From Banning Sharia to Banning Critical Race Theory: When Bigotry Collides with a Conspiracy Theory
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By Ismail Allison, CAIR National
Critical race theory is a sinister ideology at the core of an extremist movement that seeks to paint all White people as racist and destroy America — this is the lie that far-right demagogues are working around the clock to instill in the minds of millions of Americans.
This bizarre narrative, which claims that a framework of legal and sociological analysis poses an existential threat to America, bears a striking resemblance to another conspiracy theory that has been pushed by the irrational right for years: “creeping Sharia.”
For Muslims, sharia is the divine law contained in the Quran and Hadith, or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (may peace and blessings be upon him) The word can be translated as “the way to water.” Much like canon law for Catholics and halacha for Jews, Sharia is a source of guidance to Muslims on a wide variety of topics, from how to pray, to charitable giving, to the division of inheritance.
But to the peddlers of the “creeping sharia” conspiracy theory, sharia is a violent political ideology that seeks to replace the US Constitution and make non-Muslims second-class citizens. The narrative pushed by such demagogues far and wide since at least 2010 holds that the Muslim Brotherhood, a social and political movement that originated in Egypt, controls major American Muslim organizations and uses them to promote sharia law with the aid of secular leftist groups and complicit government officials.
None of this makes any sense, of course, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming an accepted belief for many Americans. The creeping sharia conspiracy originated with far-right, Islamophobic think tanks like Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy (CSP), and Brigitte Gabriel’s ACT! for America, both Southern Poverty Law Center classified hate groups. Organizations like CSP and ACT are part of a well-funded and interconnected network of groups and individuals that promote anti-Muslim bigotry and spread conspiracy theories.
In 2010, Gaffney’s organization put out a report entitled Shariah: The Threat to America, which claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood has successfully infiltrated the “educational, legal and political systems, as well as top levels of government, intelligence, the media, and U.S. military;” and that American Muslim organizations undertake outreach efforts in order to “subvert” institutions.
Rhetoric like that of the Center for Security Policy was not restricted to the fringes. Their report was praised by then-Congressmen Trent Franks and Peter Hoekstra and Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann.
In 2011, New York Congressman Peter King, who parroted creeping sharia conspiracy claims about most American mosques being run by ‘radical’ clerics and appeared on both the ACT For America Show and Frank Gaffney’s podcast, held a series of congressional hearings on “radicalization” among American Muslims. Zuhdi Jasser, a prominent creeping sharia conspiracy theorist and member of the Islamophobia network, was among the witnesses at the hearings.
The results of the hearings were ultimately disappointing for King and the creeping sharia conspiracy theorists — no evidence was found of widespread radicalization.
But fears of creeping sharia were not allayed. Since 2010, 201 bills banning ‘sharia law’ have been introduced in 43 states. Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Alabama have banned sharia through the adoption of foreign law bans, which prohibit the consideration of any foreign or religious laws in rulings.
The majority of anti-sharia legislation is based on the American Laws for American Courts model legislation, drafted by CSP counsel and American Public Policy Alliance co-founder David Yerushalmi, who is known for his extreme racist and Islamophobic rhetoric.
A 2013 report by the Brennan Center for Justice warned that the bans could have a “host of unintended consequences,” such as invalidating marital, contractual, and court decisions in which arbitrators took into account Islamic, Jewish, or Christian legal norms. The American Bar Association published a formal letter of dissent against the bans. Nevertheless, these testaments to the power of far-right demagoguery remain on the books across the country.
Like sharia, critical race theory (CRT) is a term that has two very different meanings for two different groups of people. For those who actually study or teach it, critical race theory is a method of analyzing the ways in which race and racism influence social, cultural, political, and legal structures and institutions. It posits that racism is a socially constructed means of maintaining power for those on top of the social hierarchy as opposed to a merely individual manifestation of prejudice.
According to critical race theory, America’s history of white supremacy persists not primarily through individually racist people, but rather through systems and institutions built to benefit white people at the expense of all other groups.
To its opponents, critical race theory is a subversive ideology that condemns all white people as racists and calls for the destruction of American society. It is being taught in elementary, middle and high schools across the country, causing young people to hate America and its history. It leads to division and tension, and stokes the flames of racial hatred. Again, none of this is actually true.
The current right wing hysteria around critical race theory began last year after Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute with very little understanding of the concept, appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight. He claimed that critical race theory had “pervaded every institution in the federal government,” and that it was being “weaponized against the American people.” He also called on President Trump to issue an executive order to “stamp out this destructive, divisive, pseudoscientific ideology at its root — and Trump listened.
In September 2020, within days of Rufo’s appearance on Tucker Carlson, Trump issued an executive order instructing federal agencies to suspend all racial sensitivity trainings that dealt with “critical race theory” and “white privilege.” He also established the 1776 Commission, to “encourage educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history.”
Upon his inauguration, President Biden rescinded Trump’s executive order about critical race theory. However, this did not prevent the spread of hysteria. As of this month, 25 states have introduced bills or other measures to prevent the teaching of critical race theory in schools. 9 states have enacted these measures.
This month, Republican lawmakers reintroduced a bill to prohibit schools from using federal funding to teach the 1619 Project, a collection of essays, photo essays, poetry, and fiction originally published by the The New York Times Magazine examining the consequences of slavery and the position of Black people in America. The project challenged traditional narratives of American history, suggesting that the story of America began not in 1776 but in 1619, when the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia.
The bans that have been enacted in response to fear mongering about critical race theory for the most part do not address critical race theory. There is no compelling evidence that CRT, a postgraduate level field of study, was being taught in elementary, middle, or high schools. That was not Rufo’s goal, as he admitted at an event hosted by the Claremont Institute. Rather, the goal was to “have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’”
The fear mongering and the bans do , however, make conversations about race and racism in the classroom more difficult and controversial.
Although panics like the ones surrounding sharia law ten years ago and critical race theory today make little sense, they are useful tools for the far-right’s political ambitions. Through demagoguery and fear mongering, the far right was able to, in the name of preserving American freedom, pass countless pieces of Islamophobic legislation that directly contradicted the most basic tenets of the Constitution.
It is incumbent upon us to dispel similar conspiracy theories against anti-racism teaching by exposing them as lies. If we don’t, we may continue to lose our constitutional freedoms to far-right delusions.
Ismail Allison is a researcher with the Council on American-Islamic Relations and a recent graduate of Howard University.
