“Sharia-Free America: Why Political Islam & Sharia Law Are Incompatible with the U.S. Constitution”

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The subcommittee will come to order. Without objection the chair is authorized to declare recess at any time. We welcome everyone to today's hearing on Sharia law in America. I will now recognize myself for an opening statement. There's a movement afoot across the United States that seeks to overthrow our legal system and the Constitution to replace it with a foreign legal system that upends our American way of life. It seeks to replace these foundational elements of our constitutional order with Islamic law, known as Sharia. The principles of Sharia are at odds with the Constitution and the laws of the United States. Sharia fails to include due process, treats non-Muslims as second-class citizens, and prescribes barbaric punishments. All the while polygamy, misguided corporal punishment for perceived violations of Islam, and acts of violence and terrorism on behalf of Sharia are permitted by its adherents. Sharia encourages violence, silences dissent, rejects religious freedom, and subjugates women and children. Let's be clear. This is not about having the freedom of worshipping a religion of one's choosing, such as Islam, but forcing a foreign legal code that is incompatible with our laws and legal system that provides unwanted consequences to the American people. It's everything we have fought against for more than 250 years. Thomas Jefferson recognized this problem at the beginning of the 19th century when he confronted Islamists in the Barbary Wars to keep trade lanes open and end Islamic religious slavery. When envoys and future presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson inquired by what right the Islamic Barbary states preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers, America's two foremost envoys were told by Tripoli's ambassador, quote, "It was written in the Quran that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to paradise," end quote. While the rest is history, with American Marines victorious on the shores of Tripoli as their anthem rings, the American people, this Congress, must recognize the same issue our founders identified and defeated over 200 years ago. Islamists are forcing their legal code onto non-believers by violence or the threat of it, by any means necessary. The same problem of radical Islam enforcing Sharia has reared its head in the 21st century. This time using different tactics to advance it across the United States. Some of you might think of Sharia as a 2010s buzzword. That is wrong. Over the last few years, efforts to impose Sharia on American communities have taken off. And nowhere more than in my home state of Texas. In 2024, members of a Plano mosque sought to create their own 402-acre Islamic enclave governed by Sharia within the state of Texas. It was called the East Plano Islamic Center, or EPIC. And thankfully, after advocacy by many in Texas, the Texas state government has currently stymied it from advancing. EPIC's leader, Yasir Qadhi, is a prominent imam with a long history of involving himself in Islamist causes, openly expressing hatred for Jews and support for Holocaust denial ideas. Despite claims Qadhi renounced his earlier extremism and antisemitism, in October 2016, Qadhi offered a defense of the Taliban. And following the October 7th attacks by the terrorist group Hamas, in which over 1,200 Israelis were murdered, Qadhi declared he had, quote, "the luxury of bluntly saying I am not going to condemn the fight of an oppressed people," end quote. However, EPIC is only one example of Sharia taking root in Texas. Shadow Islamic courts have also proliferated. One Dallas tribunal, for example, purports to make final judgments on legal disputes according to Islamic jurisprudence, placing Sharia law above binding state and federal law. Both EPIC cities and Islamic tribunals are repugnant to the spirit of the Constitution, which guarantees religious freedom and confirms that federal law is supreme. We see further evidence of a Sharia movement with imams making concerning claims. For example, in a recent video posted on X this month, a Texas imam said the following: "Hamdani is victory. We didn't succeed to conquer Vienna by the sword for 200 years and now it's 10 percent Muslims. We need to enlarge the Muslim population in America." Sheikh Ustad, an imam from EPIC mosque in Texas, preaches regularly that jihad against the non-Muslims and martyrdom is the highest cause and reward in Islam, and he praises Hamas and other terror groups, espousing the following: quote, "My brothers and sisters, we are going to die anyway. So why don't we aim to die as a shaheed?" Shaheed is Arabic for witness, but used in Islamic context for martyrdom on behalf of Allah. All of this while the Muslim-observing population in Texas has grown. For example, in 2000 there were 115,000 Muslims in Texas. In 2020, the most recent data available, it's estimated 313,000, a 172 percent jump, and it's much greater five years later. One can make the claim that not all devotees agree or enforce with Sharia. But no one can deny the increase of Muslim observers in Texas, many of whom likely harbor support for Sharia's tenets. Moreover, Texas ranks third among U.S. states in the number of mosques, with 224 counted in 2020 and estimated over 300 today. Let's look at immigration numbers from those who immigrate from Muslim-majority countries, many of whom have settled in Texas. Since 2002, after the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks, the United States has issued 4.6 million green cards, or lawful permanent status, to nationals from Muslim-majority nations, allowing them to remain here indefinitely. Some of these countries include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mauritania, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and the list goes on and on. But put another way, there's been a 48 percent increase in green cards to these countries from 2002 to 2023, after 9/11. 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 percent favored Sharia blasphemy law, making it illegal to show a picture or cartoon of Muhammad; 46 percent were in favor to form a Muslim political party; 39 percent supported broad application of Sharia in the United States; 33 percent wanted Islam declared as our national religion. A previous Pew study found 19 percent 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 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 $1.8 billion 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 terrorist finance networks of Hamas, Taliban, or Al-Qaeda," former Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated. Taken together, the U.S. arm of the Doha-based and Qatari state-supported Qatar 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-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 foreign-backed curricula in public education. Here are examples. At the Manara Academy, a public charter school in Irving, Texas, QFI-supported activities have included classroom 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&M University has received over $197 million through the Qatar National Research Fund for research contracts, additional undisclosed funds estimated over $100 million routed through the Texas Engineering Experiment Station. In fact, it was just last year that A&M shuttered its Qatar campus, which was 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 and 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 percent, are based in Texas. One of the major Islamic networks that operate in Texas is the Qubits, which is tied to various Muslim Brotherhood branches and 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 CAIR as a foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organization. And for good reason. CAIR is listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation case, the largest terror financing prosecution in United States history, a case centered in Richardson, Texas. Additionally, Nabil Sadoun, a former Dallas resident and CAIR board member, was deported to Jordan in 2010 and denied reentry after the U.S. government alleged he had lied on naturalization documents when he denied membership with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. These examples underscore CAIR'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 surfaced of 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 non-issue or benign, can any of 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 isn't limited to Texas. It's the entire West. An Islamic cleric from New Jersey said of Muslims overtaking the electoral system, mayors, 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 adherents 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. And with that, I will now recognize the ranking member, Ms. Scanlon, for her opening statement.

Thank you, Chairman Roy, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today. When the chair began his remarks with 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 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 non-believers of 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 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 adherents 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.

...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 discordant 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, including 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 interests 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 mahrs as prenuptial agreements, talaq or 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 interests 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 discordant 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. Moreover, the U.S. 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 discordant foreign law into the United States, multiple efforts have been undertaken, primarily at the state but also the federal level, to address discordant foreign law. By model statute, American Laws for American Courts passed 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 U.S. citizen should be denied the fundamental liberties guaranteed in our Constitution and the Republic. The intrusion of discordant 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.

Thank you, Mr. Gelé, for your testimony. Mr. Spencer, remind you to turn your microphone on and you have five minutes.

Thank you. The U.S. Constitution and Sharia are incompatible, and the conflict between the two legal systems will grow as Sharia adherents increase 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 Halakha for Orthodox Jews, Sharia 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 that Sharia were about, no reasonable person would have any problem with it. CAIR doesn't mention, however, that Sharia is inherently political, supremacist, expansionist and violent. Far from being the Islamophobic conspiracy theories of CAIR's imagining, these are facts that Muslim authorities on Sharia openly attest. Reliance of the Traveller, Umdat as-Salik, is a classic manual of Islamic sacred law, that is Sharia. In 1990, Dr. Taha Jabir al-Alwani, president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought as well as president of the Fiqh Council of North America, stated 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 9:29. This religion-based tax is designed to indicate, as the renowned Islamic scholar Ibn Kathir 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, Muhammad or the Quran, they're liable to be put to death. From all this, it is clear that Sharia is not simply 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 Traveller terms as something impermissible about Allah, the Prophet or Islam, that is blasphemy, is directly at variance with First Amendment freedom of speech protections. The Islamic imperative to establish the hegemony of Sharia as the law of the land, as in today 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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. As 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 4, 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.

Thank you, Mr. Spencer. Appreciate your testimony. Ms. Schild, again remind you to turn your microphone on and you have five minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of Congress. I'm Krista Schild, the Texas state director for RAIR 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-government. On September 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 9/11, we believed 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 terror-tied 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 church bells. Sons who fought these very forces abroad return to find their hometown starting to resemble the Middle East that they risked their lives to defend us against. Texas is ground zero for the Islamic conquest of America. We are deep into a 1,400-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. CAIR 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 billion 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 glorify chopping off hands, killing homosexuals and wife-beating. Aggressive conversion campaigns including terror-tied groups enter public schools without parental consent to distribute Qurans, Sharia pamphlets and hijabs to students. The East Plano Islamic Center, EPIC, rebranded, quote, the Meadows, an enclave led by Imam Yasir Qadhi 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, multi-generational 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.

Thank you, Ms. Schild. And I will now recognize Professor Somin. Again remind you to turn your microphone on and you have five minutes.

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 non-citizen 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 radical Islamist 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 adherents targets Muslims in much the same way as a law targeting adherents of Talmudic law would target Jews or a law targeting adherents of canon law targets Catholics. The Supreme Court has also ruled that the free speech clause protects religious freedom and expression and does this law if enacted would violate the free speech clause as well. And it does not matter that this law addresses non-citizen 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 non-citizens 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 and 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 of a majority, including conservative Christians among others. This law also would 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 Muslims 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 U.S. forces in the war on terror. They do not deserve to be excluded and deported. 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 and others may have awful views on various issues, but mass expulsion and discrimination is not the answer to any problems that might pose. We should instead simply enforce the religious freedom provisions of our Constitution and other relevant laws banning terrorism or violence or the like. In sum, this law is unconstitutional. If enacted, it would cause great harm and therefore this subcommittee would do well to reject it out of hand. Thank you.

Thank you, Professor Somin. We will now proceed under the five-minute rule with questions. Without objection, Mr. Biggs, a member of the Judiciary 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, Mr. Onder, for five minutes.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield my time to Representative Biggs.

Thanks the gentleman. Mr. Biggs.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Onder, for yielding time. So I'm curious, Professor, you familiar with a case called Reynolds v. United States, 1879 case?

I am. I am, yes.

I think you must be because part of your rationale on page six of your statement seems to indicate, seems to 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, right?

[Inaudible.]

I'm looking at page six, your line that says, many aspects of Sharia law govern such issues as prayer, fasting and dietary restrictions applied to religious behaviors. You would say that stuff's okay, protected even under Reynolds, right?

So certainly free exercise of religion includes...

So you would agree that praying, fasting, dietary restrictions, that's A-OK under Reynolds, right?

I do not think Reynolds gives a government a general power to ban prayer, fasting and so on. No, it does not.

That's right, and I agree with that, right? But in that particular case, the court said polygamy is dummy, it is bad, you cannot practice polygamy anymore. You remember that?

I do.

Yeah. And so now I want to go to you, Mr. Gelé, and let's just talk about some of the practices that seem to be broad in 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?

Yes, there's been numerous cases in which child custody judgments from either Islamic countries or even non-Islamic countries that have Sharia courts.

How does that square with Reynolds for that where you have a distinction between religious practices and behavior? And here we have Sharia determining actual child custody issues, totally irrespective of religious practices. How does that square with Reynolds?

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 comity of foreign judgments and the constitutionality of the process by which those foreign courts reach their judgments. There's even a Ninth Circuit case, the Naoko 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 and those judgments are being on many occasions enforced.

Yeah, and they would be inconsistent with American 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, domestic violence is a behavior as opposed to a belief, but in the Sharia system, it seems to be a belief.

Yes, 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.

And so Sharia actually became an institution or a third rail that replaced the British judicial system, at least in that particular case.

Exactly.

And Ms. Schild, ultimately this is, 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 as just, you know, it's how we pray, it's how we call to prayer, it's those types of religious practices, but it actually has massive institutional ramifications. Has it, has it grown in Texas? What did it start out with and how has it been impacted in Texas? And I'm almost out of time, so Mr. Chairman, if she can answer that question.

Yes, Mr. 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.

Ms. Schild, you're going to wrap your answer because we're on overtime, but go ahead and wrap.

Yes. So as RAIR Foundation 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 of 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.

Thank you, Ms. Schild. With that, I'll now recognize the ranking member, Mr. Raskin.

Mr. Roy, thank you very much. And I find something to agree with in what all of the witnesses said. Let me start with Ms. Schild and Mr. 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, you could also find taking place in other communities too. Now Mr. Gelé, am I pronouncing your name right?

Yes, you are. Thank you.

Mr. Gelé. So, and you make a very interesting point to me, but I want to 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 govern 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.

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 rules...

Okay, so I'm going there now. But just, 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 going to use Orthodox Jewish law or Islamic law or Seventh-day Adventist law in order to decide a custody dispute or marriage dispute. We can only use the secular law and it is reversible error if it doesn't. 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?

I'm not saying that. The Maryland courts have said that in the case of Hosain v. Malik, and it's happened in other instances. The problem, Congressman, is that although the law of the states is clear, the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act has overruled traditional concepts of comity and it does not have a high threshold for enforcing those foreign judgments.

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 anything in the 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 Somin, to you, what about the chairman's legislation? Have you looked at that from a constitutional perspective?

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 text, you're an originalist, you're a textualist, you're the Cato Institute, you believe the language of the First Amendment which says Congress shall make no law respecting an... ...establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Therefore, if we said we're not going to allow Sharia followers in the country, we're not going to allow fundamentalist Mormons in the country because they believe in plural marriage too, we're not going to believe anybody who believes in something that's at odds with our beliefs in the country, you're saying that 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 is unconstitutional.

All right, let me 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 in the Maryland 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 schmucks, they're not giving the women the get, but the women can get remarried in secular court if they want to, they just can't do it within the religious courts.

Yes, I agree with you. 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.

Thank you for your patience, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Thank the ranking member. I now recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. McClintock, for five minutes.

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 and 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. 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 those different 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 beliefs. Do any of our panelists disagree with that?

[No response.]

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 disagree with that?

[No response.]

Okay. If someone 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?

Representative, I would not agree with that in the case of child custody, of arbitration of child custody.

Could you explain that a little bit further?

Sure. There's some states allow, and particularly Texas allows the arbitration of child custody. Other states have just banned it, like New York. 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.

Well, if both of the parents agree, I mean this would be a contractual relationship. Both of the parents agree, what's the beef? And again, it's in compliance with the civil law.

Well, if in compliance with the civil law means a judge reviewed it and found it was the best interest of the child, then that I would certainly agree with.

Okay, so 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?

In the case of child custody, the arbitration panels can be doing that. And that could both be through foreign judgments or through arbitration.

Okay. 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?

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.

Well, again, that's the remedy we have for erroneous judicial decisions is 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 Mr. Biggs has left.

I thank the gentleman from California. I would just ask, Mr. Spencer, do you have anything to add to what Mr. McClintock from California was just adding about any of those concerns? You seem to want to. I just want to make sure.

Yeah, the aspects of Sharia that are 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 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.

If I could reclaim my time, 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. Isn't that the way the system works?

Well, I don't think that the freedom of speech is in play when you're talking about active efforts to subvert constitutional order.

Well, when you're debating any political issue, that's the issue. I mean, obviously you cannot...

...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.

Thank you, Mr. Spencer. Thank the gentleman from California. I'll now recognize the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Cohen.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm a little confused about this hearing. I think we all probably agree, I hadn't been here to hear everybody's agreement, but I think we'd 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 put forced on other people. But we've got a Constitution already that's under attack, and the Emoluments Clause is being shredded, and the pardons power is being abused in such a way that it's people question whether we even 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, etc., and it's being used as a transactional event. And we're talking about Sharia law? We've got so much to deal with, Mr. Chairman, with our Constitution and protecting it: the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, what's going on in Minnesota, murdering of citizens 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 was it that the group put forward as their plan for the future, some publication or some ideology. Did you mention that?

I don't know, you might be referring to the explanatory memorandum, which is 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 Allah's religion is victorious over other religions.

Right, that's pretty much the issue. Sir, I've got the floor. Sir, I've got the floor. You're not Pam Bondi. Sorry? I say I've got the floor. You're not Pam Bondi, if you're really... That's what I was getting at. And what you're talking about sounds like a Middle Eastern version of Project 2025, 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 this is not the country that Jefferson would have known, not the country that I've known, not the country that I think our Constitution foresaw, and none of this seems relevant.

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 want to 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 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 a hundred times or something.

Anything about the massacre itself? Anything about the massacre of all the innocent people?

He also quoted Barack Obama, he quoted John F. Kennedy...

Okay, leaving aside the quotations, do you have any thoughts about the massacre of the people?

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 responsible for the Dayton mass murders because the mass murderer invoked her name.

Mr. Chairman, I think Mr. Cohen's time is up. I'd like to enter this New York Times article into the record: 'Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in the U.S.' And I yield back.

Without objection. Thank you, Mr. Cohen. And now recognize the friend, my friend from North Carolina, Mr. Harris.

Thank you, Mr. 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 and we don't know this world or we don't know that world, let me tell you what happened in my world, in the Eighth 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 Sturdivant was his name, is his name, sought to become a martyr for ISIS. Mr. Spencer, I just want to give you a chance to share. Can you help me understand how a kid growing up in a suburb of Charlotte, rural area in North Carolina, can be radicalized by the Islamic State?

Mr. Harris, this is very important issue that law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the U.S. 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 a hundred 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 know this happened in Mint Hill as I mentioned. Can you tell me where else in the United States that such radicalization is happening?

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 on and 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.

And what role is the internet playing, you believe, in the radicalization of American-born youth?

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.

Well, as a pastor 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 onto 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?

It seems to me 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 as 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.

Well, and one thing in just the last 40 seconds that concerns me is the creation of these Islamic tribunals that seek to mediate disputes between Muslims and bind 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 Mr. Gelé, in just the last 15 seconds, would Sharia law-based institutions such as these potentially violate federal law, and if so, how so?

They would probably not violate federal law, that is particularly a statute, but what they would do is in some of their rulings, if 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.

Okay. Thank you, sir. I'm out of time. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

Thank the gentleman from North Carolina. I'll now recognize the ranking member, Ms. Scanlon, for her five minutes of questions.

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 Mr. 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, 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 run 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 for mifepristone and restricting access to contraception. These beliefs seek to reverse LGBTQ+ 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. Impacts on the environment, etc. 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 own religion on others. Professor Somin, can you speak for the benefit of my Republican colleagues, can you explain how the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause and the Free Establishment Clause work together to prohibit the government from imposing one group of Americans' religious views on another?

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 v. 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 Maine did so, in Carson, the Supreme Court in a 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 they're adherents of Sharia law. I think this jurisprudence, which conservatives accept almost everywhere else, applies here as well.

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 non-citizens simply because of their religious views?

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 non-citizens on our territory no less than to citizens. And thus courts several times over the last year have ruled against the Trump administration's campaign of speech-based deportations, and rightly so.

And I would just yield 25 seconds to Mr. Raskin.

I actually have a UC request, Mr. Chairman, if that's okay. Sure. And this is 18 U.S. Code 116, Section C, and this is banning female genital mutilation in America. And it says it shall not be a defense to a 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.

Without objection. I will now recognize my colleague and friend, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Gill.

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 of the time from my constituents in North Texas who are concerned about the rise of radical Islam in Texas. And I want to thank the witnesses for being here as well. I've got a few questions and I want to start with you, Mr. Somin. Can you tell me what percentage of U.S. Muslims believe that Sharia law should be implemented in the United States?

So I am not aware of survey data on that specific question. However...

Well, I can tell you it's 39 percent. 39 percent 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?

Again, I'm not familiar with survey data on that particular question.

The number is 46 percent. 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 the wording and the sample, and I would want to see those details of methodology.

50 percent. 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 questions, and see if there's any problems.

33 percent. This is from a survey conducted by the Heritage Foundation in 2024, in September of 2024. It was published on October 6, 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?

I don't know that one either, but if it's from a survey by the Heritage Foundation, they are known for their bad methodology.

It's 43 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 going to 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?

Once again, I would refer you back to my previous answer.

57 percent. Do those facts concern you?

Again, I would want to see the nature of the survey and I would also know the Heritage...

No, I'm just asking if those statistics concern you.

If they were accurate, they would be a matter of concern, but I would want to see...

They are accurate and I think that they are a matter of concern and I think most Americans agree with me there. Mr. Spencer, I'm going to move on to you. Let me ask you, is Islam as a political ideology in your opinion compatible with America's constitutional governing framework?

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 U.S. law in numerous other particulars.

And can you tell me, what is the goal of political Islam?

Well, Muhammad the Prophet of Islam said Islam must dominate and not be dominated. And in every Sharia state that is in 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 Muhammad, which the Quran says that they will suffer.

Under Islamic law as it's commonly practiced, are men and women treated with equal dignity?

No, certainly not. I quoted before the passage about beating women from whom you fear disobedience. The Quran contains nothing about beating disobedient men.

Ms. Schild, I've got a few questions for you. Can you explain to us very, very briefly, what is Epic City?

Oh, yes. Do you mind turning your microphone on? Sorry. Yeah, so to understand how Sharia relates to Epic City, you don't have to look any further than Imam Yasir Qadhi of Epic. He's the chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America, the group that tells Muslims in the U.S. how to apply Sharia.

And do you know who's funding Epic City?

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 is not in isolation.

Thank you, and my time is up, so I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The ranking member.

Thank you. I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record an article published by the Cato Institute on October 26, 2025, written by Mustafa Akyol, titled 'No, Sharia Law Is Coming to Texas.' Without objection. I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record an article published by Politico on January 26, 2026, written by Liz Crampton and Jessica Piper, titled 'Republicans Go All In on Sharia Law Attacks Ahead of Texas Primary.' Without objection. I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record an article written by J. David... ...Goodman, published in the New York Times on February 10, 2026, Without a Border Invasion, Texas GOP Turns to an Old Enemy: Islam.

Without objection.

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, too, I've got one too.

Ranking Member.

This is from the Pew Research Center: 45 percent of Americans say the United States should be a Christian nation.

Without objection. I'll now recognize myself for such time as I shall consume. Ms. Schild, let me ask you a quick question, and just try to go through these pretty quickly, right? Just a few things in the with respect to Texas, my friend Mr. Gill was just talking about. Is it true that not just in Austin, including there's a big center in West Campus at the University of Texas, including other places, in other words, it's not just located just in big cities, is that correct?

That's correct. All over.

So are there I'm also talked to a number of people, particularly in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, women in particular, who will tell me that there are enclaves and 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, they that there are now quote no-go zones in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Is that correct?

That's correct.

And I've heard that from multiple people in multiple places throughout that area, correct?

Correct.

And Mr. Spencer, I'm and I'd look to you on on this question here. I heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who were raising objection to legislation that 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 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 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?

It would seem as if they're aware of that, yes.

And is that true? Is Sharia law central to most Muslims throughout the world?

Absolutely. Sharia is considered divine law, and thus it takes precedence over all other legal systems. In areas of the Muslim world where it is not fully implemented, such as Egypt or Syria or 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.

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?

Yes, that's right. There are 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation: 56 nations and the Palestinian Authority.

Is it also not true that when 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?

Oh, there's no doubt whatsoever. You have, for example, Prince Al-Waleed 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 Al-Waleed 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. Also have the government of Qatar doing the same thing on an even larger scale.

In addition to these these countries, in addition to foreign funding, there are organizations such as CAIR 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?

Oh, certainly. Omar Ahmad, the co-founder of CAIR, 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 by 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. And this is something that is clear from all of CAIR's actions.

And is would it be safe to say that the goal of those organizations and the Muslim Brotherhood, as my friend Mr. Gill 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?

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.

One last question, I'm over my time, then I'll recognize the gentlelady 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 Muhammad and Islam, as much a Christian might want to advance the mission of Christ, but that it is political in ideology and in effect?

There's no doubt whatsoever. This is all about political power. Nihad 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.

I thank the gentleman. I'll now recognize the gentlelady from Wyoming.

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 that 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, and the decision was upheld by the Vienna Regional Court for Civil Matters. The 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 Mr. Gelé, I'd like to turn to you. Across parts of Europe and more limited contexts 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?

Across Europe, I can't speak to as well. Across the United States, they've existed for at least several decades. Certainly, the number of cases that they've been handling appears to be increasing, and that increasing appears to be accelerating. One of the difficulties in monitoring this is that typically only appellate court decisions are reported. So you would only truly find out about it if there was an arbitration, if the arbitration award was then challenged in a district court, sometimes those reported, but normally it'd only be reported if the appeal then went up to an appellate court. So it's very hard 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?

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, they would 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 within American law, so you wouldn't have, for example, a court reporter recording everything down, 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 systems.

Well, and I think that that's 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. Mr. Gelé, 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?

Yes, those risks are quite significant. They've manifested themselves in the few appellate cases we've 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 or other child matters for visitation, they'd look at the best interest of the child. Currently in many states, Texas particularly being one, those safeguards do not exist.

So why are women and minors more at risk in a Sharia-based tribunal system?

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 an analysis of the best interest of the child. Normally custody is based depending 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.

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?

Yes, it's almost guaranteed, particularly on the equal protection side.

Thank you, and I yield back.

Thank you, Mr. Gelé. I thank the gentlelady from Wyoming, and I'll now recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin for five minutes.

Thank you. First of all, I want to respond to something that was said earlier. Every weekend I get home and I meet, you know, different people around my district, maybe attend Republican Party events, maybe church groups and their fundraisers, American Legions, Lions Clubs, Rotary Clubs, and just random people when I sometimes just go door to door. I have yet to find one person who is a self-avowed or even an un-self-avowed Christian nationalist. I've 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 want to 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, Mr. Spencer, you were cut off before. I'm going to give you just a few minutes. Is there anything you wanted to say that weren't able to say when you were cut off?

To be honest with you, I don't remember when the last time I was cut off was, so...

Okay. I am from Wisconsin, and in Wisconsin we have a a military base called Fort McCoy. And there are 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 of a minor and 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 did the Biden administration bring to the U.S.?

Oh, I believe it was about 85,000.

I'll help you. My my cheat sheet here says 200,000.

Okay. 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 Mayorkas 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 in microcosm of the dangers of bringing over Sharia-adherent Muslims. They are adherents of a legal system and a 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.

Okay. This did have serious and tragic consequences, didn't it, by not vetting these folks?

Absolutely. Well, that's one example is the the Afghans who were arrested at Fort McCoy, but there's also the fact that ISIS as well as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are quite active in Afghanistan. So you bring over a lot of Afghans without any vetting, you're bringing over almost certainly ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and Taliban operatives who believe that they have a responsibility before Allah to wage Jihad in the infidel land. And that's going to be something we're going to be seeing the consequences of for years to come.

Okay. What can Congress do to strengthen laws to to prevent this type of mass importation of unvetted aliens?

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.

Okay. Anyone of the three of you on the right side of me, are we right now actively tracking instances of Sharia law and the patterns of places where it's most prevalent? If I Google it, am I going to find something on that?

To my knowledge, the United States government is not doing that whatsoever. The Center for Security Policy attempted that a couple of decades ago, basically looking through Louisiana appellate cases. They were able to find dozens upon dozens. I've been trying to monitor it. It is very difficult to monitor because most 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.

The gentleman's over his time. Did the other two want to quickly answer that question since he addressed all three of you? But just quickly, do you know anything additional to add?

That's exactly what I was going to say, that the U.S. government's not doing this.

I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Thanks. They might end up getting results they don't want.

Exactly.

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 for the witnesses or additional materials for the record. Without objection, this hearing is adjourned. [Gavel sounds.]