026); still on the U.S. FTO list
Jemaah Islamiyah is the Southeast Asian jihadist network behind the 2002 Bali bombings, whose senior leaders announced its dissolution in June 2024.
Christian-Identified Extremist Groups
Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)Northern Uganda historically; now the border region of northeast Central African Republic, the Sudanese-controlled Kafia Kingi enclave and northern DRCNear defunct: fewer than 100 members, mostly women and children (2025); Joseph Kony at large; ICC confirmed 39 charges on 6 November 2025
The Lord's Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony, is a Ugandan rebel movement with a syncretic Christian and Acholi spiritual ideology that became notorious for abducting children.
Anti-balaka militiasWestern and central Central African RepublicFragmented: main (Ngaissona) wing declared its dissolution on 7 October 2025; ICC convicted two leaders on 24 July 2025
The anti-balaka are local self-defense militias, often but inaccurately called Christian militias, that the International Criminal Court found targeted Muslim civilians in the Central African Republic in 2013 and 2014.
National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT)Tripura, northeast India, with former camps in BangladeshLargely defunct: NLFT-SD faction accord 10 August 2019; NLFT-BM faction accord 4 September 2024
The National Liberation Front of Tripura is a tribal separatist insurgency, founded in 1989 and accused by its opponents of forcing conversions to Christianity, whose factions signed peace accords with India in 2019 and 2024.
Christian Identity movementUnited States, historically centered on Aryan Nations in Hayden Lake, IdahoDiminished and decentralized movement
Christian Identity is a racist and antisemitic theology, rejected by mainstream churches as heresy, that claims white people are the true Israelites and has inspired Aryan Nations and other violent white supremacists.
Army of GodUnited States (incidents in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Kansas and elsewhere)Loose underground network; no recent organizational activity verified
The Army of God is a loosely organized American anti-abortion network whose name was invoked by bomber Eric Rudolph and whose doctrine of justifiable homicide was promoted by Paul Hill, who murdered a doctor and his escort in 1994.
Ku Klux Klan (KKK)United States, especially the South (first Klan founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865)Small, fragmented groups persist (status based on older ADL reporting)
The Ku Klux Klan is a white supremacist terrorist movement whose 1920s revival recruited millions by presenting itself as the defender of white Protestant Christianity, a claim most churches denounced.
Hutaree militiaSoutheast Michigan, United StatesDefunct: members acquitted of sedition conspiracy in March 2012
The Hutaree were a small Michigan militia, described as Christian-based, whose members were arrested in 2010 over an alleged plot against police but were acquitted of seditious conspiracy in 2012.
Phineas Priesthood (concept)United States (notably the Pacific Northwest, including the 1996 Spokane Valley bombings)A concept and symbol, not an organization (ADL)
The Phineas Priesthood is a Christian Identity concept, drawn from Numbers 25 and popularized in a 1990 book, that lone white supremacist attackers have used to justify violence, although no organized group has ever existed.
God's Army (Myanmar)Karen areas of Myanmar near the Thai borderDefunct: leaders surrendered in 2001 and 2006
God's Army was a small Christian-identified Karen rebel splinter group led by the child twins Johnny and Luther Htoo, active from 1997 to 2006, whose members seized a hospital in Ratchaburi, Thailand, in 2000.
Holy Spirit MovementNorthern Uganda (Acholi region), advancing toward JinjaDefunct: defeated near Jinja in November 1987
The Holy Spirit Movement was a millenarian rebellion led by Alice Auma (Lakwena) that blended Christian and Acholi spiritual beliefs and was defeated by Ugandan government forces in 1987.
National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah)Nagaland and Naga areas of Manipur, northeast IndiaIn ceasefire with India since 1997; Framework Agreement signed 2015; settlement unresolved in 2026
The National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) is an armed Naga nationalist movement whose slogan is Nagalim for Christ and which has observed a ceasefire with India since 1997.
Lebanese Phalange (Kataeb) militiaLebanon (civil war, 1975 to 1990)Defunct as a militia; the Kataeb continues as a political party
The Phalange was a Maronite Christian political militia in Lebanon's civil war whose fighters carried out the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, according to Israel's Kahan Commission.
Statuses come from United Nations monitoring reports, the Global Terrorism Index, the U.S. State Department’s terrorist list, and court and news records, current to late 2026.42443 Fast-moving conflicts can change quickly.
Religion Is Rarely the Whole Story
Many of these conflicts are also about land, ethnicity, and abusive governments. In sub-Saharan Africa, 71 percent of recruits to extremist groups said abuse by state security forces was what pushed them to join.4 Several Christian-identified groups mixed Christian language with ethnic causes or local spiritual movements, and church leaders rejected them. Central African Republic’s Catholic cardinal said plainly that not all anti-balaka fighters are Christians.44
In the United States, the 2021 federal intelligence assessment named racially motivated extremists and militia extremists as the most lethal domestic threats. Those are not religious categories, though some, such as Christian Identity adherents, use Christian language.45
Muslim Scholars Have Answered Them
The Amman Message (2004 and 2005): endorsed by more than 500 scholars; it forbids declaring other Muslims apostates, the move jihadists use to justify killing them.17
Open Letter to al-Baghdadi (2014): 126 scholars refuted the Islamic State point by point on Islamic legal grounds, condemning its killing of journalists and aid workers and its persecution of Christians and Yazidis.46
Bareilly fatwa (2015): about 70,000 Indian clerics declared the Islamic State, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda “not Islamic organizations.”47
Marrakesh Declaration (2016): about 250 Muslim leaders affirmed full citizenship and protection for religious minorities in Muslim-majority countries.48
History
Where the “Sharia Is Coming” Claim Came From
The modern version of the claim took shape between 2006 and 2011, built by a small network of activists, a think tank, and the foundations that funded them. From there it moved into state legislatures, presidential campaigns, and Congress.649
1991 to 2008A Memo Nobody Adopted
In 2004 the FBI seized a 1991 memo, written by a man named Mohamed Akram, that described a “civilization-jihadist process” in North America. Prosecutors entered it as evidence in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a charity convicted in 2008 of funding Hamas abroad.50 No court finding, government report, or independent study located for this guide shows that any organization adopted the memo or acted on it, yet it remains the source of the phrase “civilization jihad.” Prosecutors also named CAIR and two other Muslim groups as unindicted co-conspirators. The judge found “ample evidence” tying them to the foundation but called the public listing an “official public smear,” and none was ever charged.51
2006 to 2009A Lawyer and a Model Bill
Brooklyn attorney David Yerushalmi founded the Society of Americans for National Existence in 2006 and proposed making the observance of Islamic law a felony punishable by 20 years in prison. In 2009 he drafted “American Laws for American Courts,” a model bill that never names Sharia. He told The New York Times its purpose was “heuristic”: to get people asking what Sharia is.6
2010The Think Tank Report
Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy published Shariah: The Threat to America, with Yerushalmi and retired Lt. Gen. William Boykin among its authors. It argued that Sharia is a totalitarian political system and that mainstream American Muslim organizations are fronts.652
2010The “Ground Zero Mosque”
Bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer led the campaign against Park51, a planned Islamic community center two blocks from the World Trade Center site.53
2010 to 2013Oklahoma Votes, Then Loses in Court
Seventy percent of Oklahoma voters approved a constitutional amendment telling courts not to consider “Sharia Law.” ACT for America spent $60,000 promoting it, including 600,000 robocalls.67 In court, state officials admitted they “did not know of even a single instance” of an Oklahoma court applying Sharia. A federal appeals court called the harm “speculative at best,” and the amendment was permanently blocked in 2013.7
2011The Money and the Megaphone
The Center for American Progress traced $42.6 million from seven foundations, from 2001 to 2009, to the groups and writers driving the claim.49 Sociologist Christopher Bail tracked more than 50,000 news stories and found that fringe anti-Muslim groups dominated coverage with displays of fear and anger, while mainstream Muslim groups’ condemnations of terrorism were largely ignored.54 That year, Rep. Peter King opened a series of House hearings on radicalization focused only on American Muslims.55
2010 to 2018The Bills
Legislators introduced 223 anti-Sharia or “foreign law” bills in 43 legislatures, and 20 became law in 13 states.56 From 2010 to 2016, 140 of 194 bills copied the model bill’s language, and about 97 percent of their sponsors were Republicans.57
2015 to 2017From the Fringe to the Podium
In December 2015, candidate Donald Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” citing a Center for Security Policy poll.58 That poll was an opt-in online survey of 600 Muslims, which cannot be treated as representative, and its most common description of Sharia was a guide to personal religious practice.59 In 2017 an executive order suspended entry from seven Muslim-majority countries,60 and ACT for America held “March Against Sharia” rallies in more than 20 cities.61
2025Texas Targets a Neighborhood
Plans for EPIC City, a Muslim-centered housing development near Dallas, set off state and federal investigations. The Justice Department closed its civil rights probe in June 2025 with no findings of wrongdoing.62 Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law his office described as banning “Sharia compounds,” though the law never mentions Islam or Sharia.6364 In November he declared CAIR, the country’s largest Muslim civil rights group, and the Muslim Brotherhood “foreign terrorist” organizations under state law. Neither was on the federal terrorist list at the time, and CAIR sued.6566
2025 to 2026Congress Picks It Up
After Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s mayoral primary in June 2025, members of Congress called him “little Muhammad” and posted 9/11 imagery.67 In December 2025, Reps. Keith Self and Chip Roy launched the Sharia Free America Caucus, which reported 68 members by June 2026.6869 Bills it backs would bar courts from enforcing rulings based on Sharia and bar entry to immigrants “who adhere to Sharia law.”7071 The House Judiciary Committee held two “Sharia-Free America” hearings in 2026, and Robert Spencer, from the 2010 Park51 campaign, testified at the first.7273 In January 2026 the State Department designated the Muslim Brotherhood’s branches in Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan as terrorist organizations; those designations concern groups abroad, not U.S. law.74
2026Ballots, Caucuses, and Posts
Nearly 95 percent of Texas Republican primary voters backed a nonbinding question on whether “Texas should prohibit Sharia Law,” and a Republican strategist told CNN the issue is “solid gold” in primaries.75 Texas lawmakers announced a “Sharia Free Texas” caucus whose stated focus includes reinforcing “Biblical foundations.”76 Florida banned its courts from applying foreign or religious law that violates constitutional rights.77 In March, Sen. Tommy Tuberville posted a photo of the September 11 attacks beside a photo of Mayor Mamdani hosting a Ramadan dinner, captioned “The enemy is inside the gates.”78
Evidence
Is Sharia a Real Threat in the United States?
Test the claim the way a court would. Ask for the numbers, the law, and the cases.
The Numbers
About 5.5 million Muslims live in the United States,11 roughly 1.6 percent of the population, or about 1 in 60 Americans (our calculation from Pew’s estimate). In Texas, where the fight is loudest, Muslims are about 2 percent of residents.75
The Constitution
The First Amendment bars government from establishing a religion. Article VI makes the Constitution “the supreme Law of the Land” and bans religious tests for office.79 Changing any of that takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress, or a convention called by 34 state legislatures, and then ratification by 38 states.80 The Constitution does not stop ordinary laws shaped by religious belief, which is how the Ten Commandments classroom laws described below were passed.
The Courts
Asked in court for a single example, Oklahoma had none.7 A 2013 legal review found that supporters of these bans had not cited a single case of a U.S. court relying on Sharia to decide a dispute, and a National Review writer who checked the movement’s own top 20 cases found most had rejected Sharia principles at trial or on appeal.81 When foreign religious law conflicts with American rights, courts already refuse it: Maryland’s highest court rejected a Pakistani divorce that gave the wife no notice or say.82
Religious Arbitration
Jewish, Christian, and Muslim arbitration panels all work under the same Federal Arbitration Act. Courts enforce an award only if both sides agreed to arbitrate, the process was fair, and the result does not violate U.S. law or public policy. The most common religious arbitration forum in the country is the Jewish Beth Din.8183
What American Muslims Say
In Pew’s 2017 survey, 76 percent of U.S. Muslims said targeting civilians is never justified, compared with 59 percent of the general public; 65 percent saw no conflict between Islam and democracy; and 92 percent said they are proud to be American.84
In a 2019 poll, 33 percent of U.S. Muslims said their religion should be a source, but not the only source, of American law. So did 54 percent of white evangelicals.85
The Real Risks, Stated Plainly
Jihadist attackers have killed 121 people in the United States since September 11, 2001, and far-right attackers have killed 137.41 Both are real threats; neither is a plan to replace the legal system. Some foreign Sharia-court judgments, such as custody orders, raise genuine conflict-of-law questions, which courts already handle with existing rules.86 Meanwhile, the FBI counted 205 anti-Islamic hate crime incidents in 2025,11 and CAIR received 8,683 civil rights complaints that year, its highest count on record.87
Who Is Pushing the Claim, and Is It Christian Extremism?
The record points to a political messaging campaign, not a security finding. The model bill’s author called its purpose “heuristic,”6 and a Republican strategist called the issue “solid gold” in primaries.75 Whether it is Christian extremism is a fair question, and the evidence cuts both ways.
documented overlap
Where It Runs Through the Christian Right
Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a co-author of the 2010 report, gave talks at evangelical churches in uniform describing the fight against Islamic extremists in religious terms, and later became executive vice president of the Family Research Council.8889
The New York Times reported that the model bill was promoted through Tea Party and Christian groups.6
ACT for America’s founder, Brigitte Gabriel, spoke at the Christians United for Israel conference.90
Franklin Graham, one of the country’s best-known evangelists, called for banning Sharia in the United States in 2015.91
The 2026 “Sharia Free Texas” caucus describes its focus as reinforcing “Biblical foundations.”76
In 2011, 46 percent of white evangelical Protestants agreed that American Muslims want to establish Sharia as the law of the land, compared with 30 percent of all Americans.92 Research links Christian nationalist beliefs to negative views of Muslims.93
documented limits
Where It Does Not
The movement’s legal architect, David Yerushalmi, is a Hasidic Jew, according to The New York Times.6
Its central organizations present themselves as national security groups, not religious ones, and its main funders were conservative and pro-Israel family foundations, not churches.49
Catholic bishops opposed the model legislation.6 The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty testified as a minority witness at the second “Sharia-Free America” hearing in 2026.73
Some of the strongest rebuttals came from conservatives, including the National Review analysis of the movement’s court cases and libertarian law professor Ilya Somin’s 2026 testimony.8186
The fairest answer: the anti-Sharia movement overlaps with, and spreads through, Christian right and Christian nationalist networks, and it finds its most receptive audience among white evangelical Protestants. The record does not show that those networks created it or run it. It is propaganda in the plain sense of the word: a claim promoted for political effect without the evidence to support it.
The Religious Law That Is Actually Advancing
0U.S. laws that impose Sharia on anyone.
20+State laws against Sharia or “foreign law,” in 13 states by 2018, plus Florida in 2026.5677
3States that now require the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.8910
32%Of Americans are Christian nationalism adherents or sympathizers, including 56 percent of Republicans.94
Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas have all passed laws requiring the Ten Commandments in classrooms. In April 2026 the full Fifth Circuit upheld the Texas law by a 9 to 8 vote, and a petition to the Supreme Court is pending. Louisiana’s posters went up after the same court lifted an injunction on procedural grounds, and Arkansas’s law is blocked in six districts while the state appeals.9810 One of the five statements PRRI uses to measure Christian nationalism is “U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.”94
The Answer
There Is No Credible Evidence of a Plan to Impose Sharia on the United States.
Anti-Muslim generalizations are not justified by the conduct of Islamist governments or extremist movements. At the same time, religiously coercive laws exist in many countries, and their harm to women, minorities, and dissenters should not be minimized.
In the United States, constitutional safeguards and the small Muslim share of the population make replacing the constitutional system with Sharia extraordinarily unlikely. Anyone who claims an organized effort to do so owes the public specific, verifiable evidence, not speculation about an entire religious community.
Three Questions to Ask When You Hear It
Which law?
Ask for the bill or statute that imposes Sharia. In the United States there is none.
Which case?
Ask for the court and the case name. When Oklahoma was asked in federal court, its officials could not name one.7
Who benefits?
Ask who is spreading the claim, who funds them, and what they want you to do next: vote, donate, or fear your neighbors.
Notes
Sources
Numbered in the order they first appear. Where a source is an advocacy organization, its description says so.
Andrea Elliott, "The Man Behind the Anti-Shariah Movement," The New York Times, July 31, 2011 (as republished by NBC News). https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna43960460
CIA World Factbook, final edition (Religions field), for 12 microstates and Greenland not covered by Pew; via the factbook.json archive after the Factbook was discontinued. https://github.com/factbook/factbook.json
Article on the objectives of Islamic law (maqasid al-shari'ah), American Journal of Islam and Society; see also Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Maqasid al-Shari'ah Made Simple (IIIT, 2008). https://ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/233
The Jerusalem Post, September 5, 2023, reporting the Sharia Courts Administration's annual report (nine regional courts and a Sharia Court of Appeals). https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-757589
Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (New York: Knopf, 1930), in the U.S. public domain since 2026; 1930 text transcribed on Wikisource. Verse references can be compared across translations at quran.com. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_the_Glorious_Koran_(1930)
M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an: A New Translation (Oxford World's Classics, 2004), note to 9:5; and Asma Afsaruddin, Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2013).
Wajahat Ali and others, "Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America," Center for American Progress (a progressive think tank), August 26, 2011. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/fear-inc/
Christopher Bail, "The Fringe Effect," American Sociological Review (2012), summarized by Science Daily; expanded in Terrified: How Anti-Muslim Fringe Organizations Became Mainstream (Princeton University Press, 2014). https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121129093004.htm
"Donald J. Trump Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration," December 7, 2015, The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/314221
Faiza Patel, Matthew Duss and Amos Toh, "Foreign Law Bans: Legal Uncertainties and Practical Problems," Brennan Center for Justice and Center for American Progress, May 2013 (quoting a National Review review of the Center for Security Policy's top 20 cases). https://www.brennancenter.org/media/229/download
Associated Press, report on the Pentagon inspector general's findings about Lt. Gen. William Boykin's church speeches, August 19, 2004, via NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna5761814