“Sharia-Free America: Why Political Islam & Sharia Law Are Incompatible with the U.S. Constitution”
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House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution and Limited Government U.S. House of Representatives
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 1
We must take a sobering look at our immigration policy to ensure we do not admit those who refuse to assimilate and try to establish their own legal code in contravention of our laws. All this is particularly true when one looks at Muslims in the United States' view of Sharia and in what capacity it should exist in our country. To give a nationwide perspective, a September 2024 survey discovered the following about United States Muslims. 50% favored Sharia blasphemy law, making it illegal to show a picture or a cartoon of Muhammad. 46% were in favor of forming a Muslim political party.
39% supported the broad application of Sharia in the United States. 33% wanted Islam declared as our national religion. A previous Pew study found 19% of American Muslims believed suicide bombing on behalf of Islam should be justified. These results should be troubling to every American. Additionally, Islamists and groups who adhere to Sharia have tried to influence the Texas state education system to drill Sharia into young minds.
The Middle East nation, Qatar, has been reported as Hamas' most important financial backer and foreign ally. Qatar has provided 1,800,000,000 to the terrorist group Hamas since 2012. During his first term in the White House, President Trump fired off a series of posts that cast Qatar as facilitating, quote, radical ideology. That same year, former United States officials raised concerns about Qatar's support for terrorism. I don't know instances in which Qatar aggressively goes after the terrorist finance networks of Hamas, Taliban, or Al Qaeda, former defense secretary Robert Gates stated.
Taken together, the US arm of the Doha-based Qatar's state-supported Qatari foundation known as Qatar Foundation International claims its goal is to promote and provide support for certifying, quote, teachers of Arabic in primary and/or secondary K through 12 public state-funded schools. In Texas, QFI has directly funded Arabic language and culture programs in several districts, raising questions about the content and implications of such form-backed curricula in public education. Here are examples. At the Menar Academy, a public charter school in Irving, Texas, QFI-supported activities have included class one materials featuring maps of the Arab world that exclude Israel entirely, replacing it with Palestine. Austin Independent School District received a $100,000 grant from QFI to launch a new Arabic language and culture program, funding teacher salaries and curriculum development and instructional materials similar to what I just described.
In 2015, Houston Independent School District obtained an $85,000 grant to perpetuate those curricula. Texas A and M University has received over $197,000,000 through the Qatar National Research Fund for research contracts. Additional undisclosed funds estimated over $100,000,000 routed through the Texas Engineering Experiment Station. In fact, it was just last year that A and M shuttered its Qatar campus, which is being funded by the Qatar Foundation after it faced significant concerns over foreign influence, national security risks, and geopolitical ties. This subversion should shock every American's conscience.
To better illustrate how pervasive this movement of radical Islam in Sharia is in Texas, according to data compiled by the Middle East Forum, of the 8,000-plus Islamic nonprofit organizations in the United States, almost 650 or 10% are based in Texas. One of the major Islamic networks that operate in Texas is the Cubits, which is tied to various Muslim Brotherhood branches in Hamas. How about the council on American Islamic relations' influence in Texas? An Islamist organization that actively associates with other Islamists and Sharia-supporting groups like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Three months ago, Governor Abbott designated CARE as a foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organization, and for good reason.
CARE is enlisted as an undoubted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation case, the largest terror financing prosecution in the United States history, a case centered in Richardson, Texas. Additionally, Nabil Sadun, a former Dallas resident and CARE board member, was deported to Jordan in 2010 and denied reentry after the US government alleged he had lied on naturalization documents when he denied membership with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. These examples underscore CARE's network of spreading Sharia across Texas and the rest of the country. I'll end with one more example in Texas. In September, video footage shows an imam in Houston going to convenience stores in Houston, threatening to occupy if the presumed Muslim store owners did not stop selling haram products, alcohol, pork, lottery tickets, and other prohibited items under Sharia.
While some may attribute this as a nonissue or benign, Canadian and my colleagues point to individuals of other faiths whose tenets demand this type of force, not opinion, but force of subservience to it. The overtaking by Sharia is not limited to Texas. It's the entire West. Islamic cleric from New Jersey said of Muslims overtaking the electoral system, mayor, school boards, and local communities, quote, "Where is Mecca now?" It's coming.
Change is coming to America. And what is Allah saying? You are the best of nations. You're better than everybody else. Let's work toward that.
Let's work toward a Muslim mayor. This should be a stark warning to all Americans in all 50 states. If Texas falls, so does the nation. These efforts to undermine the constitution and demonstrate political Islam have only been worsened by an unchecked immigration system that admitted Sharia adherence into our borders. Europe gives us a clear example of what will happen if we don't close the door on Sharia now.
In England and Wales, more than 85 Sharia courts operate as a parallel Islamic government, depriving women of the rights they are entitled to under British law. This year, The United Arab Emirates announced that it will end all support for Emirati students studying in The UK because of fears that students will be exposed to and join the Muslim Brotherhood, which The UAE has declared a terrorist organization, but The UK has not. As recent as last March, supporters of Sharia and other Islamists have signaled their desire to advance Jihad to other nations. The Qatar-based International Union of Muslim Scholars, a global network of Muslim scholars, called for, quote, armed Jihad against our friend and ally Israel. You might think the Sharia crisis is only in foreign countries or has not yet arrived in the United States, but it is here.
Now is the time to protect every American's right to freely practice their own faith and defend the supremacy of our shared political system. Now is the time to take decisive action, as our founders did when confronted with the same issues today. Our nation is founded on these ideas. Sharia law shares none of these principles. By its Arabic definition, it is a law, one pushed in our country for too long.
It has no place in American government, not now or ever. With that, I will now recognize the ranking member, Miss Scanlon, for her opening statement.
Speaker 2
Thank you, Chairman Roy, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today. When the chair began his remarks, I had a concern about forces trying to undermine our constitution, I thought we might have some unintended agreement, but, unfortunately, I don't think that's the case. I can't think of anything more un-American than for members of Congress to be stoking fear and suspicion against fellow Americans or anyone else on the explicit basis of their religious beliefs. No matter what historic, hysterical rhetoric we hear from our republican colleagues, our constitution is clear. In this country, people have the right to hold and express whatever religious beliefs they choose, or none at all.
You don't have to agree with those beliefs, but no one can use the power of the government to punish or discriminate against those who do. There's nothing foreign or suspicious about that. In fact, there's nothing more American. Whether our colleagues actually believe the histrionic and unsupported statements they've made about Muslims and Sharia law, I'm not sure. But it does appear that today's hearing is the most recent expression of a cynical political ploy driven by the Texas Republican primary where early voting starts in a week, and federal, state, and local candidates are trying to outdo one another with anti Sharia, anti Muslim sentiment in order to score political points.
In the words of one Texas Republican political strategist, the Muslim community is the boogeyman for this cycle. It seems the pretext for all this bluster is a proposed real estate development in the Dallas suburbs led by the area's growing Muslim population, but there's no evidence it has anything to do with imposing Sharia law on nonbelievers in Islam. And there's no evidence it's a Sharia compound, as Texas Republicans have alleged. The Trump Justice Department itself closed an investigation into the development, finding no basis for any violation of fair housing laws. As with so many things Republicans bring to this committee, there's just no there.
But their view seems to be as long as they can scapegoat someone or something for political gain, who cares? Right? And it's entirely clear they don't care at all whether fellow Americans or others end up as collateral damage to the anti-Muslim hatred and fear that's being stoked. In addition, this hearing appears designed to support unconstitutional legislation. Last October, chairman Roy introduced H.R. 5722, a bill that requires the government to, among other things, deny any immigration benefit, visa, immigration relief, or admission to the United States to any foreign national who adheres to Sharia law.
It similarly directs the government to remove any foreign national already here if the government determines that the person is an adherent of Sharia law. This kind of government discrimination based purely on a person's religious beliefs, not actions, is a blatant violation of the First Amendment's free exercise and free speech guarantees. And to the extent that this bill implicitly favors Christianity or another faith over Islam by singling out Islam for government disfavor, it could violate both the spirit and the letter of the establishment clause. By banning an adherent of Sharia law from the country, the bill essentially targets any observant Muslim for government discrimination. Sharia is concerned with guiding individual personal religious observance, not shaping national law.
Just as other belief systems guide the adherence of those faiths, Sharia guides Muslims in how to pray, dress, eat, or fast, and includes rules about marriage, divorce, and the raising of children. So to say that an adherent of Sharia law should be excluded or removed from the country is to say that all Muslims should be excluded or removed from the country because of their religious beliefs and observances. It goes against everything that America stands for, and we need look no further for confirmation of that than one of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson. In his autobiography, Jefferson wrote about what he considered one of his proudest achievements, the drafting of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom of 1786, a precursor to our First Amendment. He affirmed that religious freedom was meant to encompass within the mantle of its protection people of every denomination.
In addition to expressing the fundamentally American belief in the right to freely practice one's religion and to prevent the government from favoring one religion over another, Jefferson's writings specifically reference, among other faiths, believers in Islam, illustrating that from our republic's earliest days, Muslims were intended to be included within the fabric of American life. The kind of demagoguery that this hearing represents is unbecoming of this subcommittee as one that is dedicated to the Constitution and unbecoming of members of Congress. Our attention should be focused on the Trump administration's repeated attacks on our constitutional order and on Americans' rights, including the rights to free speech, a free press, to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances. We shouldn't be furthering ugly Islamophobia and justifying a blatantly unconstitutional bill. It's shameful, and it's un-American.
I yield back.
Speaker 1
I will now recognize the ranking member, Mr. Raskin, for his opening statement.
Speaker 3
Kindly, mister chairman, and thanks to the witnesses for joining us today. We live in a country so great that we don't need the anti-Sharia and anti-Muslim legislation our friends are proposing today because our constitution already forbids theocratic imposition and establishment of any kind at all, whether it's Christian white nationalism expressed in compulsory 10 Commandments displays, an orthodox Jewish set-aside school district in New York, or any effort to replace secular public law with a religious sectarian code, whether that's Sharia law, the Analects of Confucius, the Torah, or anything else. So this completely unnecessary hearing, another distraction from the administration's cover-up of the Epstein files and the continuing brutal violation of people's constitutional rights in Minneapolis, is a wonderful opportunity to remind ourselves why our constitution has three essential religion clauses, and why they do all of the work that people are talking about, doing today. The establishment clause, the free exercise clause, and the clause guaranteeing no religious tests for public office. And if you take time to study them, they will dispel all the anxieties stirred up by legislation and agitation like this.
Anything legitimate that our colleagues wanna say about preventing the imposition of sharia law in America is already accomplished by the establishment clause. So everybody can rest easy with Thomas Jefferson's wall of separation between church and state that he identified in his famous letter to the Danbury Baptists. Let's say someone proposes that all public schools and government offices should post the core principles of Sharia law, which I don't know exactly what they are. And I looked online, and there were four or five different versions. But let's take one which said protecting religion, life, family, intellect, property, and wealth.
Another one said protecting honesty, trustworthiness, mercy, humility, moderation, and honoring promises. But whatever it is, if somebody said if we wanna put Muslim Sharia law up in all the schools and all the government buildings, we would know very quickly how to deal with that because we're not writing on a blank slate. In fact, we're in something of a furor over the laws compelling the posting of the 10 commandments right now that were recently passed in Louisiana and Texas, but the Supreme Court already struck down such 10 commandment laws in 1980, more than 45 years ago, in a case called Stone versus Graham as a plain violation of the establishment clause, which forbids governmental endorsement of any religious text or any religious doctrine. We don't even have one agreed-upon version of the 10 commandments. There's a Catholic version.
There's a Lutheran version. There's an Episcopalian version. Many others you can find online. Which one would the government even endorse? Well, we've got members of this body who vehemently denounce Sharia law, but also agree with Louisiana and Texas that we should be posting the 10 commandments of some particular secretary and variety up in the schools.
When this came up last Congress, there were members of the oversight committee who said we should not only be putting the 10 commandments up in public schools, but in Congress and all public buildings. I told them the 10 commandments have been doing fine for millennia without an endorsement by the Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives. One guy told me, well, you know, the 10 commandments are the basis for the Bill of Rights. I was kinda confused because, you know, there are 10 in each one, but I said, let's test the proposition. The first commandment says, thou shalt have no other god before me.
The first amendment says congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. So I don't think the first amendment dictates, the first amendment. They wanted to go to the floor and have an up or down vote on the 10 Commandments. I said if we're gonna vote on the 10 commandments in 2025, we should vote on each commandment separately. And you shouldn't be allowed to vote on any commandment you have ever violated.
That would make more sense. In any event, this is res judicata. It's a closed case. You can't, the government cannot endorse Muslim law, Jewish law, Christian law, Methodist law, Baptist law, none of it. So we don't need a special anti-Sharia law or a special anti-Sharia caucus.
The First Amendment already takes care of it. Well, anything illegitimate or discriminatory that our colleagues would wanna selectively impose on Muslims is, conversely, a violation of the free exercise clause and also forbidden by the constitutions. Muslims are afraid that congress might actually impose one of these anti-Sharia bills, and, of course, they're just introduced for political purposes. I don't think they have any delusions that they're gonna pass congress. But if you were afraid of that, all you would have to do is read the case law to understand why that can't be done.
Check out, for example, a case with the wonderful name Church of Lukumi Babalu Eye versus City of Hialeah in 1992, where the city of Hialeah in Florida selectively banned animal rituals and sacrifice by people practicing the Santeria religion. And the Supreme Court assuredly said, look, if you wanna have general laws that apply to every religion and to every citizen that ban certain kinds of animal slaughter as cruel or unusual or particularly harmful, then you can do it. But you can't pass a law that targets a specific religion. Justice Kennedy called it religious gerrymandering. So I don't know, mister chairman, about the East Plano Islamic center, which sounds like a compound with a mosque and some residential and some restaurants and so on.
And, of course, those kinds of religious compounds exist all across America, whether we're talking about the Amish, the Mennonites, Catholics, Jews, you name it. Lots of those exist. But, they do violate a separate principle if the government actually gives them clothes with secular power. So I would agree with you if they're giving them the power to set up their own police force, their own school system, that would violate the Supreme Court's decision in a case called Kieris Joel, Village School District versus Coomed. That was 1994, where New York created a separate public school district for members of the Satmar Hasidic Jewish religion in Upstate New York.
And the Supreme Court said no. You can't endow a religious group with secular power. So if that's going on there, then I'm with you. But if it's not going on, then it's just a compound. And if they own the property, it's private property, and they bought it.
Why would we want to mess around with that? That sounds like you're just vilifying and demonizing people because you don't like their religion, and I know you wouldn't do that. And let me just say finally, to uniquely blockade members of a particular religion, here, Islam, from participating in government or politics, the kind of thing you do hear from people calling for Ilhan Omar to be expelled from Congress or deported from the country. That plainly violates article six, clause three of the Constitution, which says no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. So let's repose some of our faith and trust in the founders of the constitution.
The establishment clause, the free exercise clause, the ban on religious tests for public office, they've been working pretty well for America. I think they take care of every single thing that anybody's talking about in this hearing. And I do think we'd be much better off getting back to the work of the country right now, trying to deal with the runaway problem of inflation or to deal with the problem of the continuing administration cover-up of the Epstein files. Any of those, I think, would be a little more valuable. Although I've gotta say, as a washed-up professor of constitutional law, I do welcome the opportunity to remind people about the First Amendment.
I yield back to you, Chairman Roy.
Speaker 1
I thank the ranking member for his opening statement. And without objection, all other opening statements will be included in the record, and we will now introduce today's witnesses. First, Mister Steven Galle. Mister Galle is the chairman of the Pelican Institute for Public Policy, a nonprofit organization that works to reduce barriers to opportunity in Louisiana. He's also a partner at the law firm of Bivalaqua, Galley, and Ellis in New Orleans.
Mr. Robert Spencer. Mister Spencer is a Shulman fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a nonprofit organization that advocates for free societies. He's authored 32 books on Islam and jihadism. Miss Christa Child. Miss Child is the Texas director of the Rare Foundation, a grassroots organization that advocates for American values.
She has volunteered for decades for causes that serve vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls. Finally, professor Ilya Somen. Professor Somen is a professor of law at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. His research focuses on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration. We thank our witnesses for appearing today, and we'll begin by swearing you in.
Would you please rise and raise your right hand? Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief? So help you God. Let the record reflect that the witnesses have answered in the affirmative. Thank you, and you please, may be seated.
Please know that your written testimony will be entered into the record in its entirety. Accordingly, we ask that you summarize your testimony in five minutes. I'll also remind each of you to turn the microphone on in front of you, so that everybody can hear, and it'll be inserted in the record. Mister Galley, you may begin with your five minutes. Is the microphone on?
Now it's on. Okay.
Speaker 4
Thank you, chairman Roy, ranking member Scanlon, and member of the subcommittee for inviting me here today to discuss the phenomena of alternative Sharia law-based institutions, why the enforcement by American courts of decrees issued by such institutions would be inconsistent with the fundamental rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution, and potential legal remedies to prevent such violation of fundamental constitutional rights. I'm an attorney practicing in the state of Louisiana for over 32 years. During the last seventeen years, I've had the opportunity, largely on behalf of the Senate for Security Policy, to research and study the interaction of foreign law, including Islamic Sharia, with American law. The interaction of foreign law with American law and American courts arises in four contexts. The enforcement of foreign judgments by American courts via comity, the application of foreign law in American courts through conflicts of law, the enforcement of choice of law clauses and contracts, the enforcement of forum selection clauses and contracts, the enforcement of arbitration clauses and contracts, and the transfer of lawsuits to foreign jurisdictions under the doctrine of forum non conveniens.
In all of these contexts, American courts and even American law enforcement could be called upon to enforce foreign law, even though the enforcement of foreign law would violate fundamental rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution. I've studied the numerous occasions in which foreign discordant law, including Sharia, has been litigated before American courts. Although the vast majority of foreign law applications are routine and do not violate American constitutional norms, over the past half century, the number of cases adjudicating the application of the scored foreign law in American state courts, including through arbitrations, has steadily increased. The most prominent category of foreign law that has been increasingly intruding upon American courts is Islamic Sharia law, a body of law which consistently violates American public policy and fundamental constitutional rights, including the rights to equal protection based on race, religion, and gender, the right of due process, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. Numerous tenets of Sharia show bias against women, the LGBTQ community, non-Muslims, former Muslims, and people designated as blasphemers.
Courts in dozens of Muslim-majority nations and some non-Muslim nations currently apply Sharia. In hundreds of reported cases throughout the United States, litigants have attempted to apply Sharia, often succeeding. Examples include the enforcement of foreign child custody judgments or jurisdiction not based on the best interest of the child, but instead based on gender or religious discrimination. The transfer of cases to foreign countries whose courts discriminate on gender or religion. The enforcement of Islamic marriage contracts, dubbed MARS, as prenuptial agreements.
To lock our other Sharia divorces, and increasingly the creation of arbitration tribunals applying Sharia law within the United States. The law applied by such tribunals discriminates based on gender and religion, and in cases of custody disputes, does not apply the best interest of the child standard. Those arbitration tribunals also lack traditional American legal formalities, lessening due process. Furthermore, legislation of the past half century has suppressed certain American legal protections against the intrusion of the scored-in form foreign law. Public policy exceptions and common law rules have been overwritten by uniform acts adopted by the states, sometimes related to foreign treaties.
Some uniform acts now treat foreign country judgments like sister state judgments, essentially extending the full faith and credit clause of the United States Constitution to foreign nations. Furthermore, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has explicitly held that foreign court orders are not subject to the constraints of American constitutional law. Responding to this encroachment of the discordant foreign law into the United States, multiple efforts have been undertaken, primarily at the state but also the federal level, to address the discordant foreign law. The model statute American laws for Americans' courts pass in some form in 13 states to protect fundamental constitutional rights against the infiltration of foreign law, such as Sharia. Additional state acts and federal acts have also passed, including the Speech Act.
Americans for over 250 years have toiled and suffered, including spilling blood, towards guaranteeing fundamental constitutional rights. No US citizens should be denied the fundamental liberties guaranteed in our constitutional republic. The intrusion of discarding foreign laws, including Sharia, into the American legal system should be resisted. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to answering your questions.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Mr. Gulay, for your testimony. Mister Spencer, remind you to turn your microphone on, and you have 5 minutes.
Speaker 5
Thank you. The US constitution and Sharia are incompatible, and the conflict between the two legal systems will grow as Sharia adherence increases in number in the West. This fact has been obscured by misinformation about what Sharia actually is. When the city of Keller, Texas scrapped an anti-Sharia resolution in January 2026, the Hamas-linked Council on American Islamic Relations, CAIR, stated that like canon law for Catholics and halacha for Orthodox Jews, it refers to the rules that Muslims follow, including praying five times a day, fasting in Ramadan, giving in charity, and following the laws of the land in which they live. If that were really all the Sharia was about, no reasonable person would have any problem with it. Care doesn't mention, however, that Sharia is inherently political, supremacist, expansionist, and violent.
Far from being the islamophobic conspiracy theories of Keres imagining, these are facts that Muslim authorities on Sharia openly attest. Reliance of the traveler, Umdah Asalik, is a classic manual of Islamic sacred law that is Sharia. In 1990, doctor Taha Jabir Al Awani, president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, as well as president of the Fikh Council of North America, said that this Sharia manual was useful as a textbook for teaching Islamic jurisprudence. The most prestigious institution of Islamic learning in the world, Al Azhar in Cairo, stated in 1991 that the same manual of Sharia conforms to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community. We read in this same guide to Sharia that jihad means war against non-Muslims and that it is a communal obligation upon the Muslim community.
The object of this war is to establish the hegemony of Sharia over the conquered land. For non-Muslims, this means an institutionalized, highly codified second-class status that denies them basic rights. Non-Muslims living under Sharia must pay the non-Muslim poll tax, jizya, that is specified in the Quran verse nine twenty-nine. This religion-based tax is designed to indicate, as the renowned Islamic scholar Ibn Qathir explained, that the non-Muslims who are paying it are disgraced, humiliated, and belittled. The non-Muslims in this state of disgrace and humiliation are not allowed to build new houses of worship or repair old ones, so their communities are in a perpetual state of decline.
They are forbidden to make any public display of their religion. They're relegated to the most menial jobs in society, for they are forbidden to hold authority over Muslims. If they say anything critical about Islam, Mohammed, or the Quran, they're liable to be put to death. From all this, it is clear that Sharia is not simply a Muslim personal religious law. On the contrary, Sharia-based legal and civic institutions are contrary to America's founding principles and violate federal law and the Constitution in numerous particulars.
The death penalty for mentioning what reliance of the traveler terms is something impermissible about Allah, the prophet, or Islam, that is blasphemy, is directly at variance with the First Amendment's freedom of speech protections. The Islamic imperative to establish the hegemony of Sharia as the law of the land, as in today, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, is obviously at variance with the First Amendment principle of non establishment of a religion. Even in its personal aspect, Sharia does contradict US law. The Quran states that a man should beat a woman from whom he fears disobedience. That's chapter 4 verse 34.
Domestic violence is a crime in US law, but it is not a crime under Sharia. And we have the example of what happened in Britain. Britain began establishing Sharia courts several years ago, with the understanding that cases that came under the purview of British criminal law would be referred to the British criminal courts. Instead, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal on its website urged the Crown Prosecution Service to reconsider bringing criminal charges against Muslim men who'd been accused of domestic violence. And as this is in the Quran, the same thing would happen here.
Sharia is considered divine law. Those Muslims who adhere to it always consider that it takes precedence over the laws of the land. Moreover, emigration to a new land to bring Sharia to it is also an Islamic imperative. The Quran in chapter four verse 100 promises a reward from Allah to those who emigrate for the sake of Allah, which means for the purpose of bringing Sharia to a non-Muslim land. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Mr. Spencer. Appreciate your testimony. Miss Schilde, again, remind you to turn your microphone on, you have 5 minutes.
Speaker 6
Thank you, Mister Chairman, distinguished members of Congress. I'm Christa Shield, the Texas state director for Rare Foundation USA. I stand before you from deep love for America, our Constitution, and the religious liberties it guarantees every citizen. As a Christian who cherishes this nation, I fiercely defend its founding principles of freedom, equality, and self-governance. On 09/11/2001, as an American Airlines flight attendant, I watched the second plane slam into the tower.
My heart sank. The world changed in that moment. Freedom itself was under siege. After nine eleven, we believe the war was far away. Our brave military went overseas to fight.
We thought we were safe, but we were tragically wrong. A planned invasion took root, concealed and deliberate. Foreign and Islamic terrorist networks quietly infiltrated every layer of Texas life while we looked away. I travel across Texas, listening to communities. Residents tell me their neighborhoods are becoming unrecognizable.
Streets once familiar now echo with foreign calls to prayer that drown out the church bells. Sons who fought these very forces abroad returned to find their hometown starting to resemble the Middle East that they risked their lives to defend against. Texas is ground zero for the Islamic conquest of America. We are deep into a 1400 year Islamic immigration conquest pattern, a patient, relentless strategy of settlement, infiltration, and eventual dominance. The Muslim Brotherhood's 1991 explanatory memorandum entered in federal court calls it a, quote, civilization jihadist process to destroy the West from within.
That plan has been capturing Texas for over 35 years. We now have over 330 mosques. CARE calls them, quote, our infrastructure. Erdogan calls them, quote, "our barracks." At least 650 Islamic nonprofits channeling influence.
Dozens of Islamic scholars and banks promoting sharia-compliant finance. More than 4,000,000,000 in taxpayer funds routed to Islamic entities since 2017. Our own money fueling our demise. Islamic leaders telling us they want to implement Sharia. They glorified chopping off hands, killing homosexuals.
Aggressive conversion campaigns, including terror-tied groups, enter public schools without parental consent. To distribute Korans, Sharia pamphlets, and hijabs to students, The East Plano Islamic Center epic rebranded, quote, The Meadows, an enclave led by Imam Yasser Khadi who calls Jews and Christians, quote, the most evil of all evils, and demands Islamic theocracy over democracy. These are emerging no-go zones, active Sharia courts. In the last legislative session, two Pakistani-born representatives introduced over 20 bills advancing Sharia, mandating halal in Texas schools, Muslim heritage month, quote, Islamophobia, censorship laws to silence critics. We already see Sharia enforcement in Texas, patrols pressuring Houston Muslim businesses to conform, imams berating Muslims for speaking to Christians, and families imposing deadly punishments on those who refuse to submit.
My own family was connected to two young Texas girls who chose to date non-Muslims. They were murdered by their own father for not conforming to Islam. That pain drives me every day. These examples are not isolated. This is not assimilation.
It is strategic infiltration and conquest. It is patient, multigenerational, and often funded by taxpayers. If we do not act, Sharia will dominate. We're here today to bring you legislative evidence, and have submitted that to prove to you that wherever Islam grows, freedom dies. We must choose freedom under the Constitution or submission to Islam.
Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Miss Shield. And I will now recognize Professor Suman. Again, remind me to turn your microphone on. You have five minutes.
Speaker 7
I thank the subcommittee for the opportunity to address these important issues. George Washington wrote that America was founded in part to create an asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions. Thomas Jefferson, among others, made clear that American religious freedom is supposed to extend to Muslims no less than to Christians, Jews, and others. George Washington and Jefferson, they were right, whereas the proposed preserving a Sharia-free America act is wrong. If enacted and upheld by the courts, it would expel tens of thousands of people from the United States just because of their religion by virtue of making any noncitizen adherent of Sharia law subject to exclusion or deportation.
That violates the First Amendment, and it would do nothing to improve American national security. Indeed, the only real winners would be radicalissimus terrorists who would benefit from this by getting a free propaganda victory. The Constitution in the First Amendment states that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. That clearly protects freedom of religion against discrimination, and it applies to Muslims no less than to any other religious group. And almost all Muslims, to some degree or another, are Sharia law adherents because Sharia law is simply the religious precepts of Islam.
Muslims disagree a lot among themselves about what exactly those precepts mean and how they should be applied. But nonetheless, a law targeting Sharia law adherence targets Muslims in much the same way as a law targeting adherence of Talmudic law would target Jews, or a law targeting adherence of canon law targets Catholics. The Supreme Court has also ruled that the free speech clause protects religious freedom and expression, and this law, if enacted, would violate the free speech clause as well. And it does not matter that this law addresses noncitizen immigrants, because there is no immigration exception to the First Amendment. When it says that Congress shall make no law restricting freedom of speech or the free exercise of religion, that means no law, no exceptions.
It also does not matter that noncitizens don't have a constitutional right to be in the United States. The Supreme Court, including in decisions by conservative justices, has repeatedly made clear that discrimination against religious believers with respect to government benefits that are not constitutional rights still violates the Free Exercise Clause and, also, in some cases, the Free Speech Clause. For example, there's no constitutional right to social security benefits. But if Congress were to pass a law saying only Christians are entitled to such benefits, that would obviously be a violation of the First Amendment. If enacted or wrongly upheld by the courts, this law would set a dangerous precedent, because it could easily be used to target any religious believers, of any kind who run afoul of the views in a majority, including conservative Christians among others.
This law would also cause great harm to innocent people. It would expel hundreds of thousands of people from the United States who have done no wrong and pose no threat. Survey data shows the vast majority of Muslim in the United States do not support terrorism, do not support the creation of some kind of Islamic theocracy or anything of the kind. Indeed, many of the Muslims in the United States are actually immigrants who fled oppression at the hands of radical Islamist regimes like those of Iran and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Many of the latter are actually people who aided US forces in the war on terror.
They do not deserve to be excluded and unsupported. In addition, if this were to pass and again be upheld wrongly, it would actually help radical Islamist terrorists waging war against the United States. When president Trump in his first term enacted his much more limited anti-Muslim travel ban, the Islamic terrorist group ISIS hailed it as, quote, the blessed ban because they knew it would help their terrorist recruitment by feeding their propaganda to the effect that the United States and the West generally are enemies of all Muslims. We should not give a gift to the terrorists, and we should not damage ourselves by expelling hundreds of thousands of people who are productively contributing to our economy and society and have done no wrong other than perhaps have religious beliefs that some people do not like. It is true that some Muslims, like some Christians, Jews, others, may have awful views on various issues, but mass exposure and discrimination is not the answer to any problems that might pose.
We should instead simply enforce the religious freedom provision of our constitution and other relevant laws banning terrorism, violence, or the like. In sum, this was unconstitutional. If enacted, it would cause great harm, and therefore, this subcommittee would do well to reject it out of hand. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Professor Suman. We will now proceed under the five-minute rule with questions. Without objection, Mister Biggs, a member of the Juice Chair Committee, will be permitted to participate in today's hearing for the purpose of questioning the witness if a member yields him time for that purpose. And with that, the chair recognizes the gentleman from Missouri, Mister Onder, for five minutes.
Speaker 8
Thank you, mister chairman. Thank you, mister Onder, for yielding the time. So I'm curious, professor, you're familiar with a case called Reynolds versus United States, 79 case?
Speaker 8
I think you must be because part of your rationale on page six of your statement seems to indeed go right along with the rationale of the original Reynolds case, which was that belief versus practice. Belief okay, practice not necessarily okay. Right? You would agree with that, Ryan? I'm looking at page six, your line that says, many aspects of Shri Lal govern such issues as prayer, fasting, and dietary restrictions apply to religious behaviors.
You would say that stuff's okay, protected even under rentals. Right?
Speaker 8
So you would agree that praying, fasting, dietary restrictions, that's okay under Reynolds. Right?
Speaker 7
So I do not think Reynolds gives a government a general power to ban prayer, fasting, and so on. No.
Speaker 8
That's right. And I agree with that. Right? But in that particular case, the court said polygamy is dame. It is bad.
You cannot practice polygamy anymore. You remember that? I do. Yeah. And so I now wanna go to you, mister Gilet.
Let's just talk about some of the practices that seem to be broad in this, this idea of Sharia. Because Sharia is an expansive term here. So I'm looking and it says here, that where Sharia is and this is on page one of your statement. The enforcement of foreign child custody judgments, that's coming into America, and we're relying on Sharia interpretations from other places. Is that accurate?
Speaker 4
Yes. There have been numerous cases in which child custody judgments from either Islamic countries or even non-Islamic countries that have Sharia courts.
Speaker 8
How does that square with Reynolds, where you have a distinction between religious practices and behavior? And here we have Sharia determining actual child custody issues, totally irrespective of religious practice. How does that square with Reynolds?
Speaker 4
Well, clearly, Reynolds would allow the government to regulate child custody whether or not the child custody rules were favored or disfavored by a religion. However, there is a lack in our law of addressing comedy of foreign judgments, and the constitutionality of the process for which those foreign courts reached their judgments. There's even a Ninth Circuit case, the Nauco case, where the Ninth Circuit explicitly said that you can't do a constitutional analysis on a foreign judgment. So under current law, it appears as though foreign courts can do things that our courts would never imagine doing, would clearly violate constitutional rights, and those judgments are being brought here. The judgments are being on many occasions enforced.
Speaker 8
Yeah. And they're they would be inconsistent with American juror jurisprudence, but somehow we're incorporating some foreign jurisprudence into ours. And so now I'll go to you, Mr. Spencer, for just a sec here. On page two of your statement, you point out that the Quran states a man should beat a woman from whom he fears disobedience. Domestic violence is a behavior as opposed to a belief, but in the sharia system, it seems to be a belief.
Speaker 5
Yeah. It's certainly a belief. You can't have something in the Quran and have Muslims say that they're against it if they are going to be believing, observant Muslims. And the problem becomes when they act upon it in a Sharia context, then you have the precedent of Britain that I was explaining, that instead of referring it to the criminal courts as they had agreed to do, they tried it under Sharia and told the wife to go back and try to please her husband instead of prosecuting the man who was committing the domestic abuse.
Speaker 8
And so Sharia actually became an institution or a third rail that replaced the British judicial system, at least in that particular case.
Speaker 8
And, miss Shields, ultimately, this really is the nub of why we're here today. We see Sharia. We see its expansive nature. Some people want to frame it in a certain way. It's just, you know, it's how we pray.
It's how we call the prayer. It's those types of religious practices, but it actually has massive institutional ramifications. Has it grown in Texas? Did what did this start out with, and how has it been impacted in Texas? And I'm almost out of time.
So, mister chairman, if she can answer that question.
Speaker 6
Yes. Mister chairman, members of Congress, Texas is under assault from Islamic groups and foreign powers. Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia waging a stealth war on our soil, planting flags via mosques, schools, and enclaves. They follow the Muslim Brotherhood's, quote, civilization jihad plan from the 1991 explanatory memorandum, destroy America from within by imposing Sharia and achieving global dominance. This has been built for over 35 years and is now deeply entrenched.
Reversal requires urgent action. Texas is ground zero. Sharia doctrine demands subjugation of non-Muslims.
Speaker 1
Is children gonna wrap your answer? It's run over time, but go ahead and wrap.
Speaker 6
Yes. So as Rare Foundation's USA Texas director, I travel across the state constantly. What I'm hearing from people in their communities who message me all of the time about what's happening in their own backyard is that they are very afraid of the Islamic Sharia expansion they see happening in our state, and what that means because they see it happening in other places in America.
Speaker 1
Thank you, miss Shivell. That I'll now recognize the ranking member, Mister Raskin.
Speaker 3
Mister Roy, thank you very much. And I find something to agree with in what all of the witnesses said. Let me start with Miss Skeild and Mister Spencer. You basically have said that there are fanatics within the Islamic faith who use the religion for their own purposes. And I have no quarrel with you there, except I would extend the point to say that's true of fanatics in every religious tradition, in every religious community.
In fact, any particular crime or violent act that you would attribute to Sharia fanatics could also find taking place in other communities too. Now, Gillet, am I pronouncing your name right?
Speaker 3
Thank you. So you make a very interesting point to me, but I wanna try to break it down if we can. So let me start with this. If there is a couple that are faithful Muslims who say that they are governed by Islamic law, but they get a divorce and it's a custody arrangement, and they go to a regular family court in any state in the country. Do you agree with me that the standard that must be governed by a judge is what's in the best interest of the child?
Even if, say, the husband is saying no, under Sharia law, and I'm making this up because I don't know if it's true, but under Sharia law, if the husband wants custody, he gets custody. That would be not just wrong, but it would be outside of the law for a judge to say, I'm not going to use the law of the state of Colorado, or Tennessee, or Maryland. I'm just going to use Sharia law, because both of you are Muslims.
Speaker 4
Every state in the United States applies the best interest of the child standard to some extent. Every state in the United States applies the law of that state. However, under the laws of arbitration and the laws of comity of foreign judgments, they will sometimes apply.
Speaker 3
So, that's where I'm going now. But I just to be clear, it would be a violation of the law and clearly reversible error if any district court in the land said we're gonna use, orthodox Jewish law or Islamic law or Seventh day Adventist law in order to decide a custody dispute or a marriage dispute. We can only use the secular law, and it is reversible error if it does not. Now you raise a really interesting point, though, which is what happens if there is a society which actually has a theocracy? Like Saudi Arabia, for example, which I believe uses Islamic law and Sharia law.
Okay. So let's say, there, the husband, again, hypothetically, because I don't know the theological particulars. But let's say the husband gets custody because he wants custody. Then they come over to America, and the wife argues I should have custody under the best-interest of the child standard. Are you saying that under the comity of laws or respect for foreign judgments, that an American court is bound to accept the judgment that took place in another society?
Speaker 4
I'm not saying that. The Maryland courts have said that in the case of Hussein versus Malik, and it has happened in other instances. The problem, congressman, is that although the law of the states is clear, the uniform child custody jurisdiction enforcement act has overruled traditional concepts of comedy, and it does not have a high threshold for enforcing those foreign judgments.
Speaker 3
Okay. So let me just stop you there because I'm limited in time, but I think you've raised an interesting point. I don't think it's addressed at all by the good chairman's legislation. I don't think there's any legislation that deals with your point. That's something I'm open to, because I like American law.
I don't think anybody here should be subject to laws of authoritarian theocratic societies like Saudi Arabia. So, Professor Soman, to you, what about the chairman's legislation? Have you looked at that from a constitutional perspective?
Speaker 7
Yes. I have. And for the reasons I stated before, it would be unconstitutional if enacted. And you say that because you believe that, well, you believe the language, the
Speaker 3
Text, an originalist, you're textualist, you're the Gato Institute. You believe the language of the First Amendment says, Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Therefore, if we said we're not gonna allow Sharia followers in the country, we're.
Speaker 7
Not gonna allow fundamentalist Mormons in the country because they believe in plural marriage too. We're not gonna believe anybody who believes in something that's at odds with our beliefs about the country. You're saying that would violate the First Amendment? Yes. It would.
And the Supreme Court, including in decisions by conservative justices, has repeatedly stated that discrimination on the basis of religion with respect to government benefits. Yeah. Is unconscious. Let me.
Speaker 3
Ask you one final thing. Okay. So within Orthodox Judaism, there's a process called the get, which is that the couple may get a secular divorce. But if the husband doesn't dispense this religious document called get, the woman can never get remarried again within Orthodox Judaism. And there was an effort when I was the mayor of the legislature to say, well, we are going to say that you can't get a secular divorce if you're not going to grant the woman this religious certificate or get.
And I just had to oppose it because it was conditioning a secular good on a religious act. And I wonder if you think I did the right thing there. These guys are shmups. They're not giving the women the get, but the women can get remarried in the secular court if they want to. They just can't do it within the religious courts.
Yes.
Speaker 7
I agree with you. But orthodox Jews can recognize or not recognize these divorces as they choose, within their religious community. But as far as secular law in the United States is concerned, the law that matters is the law of the state of Maryland in that case, or whatever state they happen to be in.
Speaker 1
I yield back. Thank the rank member. I now recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. McClintock, for five minutes.
Speaker 9
Well, my thoughts are along a similar line. We're talking about two very different things: compulsory and voluntary. Democrats are correct that Jefferson believed in religious liberty, which is the voluntary adoption by an individual of religious beliefs, religious expression, and religious practice, and that is protected under our First Amendment. That's something fundamentally different from the compulsory imposition of religious practice on those who are not accepting of those beliefs. And indeed, Jefferson made the point in one of his letters that every religion proclaims itself as the one true religion.
And how is anybody going to be able to sort through all that and find out the one true religion for themselves, if we don't allow the airing of all of those differences and allow people the freedom to discuss and to debate them. So our constitution protects not only religious liberty, it protects civil liberty as well. You've got the right to your religion. You don't have the right to impose it on others. You've got the right to extol or criticize a religion for its teachings or its beliefs.
Do any of our panelists disagree with that? Okay? If somebody wants to adopt the Muslim religion and abide by its practices in their personal lives, they have the right to do so. Does anybody agree disagree with that? Okay?
If somebody wants to enter into a contract with someone who also adopts these practices, as long as those terms don't violate the civil law, they have a right to do so. Does anybody disagree with that one?
Speaker 4
Representative would not agree with that in the case of child custody, of arbitration of child custody.
Speaker 4
Sure. There are some states that allow, and particularly Texas, allows the arbitration of child custody. Other states have just banned it, like New York. I when there's a child involved, just because the parents agree to have child custody arbitrated does not mean the state should automatically enforce that child custody judgment. And states would have the options of either banning the arbitration of child custody or there's a model law governing that states could pass governing the arbitration of child custody, but I do not believe it's a good policy to allow arbitrators to determine child custody without some basis of court review.
Speaker 9
Well, if both of the parents agree, I mean, this would be a contractual relationship. Both of the parents agree. What's the beef? If and, again, it's in both parents agree, and it's in compliance with the civil law.
Speaker 4
Well, if in compliance with the civil law means a judge reviewed it and found it was the best interest of the child, right. Then that I would certainly
Speaker 9
Agree with, we're in agreement on all those things. So my question is, are there instances where Sharia law is being imposed on people against their will in this country today?
Speaker 4
In the case of child custody, the arbitration panels, right. Discussed that. Can be doing that. Yeah. Okay.
And that could both be through foreign judgments or through arbitration.
Speaker 9
Are you aware of any proposals to enact laws that would assist in imposing Sharia law on others or giving it precedence over our own civil law? Anyone? Okay. Well, good.
Speaker 6
There was actually a case in Collin County, Texas with actually a Republican female judge who looked at a case of a divorce, and she sent the woman to a Sharia court, and it was overturned by the Texas Supreme Court.
Speaker 9
Well, yeah, again, that's the remedy we have for erroneous judicial decisions as the appellate process. And what you're saying is it worked in that case. I've got about a minute left. I'll yield to the chairman since I see mister Biggs is left.
Speaker 1
I think the gentleman from California. I would just ask, Mr. Spencer. Mean, do you have anything to add to what mister Clinton from California was just adding about any of those concerns? You seem to want to. I just wanna make sure.
Speaker 5
Really controversial are political and not religious. The whole hearing here is turning on the idea that it would be terrible to restrict religious practice and be in violation of the First Amendment. But, the difficulty here is that Sharia, in all of its forms and wherever it has been implemented, has been political and not just religious.
Speaker 5
And has been supremacist and not just egalitarian. There's no real estate.
Speaker 9
I agree with you. There is a political aspect of it, but that is protected by our freedom of speech, our freedom to criticize it, our freedom to debate it, and our freedom to vote it down. Is that the way the system works?
Speaker 5
Well, I don't think that the freedom of speech is in play when you're talking about active efforts to subvert the constitutional law.
Speaker 5
I mean, obviously, cannot do it ourselves. The classic thing of crying fire in a crowded theater. And so it's the same thing here. There are laws against subversion. There are laws against working against the constitutional order, and that's what's at issue here.
Sharia is not really open to debate everywhere it's been implemented in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia. It's pretty much the same.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Mr. Spencer. Thank you, gentlemen from California. I'll now recognize the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Cohen.
Speaker 10
Thank you, mister chair. I'm a little confused about this hearing. I think we all probably agree. I admit here to hear everybody's agreement, but I think we all agree that Sharia law is not something anybody would want to have to live under. It's oppressive, and it's religion that's forced on other people.
But we've got a constitution already that's under attack, and the emoluments clause is being shredded. The pardon power is being abused in such a way that people question whether we should have a pardon power because it's not being used for the reasons by which it was put in the constitution for unusual cases where justice wasn't served, etcetera. And, it's been used as a transactional event. And we're talking about Sharia law. We've got so much to deal with, mister chairman, and with our constitution and protecting it.
The first amendment, the fourth amendment, what's going on in Minnesota, murdering of citizens, you know, on clear on the streets, murdering, shooting people in the back 10 times, shooting a woman in the face, not giving rendering aid to either one of them, not allowing doctors to render aid to them, watching them die. And those are constitutional problems. And we're talking about Sharia law? I mean, this is not really relevant to this committee and what's going on in America today. There's so much we could be dealing with concerning the Constitution and protecting America.
White Christian nationalist ideology has been put forward. One of the gentlemen here said something about, what is it, the certain might have been you, mister Spencer, something that the group put forward as their plan for the future, some publication or some ideology. Did you mention that?
Speaker 5
I don't know. You might be referring to the explanatory memorandum, which I didn't mention, but it's a captured internal document of the Muslim Brotherhood detailing its program for the United States, where it says the brothers must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their own hands and the hands of the believers so that the law's religion is victorious over other religions.
Speaker 10
You're not Pambandi. Sorry? I say, I've got the floor. You're not Pambandi, if you know, really. What?
What I was getting at. And what you're talking about sounds like a Middle Eastern version of project twenty twenty five, another type of manifesto to take over and do all these things and to control our government and to turn it around on its head. We should be looking at project 2025 and what they plan to do to this country and what they're doing to this country. It's not the country that Jefferson would have known, not the country I've known, not the country that I think our constitution foresaw, and none of this seems relevant. It seems like.
Speaker 3
Will the gentleman kindly yield? Yes, sir, please. Thank you to the distinguished gentleman from Tennessee. There was a mass murderer in Norway, who went on an anti-Muslim rampage and killed 69 people. You'll recall his name was Anders Breivik.
And he denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country against the Muslim takeover. And I raise it because I wanna introduce this article from the New York Times. He invoked your work, Mr. Spencer. You're probably aware of that. You probably know about this New York Times article that he frequently quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch website.
All of which goes to, I think, demonstrate the point I was making before that fanatics can take up any ideology, religious or secular, and use it to commit horrific crimes, all of which, to me, would suggest that all of us should be careful about whether we're speaking up for general principles like the separation of church and state and against religious fanaticism of every kind or whether we're trying to demonize and vilify a particular group. I don't know if you have any response. Well, yeah, in terms.
Speaker 5
Of demonizing and vilifying, obviously, this would be an example of it because Anders Breivik quoted me. Yes. He actually quoted a documentary that I was in. And so every time my name was mentioned as speaking, it's listed as one of the times he mentioned. And then they say, oh, he mentioned him 100 times or something.
Speaker 3
He's leaving aside the quotations. Do you have any thoughts on the massacre of the people?
Speaker 5
And he actually took issue with me for not counseling violence. And so to bring this up really is tantamount to saying that Elizabeth Warren is K. Responsible for the Dayton mass murders because the mass murderer invoked her name.
Speaker 3
Mister chairman, I think Mister Cohen's time is up. I'd like to enter this New York Times article without objection. Into the record, killings in Norway spotlight anti-Muslim thought in the US.
Speaker 1
Without objection. Thanks. And I thank you, Mr. Cohen. And I'll recognize the friend, my friend from North Carolina, mister Harris.
Speaker 12
Thank you, mister chairman, and thank all of you on the panel for what you've shared today. And, you know, while there's been a lot of talk about what we don't know in this world or we don't know that world, let me tell you what happened in my world, in the 8th District of North Carolina. This past year, in late 2025, the FBI, in coordination with local law enforcement, arrested an 18 year old in Mint Hill, North Carolina who was plotting to carry out a deadly New Year's Eve attack in support of ISIS. According to the DOJ, this 18-year-old Christian Sturtevant, was his name, sought to become a martyr for ISIS. Mister Spencer, I just wanna give you a chance to share.
Can you help me understand how a kid growing up in a suburb of Charlotte, a rural area in North Carolina, can be radicalized by the Islamic state?
Speaker 5
Mister Harris, this is a very important issue that law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the US have been entirely remiss and have ignored altogether. Fact is that a young man like that in Mint Hill could easily go to numerous sites on the Internet and quite possibly to people within his own community who would tell him that the Islamic State, ISIS, represents authentic Islam and that violence against unbelievers is a duty that he needed to carry out. This is something that ISIS recruiters say all over the world. They were able to attract thousands of Muslims from 100 different countries when they had their caliphate in Iraq and Syria, and this was because their claim to Islamic authenticity rang true among all too many Muslims, and nobody is countering that. Well, and I.
Speaker 12
I know this happened in Minhill, I mentioned. Can you tell me where else in the United States such radicalization is happening?
Speaker 5
This has happened all over the country. We had the Boston Marathon murders that were two young Muslims, once again, who were thought to be moderate at one time. And, we had the Fort Hood massacre, San Bernardino, Chattanooga. The list goes on. Orlando, Florida.
The list goes on. And these are young Muslims in The United States who come to believe for reasons that nobody has ever investigated fully that this is the authentic expression of their faith.
Speaker 12
And what role is the Internet playing, you believe, in the radicalization of American-born youth?
Speaker 5
Well, the Islamic State group has frequently called upon Muslims in the United States specifically to carry out lone wolf jihad terror attacks by just starting to murder people at random when they get the opportunity. And so because they have this claim of Islamic authenticity, it's all too easy for a young man to go online and see that, and think that he will be receiving a reward from Allah for carrying it out.
Speaker 12
Well, as a pastor, for myself, I believe, obviously, that religious liberty is critically important and something we've got to be willing to do what we have to to protect. However, I also recognize that a person's religious liberty doesn't mean they can impose their religious liberty on others. So let me ask you this, Mr. Spencer. How do we balance our respect for religious liberty with the threat you see posed by Sharia law? Seems to.
Speaker 5
We have to be able to say to the Muslim community that they're perfectly free to practice their religion, except where, in particular, it contravenes other existing American laws. For example, there were a couple of doctors in Detroit a few years back who were put on trial for practicing female genital mutilation, and their defense was that this was part of their Islamic faith and that they were carrying out their part of their religious practice. And a judge ultimately threw the case out saying, yes, indeed, this contravenes religious freedom, and we have to understand that it would be unconstitutional to ban female genital mutilation because it's part of Islam. And so the rights of those girls whose lives are destroyed, they don't matter at all, and that's Sharia.
Speaker 12
Well, and one thing in just the last forty seconds that concerns me is the creation of these Islamic tribunals that seek to mediate disputes between Muslims and ban Muslims in The United States to Sharia law. We've seen them popping up in cities like Dallas, which led Governor Abbott to request law enforcement officials to investigate these entities. And, mister Jale, in just the last 15 seconds, would Sharia law-based institutions such as these potentially violate federal law? And if so, how?
Speaker 4
They would probably not violate federal law. That is particularly a statute. But what they would do is in some of their rulings, that their rulings were enforced by civil courts such as the courts in Texas, as Texas law would currently suggest, then that would violate certainly American constitutional liberties, including due process, equal protection, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion.
Speaker 1
I thank the gentleman from North Carolina. I'll now recognize the ranking member, Miss Scanlon, for her five minutes of questions.
Speaker 2
Thank you. It's been an interesting discussion of one religious minority attempting to impose its beliefs on the general population, which, of course, would violate the First Amendment. And I think that our colleague, mister Cohen, did raise an interesting point about the greatest danger perhaps lying not with Sharia law, but with white Christian nationalism, which is very different than patriotic Americans who happen to be Christian. But the white Christian nationalist movement, which is embodied in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 manifesto. I mean, which we've seen over the last year, the Trump administration has embraced both by putting people who drafted that document into the administration, but also by implementing its plans.
And I just ran through a few of them. The plan calls for a total abortion ban, which is not something that people of all faiths believe in, including the overturning of FDA approval of mifepristone and restricting access to contraception. These beliefs seek to reverse LGBTQ plus equality, including same sex marriage and making it very difficult for people to access gender affirming care. The policy promotes a very narrow definition of family as a married mother and father, often portraying single motherhood as an aspect or a cause of social decay. It proposes and the Trump administration has moved to abolish the department of education, promoting school privatization, through vouchers and trying to fund private religious schools.
With respect to civil service, we've seen the moves to reclassify tens of thousands of nonpartisan federal civil servants and replace them with political appointees willing to swear allegiance to this particular ideology, and impacts on the environment, etcetera. There's a whole host of ways here in which this particular ideology has been embedded in our government in recent times, despite the fact that it does pose a threat to underlying constitutional values, other people's religious beliefs. So, I think that keeps coming to mind as we have this conversation about having the respect for religious liberty and people being free to practice their own religion, but they're not supposed to be imposing their religion on others. Professor Soman, can you speak for the benefit of my Republican colleagues? Can you explain how the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause work together to prohibit the government from imposing one group of Americans' religious views on another?
Speaker 7
Sure. Absolutely. So, certainly, the free exercise clause prevents direct coercion of religion of any kind, forcing people to engage in religious practices that they don't want to engage in. The establishment clause prevents the establishment of any kind of official religion, including the kind of theocracy we see in Iran or in Saudi Arabia. And also relevant to this case, to the legislation we're talking about today, the free exercise clause in decisions by Supreme Court justices, including by conservative ones in the case of Carson versus Makin dealing with school vouchers.
They have ruled that it violates the free exercise clause to exclude people or organizations based on their religious beliefs from benefits that are available to other people. Even though the state did not have an obligation to create school vouchers under the constitution in Maine, when they did so. In Carson, the Supreme Court, the decision joined by all six conservative justices correctly ruled that excluding religious schools simply because they're religious violates the First Amendment, and the same thing would be true for an effort to exclude Muslim immigrants to the United States simply because of their adherence to Sharia law. I think this jurisprudence which conservatives accept almost everywhere else applies here as well.
Speaker 2
We've recently seen some examples where this administration has tried to exclude immigrants, deport immigrants based upon their First Amendment speech, for example, publishing an op-ed. Can you talk about why, under the First Amendment, the government can't deport noncitizens simply because of their religious views?
Speaker 7
Sure. I described this in my written testimony, but the basic idea is that there is no immigration exception to the First Amendment, and that the rights protected by the First Amendment apply to noncitizens on our territory no less than the citizens. And courts several times over the last year have ruled against the Trump administration's campaign of speech-based deportations, and rightly so.
Speaker 3
I actually have a UC request, mister chairman, if that's okay. Sure. And this is 18 US code 116, section c, and this is banning female genital mutilation. American, it says it shall not be a defense to.
Speaker 3
Prosecution under this section that female genital mutilation is required as a matter of religion, custom, or tradition. So I don't know the judge that Mr. Spencer is referring to, but that's why we have appellate courts if somebody actually allowed it in plain contravention of the statute.
Speaker 1
Without objection. I will now recognize my colleague and friend, the gentleman from Texas, Mister Gil.
Speaker 13
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding this hearing and for, very boldly and clearly speaking about this. This is an issue that I hear all the time from my constituents in North Texas who are concerned about the rise of radical Islam in Texas, and I wanna thank the witnesses for being here as well. Got a few questions, and I wanna start with you, mister Suman. Can you tell me what percentage of US Muslims believe that Sharia law should be implemented in the United States?
Speaker 13
I like, I can tell you it's 39%. 39% of Muslims in The United States want Sharia law implemented in the next 20 years. Do you know what percentage of Muslims in the United States support the formation of a Muslim political party?
Speaker 7
Again, I'm not familiar with the survey data on that particular question.
Speaker 13
Number is 46%. I'll do a couple more. Do you know what percentage of Muslims in the United States support making it illegal to show a picture of the cartoon or cartoon of the prophet Muhammad? So, as with the other questions, a lot depends on.
Speaker 13
50%. Analogy here. That's a lot. Let's do one more. Do you know what percentage of Muslims in the United States believe that Islam should be declared as our national religion?
Once again, I would want to look at the methodology of the survey. The question 33%.
Speaker 13
this is from a survey conducted by the Heritage Foundation in 2024. In September 2024, it was published on 10/06/2024. I got two more for you. Do you know what percentage of American Muslims believe that Israel does not have a right to exist as a Jewish homeland?
Speaker 7
I don't know that one either, but if it's from a survey by the Heritage Foundation, they're.
Speaker 13
be percent. You're happy. You know, you can declare that statistics you don't like aren't true, but that's not how I'm gonna operate here. We got one more. Do you know what percentage of Muslims in the United States say that Jewish people have too much power in government policy?
Speaker 7
I would again, I would wanna see the nature of the survey, and I would also know the
Speaker 7
If they were accurate, they would be a matter of concern, but I would want to.
Speaker 13
They are accurate, and I think that they are a matter of concern. And I think most Americans agree with me there. Mister Spencer, I'm gonna move on to you. Let me ask you, is Islam as a political ideology, in your opinion, compatible with America's constitutional governing framework?
Speaker 5
Oh, no. Certainly not. It denies the freedom of speech, denies the equality of rights of non-Muslims with Muslims, the equality of rights of women with men, and contradicts US law and numerous other particulars.
Speaker 5
Well, Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, said Islam must dominate and not be dominated. And in every Sharia state that is on earth today and has ever been on earth, non Muslims have not had equality of rights with Muslims in the society. The idea is to enforce a subservient position for them so that they know the pain in this world as well as the next of having rejected Mohammed, which the Quran says they will suffer.
Speaker 13
Under Islamic law, as it's commonly practiced, are men and women treated with equal dignity?
Speaker 5
No. Certainly not. I quoted before the passage about women beating women from whom you fear disobedience. The Quran contains nothing about beating disobedient men.
Speaker 13
Miss Child, I've got a few questions for you. Can you explain to us very briefly what is Epic City?
Speaker 6
Yeah. So, to understand how Sharia relates to Epic City, you don't have to look any further than Imam Yasser Khadi of Epic. He's the chairman of the Fiqh council on North America, the group that tells Muslims in the US how to apply Sharia.
Speaker 6
Yes. Just one moment. I have some information on funding. And when you ask where the money and infrastructure for Epic City are coming from, when Epic City was first marketed, they actively solicited investors, including foreign investors. So that fundraising model is now under serious legal scrutiny with Texas attorney general Ken Paxton.
He sued East Plano Islamic Center, its development arm, Community Capital Partners, alleging violations of Texas security laws and how funds were raised and managed. And this isn't isolated.
Speaker 13
Thank you. And my time is up, so I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Rican member?
Speaker 2
Thank you. I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record an article published by the Cato Institute on 10/26/2025 written by Mustafa Akhil titled, No Sharia law is coming to Texas.
Speaker 2
I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record an article published by Politico on 01/26/2026 written by Liz Crampton and Jessica Piper titled, Republicans go all in on Sharia law attacks ahead of Texas primary. Love objection. I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record an article written by J. David Goodman published in The New York Times on 02/10/2026. Without a border invasion, Texas GOP turns to an old enemy, Islam.
Speaker 3
Mister chairman, too. I've got one too. I can't remember. This is from the Pew Research Center. 45% of Americans say the United States should be a Christian nation.
Speaker 1
Without objection. I'll now recognize myself for such time as I shall consume. Miss Shield, let me ask you a quick question and just try to get through these pretty quickly. Right? Just a few things with respect to Texas, my friend, mister Gil, was just talking about.
Is it true that Boston, including there's a big center in West Campus, the University of Texas, including other places, and it's not just located in just epic city. Is that correct?
Speaker 1
So all of this are there. I'm also talking to a number of people, particularly in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex, women in particular, who will tell me that there are enclaves in areas throughout the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex where they do not go, where there are women, Texans, who say that because they are in areas that have a high concentration of Muslim men and because of the nature of what's going on in those areas, that there are now, quote, no go zones in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. Is that correct?
Speaker 1
And I've heard that from multiple people in multiple places throughout the area. Correct?
Speaker 1
And, mister Spencer, and I'd look to you on this question here. I heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who were raising objection to legislation and a number of bills that some of us introduced, particularly one that I introduced, that was raising the issue of vetting individuals as we're bringing them into The United States for their adherence to Sharia law. That was the idea. The idea is that Sharia law is inconsistent with our values in western civilization, so we should know if we're bringing people into the country that may want to advance a system of law or systems that are contrary to our laws. Here's my question.
In doing so, my colleagues acknowledged and said that that would mean that Muslims generally would be in fear of deportation or inability to be brought into the country. Does that not suggest that there's a recognition that Sharia law is central to most of the Muslim population throughout the world and those that come to the United States?
Speaker 1
Yes. And is that true? Is Sharia law central to most Muslims throughout the world?
Speaker 5
Absolutely. Sharia is considered divine law, and thus it takes precedence over all other legal systems. It in areas of the Muslim world where it is not fully implemented, such as Egypt or Syria, other countries, it still has a tremendous cultural influence such that elements of it are often enforced by individuals or groups where the government doesn't do so.
Speaker 1
And is it not true also that there are some 50 plus countries throughout the world, in which Sharia is either entirely the law or central to the law in a mixture of its religious implementation, but also its civil.
Speaker 5
Yes. That's right. There are 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, 56 nations, and the Palestinian Authority.
Speaker 1
Is it also not true that we're talking about the advance of the Islam population or the population of Muslims that adhere to Islam in this country, that it is not also true that there is significant funding by groups and organizations to push that, including Sharia, into The United States.
Speaker 5
Oh, there's no doubt whatsoever. You have, for example, prince Awali bin Talal from Saudi Arabia who has spent millions and millions of dollars in funding universities such as Georgetown, where they have now the prince Awalid center for Muslim Christian understanding that is designed essentially to whitewash Islam, Jihad, and Sharia and present a version of these things that are designed to foster complacency. And also, the government of Qatar is doing the same thing on even larger.
Speaker 1
In addition to these countries, in addition to foreign funding, there are organizations such as CARE and other organizations that are designed to implement and advance the existence of Sharia and the advance of Islam Islamism in The United States. Is that true?
Speaker 5
Oh, certainly. Omar Ahmed, the cofounder of CARE, has been on record saying the Quran should be the only law of the land. He has denied saying this, but the original reporter stuck to her story. Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR, the famous spokesman for the organization, said that he wanted to see the government of the United States become Islamic sometime in the future. So this is something that is clear from all of CARE's actions.
Speaker 1
And would it be safe to say that the goal of those organizations and the Muslim Brotherhood, as my friend mister Gil said, also from Texas, that the goal of those organizations in advancing Islam, Islamist movement in The United States, that the goal is for the Western hemisphere, for the Western civilization, The United States, and Texas as ground zero to become Islamic.
Speaker 5
Oh, there's no doubt about it. That's very clear from the explanatory memorandum of the Muslim Brotherhood, saying that the goal is that Allah's religion is victorious over other religions, and they're working toward eliminating and destroying western civilization from within. And all the non-Muslim apologists for Sharia that we see are indications of how successful that effort has been.
Speaker 1
One last question. I'm over my time, then I'll recognize the gentleman from Wyoming. Is that not inherently political, and not just missional? In other words, it's not just saying, hey. We would like people to know Allah and to know the teachings of Mohammed and Islam, as much as a Christian might want to advance the mission of Christ, but that it is political in ideology and in effect.
Speaker 5
There's no doubt whatsoever. This is all about political power. Nihat Awad, the executive director of CAIR, has made that quite clear in repeated statements speaking about increasing the number of Muslim congressmen, getting Muslim senators, and increasing Muslim political power on that basis.
Speaker 14
Thank you, and thank you all for being here today. In August 2025, an Austrian court issued a ruling confirming an arbitration award based explicitly on Islamic Sharia law. In the specific case, a contract was signed by two men that mandated an arbitration tribunal would resolve conflicts based on Sharia law. The arbitration tribunal, after a conflict arose, later decided against one of the two men and forced him to pay $320,000. The decision was upheld by the Vienna Regional Court for civil matters. European Center for Law and Justice highlights examples in Europe where Sharia law has been legally applied, including in Greece where under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, citizens who are Muslims and residents in Western Thrace have used Sharia law as a parallel legal system for private law.
We know that it has also happened here in America. And, Gillet, I'd like to turn to you. Across parts of Europe and more limited context in the United States, we have learned that there are a number of so-called Sharia-based tribunals that purport to resolve family and other civil disputes using Sharia-centric principles. To your knowledge, how far back have some of these tribunals been permitted to operate in the United States and across Europe?
Speaker 4
Across Europe, I can speak to as well. Across the United States have existed for at least several decades. Certainly, the number of cases that they've been handling appears to be increasing, and that increase appears to be accelerating. One of the difficulties in monitoring this is that typically only appellate court decisions are reported. Right.
So you would only truly find out about it if there was an arbitration, if the arbitration award was challenged in a district court. Sometimes those are reported, but normally, it'd only be reported if the appeal then went up to an appellate court. So it's very hard.
Speaker 14
To get good data. Well, could you explain the process by which a family dispute, for example, may be resolved in a Sharia law-applied setting in contrast to what we would expect to see in an American family court proceeding?
Speaker 4
Sure. Typically, you would begin with an Islamic mahr, which is an Islamic marriage contract. That contract would be signed normally before the marriage. Then during the marriage, if a dispute arose between the couple, then one of them would approach the Sharia tribunal. Typically, an imam, sometimes an attorney, sometimes not.
Sometimes not an imam, but commonly imams would then essentially adjudge it. They would typically not be most of the formalities in American law. So you wouldn't have, for example, a court reporter recording everything. You wouldn't always have formal pleadings. Sometimes it'd be as simple as basically a meeting.
And then there would be a ruling. Those rulings aren't always necessarily placed in clear judgments. So a lot of the formalities that we as lawyers do in American courts simply do not exist in those. Well, and I think
Speaker 14
That is very important because due process and equal protection are foundational tenets guaranteed under the United States Constitution and most state constitutions, and they are available to every American citizen who engages with the judiciary or seeks legal relief. Mister Delay, based on what knowledge there is of how Sharia tribunals operate both in Europe and to a more limited extent in America, are there risks of participants, notably women and minors, losing due process protections and equal treatment in a Sharia based system.
Speaker 4
Yes. Those risks are quite significant. They've manifested themselves in a few appellate cases we have been able to see. And the remedies for those are not that difficult. I mean, states can either ban the arbitration of family law matters, particularly custody.
Some states have done that for decades, often blue states, more than red states. Additionally, there is a model, act that's been put out, that would create some thresholds that the reviewing court would then be able to look at the basis of the decision of the court. In the case of custody, they would look for other child matters for visitation. They'd look at the best interests of the child. Currently, in many states, Texas, particularly being one, those safeguards do not exist.
Speaker 14
So why are women and minors more at risk in a Sharia-based tribunal system?
Speaker 4
Primarily for two reasons. One, Sharia law tends to be discriminatory against women, particularly compared to modern American law. Secondly, Sharia law does not require any analysis of the best interests of the child. Normally, custody is based on what exact school of Sharia is being applied. Custody is normally based on the age of the child, and based on the age, the child will be given to one of the two parents.
Speaker 14
So in a Sharia-based system, there is a real risk that people engaged in that would be losing due process and equal protection rights. Is that fair?
Speaker 1
Thank you, Mr. Jai. Thank the general lady from Wyoming, and I'll now recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin for five minutes.
Speaker 11
Thank you. First of all, I wanna respond to something that was said earlier. Every weekend I get home and I meet, you know, different people around my district. Maybe I attend Republican Party events, maybe church groups and their fundraisers, American Legions, Lions Clubs, Rotary Clubs, and just random people when I sometimes go door to door. I have yet to find one person who is a self-avowed or even unavowed Christian nationalist.
I just never met that person. And nevertheless, for whatever motivation, I think to be divisive and I think to run down this country in the eyes of our immigrants, I think that's what their motivation is. The Democrats keep talking about these mystery people. And I would think that if they existed, sooner or later, I would at least run into one of those people, but I've yet to run into any. So I just wanna make that point in case we may have, you know, new arrivals in this country who might think when president Biden and various Democrats talk about this huge movement in this country, they know that at least I have yet to find one person who fits the bill.
Okay. Now mister Spencer, you were cut off before. I'm gonna give you just a few minutes. Is there anything you wanted to say that weren't able to say when you were cut off?
Speaker 5
To be honest with you, I don't remember when the last time I was cut off. So.
Speaker 11
Okay. I'm from Wisconsin. And in Wisconsin, we have a military base called Fort McCoy. And there are a huge number of people who, on very short notice, inundated Fort McCoy. Eventually, federal prosecutors charged a couple of the Afghans who were there with serious crimes: sexual assault, although a minor, committing domestic violence.
I felt in any event that these incidents underscored how inadequate vetting happened before all these people were put in Wisconsin. But in any event, do you know about how many Afghans the Biden administration brought to the US?
Speaker 5
I'm sure that that's much more accurate. In any case, vetting was essentially nonexistent. These were people who were, for the most part, not people who helped us in Afghanistan, but that was by the acknowledgment of Alejandro Mallorcas that they were people who didn't have the special immigrant visas that were given to people who aided us there. And what's noteworthy about the people who were arrested at Fort McCoy is that they said they didn't know that they were violating American law when they molested these young people, because what they did was legal in Afghanistan. And that is an indication and microcosm of the dangers of bringing over Sharia-adherent Muslims.
They are adherents of a legal system and the cultural mores that are radically different from American law, and strip if we allow this, they will strip protections from all kinds of people who will be their victims.
Speaker 11
Okay. This did have serious and tragic consequences, didn't it, by not vetting these folks? I'm sorry.
Speaker 5
Absolutely. Well, that's one example is the Afghans who were arrested at Fort McCoy, but there's also the fact that ISIS as well as the Taliban and Al Qaida are quite active in Afghanistan. So you bring over a lot of Afghans without any vetting. You're bringing over almost certainly ISIS, Al Qaida, and Taliban operatives who believe that they have a responsibility under a law to wage jihad in the infidel land. And that's gonna be something we're gonna be seeing the consequences of for years to come.
Speaker 11
Okay. What can Congress do to strengthen laws to prevent this type of mass importation of unvetted aliens?
Speaker 5
Well, for one thing, vetting would be in order, and that needs to be intelligent and thorough, comprehensive vetting. That is not just, are you a member of a terrorist group, which is what it's been for years, but something, questions that are much more specific that will tease out attitudes, and then make it a deportable offense to lie when you're answering these questions.
Speaker 11
Okay. Any one of the three of you, on the right side of me. Are we right now actively tracking instances of Shri Allah and the patterns of places where it's most prevalent? By Google it. Come, we're gonna find something on that.
Speaker 4
To my knowledge, the United States government is not doing that whatsoever. The Senate for Security Policy attempted that a couple of decades ago. Basically, looking through Louisiana appellate cases, they're able to find dozens upon dozens. I've been trying to monitor it. It is very difficult to monitor because, first of all, arbitration tribunals are not reported.
Most district court cases are not reported at the state level. And properly using the search engines to tease out the cases at the state appellate level is tricky.
Speaker 1
The gentleman's over his time. The other two wanna quickly answer that question, so he addressed all three of you, but just quickly, do you know anything additional to add?
Speaker 5
That's exactly what I was going to say. The US government is not doing this.
Speaker 1
Well, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for his question. I thank the witnesses. Thank you for your participation. This concludes today's hearing, and we thank you. Without objection, all members will have five legislative days to submit additional written questions for the witnesses or additional materials for the record.
Without objection, this hearing is adjourned. Good.
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