In recent weeks, there’s been a series of indefensible incidents in which Republican members of Congress have peddled overt and explicit anti-Muslim bigotry, but GOP Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee added to the pattern this week, publishing a message to social media that argued, “Muslims don’t belong in American society.”
Democratic leaders have been quick to condemn the hateful partisan trend, but Republican leaders failed to do the same, and it was difficult to wonder whether someone like House Speaker Mike Johnson would ever address the subject in a meaningful way.
The good news is, the Louisiana Republican finally said something on Tuesday afternoon. The bad news is, Congress’ most powerful GOP leader made an ugly problem even worse.
After a brief comment about the significance of “tone,” Johnson effectively presented a defense of his far-right members’ bigotry.
“There’s a lot of energy in the country and a lot of popular sentiment that the demand to impose sharia law in America is a serious problem. That’s what animates this,” the House speaker said. “The language that people use — it’s different language than I would use, but I think that’s a serious issue. Sharia law and the imposition of sharia law is contrary to the U.S. Constitution.”
He concluded, “When you seek to come to a country and not assimilate but impose sharia law, sharia law is in conflict with the Constitution. It’s not about people as Muslims; it’s about those who seek to impose a different belief system that is in direct conflict with the Constitution.”
Right off the bat, it’s important to emphasize that it would have been incredibly easy for Johnson to simply say, “The Republican Party does not support religious bigotry of any kind.” The fact that he couldn’t bring himself to make such an obvious declaration speaks volumes about the state of the contemporary GOP.
What’s more, the House speaker was suggesting that it’s Muslim Americans’ fault that some House Republicans are peddling anti-Muslim bigotry, which is every bit as disgusting as it seems.
But let’s not overlook the inanity of Johnson’s tacit defense.
Younger readers might not be aware of this, but between 2011 and 2015, the threat of “creeping sharia law” became quite common in far-right circles, before eventually getting picked up by some Republicans eager to score points with the most rabid elements of the GOP base. (Newt Gingrich, for example, included an anti-sharia provision in his 2012 presidential platform.)
The basic idea behind this paranoid nonsense was that Americans needed to fear the demise of the separation of church and state, which would give way to the imposition of Islamic rules on the public against Americans’ will.
State-sanctioned sharia law did not and could not exist in this country, and the idea that government officials would impose sharia on the populace was obviously silly. But at the time, too many Republicans and their allies took all of this quite seriously, as part of a bizarre campaign to scare people and turn Muslim Americans into a threat in need of government action.
More than a decade later, as GOP officials and candidates look for new ways to divide the American public and scare conservative voters, partisan hysterics about sharia law have made a furious comeback, despite the inconvenient fact that there is still no credible effort underway to impose Islamic rules on unsuspecting Americans.
It’s a detail the House speaker really ought to be aware of.
As for Ogles, the scandal-plagued lawmaker responded to the controversy with a follow-up item via social media, arguing that if a sitting member of Congress said that Christians don’t belong in American society, it “wouldn’t even be a news story.”
The next time the Tennessee Republican wonders why he isn’t taken seriously as an elected official, he should keep this in mind.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
