At a campaign rally, in Port Huron, Michigan, on Oct. 25, 2026, President Donald Trump accused U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed of being a “jihadist” who wants to impose Sharia law – Islamic law – in the United States. His comments reflect a broader pattern among Republican politicians of portraying Sharia as a threat to the American legal system.

In March 2026, Texas legislators launched the Sharia Free Texas Caucus, a group dedicated to preventing what its members describe as the spread of Islamic law in Texas. Its founder, state Rep. Brent Money, has characterized Sharia as “an entire civilizational legal structure” that threatens American law and institutions. That same month, nearly 95% of Texas Republican primary voters backed a nonbinding proposition declaring that “Texas should prohibit Sharia Law.” The movement extends beyond Texas. In Congress, the Sharia Free America Caucus, established in December 2025, grew to 68 Republican lawmakers from 25 states in just six months.

These efforts reflect a long-standing claim, frequently invoked by anti-Sharia activists, that Muslims are seeking to establish a parallel legal system that will eventually replace American law.

But this rhetoric raises a more basic question: What exactly is Sharia, and what does it actually mean for Muslims to follow it while living in the United States?

I am a law professor who studies religious liberty. My 2019 book, “When Islam Is Not a Religion,” examined how ordinary Muslim religious practices come to be treated as political threats, and I recently documented that pattern in Texas. The Sharia controversy shows how this happens.

Sharia is not a single legal code

In Arabic, “sharia” means a path or way, literally “the path to a watering place.” For Muslims, it refers to the divinely ordained way of living a moral and religious life, guided by the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.

Sharia guides Muslims how to pray, when to fast, what to eat and how much to give to charity. It also addresses marriage and divorce. These rules span what Americans would sort into law, ethics, manners and worship, as law professor and an authority on Islamic law Asifa Quraishi-Landes has explained.

This distinction matters because Americans often think of law as something established and enforced by the state. Sharia is broader than that. A Muslim who avoids pork or prays five times a day may see each practice as part of following Sharia, but neither requires a separate legal court or government enforcement.

Rules governing marriage, divorce and inheritance, by contrast, may have legal consequences, though how they are interpreted and applied varies across Islamic traditions. Indeed, as Quraishi-Landes notes, Sharia itself obliges Muslims to follow the law of the land wherever they live.

Who decides what Sharia requires?

Muslims do not all agree on how Sharia should be interpreted. They distinguish between Sharia, which they regard as the divine ideal, and “fiqh,” the human effort to understand and apply it. In other words, Muslims believe Sharia comes from God, but people must figure out what it requires in practice. Because people can disagree, interpretations can differ and change over time.

Sunni Islam’s four major schools and Shiite Islam’s legal traditions sometimes reach different conclusions about matters such as marriage, divorce and financial transactions.

For example, scholars differ on whether Muslims can take out conventional mortgages to buy homes, given Islamic prohibitions on interest, and on the conditions under which a marriage can be dissolved. They continue to debate newer questions, too, such as whether organ donation is permissible or how modern banking can comply with Islamic principles.

No single institution speaks for all Muslims. Yet political debates often treat Sharia as a fixed rule book, when much of the Islamic legal tradition consists of ongoing disagreements about what its rules mean and how they should apply.

How does Sharia work in the US?

Muslims are subject to the same laws as everyone else in the United States. Their religious commitments may guide personal decisions about marriage, divorce, finances and everyday conduct, but Sharia has no independent legal authority. Muslims can follow religious rules voluntarily, but those rules cannot override American law.

This is not unique to Islam. Religious communities across the country have long used their own procedures to resolve disputes. For example, many Orthodox Jewish couples sign prenuptial agreements committing them to appear before a Jewish religious court, known as a beth din, if their marriage breaks down. The court can then help facilitate a religious divorce, including addressing situations in which a husband refuses to grant his wife a religious divorce. Christian organizations likewise offer biblical mediation and arbitration to resolve conflicts according to religious principles.

Muslims can similarly turn to religious scholars or mediators for guidance on family or financial disputes. These arrangements are generally voluntary, and any legally enforceable agreement must comply with American law.

A religious ruling does not become binding simply because a religious authority issues it. Like other religious communities, Muslims may organize aspects of their personal lives around their faith, but they do so within the framework of American law.

Can American courts enforce Sharia?

Critics often claim Sharia is gaining a foothold in the courts. The concern usually arises when Muslims ask a court to recognize a religious contract or arbitration.

Consider an Islamic marriage contract promising the wife a marriage gift, known as “mahr,” some or all of which may be payable if the couple divorces. A court asked to enforce it does not decide what Islamic theology requires. It asks whether the agreement meets ordinary contract law. In 2020, a Maryland appeals court held that a “mahr” could be enforced only under the same secular standards that apply to any agreement between spouses. In other words, the court’s job is to determine whether the couple’s agreement is legally enforceable, just as it would with any other contract. It is not enforcing Islamic religious law.

Courts may apply what the Supreme Court calls “neutral principles of law.” That simply means applying ordinary legal rules without deciding religious questions. A judge can determine whether two people entered into a valid contract, for example, but cannot decide which interpretation of Islam is religiously correct. As law professor Haider Ala Hamoudi has observed, courts can enforce a “mahr” agreement precisely because doing so does not require them to interpret Islamic law.

Arbitration works the same way. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has called Islamic panels “Sharia tribunals masquerading as legal courts.” Yet the Beth Din of America also structures its proceedings so civil courts can enforce its rulings, as do Christian arbitrators.

Courts can enforce voluntary arbitration awards and can also vacate them for fraud or overreach. For example, suppose a Muslim couple voluntarily agree to have a religious arbitrator resolve a financial dispute. If the arbitrator orders one spouse to pay the other US$10,000, a court may enforce that decision just as it would any other arbitration award. But if one spouse was coerced into participating or the arbitrator exceeded the authority the couple had agreed to give them, a court could set the decision aside.

A religious arbitrator cannot override a statute or the Constitution.

Why is Sharia so controversial?

Some concerns stem from how certain governments enforce Islamic law. In Iran, U.N. investigators have documented escalating violence against women accused of violating hijab rules. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have issued more than 100 decrees targeting women and girls.

These policies raise serious questions about religious coercion, gender equality and freedom of conscience. Muslim scholars and reformers have long debated those questions themselves. One example is Musawah, an international movement founded in Malaysia in 2009 that advocates equality and justice in Muslim family laws. Working with scholars and activists across the world, it argues that Islamic teachings can support women’s rights and challenges discriminatory interpretations of religious law.

American debates often collapse these issues into one question: whether Sharia itself is compatible with American law. That framing obscures a crucial distinction. A government imposing religious rules on unwilling citizens is doing something fundamentally different from an individual choosing to follow them. A Muslim woman who wears a hijab is not asking the government to mandate religious dress.

The American campaign against Sharia

Between 2010 and 2012, lawmakers in at least 32 states introduced bills to keep courts from applying Sharia or foreign law.

In 2010, Oklahoma voters approved a constitutional amendment barring courts from considering Sharia. A federal appeals court upheld an injunction against the amendment, finding that it likely violated the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom by singling out Islam for unfavorable treatment. In 2013, a federal judge struck it down permanently.

Other states adopted broader bans on the use of foreign law. Supporters say these measures protect women’s rights. Critics argue that they address a problem American law already guards against: Courts cannot enforce agreements that violate fundamental legal protections.

For example, a court can reject an agreement obtained through coercion or fraud, or one that violates a person’s constitutional rights or other applicable laws. Those protections apply regardless of whether an agreement is based on religious principles.

The effort has now reached Congress: In June 2026, U.S. Rep. Keith Self of Texas introduced a bill to bar federal courts from enforcing foreign or religious laws that conflict with the Constitution. But courts already cannot enforce agreements that violate the Constitution or other applicable laws. The proposed restriction thus raises a basic question: What additional protection would it provide?

The central point is that American law already provides safeguards against religious rules being imposed through the courts. Muslims, like members of other faiths, can organize their personal lives around their religious beliefs. But those beliefs do not carry independent legal authority, and courts cannot enforce them in ways that violate applicable American law.

The debate over Sharia is not just about religious law. It is also about whether Americans are willing to extend the same understanding of religious freedom to Muslims that they extend to other faiths.

Asma Uddin receives funding from the Fetzer Institute and the Lilly Endowment for her scholarly research. She is affiliated with the Institute for Humane Studies and the Aspen Institute.

By Asma Uddin, Assistant Professor of Law, Michigan State University; Institute for Humane Studies. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.