The Muslims Are Coming
According to an increasing number of Republican politicians, Islam is one of the greatest threats to the United States.
Vice President JD Vance recently called Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is Muslim, “very, very evil” and accused him of defending terrorism. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has spent much of the past year warning about Sharia law and alleged Sharia courts. Senator Tommy Tuberville warned that with radical Islam, “the enemy is inside the gates.” There is now a thirty-three-member Sharia-Free America Caucus in the House of Representatives.
Then there is Zohran Mamdani, the first Muslim mayor of New York City, whose faith has been treated by some opponents as evidence of something sinister.
This isn’t merely a disagreement with Islam. Hell, I disagree with it.
I disagree with Christianity, too. And with Judaism. And with Scientology. At the moment, I’m not particularly convinced by any religion. Disagreement is allowed. Criticism is allowed. Religions contain ideas, and ideas don’t receive immunity from criticism merely because somebody considers them sacred.
The argument the Republicans and others are engaging in here is something else.
The argument is that Muslims pose a particular threat to American freedom because, given enough political power, they will eventually impose Islamic law on the rest of us. What begins with Muslim candidates winning elections supposedly ends with Sharia replacing the Constitution.
That’s the claim. Rather than dismissing it as the rank bigotry some would see it as, let’s take it seriously. Would there be evidence that Islam is a threat in America?
Islamic Extremism is Real
Before going further, one thing needs to be made clear:
Islamic extremism is real.
I am writing this during the week of the 25th anniversary of September 11. Pretending that violent Islamic fundamentalism doesn’t exist would require a rather creative relationship with recent history and reality.
More importantly, I find certain forms of Islamic political theology profoundly oppressive. But Islam is not Islamism. Islamism is not Salafism. Salafism is not Salafi-jihadism.
Salafism is broadly an effort to recover what its adherents understand to be the beliefs and practices of Islam’s earliest generations. Salafis themselves differ significantly on politics. Many are political quietists. Some participate in electoral politics. A minority belong to the Salafi-jihadi tradition associated with organizations such as al-Qaeda and ISIS.
Salafi-jihadism is incompatible with pluralistic democracy. In his recent Salafi Political Theology, Daniel Lav describes the radical Salafi-jihadi school as committed to a form of theonomy in which God’s law holds ultimate political authority. Parliamentary democracy and human legislation are rejected as illegitimate because human beings have presumed to legislate where God should rule.
I, of course, oppose that, as I’m sure most Americans would.
But I don’t oppose it because its adherents pray toward Mecca. I don’t oppose it because they read the Quran. I don’t even oppose it merely because they hold religious beliefs I think are wrong. I oppose it because it rejects pluralism. It takes one group’s theological conclusions and gives them authority over everyone else, including those who reject theology altogether.
That’s my standard, and it isn’t one I reserve for Muslims.
If a group of atheists gained political power tomorrow and tried to ban religious worship, outlaw churches, prohibit parents from teaching their children religion, and force everyone to live by their secular philosophy, I would oppose them as well.
The problem isn’t which religion or ideology wins. The problem is believing that somebody has to win.
So, having established the threat we’re supposedly worried about, let’s look at the people we’ve been warned about.
The Data Don’t Lie
In 2019, the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding asked American Muslims and white evangelical Protestants the same set of questions.
Respondents were asked whether their religion should be a primary source of American law, a source but not the sole source, or not a source of American law.
Among American Muslims, 12% said Islam should be the primary source of American law. Among white evangelical Protestants, 17% said Christianity should. Nothing major. 33% of Muslims said their religion should be a source of American law, but not the sole source.
And white evangelical Protestants?
54%.
Add the two categories together. 45% of Muslims wanted Islam to play some role in American law. Among white evangelical Protestants, the figure is 71%.
But the last statistic is the most interesting: 51% of American Muslims said their religion should not be a source of American law. Only 27% of white evangelical Protestants said the same about Christianity.
This survey is 7 years old, and I’m not going to pretend that a 2019 poll gives us a precise measure of Muslim attitudes in 2026.
But we do have newer data showing where white evangelical Protestants stand today.
This year, Pew asked Americans how much influence the Bible should have on American law. 85% of white evangelical Protestants said the Bible should have either a great deal or some influence. Then Pew asked a really interesting question. What happens when a biblical teaching conflicts with the will of the American people?
62% of white evangelical Protestants said the Bible should take precedence over the will of the people.
One central argument against Islamic political theology is that it subordinates democratic government to divine authority.
What exactly were we measuring when we call one of these an existential threat to American democracy while treating the other as ordinary religious conservatism?
That stands in striking contrast to how most American Muslims have described the relationship between their religion and democracy!
In a 2017 Pew survey, 65% of American Muslims said they saw no inherent conflict between Islam and democracy. That means a majority of Muslims see no issue with participating in democratic norms.
That said, 30% isn’t nothing.
There are American Muslims with illiberal views on religion and government. There are Muslim fundamentalists. There are Muslims who would almost certainly prefer a society far more religiously conservative than the one I want to live in.
Of course there are. Muslims are people. They’re going to include conservatives, liberals, fundamentalists, reformers, assholes, saints, hypocrites, scholars, idiots, and everything in between, just like every other population on Earth.
But that’s quite different from evidence that American Muslims are secretly waiting until they have enough political power to destroy America.
And when we move from the abstract questions about religion and government to specific civil liberties, things become more interesting.
Consider abortion. According to PRRI’s 2025 American Values Atlas, 54% of American Muslims believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with 27% among white evangelical Protestants.
If the great fear is that Muslims will take their religious morality and use the government to force everyone else to live by it, this is an odd place to find the evidence.
But let’s complicate this. Let’s look at LGBTQ comparisons. This is worth discussing because I don’t want to “noble-savage” Islam or pretend it’s secretly Unitarian progressive.
On same-sex marriage, Muslims and white evangelical Protestants are equally conservative, with exactly 37% supporting it. That’s bad.
But notice what happens when the question shifts from personal approval to the rights of people who don’t share those religious beliefs.
57% of Muslims support laws that protect LGBTQ Americans from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations. To be fair, 54% of white evangelical Protestants also support such laws.
Where they differ is whether businesses should be allowed to refuse services to gay and lesbian people because providing those services would violate the owner’s religious beliefs.
58% of Muslims oppose permitting that refusal.
Among white evangelical Protestants?
31%.
And that’s where the distinction matters. Someone can believe homosexuality is sinful while also believing that gay people don’t have to obey their religion. That’s not secularism. It’s pluralism.
On this question, American Muslims appear considerably more willing than white evangelical Protestants to make that distinction.
The Problem Was Never Muslims
None of this means white evangelical Protestants are jihadists. They aren’t.
Calling them jihadists would collapse completely different theological traditions, political movements, and relationships with violence into a single emotionally satisfying insult. It would also be disrespectful to Muslims who have spent decades fighting actual jihadist movements and to Christians who have fought authoritarian forms of their own religion.
However, the comparison reveals something else.
We’ve been using the wrong categories. There are pluralistic Muslims and anti-pluralist Muslims. There are pluralistic Christians and anti-pluralist Christians. There are probably atheists who would happily protect your right to attend church, and others who, given sufficient authority, would make us all read Richard Dawkins.
People are complicated.
But when we compare American Muslims with white evangelical Protestants, the available data does not support treating Muslims as a uniquely anti-democratic religious problem.
On several of the questions most directly related to religious authority and civil law, the opposite appears to be true.
American Muslims make up only about 1.6% of the population. Yet we’re being warned that this tiny minority is going to capture the government, impose religious law, and take away our freedom, while one of the country’s most politically powerful religious movements openly tells pollsters that the Bible should influence American law—and that biblical teaching should prevail when it conflicts with the will of the people.
That raises an obvious issue: If you believe Muslims should not impose Islamic theology on me, I agree with you. Now tell me why I should be governed by yours.
The Alternative
I increasingly think the answer to all of this is pluralism. Pluralism isn’t the demand that religious people become secular. It doesn’t require Christians to stop believing that Jesus is Lord. It doesn’t require Muslims to stop believing that Muhammad is God’s prophet. It doesn’t require Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, or anyone to water down their beliefs until every religion becomes a slightly different version of Live, Laugh, Love.
Pluralism isn’t going to demand that you put a cringe-worthy “Coexist” bumper sticker on your car.
You have the right to believe things I find ridiculous. You have the right to believe things I find offensive. You have the right to believe things I find immoral or even horrifying.
And so do I.
That freedom becomes meaningful only when we extend it to people whose beliefs we dislike. Pluralism requires something both simple and incredibly difficult: accepting that our neighbors have the same freedom of conscience we demand for ourselves.
A Christian can believe that homosexual relationships are sinful without getting to decide whether two gay adults can marry. A Muslim can believe that alcohol is forbidden without getting to decide if I can drink. I can believe that both religions are wrong without getting to decide whether Christians may take communion or Muslims may attend a mosque.
We don’t have to agree. That’s the point.
Salafi-jihadi ideology violates that principle because it gives one interpretation of Islam authority over everyone. Christian nationalism violates it for exactly the same reason.
Neither becomes acceptable because we change the name of the God being invoked. Perhaps that’s what bothers me most about the current panic over Muslims in America. I am perfectly willing to have a conversation about religious extremism. I think we should. But let’s actually have that conversation.
Let’s oppose theocracy because it’s theocracy. Let’s oppose religious authoritarianism because it’s authoritarian. Let’s defend Muslims’ right to practice Islam, Christians’ right to practice Christianity, and my right to look at both and reject them.
The Constitution isn’t threatened only when theology becomes Arabic vocabulary.
The threat is theocracy.
The answer is pluralism.