By Lucretia Hughes Klucken
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, is facing renewed scrutiny over remarks he made while speaking to the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in October 2022.
El-Sayed criticized an Oklahoma ballot measure intended to prohibit state courts from considering Islamic Sharia law and international law in judicial decisions.
“You can’t understand a Sharia ban without understanding the Trail of Tears,” El-Sayed said, according to video of the speech.
He went further, arguing that the “same exact forces” behind the removal of Native Americans, the destruction of Black Wall Street and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing were also behind the attempt to ban Sharia law.
Those comparisons were reckless, inflammatory and deeply offensive.
The Trail of Tears was the forced removal of Native Americans from their ancestral lands. The Tulsa Race Massacre destroyed a thriving Black community and killed an unknown number of people. The Oklahoma City bombing murdered 168 people, including 19 children.
Americans who believe the Constitution should remain the supreme law of the land are not automatically white supremacists, terrorists or supporters of racial violence.
El-Sayed had every right to challenge the language and constitutionality of Oklahoma’s amendment. He did not have the right to smear every American concerned about religious law gaining influence in government by associating them with mass murder and some of the darkest chapters in American history.
The issue requires honesty from both sides.
El-Sayed’s remarks opposing the Oklahoma amendment are not, by themselves, proof that he wants Sharia to replace the Constitution. Criticizing a law that singles out Islam is not the same as demanding an Islamic government.
We should not accuse a candidate of saying something he did not say.
But El-Sayed is now seeking a seat in the United States Senate. Voters have every right to demand a direct answer about where he stands.
Should any portion of Sharia law ever override the Constitution, federal law, state law or the individual rights of an American citizen?
The only acceptable answer is no.
Sharia is a broad term referring to Islamic religious and moral principles. For many Muslim Americans, it guides personal prayer, fasting, charitable giving, diet and family life.
The First Amendment protects those private religious practices just as it protects Christians following biblical teachings and Jewish Americans observing Jewish law.
America does not punish people for their faith.
That same First Amendment also prohibits the government from establishing a religion. No Christian, Jewish, Islamic or other religious authority may become the governing legal authority of the United States.
The Constitution must remain supreme.
No woman in America should ever be forced into a marriage, denied an education, punished for refusing to cover her hair or deprived of equal protection because a religious authority demands it.
No child should be subjected to abuse in the name of religion.
No American should lose freedom of speech, freedom of worship, due process or equal protection because a religious tribunal reaches a different conclusion from an American court.
Those principles apply equally to every religion.
Government cannot impose biblical law, canon law, Jewish law or Islamic law as the civil law of the United States. Americans may voluntarily structure certain private agreements around their religious beliefs, but those agreements remain subject to constitutional protections and applicable American law.
Freedom of religion includes the right to practice a faith. It does not include the authority to use government power to force that faith upon someone else.
Oklahoma voters approved the Save Our State Amendment in 2010. The measure specifically prohibited courts from considering Sharia law and international law.
A federal court blocked it, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld the preliminary injunction in 2012. The court found that the amendment singled out one religion for negative treatment and likely violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
That ruling did not establish Sharia as American law.
It established that government cannot target and officially condemn one religion while treating others differently.
That distinction matters.
A properly written law can protect Americans against the enforcement of any foreign or religious rule that violates constitutional rights, public policy or state and federal law. Such a law should apply equally to every religious and foreign legal system.
The objective should be protecting American constitutional government, not depriving law-abiding Muslim citizens of the same religious liberty enjoyed by Christians and Jews.
I am a Christian, and I will never apologize for my faith. I believe America was founded upon principles deeply influenced by a biblical understanding of liberty, morality and human dignity.
But I do not need the government to force another person to become a Christian. Genuine faith cannot be produced by legislation or coercion.
That is why Americans can defend Christianity, protect Muslim citizens from discrimination and still declare without hesitation that Sharia must never become the law of this nation.
These positions do not contradict one another.
El-Sayed recently won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary and will face Republican Mike Rogers in the general election. If elected, El-Sayed could become the first Muslim member of the U.S. Senate.
His religion should neither automatically qualify nor disqualify him.
His judgment, policies, associations and commitment to the Constitution should determine whether voters entrust him with power.
The same standard should apply to every candidate.
El-Sayed should explain why he compared opposition to Sharia law with the forces behind the Oklahoma City bombing. He should state plainly whether he believes the Constitution and American civil law must always prevail when they conflict with any religious code.
He should also tell voters whether he supports neutral legislation preventing courts from enforcing foreign or religious rules that violate an American’s constitutional rights.
Those are legitimate questions, not religious bigotry.
Candidates for the United States Senate do not get to dismiss difficult questions by attacking the motives of the people asking them.
Americans have the right to worship freely. They also have the right to insist that their government remain bound by the Constitution.
Sharia law must never govern America.
Neither should any other religious legal system replace the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or the equal protection of every American citizen.
One nation cannot remain one nation under two competing systems of law.
In the United States of America, the Constitution must come first.
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