Complete published contentImported from the organization’s visible public page and placed into the redesigned reading experience.
As a country, we’ve drifted from our founding ideas. That makes it harder to recognize — and push back against — doctrines that clash with them. When that happens, we risk our peace, prosperity, and even the basic framework of our nation. With that in mind, it’s worth looking again at America’s first principles and why they conflict with the political, military, and legal system known as shariah.
The Founding Documents
America’s core beliefs are set out in the Declaration of Independence: all people are created equal, with rights given by their Creator. Government exists to secure those rights, and its power comes from the consent of the governed. The Constitution follows through on that promise: “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
Crucially, “We the People” created the Constitution. The people, acting together, chose a system designed to protect natural rights and personal liberty. That system rests on both reason and faith, without letting government dictate religious truth or letting religion dictate civil law. It’s a framework built to let reason and revelation coexist without either ruling the other.
Separation of Church and State
Our separation of church and state reflects that balance. It’s not hostility to faith; it’s a safeguard for both faith and freedom. Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty expressed the idea plainly: God created the mind free, and attempts to control belief by force only produce hypocrisy and harm. In practice, this means the state doesn’t coerce belief, and religious authority doesn’t control the state.
Tolerance in America Versus the Quran
American liberty depends on mutual tolerance — but it was never meant to tolerate totalitarian systems that aim to suppress basic rights. Shariah, taken as a comprehensive political-legal program, presents itself as a system to govern all aspects of life under divine rule. By that standard, the mind is not free; it is bound to a legal code claimed to be God’s will. That starting point clashes with the American premise that individuals possess natural rights the government must protect.
Intolerance towards Apostates
One sharp conflict concerns apostasy. Core texts cited for shariah include commands to kill those who leave the faith. Such rules cannot be squared with the Constitution’s protections for life, liberty, due process, and free conscience. And this is just one example; many features of shariah’s legal program are at odds with constitutional limits and guarantees.
Professionally, anyone responsible for national security or public office should understand opposing doctrines. If a doctrine is incompatible with the Constitution, officials sworn to uphold that Constitution must recognize and defend against it.
The Founders and Islam
America’s earliest leaders grasped these issues. When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams dealt with North African states demanding tribute, they asked why war was justified against nations that had done no harm. The answer they received referenced religious law and a duty to fight non-submitting nations. Jefferson studied the Quran to understand the claims driving that policy and resolved that America would pay for defense, not tribute.
John Quincy Adams later wrote at length about enduring institutions within Islamic law, including concepts of jihad and subordinate status for conquered peoples. His point was not to inflame, but to make clear that systems built on religious supremacy and perpetual struggle stand in deep tension with a constitutional order built on equal rights, consent, and limited government.
In short, the problem isn’t a “radical” offshoot set against a benign mainstream. The conflict arises wherever shariah is advanced as a supreme political-legal code. That puts it on a collision course with the Constitution.
This has practical consequences. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. No competing legal code can be slipped into our system — openly or quietly — without violating that principle. Those who would impose a foreign legal code in place of the Constitution cannot honestly swear an oath to support and defend it. And advocating violent or subversive action to replace our constitutional government is a matter for criminal law.
America’s tradition is generous and welcoming — on a reciprocal basis. We should not let buzzwords like “diversity” or “inclusion” be turned into tools to undermine the liberties that make diversity and inclusion possible in the first place. In the past, we didn’t pretend Nazi ideology fit alongside American principles. We recognized the contradiction and acted accordingly. We should be just as clear-eyed today.
The key texts that define shariah’s claims are readily available in English. There’s no excuse for public leaders to be ignorant of doctrines promoted by shariah-adherent organizations or by violent groups alike. Given shariah’s intolerance toward dissenters and disfavored groups, and its claim to legal supremacy, the conclusion is straightforward: shariah as a political-legal program is incompatible with the United States Constitution.
