StarTribune Opinion: Sharia compels me to follow the Constitution

Minnesota Multifaith Network leader Zafar Siddiqui recently wrote an opinion article that was printed in the Minnesota StarTribune. It is reprinted below. Siddiqui is a Twin Cities-based interfaith and civil rights advocate. He is the co-founder of Islamic Resource Group.

Like clockwork, the Sharia scare is back. Each election season since 2006, the same playbook is unleashed on Americans. The goal is to create an irrational fear of a nonexistent threat to divert attention from real issues we are currently facing. It is a solution in search of a problem. Its favorite ploy is the story of a Muslim “takeover” of America through Sharia “law” replacing the U.S. Constitution.

Despite Muslims being only 1% of our country’s population, this fearmongering finds traction because foundations and charitable institutions have pumped enormous amounts of money into a deliberate campaign to create fear of Islam and Muslims. Reports from the Center for American Progress and Council on American-Islamic Relations have traced hundreds of millions of dollars to this network.

I remember this happening back in 2006 when Keith Ellison successfully ran to become the first Muslim elected to Congress and Minnesota’s first Black member of Congress. His decision to take his ceremonial oath on the Quran caused an uproar, which Ellison sought to douse by using Thomas Jefferson’s Quran from the Library of Congress.

During this election cycle, the Sharia-Free America Caucus, comprising 68 House members, including my own congressman Tom Emmer, is spearheading this alarmism. Here in Minnesota, state Sen. Michael Holmstrom announced last month the launch of the Sharia-Free Minnesota Caucus.

At the Republican midterm convention earlier this month in Dallas, party leaders made Sharia an explicit election-season issue. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott promised to “fully ban Sharia law in Texas,” while U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz declared that it “has no place in America” and is “fundamentally inconsistent with the Constitution.”

A University of California, Berkeley’s report identified 223 anti-Sharia bills that were introduced in 43 state legislatures between 2010 and 2018 — 20 of which were enacted in 13 states. Nearly all were disguised as bans on “foreign law” after Oklahoma’s explicit ban on Sharia was struck down by a federal court in 2013 for singling out one religion. American courts already reject any religious rule or private agreement that violates the Constitution or another person’s rights. So what problem are these bills trying to solve?

It may come as a shock to many, but Sharia requires Muslims to honor their commitments and obey the laws of the country where they live. That includes upholding the Constitution.

What is Sharia? That question should be answered by Muslims, not by those who have made a career of attacking Islam.

For me, following Sharia means praying five times a day, fasting during Ramadan, giving charity, eating halal food, caring for my family and neighbors and being a contributing member of society. These are personal religious and moral principles that fit into the five central objectives of Sharia, namely the protection of faith, human life, intellect, family and property. Do these objectives sound like a plan to overthrow the Constitution?

Some will point to governments or extremist groups that invoke Sharia to justify human rights abuses. That is how Sharia became confused with penal law. But what a government calls Sharia is its own interpretation, not a single code accepted by Muslims everywhere. Penal law is only a small part of fiqh, the human interpretation of Sharia.

Judaism has halakha, which guides Jewish religious and daily life, and the Catholic Church has canon law. Journalist Arno Rosenfeld recently asked readers to imagine a “Talmud Free America” caucus based on the claim that Jewish law was incompatible with American values. Imagine also if state legislatures began passing laws against Catholic canon law. We would recognize this as an attack on religious freedom. Why is the standard different when the religion is Islam?

The Sharia scare is being created from thin air. No mainstream American Muslim organization is asking to replace our Constitution with Sharia. In fact, American Muslims have been demanding that our country adhere to the Constitution in both letter and spirit, and honor its guarantees of religious freedom, freedom of speech, equal protection and due process.

The electoral successes of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan demonstrate that this fearmongering is facing headwinds from a younger America that is not interested in conspiracy theories driven by well-funded special interests.

Muslims are very much part of the mosaic of American society with increasing political participation. They are invested in safeguarding and upholding our Constitution precisely because Sharia demands it.