Defend Constitution, Expose Sharia’s Challenge To American Law

The country still treats the 9/11 attacks like something that simply happened to us, not as the opening shot in a clash of rival legal visions; this piece argues that the threat was and remains a political project rooted in Sharia, explains how key Sharia rules collide with the Constitution, and insists we stop pretending this is only a matter of faith when its public law version demands supremacy over our rights.

Twenty-five years after nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered in the name of a religiously framed legal order, too many official rituals reduce that day to grief without a verdict. Silence and memorials are fine for mourning, but they become dangerous if they are substitutes for naming the legal-political claim that motivated the killers. The hijackers and their sponsors invoked scripture and jurisprudence, not social grievance, and that distinction matters.

Sharia is not merely private devotion or protected worship; it is a full civil code that, in classical interpretation, sits above any constitution. The American founding is anchored in a competing claim: governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed and rights are secured by limited civil authority. Our Constitution is explicit that it is the supreme law of the land and it leaves no room for a foreign legal system to veto its text.

Classical Islamic jurisprudence begins with revelation and discovery of preexisting divine commands rather than with popular consent or competition of opinions. When a legislature contradicts those commands, jurists view it as rebellion, not legitimate lawmaking. This is the structural problem, not a narrow extremist misreading.

American jurists and lawmakers have recognized the contrast. Justice Robert Jackson called Islamic law “a study in dramatic contrast,” and said that “in its source, its scope, and its sanctions, the law of the Middle East is the antithesis of Western law.” That comparative judgment is about legal systems, not about individual believers sitting in a mosque.

One of the clearest fault lines is apostasy. The hadith states plainly, “Whoever changes his religion, kill him.” Classical schools treated apostasy as a capital offense, sometimes permitting a delay for repentance but recognizing a severe state penalty as the norm. A legal regime that criminalizes exit from belief cannot coexist with First Amendment freedoms.

Blasphemy and speech restrictions follow the same logic. Major traditional manuals treat insult to Allah, the Prophet, or Islam as a matter that can trigger the gravest punishment. Laws that threaten death or imprisonment for speech are incompatible with a republic that protects even offensive expression from state punishment.

Sharia also ranks people by creed and sex in ways the Fourteenth Amendment forbids. Quran 2:282 and Quran 4:11 are examples cited by jurists to justify unequal testimony and inheritance rules. Polygyny, differential exit options for spouses, and instructions that allow domestic discipline are at odds with constitutional equal protection and modern criminal law.

The status of nonbelievers in classical doctrine is likewise different. Quran 9:29 has been read as commanding pressure on non-Muslims until they accept a subordinate status and pay jizya. A political order that institutionalizes different civic statuses for people based on faith cannot stand under American constitutional principles.

Punishments fixed by jurists for hudud offenses are especially problematic for an American legal system. Amputation for theft, lashing, stoning for unlawful sex, and capital penalties for certain religious crimes run straight into the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Rare or high evidentiary bars do not erase the constitutional problem of the penalties themselves.

Due process issues compound the clash. Classical evidentiary rules that exclude unbelievers or discount women and allow qisas bargain settlements substitute clan justice for impartial juries, counsel, and confrontation rights guaranteed by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. A parallel judiciary that enforces gender or creed disabilities is not the private conscience the First Amendment protects.

This is not about outlawing personal worship. A Muslim who prays, fasts, gives alms, and obeys conscience is exercising protected liberty. The line is crossed when a religious code seeks to impose a legal status that strips others of speech, exit, equality, or due process, or claims jurisdiction above Article VI.

Political movements that use civil liberties as a cover for expanding a rival constitutional order deserve scrutiny. Political Islam, as a project, aims to use Western freedoms to transform them into instruments that end those freedoms. Organizations that blur worship and statehood make it harder to defend both religious liberty and constitutional supremacy.

We built a powerful counterterror apparatus after 9/11 and it made us safer at stopping attacks. But security tools are only part of the answer; we must also name the legal order driving the political violence. A free society can host believers of all kinds, but it cannot host a rival constitution. Article VI already decided which law comes first.

“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” That biblical injunction echoes the constitutional claim: do not let a foreign legal order displace the liberties and laws that define this republic. The attackers told us which law they intended to impose; believing them is the practical step toward preventing a repeat.