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Sen. Tuberville’s anti-Sharia bills are “bigotry” and “unconstitutional,” CAIR says

Tuberville is “deliberately and consciously lying about his Alabama Muslim constituents,” CAIR’s national deputy director alleged.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. speaks at the Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's choice to be Defense secretary, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025.()
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. speaks at the Senate Armed Services Committee. AP Photo/Ben Curtis

In an October 8 speech against “radical Islam” on the Senate floor, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville complained that America is “allowing people with extremist ideologies, people who hate American values to not only live here, but to hold positions of power and influence our government.”

Tuberville said “mass migration has destroyed [the United Kingdom’s] society” and alleged that members of Congress “openly support the radical Islamic terrorist organization, Hamas.” The next day, he repeated and affirmed many of the same sentiments on an episode of the conspiracy program The Alex Jones Show.

The Council of American-Islamic Relations’ national deputy director, Edward Mitchell, later described Tuberville’s October 8 speech as spreading “dangerous hatred against American Muslims and utter ignorance about Islam” in a public statement.

“Anti-Muslim bigotry is sadly not that surprising and it’s widely tolerated in politics,” Mitchell noted during an interview with APR on Sunday night. “But I thought that going on The Alex Jones Show would be a step too far for a United States Senator and for the Alabama political leadership.”

A well-known conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones recently had his appeal of a $1.4 billion judgment for defaming the families of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre rejected by the Supreme Court. APR reported last week that former Senator Doug Jones harshly criticized Tuberville’s appearance on the show at a University of Alabama College Democrats event.

 “It shouldn’t only be Alabama Muslims who are upset about the senator’s descent into crazy world,” Mitchell said. “It can also be Alabama political leaders who are speaking out and saying, ‘insulting the parents of murdered children from Sandy Hook by going on The Alex Jones Show was a step too far.’”

Tuberville has introduced two bills related to his speech on the Senate floor and his appearance on The Alex Jones Show, the “No Sharia Act” and the “Preserving a Sharia Free America Act.” Sharia is the name for the body of Islamic law and standards derived from the Quran and other holy texts of the faith.

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The No Sharia Act would bar courts from considering “Shari’a or any foreign law that violates the constitutional rights of any party” in the decision-making process. And, if passed, the Preserving a Sharia Free America Act would make advocating for the “imposition of Sharia law in a manner that would violate the rights of another person under the Constitution of the United States or any Federal or State law” punishable by deportation.

“[Sharia] set out how you’re supposed to practice—how you’re supposed to honor God—and his bill puts a wall between Americans and God,” Britton O’Shields told APR during a phone interview on Friday.

The staff attorney for CAIR’s Alabama chapter, O’Shields stressed that the laws would represent infringements on Americans’ religious liberties protected by the First Amendment.

“At best, Senator Tuberville’s Preserving a Sharia Free America Act is redundant: a key principle of Sharia law is that observers must follow the laws of the lands in which they reside,” she said. “At worst, it provides the government with the pretext to target and discriminate against Americans who are simply abiding by the tenets of their faith.” 

In 2013, a federal judge struck down an Oklahoma ballot measure forbidding courts “from considering or using Sharia Law” on constitutional grounds. Similar bans like the one passed in Alabama in 2014, which ban “foreign laws,” have yet to be tested in court however.

“The No Sharia Act is substantively very similar to the 2014 ban passed in Alabama, and like that constitutional amendment, it is a publicity stunt that is unenforceable and unconstitutional, and that ultimately amounts to a waste of time and taxpayer dollars in the service of making people feel afraid to practice their religion,” O’Shields argued in an email on Sunday.

“As Senator Tuberville has repeatedly said, you have the right to peacefully practice religion in this country,” Tuberville’s communications director Mallory Jaspers stated in an email to APR. “But if you believe that Sharia Law supersedes the U.S. Constitution, you should be deported.”

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Mitchell noted though that “anyone is free to believe that something is superior to something else and you cannot punish them because of their thoughts that you don’t like.”

“That’s a very basic First Amendment principle,” he added. “If a Christian believes that the Bible is supreme to the Constitution, you cannot deport that Christian because they hold that belief.”

Jaspers did not answer APR’s questions about whether Tuberville would consider visiting a mosque in Alabama as he campaigns for the governorship. The most recent Religious Landscape Study, conducted by the Pew Research Center, found one percent of adults in Alabama identify as Muslims.

CAIR first issued a statement in June requesting that Tuberville visit a mosque after the senator said people moving to Alabama from blue states would not be welcome if they brought a “communist, Islamic atmosphere.”

“ So part of the reason that we and the Alabama Muslim community invited Senator Tuberville to go visit a mosque after his initial anti-Muslim statements is that we understand what the perception of Muslims is among people who are not familiar with their Muslim neighbors, right?” Mitchell said. “If I was not a Muslim and if I did not have any Muslim friends—if all I knew about Muslims was what I saw on Fox News at night—I might think crazy things about Muslims too.”

When asked about Tuberville’s recent behavior, however, Mitchell explained that he feels that initial presumption of good faith is no longer warranted.

“[Tuberville] has made it very clear that he is not acting in good faith,” Mitchell declared. “He is not some poor, misinformed individual. He is deliberately and consciously lying about his Alabama Muslim constituents, working with people who are known lunatics and liars like Alex Jones, the Sandy Hook denier, and he is fomenting hatred against the Muslim community based on debunked conspiracy theories.”

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“ If he ever decides he wants to engage, we’re happy to do it,” he added. “But in the meantime, you know, we have to defend our community, we have to speak up against this crazy, nutty bigotry.”

Chance Phillips is a reporter. You can reach him at [email protected].

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