Sharia in Texas: Separating Threat From Rhetoric

Estimated Time to Read: 45 minutes (Bottom Line: 1 minute)

Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF)

Texas faces genuine security concerns involving terrorism financing, foreign influence, and organizations that may falsely claim governmental authority. The Holy Land Foundation case proved that Islamist networks have operated in Texas, and foreign regimes that enforce Sharia by punishing apostasy and blasphemy are plainly incompatible with the Constitution. But the public record does not show Sharia displacing Texas law or functioning as a parallel government, and much of the evidence cited for that claim establishes less than its proponents suggest. Existing law has already reached the most serious documented cases, from terrorism financing to an honor killing in Irving.

The 90th Legislature should close demonstrated gaps with neutral, conduct-based laws on material support, foreign-funding disclosure, and false claims of authority, backed by real due process. It should reject proposals that would let government decide which religions are legitimate, punish peaceful advocacy, or treat association and religious identity as evidence of guilt. Muslims should receive neither special immunity nor special suspicion.

How Texas Got Here

Texas appears headed toward a consequential debate over Sharia law when lawmakers return to Austin for the 90th Legislature in 2027. What began years ago as a relatively narrow concern about foreign law appearing in American courtrooms has expanded into arguments about terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood, foreign funding, Islamic arbitration, Sharia-compliant finance, immigration, schools, mosques, residential developments, political participation, and the place of religion in American public life.

The political demand for action is unmistakable. In the March 2026 Republican primary, the Republican Party of Texas (RPT) asked voters to respond to Proposition 10: "Texas should prohibit Sharia Law." The party describes its primary propositions as nonbinding opinion polls rather than policy referenda, so Proposition 10 neither changed Texas law nor defined what a prohibition on Sharia would entail.

Days later, State Rep. Brent Money (R-Greenville) announced the Sharia Free Texas Caucus, joined by other Republican House members and organized to develop proposals for the 2027 session. Money's description of the issue extended well beyond whether a Texas judge might improperly apply Islamic law. He called "the Islamization of Texas" one of the state's major problems and connected it with immigration, assimilation, Muslim institutions, and Sharia as a broader political and legal system.

The executive branch had already acted. In November 2025, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations under Texas authority. Two days later, he directed the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to open criminal investigations into both organizations. CAIR's Texas chapters challenged the designation in federal court, where the case remains pending as of this publication. In February 2026, Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) filed a separate state-court lawsuit seeking to halt CAIR's operations in Texas. In April 2026, Paxton demanded records from a Dallas-based organization called Islamic Tribunal, alleging that it represented Sharia-based decisions as carrying governmental authority.

By the RPT convention in June, the debate had become entangled with a larger argument over religious identity and the character of American government. Muslim Republican delegates faced efforts to remove them over alleged associations with CAIR. Party officials concluded that the convention's existing rules did not permit their removal, although delegates changed the rules prospectively. Money cited founding-era Chief Justice John Jay's 1816 statement that it is the duty of "our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers," and argued that the country has historically been governed best by Christian men. Other Republicans questioned what that view would mean for non-Christian conservatives seeking to participate in the party.

Our review of the available record produces a more complicated picture than either "Sharia is taking over Texas" or "there is nothing to worry about." Genuine security and foreign-influence concerns exist. What the evidence reviewed for this analysis does not establish is that Sharia has displaced Texas law or presently operates as a systemic parallel government within the state.

What Is Texas Being Asked to Prohibit?

“Sharia law” increasingly functions as an umbrella term for activities bearing very different relationships to government.

A private agreement between two Muslims to resolve a dispute according to religious principles is not the same as an organization falsely claiming the authority of a Texas court. A foreign government funding a university research program presents different concerns from a Muslim family purchasing halal food. Financing a terrorist organization is not analogous to constructing a mosque. A criminal conspiracy does not become equivalent to peaceful political advocacy merely because the participants share a religion.

Those examples require different evidence and different legal responses.

What does “Sharia” mean in the Texas debate?

One label covers very different activities. Each sits in a different place on the scale of government’s legitimate interest.

Government protects

Government applies neutral rules

Government prohibits and prosecutes

Government protects

Personal religious practice

• Prayer
• Halal food
• Religious dress
• Mosque attendance
• Faith-informed estate planning

What law appliesRights of conscience under the U.S. and Texas constitutions and the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act

Government applies neutral rules

Private voluntary agreements

• Religious arbitration
• Faith-informed contracts
• Sharia-compliant finance

What law appliesOrdinary contract, arbitration, and public-policy rules, plus HB 45 (2017) in certain family cases

Government applies neutral rules

Financial and foreign relationships

• Foreign-government funding
• Beneficial ownership
• Funding of public schools
• Taxpayer-supported institutions

What law appliesDisclosure and research-security rules that can apply to every source equally

Government prohibits and prosecutes

Unlawful conduct

• Fraud
• Coercion
• Terrorism financing
• Sanctions violations
• Criminal conspiracy

What law appliesExisting state and federal criminal law, whatever the motive

Government prohibits and prosecutes

Claimed governmental authority

• Presenting private rulings as state court judgments
• Exercising coercive powers reserved to government

What law appliesA direct legal problem whether the claim invokes Sharia, canon law, or no religion at all

The policy test: What authority is being claimed, what conduct is occurring, and what law already governs it?

Religious identity alone does not answer those questions.

The narrowest version of the anti-Sharia argument is straightforward: no foreign or religious legal system should supersede the U.S. Constitution, the Texas Constitution, or controlling federal and state law. A Texan should not lose constitutional rights because a foreign judgment or private arbitration applied standards inconsistent with American law.

Critics often support that argument by pointing abroad. Several governments, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, enforce interpretations of Sharia that criminalize apostasy and blasphemy and deny women and religious minorities equal rights under law. Those systems are incompatible with the U.S. Constitution, and no one should pretend otherwise. But incompatibility abroad does not establish application at home. An American court cannot enforce a contract, arbitration award, or foreign judgment that violates constitutional rights or public policy, whatever its religious source. The question for Texas is not whether those foreign systems are compatible with American liberty. It is whether Texas courts are applying them, and whether existing law fails to stop it.

Texas has already legislated in this area. House Bill 45 (HB 45), enacted in the 85th Legislative Session (2017), began as a broad foreign-law proposal. The filed bill would have prohibited courts, arbitrators, and administrative adjudicators from relying on foreign law when doing so would violate rights guaranteed by the U.S. or Texas Constitutions. The Legislature ultimately enacted a narrower measure focused on foreign judgments and arbitration awards in certain marriage and parent-child proceedings. It directed the Texas Supreme Court to adopt procedures for notice, hearings, written findings, appellate review, and judicial education on foreign law. It also preserved established principles of comity and freedom of contract.

The Legislature's findings remain relevant. Lawmakers found that litigants were already protected against violations of constitutional rights and public policy through a “well-established body of law” that includes the U.S. and Texas Constitutions, federal and state law, treaties, judicial precedent, the Family Code, and other Texas statutes. HB 45 improved how those protections are applied in sensitive family cases.

That history does not prove every contemporary concern unfounded. It does establish that Texas is not starting from a legal system in which foreign or religious law can simply override constitutional protections.

The contemporary movement is making a much broader argument. Some proponents focus on organized Islamism, terrorist networks, and foreign influence. Others identify Islamic finance, Muslim-centered developments, religious schools, foreign-funded education programs, and religious arbitration as infrastructure through which Islamist influence can grow. Still others connect the issue with immigration, demographic change, and the preservation of America's historically Christian-majority culture.

These claims should not be treated as interchangeable. A terrorism-financing allegation can be tested through financial records, communications, and criminal statutes. Foreign influence can be examined through funding records and disclosure requirements. An allegation that an organization is masquerading as a court can be tested by examining the authority it claims. A claim that mosques, Muslim businesses, Islamic schools, and Muslim political participation represent an incremental “Islamization” of Texas is much broader. It requires evidence connecting otherwise lawful activity to an effort to establish competing governmental authority.

Is Sharia Actually Taking Over Texas?

A meaningful Sharia takeover would involve more than the existence of Islamic religious practice. Sharia would need to acquire coercive legal authority, displace Texas or federal law, operate as a parallel government, or exploit identifiable gaps in existing law that leave Texans subject to religious rules inconsistent with their constitutional rights.

The Islamic Tribunal investigation illustrates the evidentiary question. Paxton's office alleges that the organization represented its decisions as final judgments carrying the approval of the Texas judicial system and attempted to exercise authority over disputes involving Muslims. Paxton has acknowledged that religious institutions retain substantial First Amendment protection but argues they cannot falsely claim governmental judicial authority or evade generally applicable law.

If substantiated, those allegations describe a concrete problem appropriate for government action. A private organization cannot confer governmental jurisdiction on itself by invoking religion. But the Attorney General's own announcement describes an investigation to determine whether illegal activity is occurring, not a judicial finding that Texas has discovered an unlawful parallel court. The organization disputes the characterization and describes its work as voluntary religious mediation and arbitration. Resolving the dispute requires examining its documents, its representations to participants, its proceedings, and its relationship with Texas courts. The label “Islamic Tribunal” cannot answer those questions.

Religious dispute resolution itself is not unusual. Christian mediation and arbitration organizations operate throughout the country, and Jewish communities have long used beth din proceedings. Muslims may likewise structure private agreements around their beliefs, subject to generally applicable contract and arbitration law.

What evidence would demonstrate a genuine systemic problem? It would produce observable consequences. Examples include organizations exercising coercive powers reserved to government, Texans being involuntarily subjected to religious adjudication, and civil courts repeatedly enforcing religious rules despite controlling constitutional or statutory protections. Another would be existing safeguards repeatedly failing to protect parties from coercion. A pattern of such cases would justify legislation.

An erroneous trial-court decision proves considerably less. Judges make mistakes in every area of law, and when appellate review corrects one, the episode shows the legal system working rather than being displaced.

Texas also retains a firm boundary around governmental authority. Religious doctrine cannot supersede the Constitution, criminal law, or the rights of third parties because an adherent believes it divinely commanded. Article I, Section 6 of the Texas Constitution protects rights of conscience while prohibiting legal preference for any religious society or mode of worship.

Texas has already tested that boundary in its gravest form. In 2008, Yaser Said murdered his two teenage daughters in Irving in what prosecutors described as an honor killing. He evaded capture for 12 years, was arrested by the FBI in 2020, and was convicted of capital murder in 2022 and sentenced to life in prison without parole. The case is a real example of violence justified by religious and cultural norms. It was prosecuted under ordinary Texas murder law, and no new statute was needed to punish it.

The public evidence reviewed for this analysis has not shown Texas courts systematically substituting Sharia for controlling law or Islamic organizations exercising sovereign governmental authority. That conclusion is narrower than saying no legitimate problems exist.

Where the Evidence Shows Real Problems

The Holy Land Foundation prosecution provides the clearest Texas example. Based in Richardson, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development presented itself as a Muslim charity and became one of the largest Islamic charitable organizations in the United States. Prosecutors showed that it channeled millions of dollars to Hamas through charitable committees in the Palestinian territories. After an initial mistrial, five defendants were convicted in 2008 of offenses including material support for Hamas, money laundering, and tax violations. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the convictions after reviewing what it described as extensive evidence.

The case establishes that Islamist networks have used ostensibly charitable institutions in the United States to support a designated terrorist organization, and that a major example occurred in Texas.

It also establishes something the current debate often overlooks. Federal authorities dismantled the operation through surveillance, searches, financial evidence, testimony, federal terrorism statutes, and ordinary judicial proceedings. The government did not need to criminalize Islam or Sharia to do it.

Evidence in that prosecution included a 1991 memorandum by Mohamed Akram, commonly called the “Explanatory Memorandum,” which described the Muslim Brotherhood's work in America as a “civilization-jihadist process.” The document is real, and its language warrants scrutiny. Its existence does not establish every contemporary claim later attached to it.

The same analysis applies to “The Project,” an earlier Brotherhood strategy document seized by Swiss authorities in 2001: it shows what some Brotherhood strategists planned, not what American Muslim institutions do today.

Prosecutors also filed a list of 246 individuals and organizations described as unindicted co-conspirators or joint venturers. That list is frequently cited as proof that prominent Muslim organizations were judicially established as parts of a terrorist conspiracy. The designation does not mean that. When the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) challenged its public identification, the government conceded that filing the list publicly rather than under seal was an error. The district court found that the public identification violated NAIT's Fifth Amendment rights, a holding the government did not contest on appeal before the Fifth Circuit. An unindicted co-conspirator designation is not a conviction.

The phrase “Muslim Brotherhood-linked” presents a similar problem. It can describe formal control by a Brotherhood entity, founders who belonged decades ago, shared personnel, cooperation on particular causes, or shared ideas with no organizational relationship at all. The Congressional Research Service has documented how Brotherhood-inspired movements vary across countries without operating under a single command structure. If Texas attaches legal consequences to Brotherhood affiliation, it must define which relationship counts. Otherwise, association risks becoming the offense.

Foreign influence is a concern that exists independently of the Sharia debate. House Bill 127 (HB 127), authored by State Rep. Terry Wilson (R-Georgetown), enacted in the 89th Legislative Session (2025), created the Higher Education Research Security Council (HERSC), restricted certain gifts and contracts involving foreign adversaries, and strengthened penalties for trade-secret theft benefiting foreign actors. The Legislature did not make those protections religion-specific.

Qatar Foundation International (QFI) offers an example of how a documented fact attaches to a broader conclusion. QFI funded Arabic-language instruction, teacher development, and cultural programming in American schools before winding down operations in 2026. Qatar has hosted Hamas's political leadership since 2012, an arrangement undertaken in coordination with the United States, and has faced sustained criticism from neighboring states for supporting Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations. Given those relationships, policymakers have legitimate reasons to ask where Qatari money enters public institutions and on what conditions. But the funder's identity cannot establish what happened in the classroom. Whether a program taught language, promoted a political narrative, or indoctrinated students requires examining the materials and grant conditions.

Sharia-compliant finance presents a parallel case. In testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Public Safety and Veterans' Affairs, Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) researcher Sam Westrop alleged that some Sharia-finance institutions in Texas have relationships with clerics, nonprofits, or foreign entities associated with extremist movements. He also argued that current disclosure rules can obscure money moving through religious and nonprofit networks. Those allegations can be investigated. If an institution launders money, finances terrorism, conceals a foreign principal, violates sanctions, or commits fraud, the state has a legitimate interest in the conduct. An interest-free mortgage does not become a security threat because Islamic belief motivated its structure, and a conventional loan does not become benign if its capital comes from a sanctioned financier.

Critics also point to the Sharia supervisory boards that Islamic finance providers advertise. Religious oversight of financial products is not unique to Islam: Catholic mutual funds screen investments through religious advisory boards, and kosher certification operates on a similar model for food. Nor do these products operate outside American law. They are offered through federally insured banks and credit unions or state-licensed mortgage lenders, all subject to federal anti-money-laundering requirements. The published views of a particular board member can be examined on their merits. The existence of religious supervision is not evidence of a parallel economy.

The North Texas development originally known as EPIC City, now The Meadow, has become the debate's most visible symbol. The controversy is not purely speculative. Paxton's office has alleged violations of state and federal securities law, sued entities connected to the project, and challenged municipal utility district (MUD) actions the state alleges were designed to evade oversight. A court issued a temporary injunction against those district actions. The developers have won rulings of their own in related litigation, and the cases remain ongoing. These are concrete legal matters that can succeed or fail on their own evidence. They do not establish that a Muslim-centered residential community is a sovereign Sharia enclave. Religious Americans have long built communities around churches, schools, and shared values. A development that discriminates unlawfully or seeks exemption from Texas law raises legal problems. One that simply contains a mosque, halal businesses, and Muslim residents does not.

Claim, evidence, and what it actually establishes

A documented fact does not automatically establish every broader inference attached to it.

Frequently cited evidence	What is established	What it does not establish on its own
Holy Land Foundation	Established:Five leaders of a Texas-based charity were convicted of financing Hamas, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed.	Not established:That Muslim charities generally finance terrorism.
Unindicted co-conspirator lists	Established:Prosecutors in the Holy Land case publicly named 246 individuals and organizations as unindicted co-conspirators. The government later conceded that filing the list publicly was an error.	Not established:That the named organizations committed crimes. A listing is not a charge or a conviction.
1991 Brotherhood memorandum	Established:Some Brotherhood figures envisioned long-term institutional influence in America.	Not established:That American Muslim institutions generally follow that strategy.
Foreign funding	Established:Foreign entities fund some U.S. and Texas institutions.	Not established:That the funded activity is necessarily Islamist indoctrination.
State grants to mosques	Established:Eleven mosques received about $931,000 from a Governor's Office grant account since 2021.	Not established:Favoritism. The same account paid Jewish congregations and Christian churches about $17 million, roughly 18 times as much.
Governor's CAIR designation	Established:The governor designated CAIR under state law, and CAIR is challenging the designation in federal court.	Not established:That a court has found CAIR engaged in terrorism.
Islamic Tribunal investigation	Established:Texas is investigating allegations about claimed judicial authority. The organization disputes them.	Not established:That an illegal Sharia court exists.
EPIC City / The Meadow	Established:Texas has alleged securities and regulatory violations and won a temporary injunction against related utility district actions. Trial is pending.	Not established:That a Muslim-centered development is a sovereign Sharia enclave.
Sharia finance	Established:Religious financial products exist, and specific financial relationships can be investigated.	Not established:That Islamic finance itself constitutes terrorism financing.

Best practice: separate the verified event, the alleged connection, and the broader conclusion.

The strongest evidence points toward identifiable organizations, money, communications, criminal conduct, and foreign relationships. It becomes considerably weaker when generalized to Muslims collectively.

Where the Claims Outrun the Evidence

Some of the broadest claims in the debate concern taqiyya, presented in anti-Sharia arguments as religious authorization for Muslims to deceive non-Muslims while secretly pursuing political domination. That framing creates an evidentiary trap. If a Muslim denies seeking to impose Sharia, the denial is treated as deception. If he openly advocates it, the statement is treated as the threat. Either answer confirms the suspicion, which makes the allegation effectively unfalsifiable.

Historical Islamic jurisprudence does recognize circumstances in which believers may conceal their faith, particularly under persecution or compulsion. The doctrine developed special significance among Shiite communities living under hostile rulers. That history does not establish that Muslims generally are instructed to deceive non-Muslims as a strategy of conquest. The charge itself is not new: medieval polemicists leveled a similar accusation against Shiites, claiming the doctrine concealed a conspiracy to destroy Islam from within.

Islamist organizations can certainly lie, as can intelligence services, criminal enterprises, corporations, and political movements. Evidence of deception includes contradictory internal documents, financial records, communications, and testimony. Religious identity is a poor substitute. A system that discounts a peaceful Muslim's denial because he is Muslim cannot distinguish him from an actual conspirator, and effective counterterrorism depends on making that distinction.

A related claim describes a 1,400-year Islamic strategy summarized as "immigrate, populate, agitate, dominate." The research reviewed for this analysis has not established that formulation as a recognized doctrine drawn from the Quran, canonical Hadith, or Islamic jurisprudence. Similar staged-takeover frameworks circulate widely online, often traced to a 2005 book by a Christian missionary rather than to Islamic sources. Scholarship on Islamic law shows that jurists' views on Muslims living under non-Muslim rule developed over centuries in response to changing historical circumstances, not as a fixed strategy. The Brotherhood memorandum shows that some Islamists conceived of long-term institutional work in civilizational terms. It cannot convert Muslim immigration itself into a religiously mandated conquest. Millions of individual motives cannot be inferred from one political movement's document.

The “conveyor belt” theory holds that nonviolent Islamist institutions start people along a path from conservative religious ideas to radical politics and eventually terrorism. Advocates of stronger anti-Islamist policies have invoked it, including in discussions of Islamic schools. The theory has intuitive force, because extremist groups do recruit through social and ideological communities. But radicalization research does not support treating the progression as automatic. Researchers Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko found legal activism and willingness to engage in illegal or violent action to be related but distinguishable, with only mixed support for the conveyor-belt metaphor. If radical belief is treated as a reliable proxy for future violence, government ends up investigating what people believe rather than what they do. The pool of potential targets expands enormously while the ability to identify genuine threats declines.

Claims about Islamic schools raise the same methodological problem. Individual allegations are testable: a school using materials that praise terrorism or advocate violence against religious minorities can be identified and evaluated. Broader claims that Islamist networks control a large share of Islamic schools require definitions. What qualifies an organization as Islamist? What constitutes control? Without answers, such figures cannot be independently verified. TPPF's own researchers acknowledge that non-Islamist Muslim schools exist and that the full extent of ideological influence is not known.

Claims about Muslim student associations in public schools require the same care. Under the federal Equal Access Act, which conservatives championed in 1984 to protect student Bible clubs, a public secondary school that allows noncurricular student groups to meet must allow others on equal terms. The Supreme Court upheld that rule in Board of Education v. Mergens (1990). A Muslim student club has the same rights as a Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter. What a public school may not do is favor one faith, for example by reserving space for one religious group while denying it to others. That concern is legitimate, and it applies equally to every religion.

The same standard should apply to lists of allegedly radical organizations. A list that does not disclose its criteria, or that cannot distinguish a religious congregation or social-service provider from an extremist network, cannot serve as a basis for investigation, designation, or policy.

Claims about public funding for Muslim institutions deserve the same scrutiny. A TPR review of Texas Comptroller payment records identified about $2.3 million paid since fiscal year 2019 to organizations with “Islamic” or “Masjid” in their names. Roughly 40 percent came from a Governor's Office federal grant account that has also paid more than 40 Jewish congregations about $8.8 million, more than 70 Christian churches about $8.2 million, and two Hindu temples. Mosques received about 5 percent of that account's payments to the houses of worship identified in the review. Most of the remaining $2.3 million came through Coronavirus Relief Fund payments, federal commodity food distribution, crime-victim compensation for funeral costs, disaster assistance, and returns of unclaimed property. Churches received far larger sums through most of the same programs, including more than $130 million in Coronavirus Relief Fund payments. These programs are open to any eligible organization, religious or secular. Where a grantee does misuse public funds, Texas already has audit, procurement, and fraud laws to address it.

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Source: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Payments to Payee database, data loaded September 23, 2026. Results reflect payee names containing “Islamic,” “Masjid,” “Church,” “Synagogue,” “Temple,” or “Congregation,” with payees that are not houses of worship or religious organizations excluded. Name-based searches undercount recipients whose names do not contain these terms. Payments designated confidential under Texas Government Code §403.024(d) are not included.

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None of this requires assuming benign intentions. Investigations can uncover facts that are not yet public, including financial records, internal communications, curriculum reviews, and litigation discovery. If that evidence emerges, the analysis should change with it.

From Islamism to Islam

Much of the strongest case for government action depends on distinguishing Islam from Islamism. Islam is a religion practiced by millions of people with widely varying views. Islamism describes political movements seeking to organize government or society according to particular interpretations of Islamic principles.

Some critics reject that distinction entirely, arguing that mainstream Islamic doctrine itself calls for Sharia governance. The constitutional analysis does not depend on resolving that theological dispute. Many religions teach that divine law should shape society, and Christians have debated for centuries how Scripture should inform civil government. A belief does not lose constitutional protection because it has political implications. What the law can reach is conduct: violence, coercion, fraud, material support for terrorism, and unlawful foreign agency, whatever doctrine motivates them.

Participants on both sides of the Texas debate have articulated versions of that boundary. Rep. Money has said that “personal religious expression, belief and worship are protected under the First Amendment,” while arguing that imposing a foreign legal system conflicting with Texas law is not. State Rep. Salman Bhojani (D-Euless), one of the Legislature's two Muslim members, has described Sharia as a personal moral code he cannot impose on anyone else. Both formulations separate personal religious exercise from coercive governmental authority.

Some of the contemporary rhetoric crosses that line. Rep. Money has publicly argued that Islam is “not really a religion” but a comprehensive civilizational, political, and legal ideology. He has invoked taqiyya in questioning whether peaceful Muslims can be trusted, and has argued that the American constitutional system presupposes a Christian population.

Those propositions reach far beyond terrorism. If Islam is principally a political ideology, a mosque becomes political infrastructure rather than a house of worship. Religious arbitration becomes a parallel judiciary. Islamic finance becomes a funding network for a political movement. Muslim political organization becomes evidence of infiltration. A Muslim's assurance that he rejects extremism can be discounted as authorized deception.

American law does not require government to approve of Islamic theology. The constitutional problem arises when government moves from regulating conduct to deciding whether an established faith qualifies as religion. In United States v. Ballard, the Supreme Court refused to let the truth of religious claims become the issue in a fraud prosecution, emphasizing that Americans may hold beliefs government cannot require them to prove. The Texas Constitution protects rights of conscience, prohibits legal preference among religious societies, directs the Legislature to protect denominations equally in peaceful worship, and guarantees equality under law without regard to creed. Article I, Section 6-a, added by voters in 2021, bars state and local government from prohibiting or limiting religious services. The Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act separately requires government to justify substantial burdens on religious exercise under a strict standard.

None of that immunizes fraud, terrorism financing, assault, abuse, conspiracy, or coercion. It does mean a legislative declaration that Islam is not a religion is constitutionally different from enforcing neutral laws against Muslims who commit crimes.

A religious-compatibility test would also not stop with Islam. Many religions contain teachings on gender, sexuality, family authority, and divine law that officials or fellow citizens reject. A government hostile to traditional Christianity could point to biblical teaching and reach its own conclusion about compatibility with contemporary equality norms. Christians remain free to argue that Islam is theologically false, and Muslims remain free to defend it. Constitutional protection does not signify government agreement with anyone's theology.

Christianity, the Founding, and the “Christian Nation” Claim

Rep. Money's appeal to John Jay at the June convention raises a separate historical question. Jay, the nation's first Chief Justice, wrote that Americans should "select and prefer Christians" as their rulers. That was advice about whom voters should choose, and voters remain free to weigh a candidate's faith. Whether government may do the same is a different question.

Christianity profoundly influenced colonial and early American society, and the Library of Congress documents religion's extensive role in the Revolutionary and early national periods. The founding generation was nevertheless not uniform. The Library identifies Thomas Jefferson and John Adams as leading American adherents of Deistic thought, and early America included established churches, dissenting Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and skeptics.

The federal Constitution did not establish Christianity. Apart from dating the document "in the Year of our Lord," it makes no reference to God or Christianity. Article VI prohibited religious tests for federal office, and the First Amendment barred Congress from establishing religion while protecting its free exercise. Those limits originally bound only the federal government. Several states kept established churches after ratification, and Massachusetts did not end its establishment until 1833. The Fourteenth Amendment later extended the religion clauses to the states, and the Supreme Court applied them to state governments in the 1940s. Whatever the founding generation permitted the states to do, Texas today is bound by those clauses and by its own constitution.

Three propositions should remain separate. First, Christianity substantially influenced American history and culture. Second, Christian ideas shaped portions of American political and legal thought. Third, government therefore possesses authority to give Christianity preferred legal status or impose disabilities on competing religions. The first has extensive historical support. The second can be evaluated doctrine by doctrine. The third does not follow from either.

Texas law supplies its own answer on religious qualifications for public life. Article I, Section 4 of the Texas Constitution prohibits religious tests for office and bars exclusion from office on account of religious sentiments, subject to its existing reference to acknowledging a Supreme Being.

The debate should be candid about what is being proposed. Preserving American law against coercive religious government is one objective. Preserving a predominantly Christian culture is another. Government possesses considerably different authority to pursue each.

Can Liberty Be Used to Destroy Liberty?

The strongest argument from critics of Islamism does not depend on proving that Sharia already governs Texas courts. It looks further ahead. An illiberal movement need not begin with violence. It can operate through protected institutions, including religious organizations, schools, nonprofits, businesses, litigation, and elections, until it can undermine the system that protected its rise. The Brotherhood memorandum shows that at least some Islamists thought about America in exactly those terms.

America has confronted this problem before. In Scales v. United States (1961), the Supreme Court upheld a conviction for Communist Party membership but required proof of active membership, knowledge of the party's unlawful advocacy, and specific intent to bring about violent overthrow. Passive or nominal membership was not enough. In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Court held that advocacy of force or lawbreaking cannot be punished unless directed toward producing imminent lawless action and likely to produce it.

The Constitution also does not require government to wait for an attack. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2339B, knowingly providing money, training, personnel, services, or other material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization is a federal crime. In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010), the Supreme Court upheld the statute's application to coordinated assistance, even assistance with ostensibly peaceful aims. The Court also emphasized that the law does not criminalize mere membership or independent advocacy of an organization's political goals.

That line offers Texas a useful model. Government can reach financing, training, coordinated services, and criminal conspiracies connected to terrorist organizations without criminalizing independent religious or political advocacy.

Institution building by itself establishes political ambition, not unlawful capture. The civil-rights movement, organized labor, progressives, conservatives, and Christian activists have all built schools, trained attorneys, created media organizations, recruited candidates, and developed donor networks. A Muslim organization encouraging young Muslims to become lawyers, journalists, professors, or legislators does not by itself establish a conspiracy. Internal communications directing unlawful activity, financial ties to terrorist organizations, or concealed foreign control would.

The Constitution also restrains electoral majorities. A future Muslim-majority city council could not lawfully prohibit Christian worship, punish apostasy, establish inferior legal rights for women, or impose Islamic criminal punishments because voters supported them. Constitutional rights constrain officeholders after they win.

America's experience with communism shows both sides of the problem. Government investigations uncovered genuine Soviet espionage and real revolutionary organizations. They also produced loyalty programs, blacklists, and guilt by association that swept in people whose principal offense was unpopular affiliation. The lesson is not that the threat was imaginary, but that the response outran it.

No constitutional system can guarantee its survival if enough citizens ultimately reject it. Eliminating that risk would require restricting liberty based on predictions about what peaceful people might someday do.

The most durable response also takes critics at their word. If the objection to Islamism is that it subordinates individual conscience to political-religious authority, government should hesitate to claim its own authority to decide which peaceful beliefs citizens may hold. If the objection is that Sharia suppresses dissent, criminalizing peaceful advocacy creates an obvious tension. If the objection is that Islamist governments discriminate by religion, laws imposing special disabilities on Muslims move in the wrong direction.

What Texas Is Actually Considering

The 90th Legislature will move the debate from rhetoric into statutory design. Texas already has statutes addressing terrorism, organized crime, foreign adversaries, sedition, foreign law, and research security. The real question is whether identifiable gaps remain and whether proposed remedies fit the conduct lawmakers want to prevent.

Much of the specific policy work has come from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, whose researchers have done more than anyone to translate these concerns into concrete legislative proposals. That work deserves engagement on its merits, which is why it features prominently here.

Terrorist Designations

Senate Bill 1900 (SB 1900), authored by former State Sen. Brian Birdwell (R-Granbury), enacted in the 88th Legislative Session (2023), created a state category of foreign terrorist organization, defined as three or more persons operating at least partially outside the United States who engage in criminal activity and threaten the security of the state or its residents. The framework grew largely out of concerns about Mexican cartels. Abbott later relied on it, together with Senate Bill 17 (SB 17), authored by State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst (R-Brenham) and enacted in the 89th Legislative Session (2025) to restrict land acquisition by certain foreign entities, for the CAIR and Brotherhood designations. TPPF senior fellow Ammon Blair has argued that Texas created the definition without giving local law enforcement the investigative and prosecutorial tools to use it, and has proposed state material-support provisions. A carefully written state analogue to federal material-support law could address genuine gaps.

TPR opposed SB 17 during the session on limited-government grounds, warning that it restricted property rights based on status and association rather than conduct, relied on forced divestment, and concentrated enforcement power without adequate due process. Those concerns are about how the power is structured, not about any organization it reaches. If CAIR or any other group has knowingly supported terrorism, that conduct should be proven and punished. The question is whether a designation process can reliably make that determination.

The details will determine whether any designation system remains targeted. Federal terrorist designation involves statutory criteria, an administrative record, publication, and judicial review. A governor's proclamation followed by investigation is one model. A designation that automatically triggers criminal liability, loss of licenses or contracts, or property restrictions is another. The more severe the consequences, the more important notice, evidentiary standards, an opportunity to respond, and judicial review become. The pending CAIR litigation will likely test several of these questions.

Watchlists

Westrop has recommended an “ANGLE” list identifying individuals and organizations associated with terrorism, extremism, corruption, or hostile foreign influence. Blair has acknowledged an unresolved operational problem: local agencies may lack the intelligence, technology, and information sharing to establish the relationships such a list would identify. An internal law-enforcement tool built on verified terrorism, sanctions, or foreign-agent information is different from a public blacklist resting on “extremism” or ideological affinity. Texas would need to define what “bad actor” means in law and what consequences follow.

Foreign Funding and Schools

Foreign funding may offer the strongest opportunity for neutral reform. Public institutions receiving significant money, curriculum, teacher training, or other support from specified foreign governments or controlled entities could be required to disclose the source, amount, conditions, and materials involved. A mosque receiving covered foreign-government money would face the same requirement as a church, university, nonprofit, corporation, or think tank. Disclosure would also test the claims in the current debate. If foreign governments are financing influence operations, transparency should reveal it. If the money supports ordinary language instruction or research, transparency will show that too.

Private religious schools present a different question, which the state's new education savings account program makes timely. Government has far more authority over the conditions attached to public funds than over the religious teaching of privately funded schools. If participating schools must meet financial-transparency, child-protection, anti-fraud, or anti-terrorism requirements, those rules can apply equally to Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and secular schools. A Christian school and an Islamic school receiving the same public benefit should face the same statutory test.

Financial Transparency

If lawmakers find gaps involving foreign capital, beneficial ownership, nonprofit intermediaries, sanctions exposure, or designated organizations, those gaps can be closed regardless of whether a transaction is Sharia-compliant. A system focused on the source and movement of money rather than its theology is more likely to catch the conduct that matters.

Revisiting HB 45

Blair has suggested expanding HB 45 beyond family law. The starting point should be documented cases outside family law where existing conflicts-of-law, contract, arbitration, or public-policy doctrines failed. Courts routinely encounter foreign law in international contracts, estates, marriages, and commercial disputes, and interpreting a foreign document is not the same as letting foreign law supersede Texas law. A broad prohibition on courts “considering” foreign law could disrupt ordinary litigation. A ban extending to international law would raise a further problem: treaties are part of the supreme law of the land under the U.S. Constitution, and state courts are bound to apply them. The 2017 Legislature considered a broad bill and chose a narrower procedural approach, and that history should inform any effort to reopen the statute.

Sedition

This may be the most constitutionally consequential proposal. Texas's existing sedition statute addresses advocacy, organization, or conspiracy directed toward overthrowing or altering government by force or violence, and its advocacy provision incorporates a clear-and-present-danger requirement. Making “advocacy of Sharia” itself seditious would move far beyond that framework. Sharia can refer to anything from prayer and dietary rules to theories of criminal and constitutional government. Would a Muslim advocating interest-free banking qualify? An imam teaching traditional jurisprudence? A candidate saying his faith informs his votes? Once the prohibited conduct becomes advocacy rather than violence or conspiracy, those questions are unavoidable, and Brandenburg governs the answer.

Immigration

Proposals should be described by what they regulate. A prohibition on public entities employing certain foreign workers, or a cap on foreign university enrollment, would affect physicians, engineers, researchers, and students of every religion. Immigration authority rests primarily with the federal government. These proposals may have independent merits, but their connection to preventing Sharia should be demonstrated rather than assumed.

Polling Places

A particular polling site can be rejected for accessibility, security, electioneering, capacity, or voter-access reasons. Its status as a mosque is a different proposition. A neutral rule governing all houses of worship is analytically different from one treating mosques differently from churches.

A Limited-Government Test for the 90th Legislature

A limited-government test for new “anti-Sharia” legislation

Evaluate the government power before evaluating whether today’s target is popular.

1. 1

   Step 1: Define the harm

   What specific conduct is occurring?

   Stop ifThe concern is belief, identity, or association alone.

2. 2

   Step 2: Check existing law

   Does Texas or federal law already reach it?

   If it doesEnforce the existing law. New authority needs a demonstrated gap.

3. 3

   Step 3: Define the trigger

   What evidence activates the new authority?

   Stop ifThe trigger is a label such as “Islamist,” “linked,” or “bad actor.”

4. 4

   Step 4: Constrain the power

   Who decides, what process is due, and how is an error corrected?

   RequireNotice, a chance to respond, judicial review, a sunset date, and a way to remove a wrongful designation.

5. 5

   Step 5: Test the precedent

   Would the same power be acceptable if aimed at another religion or political movement?

   Stop ifYou would object to it being used against a church, a Christian school, or a cause you support.

A proposal that clears all five is a narrow, conduct-based law.

Identify the harm, prove the conduct, close demonstrated gaps, and create no more power than necessary.

The emerging agenda does not require Texas to choose between ignoring genuine threats and granting government sweeping power over a religion. It requires a disciplined sequence of questions.

Start With the Gap

The existence of a threat does not establish a deficiency in existing law. The Holy Land Foundation case demonstrates a real threat, but its successful prosecution does not show that Texas needs a law prohibiting Sharia. Blair's testimony frames the problem more usefully: agencies lacking intelligence, technology, and information sharing, and designations that carry consequences without investigative tools. If substantiated by law-enforcement experience, those are concrete problems lawmakers can address without legislating against a religion.

Define the Trigger

Terms like “Islamist,” “extremist,” “terror-linked,” and “bad actor” communicate political concerns, but they cannot serve as legal standards. The trigger determines the nature of the power. A law triggered by knowingly transferring money to a terrorist organization regulates conduct. One triggered by membership regulates association and must address intent. One triggered by expressing support for an ideology reaches speech. One triggered by adherence to Sharia reaches religious belief. Those are not variations of the same governmental action.

Constrain the Power

Designation systems can reverse the ordinary sequence of enforcement. Criminal prosecution requires government to prove its case before punishment follows. Administrative designation can impose consequences first and leave the organization to challenge them afterward. If designation costs an organization funding, licenses, contracts, property, or banking access, lawmakers should specify evidentiary standards, notice, an opportunity to respond, judicial review, duration, periodic reconsideration, and a path to removal. The possibility of a lawsuit does not substitute for due process. Forcing an organization to fund expensive litigation after disabilities attach can itself become part of the punishment.

Keep Association From Replacing Conduct

Counterterrorism requires network analysis, but control, direction, financing, knowing material support, unlawful foreign agency, and criminal conspiracy differ from sharing a speaker, donor, board member, coalition, or theology. The unindicted co-conspirator list shows how quickly the difference erodes in political rhetoric.

Test the Precedent

Imagine a future Texas government hostile to conservative Christianity. Officials label “Christian nationalism” a threat and identify churches that mobilize voters, Christian schools teaching biblical approaches to government, religious nonprofits financing litigation, Christian arbitration services, and ministries advocating laws based on Christian morality. They decide ordinary Christianity remains protected but “political Christianity” does not. Would conservatives accept a designation system blacklisting those organizations based on ideological association? Would peaceful advocacy of biblical principles become evidence of sedition?

The comparison does not equate Christianity and Islam. It tests the governmental authority. Political power rarely remains confined to the people who create it.

Count the Cost

Oklahoma's 2010 State Question 755 prohibited state courts from considering Sharia and international law. In Awad v. Ziriax, the Tenth Circuit upheld an injunction against the measure. The court did not hold that Sharia is compatible with the Constitution. Applying the Supreme Court's decision in Larson v. Valente (1982), it held that a law singling out one religion for disfavor must survive strict scrutiny, the most demanding standard of judicial review, and Oklahoma could not identify a single instance of a state court improperly applying Sharia to justify it. The amendment was ultimately blocked permanently. An amendment barring courts from considering biblical principles in estate plans or arbitration agreements would fail for the same reason, and conservatives would rightly call it persecution.

Guard Against Mission Creep

Intelligence capabilities built for terrorist financing can migrate into ordinary investigations. Watchlists can expand to domestic movements. Foreign-funding disclosure can become broad financial surveillance. Lawmakers can mitigate these risks through sunset dates, periodic review, public reporting, retention limits, access controls, legislative oversight, and judicial review. A database of people convicted of providing material support to terrorists presents little ambiguity. A database of people who attended the same mosque, donated to the same nonprofit, or appeared at the same protest presents much more. Intelligence should distinguish threats from non-threats, not make membership in a broad community the threat indicator.

What Texas Can Do

Texas still has a substantial policy agenda available.

It can strengthen its ability to investigate and prosecute material support for terrorist organizations where genuine state-law gaps exist. It can improve intelligence sharing while establishing safeguards for information about people not accused of crimes. It can require disclosure of specified foreign-government funding entering public institutions. It can strengthen research security, examine beneficial ownership and nonprofit intermediaries, enforce sanctions, prosecute fraud, and stop private organizations from falsely claiming governmental authority.

It can ensure religious arbitration remains genuinely voluntary and subject to constitutional rights, public policy, and applicable law. It can protect children and vulnerable adults from abuse or coercion regardless of the religious justification offered. It can deny taxpayer support to organizations proven, through constitutionally adequate procedures, to engage in conduct that neutral statutes make disqualifying.

None of those policies require government to decide whether Islam is a legitimate religion. Nor do they require Texas to ignore Islamism. They require government to identify the conduct that creates the public harm and write the law around that conduct.

Neutrality also makes enforcement more durable. A statute addressing concealed foreign control works whether the foreign actor is Islamist, communist, authoritarian, or otherwise hostile. A terrorism-financing statute works regardless of ideology. A prohibition on falsely claiming governmental authority works whether the organization invokes Sharia, canon law, Jewish law, or no religion at all.

What Is Really Being Debated?

If the controversy stopped at terrorism financing, foreign influence, coercion, fraud, or unauthorized governmental authority, much of the current debate would be easier to resolve.

It has not stopped there.

The public discussion increasingly encompasses Muslim immigration, mosque construction, Islamic schools, halal commerce, Sharia-compliant finance, Muslim political organization, religious clothing, polling places, demographic growth, and whether Islam itself should be treated primarily as a religion.

Some of the debate treats ordinary legislation as evidence of infiltration. When the House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence considered House Bill 1044 (HB 1044), authored by Rep. Bhojani, in 2025, public comments submitted to the committee raised fears of “creeping Sharia.” The bill would have added imams, along with Buddhist monks, Hindu pundits, and Sikh granthis, to a Family Code list that already names Christian ministers and rabbis as authorized officiants. An officiant conducts a ceremony; the license, the marriage's validity, and any divorce remain governed by Texas law and civil courts. Other proposals deserve scrutiny on neutral grounds. House Bill 625 (HB 625), authored by State Rep. Suleman Lalani (D-Sugar Land), the Legislature's other Muslim member, would have required public schools to provide halal meals on request, but it was never granted a hearing in the House Committee on Public Education. The bill raises fair questions about unfunded mandates and about accommodating one faith's dietary rules but not others. Neither bill became law. Both debates involve ordinary policy objections, not evidence of a parallel legal system.

Texas is therefore debating more than a competing legal system. Part of the dispute concerns Islamism as a political ideology. Part concerns terrorism and foreign influence. Part concerns immigration and assimilation. Part concerns the cultural consequences of a growing Muslim population. And part concerns competing views about the religious character of the United States and whether government should play a role in preserving it.

Those questions should be debated honestly on their own terms.

Texans are free to believe Islamic theology is incompatible with Christianity. They are free to believe immigration levels are too high, to oppose multiculturalism, or to argue that Christianity has been indispensable to American civilization and should remain culturally dominant. Muslim Texans possess the same freedom to disagree.

The policy question begins when government coercion enters the discussion.

A desire to preserve a particular culture does not automatically establish governmental authority to suppress lawful competing cultures. Concern about demographic change does not itself establish a national-security threat. Political organization by a religious minority does not establish institutional capture. Disagreement with a theology does not establish criminal conduct.

Conversely, religious liberty does not immunize Muslims or Muslim organizations from laws that legitimately apply to everyone else. Muslims should receive neither special immunity nor special suspicion because they are Muslims.

Define the Harm Before Expanding the State

Texas has legitimate security concerns to confront.

The Holy Land Foundation case demonstrated that an ostensibly charitable organization operating in Texas could participate in financing Hamas. The Brotherhood memorandum demonstrated that at least some Islamist strategists conceived of long-term institutional activity in the United States in explicitly transformational terms. Foreign governments seek influence in American education, research, politics, and civil society. Terrorist organizations recruit, finance operations, and exploit legitimate institutions.

None of that establishes that Sharia is presently displacing Texas law. Nor does evidence concerning particular extremist organizations establish that Muslim religious and civic life generally forms part of a coordinated campaign to overthrow constitutional government.

If an organization finances terrorism, prosecute the financing. If a foreign government conceals influence, expose the relationship. If a nonprofit commits fraud, enforce fraud law. If an organization falsely claims governmental judicial authority, stop the misrepresentation. If religious arbitration becomes coercive, protect the coerced party. If a foreign-funded curriculum enters a public school, disclose the source and examine the curriculum. If existing statutes cannot reach demonstrated criminal or national-security harms, identify the gap and address it narrowly.

Government should resist substituting labels for evidence. “Sharia,” “Islamist,” “extremist,” “terror-linked,” and “bad actor” cannot become legal shortcuts relieving the state of its obligation to establish the conduct warranting intervention.

A constitutional republic inevitably protects some people who dislike its principles. It permits advocacy of ideas that majorities find dangerous. It allows religious communities to build institutions, political movements to seek influence, and citizens to attempt peacefully to change their government.

Those freedoms carry risk. The alternative carries risk as well.

A government powerful enough to decide which peaceful religions are legitimate, which political ideas may be advocated, which associations make someone presumptively dangerous, and which organizations may be disabled before wrongdoing is proven acquires tools that will not remain confined to today's targets.

Texas does not need to choose between constitutional liberty and national security. It can investigate terrorism without investigating a religion. It can expose foreign influence without treating foreign culture as criminal. It can enforce American law without prohibiting private religious practice. It can confront Islamism without making Muslim identity evidence of guilt.

The most defensible policy agenda for 2027 is therefore also the most disciplined: Identify the harm. Prove the conduct. Enforce existing law where it is adequate. Close demonstrated gaps where it is not. And give government no more power than it needs to accomplish those purposes.

That approach may be less politically satisfying than declaring Texas “Sharia-free.” It is considerably closer to the constitutional government such a declaration is supposed to defend.

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