Threat of imposing religious law in America isn't from Muslims | Opinion

Nearly 250 years after the founding of this nation, the United States finds herself at a crossroads, asked to choose between two different visions of what it means to belong to the American family. 

One path leads to a Christian nationalist rebranding of America based on the alluring myth of religious and national purity, where Christian and American identities are synonymous, and where Christians are tasked with holding authority over all essential aspects of American civic life.  

The other path is a return to America’s pluralistic roots and the endeavor to create a society in which people from diverse religious traditions can freely bring their gifts and aspirations to bear on a shared diverse democracy.

Christian nationalists pit Muslim Americans against USA

Lately, some politicians are pushing us down the Christian nationalist path, where Islam is the foil against which to define authentic American identity.

Rep. Andy Ogles, the Tennessee Republican who has proclaimed that “America is and must always be a Christian nation," recently posted on X: “Muslims don’t belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie.” 

On that same platform, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the Alabama Republican who has raised the alarm bells about the threat that Muslims pose to America’s Christian values and identity, reposted a photo of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani alongside a photo of the 9/11 attacks, adding his own caption: “The enemy is inside the gates.”

Some Texas lawmakers are mobilizing around what they believe is the greatest threat to the United States: sharia, or Islamic law. Rep. Chip Roy, an advocate of posting the Ten Commandments in Texas’ public schools as a reflection of the nation’s “distinctly Christian understanding,” argues that the sharia system is “an existential threat” to America that seeks “to replace our legal system and Constitution with an incompatible ideology.”

This argument is a throwback to the 2010s, when a wave of anti-sharia legislation swept through the nation, resulting in 20 anti-sharia bills enacted in 13 states.  

Threat of imposing US religious law is not coming from Islam

With the war in Iran, reports of military leaders telling those in their command that the war is part of God’s plan to bring about Armageddon, combined with public figures claiming that Islam in Iran is delusional and misguided, have exacerbated rhetoric casting Muslims and Islam as antithetical to a Christian America.  

The aggressive, Islamophobic push to tout Christian nationalism is hard to miss these days. But why now?

The most straightforward explanation is that there is a growing need in certain political quarters for a distraction from the real authoritarian, anti-democratic, anti-pluralist threat to the nation. That threat is not coming from Muslims, who make up only 1% of the U.S. adult population, but from Christian nationalists.  

According to a recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute:

• 1 in 3 Americans adhere to or sympathize with Christian nationalism. 
• Close to half of White Christians fall into the Christian nationalist camp. 
• Christian nationalists are more likely than other Americans to sympathize with authoritarianism; to subscribe to the "great replacement theory" that claims "immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background"; and to support political violence to keep the United States from going off-track. 

The specter of imposing religious law on America isn’t coming from Muslims; that threat is actually coming from Christian nationalists. 

It wasn’t Muslims who swarmed the U.S. Capitol trying to overturn a democratic presidential election. We didn’t see placards with the Islamic crescent or quotes from the Quran among the hordes of insurrectionists on that day. We did see on Jan. 6, 2021, large wooden crosses, signs that read “Jesus saves,” and banners bearing Christian symbols swaying alongside Confederate flags.  

Christian nationalism offers anti-pluralist, authoritarian ideas and asks us to accept them as a means of saving America. But Christian nationalism is not our savior. It is a lie that tempts us to view religious diversity as an evil that must be fought with a firm, Christian, iron fist.

Such a lie distracts us from the pluralistic origins of our nation, when our founders rejected the European model of one branch of Christianity having a monopoly on religion in favor of allowing diverse religious communities not only to coexist but also to cooperate across differences.  

The founders didn’t get it all right. Prejudice persisted against Catholics, Jews, atheists, among others. As many as 30% of enslaved Africans brought to these shores were Muslim – but their human and religious identities did not have voice in America’s founding. 

Even so, the founders cast an aspirational vision for an America in which religious minorities would not be subject to prejudice, even if that vision at times outpaced reality. 

George Washington promised a Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, that this new government “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” 

Thomas Jefferson insisted that the rights of many religious communities should be respected, including “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.” 

Our founders accepted religious diversity as essential to the pluralistic fabric of the new nation. Pluralism represents America’s foundational vision for intentional collaboration and cooperation across differences. And it sees Muslims and the rich diversity of America’s religious communities not as a problem to be solved ‒ but as a promise that points to a more perfect union.  

Jenan Mohajir is vice president of external affairs at Interfaith America, where Todd Green is senior director of campus partnerships.