Additional Testimony Against the Proposed “Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act”

I recently submitted additional written testimony for the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government. It is a supplement to my original written and oral testimony against the “Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act,” which would bar virtually all immigration by Muslims, and require deportation of non-citizen Muslims currently in the United States.

My initial testimony explained why the proposed law violates the Free Exercise and Free Speech clauses of the First Amendment, and why – if enacted and upheld by the courts – it would set a dangerous precedent threatening religious liberty for a variety of groups, cause great harm to many thousands of innocent people, and damage US national security by giving a propaganda victory to radical Islamist terrorists. The other witnesses’ written testimony is available here.

The additional testimony is in response to a question from Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, ranking minority member of the Subcommittee, inviting me to comment on any issues I was not able to adequately address during the February 10 hearing.

Here is a brief summary of the additional testimony:

I would like to focus this additional testimony on the 2024 survey of American Muslims
commissioned by the Heritage Foundation, raised in the hearing by Representative Brandon Gill (R-Texas). Rep. Gill mentioned several items from that survey in queries directed at me, but did not give me any meaningful opportunity to respond. I tried to point out that Heritage is a highly questionable source, and that survey questions must be carefully analyzed, because wording can often have an important impact on the validity of their results. But Rep. Gill cut me off before I could make these points. He instead continued to claim that the survey items indicates most American Muslims have dangerous and troubling views on a variety of issues related to Sharia law, religious tolerance, and terrorism.

Since the February 10 hearing, I have had a chance to analyze the methodology of the survey and the wording of the questions…. It turns out the survey is seriously flawed and should not be relied on as an indicator of the views of American Muslims.

The hearing focused on fears that American Muslims are seeking to impose Sharia law on the US, creating some sort of Muslim theocratic legal system. It turns out the Heritage question purporting to address this issue is seriously flawed, and better survey data points to a very different conclusion:

Rep. Gill and some others at the hearing expressed grave concern about the supposed desire of Muslims to impose religious Sharia law on Americans. The question on this topic in the Heritage survey finds that 39% of Muslims either “strongly support” or “somewhat support” the “implementation [of Sharia law] in the US in the next 20 years.”

But it would be a mistake to assume this proves 39% of Muslim respondents support
imposition of a Muslim theocracy or enforcement of Sharia law through government
coercion. “Implementation” is an ambiguous term that could simply imply voluntary
adherence by private individuals. It does not even necessarily imply that such voluntary adherence should extend to all Americans, as opposed to just some (perhaps only those who are adherents of Islam).

If asked, many Christians might answer that they would support “implementation” of
Biblical morality in the United States over the next twenty years. But that would not mean all such Christians seek to impose Christianity through government coercion, even though some such “integralists” do exist and have become more prominent in recent years. As described in my original testimony, there is extensive disagreement among Muslims about what exactly is required by Sharia law, and what relationship it should have to the state.

A better-worded 2019 survey question on this same issue, conducted by the Institute for
Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), found that only 12% of American Muslims believe that their religion should be “the main source of American law,” compared with 17% of Protestants, and 17% of white Evangelicals.13 A larger number (33%) believed their religion should be “a source of American law, but not the only source”; this latter figure is similar to that for other religious groups including Protestants (39%), Catholics (28%), and white Evangelicals (54%). Many religious people believe religion should have at least some impact on law, even if in many cases it is a relatively small impact that can be outweighed by other factors. The advantage of the ISPU question wording over that used in the Heritage survey is that the former specifically asked about the use of religion as a source of law enforced by the government, as opposed to merely about “implementation” of religious law, which could potentially be a matter of voluntary private action. [footnotes omitted]

The additional testimony also outlines a number of other methodological flaws in the Heritage survey. My Cato Institute colleague David Bier recently wrote about why survey data often underestimates the extent to which Muslim immigrants and their children embrace American liberal democratic values. His analysis came too late to be cited in my testimony. But it is valuable reading for anyone interested in this subject.

Elsewhere in the additional testimony, I noted that the Heritage Foundation is a dubious source, given its descent into anti-Semitism and other bigotry, and skewing of research for political ends. These trends have led many prominent conservative scholars and intellectuals to break with Heritage (including prominent Princeton political theorist Robert George and my Volokh Conspiracy co-blogger Josh Blackman), and caused most of its leading scholars to resign. I wrote about these issues in more detail here, here, and here. As noted in my testimony, Heritage’s degeneration does not by itself prove that any study it commissions is flawed. But it is grounds for serious skepticism about recent Heritage products.