In This Article
- Why accusations about Sharia often mirror the legal ambitions of the people making them
- What Sharia means in plain English, and how personal religious practice differs from state enforcement
- How Christian Reconstructionism offers a documented example of biblical law as a political project
- Why projection and political gaslighting are useful terms for this debate
- How the First Amendment provides a neutral test no matter which faith holds power
"They want to impose their religion on us." "Our laws should be based on the Bible." Put those two statements side by side and the hypocrisy is glaring. The most pointed version of the argument isn't directed at every religious voter or every conservative Christian. It's aimed squarely at those who make both assertions: the people who are on the one hand warning us that Muslims are coming to take over our secular government, and on the other hand are demanding that the state should be based on their own interpretation of the Bible. Their campaign of fear is to have the public accept one form of religious influence as a threat to freedom and the other as the very definition of the moral order. That is the question that should be at the heart of the entire debate. Would they be prepared to accept the same level of state intervention if it were being exercised by a different religion, using a different sacred text, with a different set of rules for family life, for public behaviour and for education?
What Sharia Means In Plain English
Sharia is frequently portrayed in American political discourse as a single statute book which would simply replace the Constitution. That is completely incorrect. Sharia in its most basic sense is Islamic religious and moral guidance. It's the body of religious and moral teachings which covers things like prayer, fasting during Ramadan, charity, dietary laws and the various ethical questions relating to marriage, inheritance, contracts and business. It's much the same as Jewish halakha or Christian moral teaching in that it is not a single thing which is interpreted in one way for all time. There has been and continues to be considerable disagreement amongst Muslim scholars across the centuries, across the various schools of law and across the various countries.
The key distinction in a constitutional democracy is between private religious practice and state coercion. A Muslim observing the fast in Ramadan is engaging in religion. A mosque which teaches its members how to pray is also engaging in religion. A government which orders everyone to fast (believer or non-believer) is doing something quite different. It is the state using its power to compel religious behaviour. That distinction is fundamental, but the sort of political fearmongering that goes on depends absolutely on smearing the two together. Once private religious practice is presented as a scheme for takeover, it can be packaged up and sold as a threat to the state.
Governments in some of the Muslim majority countries do incorporate elements of sharia into their civil law (particularly in areas such as marriage and inheritance). They vary enormously though and that in itself doesn't prove that Muslim citizens in the US are in any way looking for the same thing here. The relevant question isn't whether or not religious traditions contain legal principles (they most certainly do). The relevant question is who wants the State to make one particular tradition binding on all.
The Christian Parallel In Plain Sight
That's where the Christian parallel becomes utterly unmissable. Many Christians will vote on the basis of their scriptural convictions and that in itself is perfectly normal democratic behaviour. All citizens bring their values to politics all the time. The line is drawn when a movement seeks for the state to adopt one particular sectarian interpretation of scripture as being the one authoritative interpretation for the whole of society. That is not faith in citizenship. That is a bid for state power.
A good example of this is Christian Reconstructionism (most famously associated with R.J. Rushdoony and his followers) who argued that civil government and society as a whole should be governed by biblical law. Rushdoony wasn't in any doubt about the source of law. His project was to build a system in which the Old Testament law would be the basis of the social order, the civil law and the very legitimacy of the state. It was a very clear cut proposition as to where the law should come from and what theology should be the basis of the state. Whether or not the majority of Christians would agree with that is irrelevant. The point is that there has been a movement in American political history which has sought the legal supremacy of a particular reading of the Bible.
That's the point really. It gives us a tangible point of comparison. To denounce 'Sharia law' as some kind of alien, terrifying thing whilst at the same time pushing policies which are designed to give Christianity a preferential status in schools, in legislation, in the public sector etc is not simply a matter of inconsistency in the rhetoric. It's a matter of structure. One set of religious legal claims is anathema by definition. The other is presented as heritage, as morality, as freedom. And both of them are predicated on the very same thing: the use of the state to give one religion a position of superiority over all the others.
Projection As A Political Habit
Projection is the right word to use here as it describes a perfectly familiar tactic. You accuse another group of wanting the very power they are themselves trying to acquire. In this instance they're saying that Muslims want to replace neutral law with religious law as they campaign for state action which is in accordance with their own theology. That doesn't mean every complaint about Islamist movements abroad is fantasy. It just means that the complaint becomes projection when it is coupled with domestic support for religiously based civil rules (i.e. rules which are enforced by the state and which are based on Christianity).
The pattern is simple to spot. Take the accusation and then look at the policy preference. If the same person is saying that America must be protected from Islamic religious law and at the same time is saying that the country should be governed by biblical law, the contradiction is not in any subtle way. They're not in opposition to the idea of religion and state being fused. They're in opposition to who is going to be the one doing the fusing. The objection is not to the instrument of power per se, it's to the identity of the hand that is going to wield it.
That's why it's not simply a culture war about symbols. It's about the very terms of democratic legitimacy. A rule which comes from the force of the state must be judged by a standard which is not affected by who is in office. If someone only likes a religiously grounded form of legal authority when it is in their own interests, they are not in fact defending any neutral principle. They are defending their own advantage.
How Religious Privilege Gets Sold As Freedom
Gaslighting is the perfect term to describe the situation where religious privilege is presented as religious freedom. It's the right word because it inverts the reality. Religious freedom is about people being free to believe as they like, to change their beliefs, to reject belief altogether, to come together with their fellow believers and to live by their conscience within the law. It doesn't mean that one particular religious group gets state support in the form of forcing everyone else to conform to its beliefs. Yet that's precisely what the political rhetoric often does and treats as if it were religious freedom.
Watch the language shift. Public institutions are being asked to promote prayer, to display sectarian texts, to give special favours to the believers of a particular faith. The critics are then told they are in effect attacking freedom. Whose freedom is being extended in such a situation and who is obliged to conform? If a public school is going to compel children to participate in a religious rite, the state is no longer protecting private belief. It is in fact imposing belief via the mechanism of state authority. If the law of the land is to be rewritten to reflect the theology of one particular tradition, the dissenters are only formally free in the sense that they can complain. They are still living under a system of rules which they have not chosen and which they cannot get out of.
There's a difference between simply stating outright that Christianity is entitled to legal privilege and pretending that that privilege is merely equal treatment. The first is a plain double standard. The second is a bit more insidious in that it asks the public to refer to dominance as freedom. If the rule only looks like religious freedom when your side is the one that writes it, what are you actually defending? You're defending a form of freedom which is predicated on the ownership of the state. That is not freedom in any genuine civic sense. That is just permission for one group to rule under a sanctified banner.
The First Amendment Offers A Neutral Test
The Constitution provides a far cleaner standard than any partisan hysterics ever will. The First Amendment both protects the free exercise of religion and prohibits the establishment of religion by the government. Those two principles go hand in hand. Individuals may freely practice their religion without state interference and the state may not adopt a religion, may not favour one religion over another and may not compel people to practice their religion. That is not hostility to belief at all. It is the framework which allows belief to remain voluntary rather than being an arm of the state.
The distinction becomes clear with the most mundane examples. A Christian family can put up the Ten Commandments in their house and teach the Bible to their kids. A Muslim family can teach the Quran at home, pray together and observe Ramadan. A Jewish family can keep kosher and celebrate the holy days. Those are purely exercises of religion. A public school which is forcing students to join in prayer or participate in a religious exercise is a different matter as the state is now the one doing the forcing. The constitutional problem arises when the state moves from being a protector of private religious practice to being the one that is directing it.
The test of any proposed policy is therefore straightforward. Would you regard it as legitimate if a different religion were in office and exercised that same power in its own image? If the answer is no, then the principle was never neutral. It was simply a mechanism of sectarian control in the guise of public virtue.
The Question They Cannot Avoid
The warning about imposed religious law is only going to mean anything if it's applied equally. If you've spent years insisting that America must be protected from Muslim legal rule whilst at the same time supporting the very notion of writing Christian doctrine into civil law, you've already answered the real question (even if you never state it). You don't in principle oppose the fusion of religion and state. You simply don't want to lose the battle over which religion gets the fusion.
That's the point that needs to be borne in mind whenever religious freedom is used as a pretext to justify religious privilege. You have to strip away the trappings and ask the question of power. Who writes the rules? Who is it that has to live under them? Would the very people who are demanding that power still call it freedom if it were the rules of another religion that were in place? The ultimate test is for the reader. Would you hand the state that power if it were the rules of someone else's religion that were in force?
About the Author
Alex Jordan is an ai staff writer for InnerSelf.com. He researches and then writes articles based on selected topics and personal experiences contributed by InnerSelf publishers Marie T. Russell and Robert Jennings.
Recommended Books
American Crusade by Andrew L. Seidel — A concise examination of Christian nationalism and the constitutional dangers of merging one faith tradition with state power.
The Myth of American Religious Freedom by David Sehat — A historical account showing how claims of religious liberty in the United States have often masked struggles over authority and cultural dominance.
Taking Back America for God by Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry — A research based study of Christian nationalism and how it shapes politics, identity, and public life in the United States.
Article Recap
This analysis of the Sharia law scare and Christian nationalism double standard shows how accusations of religious takeover can function as projection when the accusers seek similar power for their own faith. Using a constitutional test for religious freedom and government establishment of religion, the article offers a clear framework for judging whether a policy protects liberty or grants sectarian privilege.
#ShariaLaw #ReligiousFreedom #ChristianNationalism #FirstAmendment #ChurchAndState #PoliticalProjection #Gaslighting #ConstitutionalRights #ReligiousPrivilege #AlexJordan
