Abstract
In 2010 a number of states began introducing a law that prohibited the application of sharia in U.S. courtrooms. Sharia, translated as the ‘clear path’, is essentially the law of Islam. These laws are an outgrowth of the angst and prejudice toward Muslim Americans known as Islamophobia. This study attempts to understand these laws, their origin and the population, legislative and political/cultural factors most closely related to their introduction and existence. This is a very salient topic given the targeting of Islam by some politicians most prominently in the 2016 presidential election. Their introduction and passage in some states have alienated the small, but growing population of Muslims. It was found in this study that religious salience, traditionalism and the size of the presence of anti-Muslim groups predicted the existence of an anti-sharia law, while Democratic dominance predicted no law. These results indicate that Islam is part of the ‘culture war’ in the United States.
Introduction
In 2010 a number of states began introducing a law that prohibited the application of sharia in U.S. courtrooms. The word ‘sharia’ comes from the Qur’an, the Islamic holy book. The word can be translated as the ‘clear path’. It is essentially the law of Islam like the halakhah is for Judaism or the canon law for Catholics. For a practicing Muslim, one cannot have Islam without sharia (Uddin, 2019).
The laws have been challenged in court particularly in Awad v. Ziriax (2012) which was related to a constitutional amendment in Oklahoma that sought to ban sharia. Based on established standards through various court cases that encompass interpretations of the Establishment Clause and the Supremacy Clause these laws were considered unconstitutional. Since then the language of these laws has been altered to avoid specific references to sharia; however, the intent of these laws is still the same and continue to raise Supremacy Clause issues (Sheeder, 2013).
The unconstitutionality of these laws was also based on the court’s inability to establish the actual implementation of sharia in the United States or the harmful effects on the state from individual adoption of sharia in civil court cases involving marriage, divorce and child custody. Religious law has been used in these courts in the United States for some time by various religious communities. Quite the contrary, as explained by Pedrioli (2012) these, “laws discriminate against U.S. Muslims out of whose religious tradition Sharia comes, and fail to offer an explanation for such discrimination, instead appealing to public ignorance of Islam and fear of terrorism (p. 69).” In addition, Prasatik (2013) observed that, “laboring under the guise of protecting the U.S. Constitution and preventing future terrorist attacks, the singling-out of Islam has been described as plain bigotry (p. 466).”
These laws have an origin point with David Yerushalmi who drafted the legislation in 2009. The legislation has been promoted by Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy and the American Public Policy Alliance. In addition, Brigitte Gabriel and her organization ACT! For America has promoted the law. Both Yerushalmi and Gabriel have been identified as part of the ‘anti-Muslim inner circle’ in a 2011 Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report (Steinback, 2011).
David Yerushalmi is an Arizona attorney who serves as a general counsel for anti-Muslim think tanks and other organizations. He also is a co-founder of the American Freedom Law Center and a founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE). He believes that Muslims are holy warriors who are focused on killing non-Muslims. Over the years his focus has been directed at the halting of the supposed spread of sharia with his model legislation known as American Law for American Courts (ALAC). He has argued that sharia is a totalitarian ideology that undermines the Constitution. His model legislation initially proposed that the observance of sharia was an act of sedition which is a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. He included that any Muslim observing it would be deported or barred entry to the United States. This version of the law has not survived today. While a softer version of the law proliferates, he admitted that the legislation is really a tool to spread fear and scrutiny of sharia (Ali et al., 2011; David Yerushalmi, 2012; Elsheikh et al., 2018; Patel et al., 2013).
Despite the concerns over constitutionality and the association of these laws with hate groups, state legislatures continue to introduce them and, in some cases, pass them. Between 2010 and 2018, 11 states adopted some form of an anti-sharia law. These include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and South Dakota. See Figure 1. Although this is a minority of states practically every state has introduced these laws with the exception of California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York and Rhode Island. In addition, the momentum for policy adoption has increased over time as can be seen with the cumulative hazard rate shown in Figure 2. The hazard rate is the conditional probability a state will pass an anti-sharia law in a year.
States with Anti-Sharia Laws Enacted (E) (2010 – 2018).
Cumulative Hazard Rate for Anti-Sharia Law Adoption (2010 – 2018).
The cumulative hazard rate started at less than .05 in 2010 and ended at .25 in 2018. This means that by 2018 there was a 25% probability of states adopting an anti-sharia law. This does not consider the other possible influencing factors for policy adoption. As can be seen in Figure 1 there appears to be a concentration of states in the South that have these laws. Why these states? It is unknown if the number of states that have these laws will increase, but there are some states with similar backgrounds to those states that have them that have not passed these laws yet. This is the interest in this study.
The next section describes the source for this legislation in Islamophobia and the ongoing ‘culture war’ in the United States. The factors for bill introduction and law existence are considered within this context. In particular, political and religious factors are considered the most relevant toward this end.
Islamophobia and the culture war
The term ‘Islamophobia’ has been linked to the French colonial authorities in Africa, who were advised by authors like Alain Quellien to not engage in ‘Islamophobie’, in order to promote peace and stability in the colonies (Skenderovic et al., 2014). Later, the term gained prominence in 1997 with the Runnymede Report, developed by Runnymede, a think tank in the United Kingdom. Islamophobia is believed to be the next evolution of Orientalism or anti-Arab racism. The transition from Orientalism to Islamophobia started to occur in the 1990s as Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis promoted the idea of a ‘clash of civilizations’ (Ali, 2012).
This shift along with the association of Islam with terrorism since the 1980s has led to a simplification of political and economic problems facing the Muslim world. Muslims are seen as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ with conservative Muslims being viewed as mostly ‘bad’ (Uddin, 2019). This is rooted in the belief that the unrest in the Muslim world and the rise of terrorism is directly linked to a faithful implementation of Islam. Islam is seen as a violent authoritarian religion that has a political agenda which aims to destabilize the Western secular governments. Islamophobia, or the fear of Islam, is therefore justified because Islam is a direct threat to non-Muslims all over the world.
Despite its modern manifestations, Islamophobia has been around for a long time. As explained by Love (2009), “’Islamophobia’ is the latest term for a centuries-long history of American state policy, cultural discourses and discriminatory practices that enforce racial boundaries around Middle Easterners in America (p. 405).” As this quote explains, Islamophobia is largely a product of racial and cultural separation in the United States. Its existence is also a means to define foreign and domestic policy that takes a hard line against Muslim communities. The end result is discriminatory treatment.
A familiar rejoinder to accusations of racism for those expressing Islamophobic beliefs is that Islam is not a race. Racism is a mentality not necessarily linked with race. Love (2009) argued that Islamophobia is a racialized phenomenon. It is racialized because Muslims have a particular appearance based on clothing, skin color and accents. Muslims can be distinguished based on this appearance and treated differentially which is the essence of racism. It is for this reason that Sikhs, who are not Muslim, continue to be targeted for hate crimes in the United States because of their Muslim-like appearance (Mahmood, 2012).
The problem is that there is a widely held belief that Muslims are militant fundamentalists. This belief increases anxiety towards this community so that people avoid it. The amount of contact with Muslims in the United States is very low. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, only six percent of Americans say they have a conversation with a Muslim once a day (American Attitudes on Muslims, 2011). The Muslim community largely remains a mystery for most Americans. For this reason, when Muslim rights are discussed they are often seen through the prism of national security (Uddin, 2019).
The political Left in the United States has largely supported the notion that Muslims are an oppressed minority. On the political Right the patriotism of Muslims is constantly in question (Khan, 2018). Mitchell and Toner (2016) studied the passage of anti-sharia laws by the states and found conservativism as a predictor for them. The more conservative the people of a state were the more likely they were to pass these laws. In accordance, the size of the Evangelical Christian community also predicted their passage revealing a possible linkage with religious salience. Hewstone et al. (2011) found that as religious salience increased there were greater levels of Islamophobic sentiment.
The anti-sharia movement is an expression of the political divide in the United States and is part of the ongoing ‘culture wars’. This is evident in the close relationship between the introduction of these laws and other laws that are associated with this divide. The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) collected data on the number of bills introduced on ‘culture war’ issues between 2011 and 2017. These included bills that were anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion, right-to-work and voter identity laws. They found that these laws are introduced in the same places by the same people, all Republican and very conservative. Although this answers some of the political and ideological issues that surround these laws it does not address the influence of religion and anti-Muslim groups (Erum Ikramullah, e-mail message to author, April 8, 2019).
Anti-immigrant laws included laws styled on Arizona’s SB 1070, which aim to facilitate the deportation of undocumented immigrants. Other laws included bans on ‘sanctuary cities’. Anti-refugee laws were focused on preventing the resettlement of refugees in the state. Anti-LGBTQ laws included religious freedom restoration acts which aim to allow business owners to elect not to serve certain patrons who embrace an LGBTQ lifestyle. Other anti-LGBTQ laws included defense of marriage acts which aim to define marriage as between a man and a woman. Right-to-work laws forbid compulsory labor union membership or union fee payment. Voter identity laws have been seen as measures to limit voter participation by increasing the stringency in the voting process (Anderson, 2018). Anti-abortion laws limit the legality and access to abortions such as the Pain-Capable Unborn Protection Act, which does not allow abortions after 20 weeks unless it is to save the mother’s life.
A Spearman’s Rho correlation, a non-parametric test for non-normally distributed data, on the number of times these bills were introduced between 2011 and 2017 revealed significant correlations between the introduction of anti-sharia bills with the introduction of anti-LGBTQ bills and anti-abortion bills. The correlations were above .4 indicating a moderate level of correlation. The introduction of anti-sharia bills was most correlated with the introduction of anti-abortion bills. The direction of the correlation was positive indicating that an increase in the introduction of one type of bill coincides with the introduction of the other type. See Table 1.
Correlations of frequencies of bill introductions (2011–2017).
Note: N = 50. *ρ ≤ .05; **ρ ≤ .01 (2-tailed).
Although there appears to be some overlap between the introduction of anti-sharia laws and other laws that exemplify the political divide, more research is needed to understand these unique bills. Currently, there is a paucity of research on this topic. Besides the work of Mitchell and Toner (2016) and some publications in law journals, there is nothing else on this topic in academic journals. This study seeks to expand on the work of Mitchell and Toner (2016) by focusing specifically on the influence of ideology and religiosity including the potential influence of anti-Muslim hate groups. The existence of anti-sharia laws in the different states is due to a number of factors including ideology and religiosity. In order to better understand these factors a more thorough analysis is needed to discern these relationships.
The approach used in this study is primarily focused on the influence of population-level factors on whether a state has an anti-sharia law and how many times the bill has been introduced by lawmakers. The influence of these population-level factors cannot be discounted especially with laws that exemplify ‘culture war’ issues. For example, when considering population religiosity as measured by Gallup, a larger percentage of the population that indicates high religious salience in a state is significantly correlated with the frequency of the introduction of anti-abortion bills. See Table 2. As shown in Table 1, the frequency of anti-abortion bill introduction is most correlated with the frequency of anti-sharia bill introduction.
Anti-abortion bill introduction and religiosity.
Note: Spearman’s Rho correlation. *ρ ≤ .01 (two-tailed). N = 50. Number of times an anti-abortion bill introduced between 2011 and 2017 (ISPU). Average percentage very religious 2012 – 2016 (Gallup).
Public sentiment towards Islam and Muslims is also unique as it may influence legislation. For example, Lajevardi and Abrajano (2019) found that resentment towards Muslim Americans was a strong and significant predictor for supporting Donald Trump for President. As the authors observed, it is not common practice to include group attitudes (public sentiments) and policy measures together; however, there is a group consciousness towards Muslims that make this inclusion plausible. Given that anti-sharia laws are a ‘culture war’ issue while encompassing a group consciousness about Muslims, population-level factors are considered in this research. These are explored in the next section.
Factors for the adoption of anti-sharia laws
In studies on the diffusion of policies, political entities that border each other tend to adopt the same or similar policies (Douglas et al., 2015). In this case, bordering states may adopt anti-sharia laws if one of those states adopt it. In Figure 1 a concentration of states in the South may be evidence of this. The expectation is that a state with a greater percentage of neighboring states that have adopted an anti-sharia law would be more likely to adopt the law.
A similar ideology between these states could also be a contributing factor. For instance, these states in the South are predominantly conservative. Gallup collects annual surveys from residents in these states asking if their political views are very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal or very liberal. The percentage of those with political views that are very conservative and conservative can be compared with the percentage of those with political views that are very liberal and liberal. Ideological distance is commonly used to understand how a policy like the anti-sharia laws spread between the states (Grossback et al., 2004). In the case of anti-sharia laws, the distance between the grand mean of the average percentage conservative of adopting states in the previous years and the percentage conservative at the time of adoption or non-adoption can provide evidence if ideology is a relevant factor in policy adoption.
Ideology can also be fueled by interest groups. These groups are important for constructing problems or constructing the narrative around a problem linked to some event. In the case of anti-sharia laws this could be a terrorist attack or some other transgression that can be linked to a Muslim and thereby all Muslims because of their common affinity in Islam. As explained by Boushey (2016), a policy burden tends to fall on those who are considered social deviants. Those policies that reinforce stereotypes are more likely to be adopted in a state. Ideology as well as the narratives constructed by interest groups reinforce those stereotypes.
A major hurdle to the adoption of a policy is whether that policy is considered legitimate by the people in that state. Interest groups and the narratives they construct around a policy can increase the chances that a policy is considered legitimate. As explained by Jensen (2003), “when a policy becomes legitimized among the general public, the members of the general public have the ability to exert both direct and indirect pressures on governing bodies to adopt a policy (or not) (p. 524).”
With anti-sharia laws, there is a question on whether those laws are seen as legitimate. The courts and various legal associations have refuted them, but public opinion is another thing. The importance of a focusing event for policy adoption may amplify terror events for the purpose of passage of these laws. This is especially true since research has shown that Muslims receive twice the quantity of media coverage as non-Muslims for similar crimes (Rao and Shenkman, 2018).
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) tracks hate groups across the United States by location. A number of categories for these groups have been developed to characterize their ideological orientation. The rise of hate groups specifically targeting Muslims led the SPLC to create a special category for these groups. The percentage of these hate groups out of all the hate groups in a state would indicate the presence and activity of anti-Muslim groups. These groups support the anti-sharia laws and use ideologically-driven narratives that reinforce stereotypes of Muslims to secure support for them among legislators and the general population. The occurrence of focusing events like terrorist attacks further legitimizes their message.
According to the work of Nathan Lean, anti-Muslim groups capitalize on negative sentiments toward Muslims to support the passage of anti-sharia laws (Lean, 2017). Further, Bail (2016) found that these groups have considerable influence over the media, government and public opinion. The negative energy surrounding sharia, which they have helped generate, has been channeled through these groups and their lobbying efforts. Lean (2017) found that Republican lawmakers were more receptive of these efforts. This is especially the case as TEA party activists and right-wing Christian groups have supported the law.
Religion and religiosity need to be considered factors as well. Chouhoud and Mogahed (2018) found in a study of Islamophobia between different faith communities that white evangelicals scored the highest in most measures of prejudice towards Muslims. Based on this, it might be assumed that this faith community is more influenced by narratives that reinforce stereotypes about Muslims and be more supportive of these laws. Mitchell and Toner (2016) established a significant relationship between the size of the Evangelical community and state adoption of an anti-sharia law. In addition, religious salience is a separate factor since religious identification is not as influential as religious importance in determining prejudicial views towards Muslims (Hewstone et al., 2011). Gallup collects annual surveys from a sample of state residents on the importance of religion.
Political competition in a state may also explain the adoption of anti-sharia laws. A state that is evenly split between opposing parties/ideologies may avoid ideologically-driven policy like the anti-sharia laws in order to appeal to moderates. Austin Ranney developed the Ranney index to determine the level of political competition in a state ranging from 1 (Democratic control) to 0 (Republican control) (Klarner, 2013). This index can also reveal if more Democratically-controlled states are least likely to have an anti-sharia law reinforcing the idea that this issue is part of the political divide. Significant findings may confirm the descriptive evidence by ISPU that anti-sharia laws are mostly introduced by Republicans.
Similarly, those states that have full time legislatures and thereby are more professional may be less likely to entertain ideologically-driven policy. Peverill Squire developed the Squire index to capture the level of professionalism of state legislatures (Squire, 2017). The higher the score the more professional the legislature.
In addition to ideological distance, the presence of anti-Muslim hate groups, the amount of political competition and the professionalism of the legislature, the effects of the regional political culture on the propensity to adopt these laws seems connected and relevant to this discussion. Daniel Elazar categorized the political culture of the United States into three categories (traditionalist, individualist and moralist) (Elazar, 1966). Moralist states view government as a means to improve society and promote the general welfare. If sharia is seen as a threat to general welfare, the people in these states may support anti-sharia laws. Individualist states are focusing on supporting the goals of individuals like through a marketplace. The relationships are more transactional. It is unlikely that anti-sharia laws exist in these states since there is no gain in individual utility with their passage. Traditionalist states also align with the South and more conservative states. The goal in these states is to maintain the status quo. Sharia would be seen as a threat in these places since it is assumed that it would upset the social order.
Beyond ideological and political factors, the importance of education cannot be ignored as a factor for the existence of anti-sharia laws. A larger proportion of the population that have a college education could also lower the likelihood for the adoption of an anti-sharia law. An educated population would have gone to college with a diverse student body including Muslims. Beyond this, classes in college would have covered the Muslim world dispelling myths about the Islamic religion and culture. The inter-group contact hypothesis has been used to explore these relationships (Schmid et al., 2014). In addition, an educated population would also not tolerate their politicians attempting to pass contentious legislation that address pseudo-problems.
The focus of this study is on the religious and ideological factors that drive the introduction and existence of these laws in the states. Bigotry towards Muslims and the political ‘culture wars’ that make Islam and Muslims a partisan issue are assumed to contribute to the incidence of these laws across the states. Evidence of these relationships would indicate that these bills are limited to a select group of states.
This study is a unique contribution to the literature on this topic because it includes religious salience, political party control, regional culture and the size of the presence of anti-Muslims groups by state. By considering such factors as anti-Muslim groups the connection between population beliefs and legislation through the act of creating policy legitimacy can be more comprehensively understood. As previously cited, understanding the existence of these laws and the frequency of their introduction from a group consciousness level using population-level factors is an important contribution because of the uniqueness of the issue and its inclusion among a group of issues considered polarizing and based within the ongoing ‘culture war’.
Study design
There are several assumptions for this study. The first assumption is that ideology matters for policy adoption. It is assumed that more conservative states have these laws. Ideological distance is used as a variable to capture this possible effect. This variable is oriented towards the proportion of respondents to a state-wide survey conducted by Gallup that identify as conservative. The years 2010 to 2018 were used to calculate this variable. The Ranney Index, which measures political competition, similarly captures the possible effect of ideology on policy adoption. This index measures whether a state is Democrat-controlled (1) or Republican-controlled (0). This variable is measured on a moving average between 2007 and 2010. It includes all states with the exception of Nebraska because of its unicameral legislature. Elazar’s political culture designations also contribute to an understanding of the relationship between ideology and policy adoption. Each state is coded based on whether it is a ‘traditionalist’ state or not based on Elazar’s categorization.
The selected years for measurement reflect the years of available data during the study period. The anti-sharia laws began to be adopted in 2010 and the last year of the study was 2018. The method of analysis used in this study is a Cox regression. As noted by Allison (1984), “Cox regression is unequivocally the best all-around method for estimating regression models for event history data.” This technique assesses the relationship between the survival time and the covariates in the model. The outcome is the log of the hazard ratio at time (t). A significant relationship between a covariate and the outcome is determined at the .05 probability level. Interpretation of the effect is based on the odds ratio. Covariates can be entered into the model as time constant or time varying albeit one of the assumptions of Cox regression is proportionality in which the effects are constant across time. This assumption is not absolute as Allison (1984) observed that Cox regression is still robust to violations of this assumption.
The other approach adopted in this study is a Poisson regression. The outcome in the Cox regression is focused on policy existence. The outcome in the Poisson regression is focused on bill introduction i.e. the number of times an anti-sharia law bill has been introduced in the state legislature. Some states have introduced this bill several times while some states have introduced it a few times or not at all. The total number of times the bill has been introduced between 2010 and 2018 serves as the outcome variable in this analysis. The nature of this variable necessitates a Poisson regression approach.
The second assumption for this study is that religion and religiosity matter for the existence of anti-sharia laws. The proportion of the state that identifies as Evangelical Christian is assumed to predict policy existence. The Association of Religion Data Archives based at Pennsylvania State University has collected data on religious composition by state. These data also include the proportion of the state that is Muslim. Religiosity is also an important aspect of the role of religion in law existence. Religiosity is the salience of religion. Gallup collects data on religious salience by state. The proportion of those that indicate that religion is very important to them is used as a measure of religiosity in this study. The religious composition variables are measured in 2010, the last year of available data, and the religious salience variable is based on an average of survey responses between 2012 and 2016. The average encompasses survey responses for several years and represent the years of available data during the study period.
The third assumption is that education and legislative professionalism are important factors for policy existence. The proportion with a Bachelor’s degree or higher is a measure of educational achievement in a state. The data for this variable is in the Census and measured in 2010. Legislative professionalism is measured through the Squire Index in which higher values connote a more professional legislature. This was last calculated in 2015.
The descriptive statistics of the variables included in this study with the exception of the categorical variable are in Table 3. This includes the minimum/maximum values, the mean and the standard deviation for 49 states. Nebraska is not included because the Ranney Index is not calculated for it because of its unicameral legislature.
Descriptive statistics.
Note: N = 49 states.
The number of times the bill has been introduced between 2010 and 2018 ranges from none to 20 different times. On average the states have introduced this bill four times. In some of these states, half of the hate groups are anti-Muslim with an average of ten percent of the hate groups being anti-Muslim. This is substantial given that Muslims are a small minority of the state population. On average they represent .47 percent of a state’s population.
The causal relationship for the Cox regression is conceptualized in equation (1) below. Two separate regressions are considered so that the full sample of states can be included in the analysis. In the separate regression the Ranney Index is excluded for this reason. The causal relationship for the Poisson regression is conceptualized in equation (2) below. Two separate regressions are also considered with this model as well.
Harrell’s C as well as the model chi-square are used to test for model fit with equation (1). Somers’ D is used to test for explained variance in this equation. Somers’ D is commonly used for this purpose in Cox regression albeit its estimates are considered more conservative than a Pearson’s R2 calculation used in OLS (Schemper and Stare, 1996). The model chi-square is used to test for model fit with equation (2) while the pseudo-R2 is used to test for explained variance.
There are no evident problems with multicollinearity with these variables. The tolerance values were well above .1 and the variance inflation factors were below 10. In addition, the significance values to determine a Type 1 error were established at .05 and the confidence intervals were established at the 95% level. However, the .10 significance value was also considered given the exploratory nature of the study.
Study results
In Table 4, the results are shown for the first Cox regression with the Ranney Index. The most significant variable in this model is the percentage religious. An increase in this percentage by one increases the odds for the existence of an anti-sharia law by 38.2%. Odds is the probability of an event occurring over it not occurring. The significance of this variable along with its positive relationship with law existence confirms prior research that Islamophobia is linked with religious salience. As the population reports greater levels of religiosity, the likelihood for anti-sharia law existence increases across the states excluding Nebraska.
Cox regression results with Ranney index.
Note: N = 49. *ρ ≤ .10; **ρ ≤ .05; ***ρ ≤ .01. Optimism-corrected Harrell’s C statistic = .825. Optimism-corrected Somers’ D statistic = .635. Chi-square (df: 10) = 35.854 (significantly different from the null model at .0001).
Similarly, traditionalist states were also a significant factor in whether a state had an anti-sharia law. Compared to non-traditionalist states, there was more than a 2000% chance of having this policy for traditionalist states. Although not the most significant factor out of all of the variables in this model, it had the largest relationship. Traditionalist states are in the southern United States where most of these bills are passing into law.
Political and geographical factors were also significantly related to law existence. The assumption in policy diffusion studies that neighbor adoption increases the likelihood for policy adoption is not confirmed in this analysis. As the percentage of neighbors adopting anti-sharia laws increases by one, the odds for adoption decrease by 3.9%. Although there is a concentration of states in the South that have these laws, sharing a contiguous border with an adopting state actually decreases the odds of having it.
Political competition (Ranney index) has a larger negative relationship than neighbor adoption. Those states that are more Democratically controlled reduce the odds for having the law. A one unit increase in the political competition score i.e. movement towards Democratic control reduces the odds for law existence by 92.7%. This could be interpreted as the effects of political control on the need to use politically divisive issues like the anti-sharia bills. The more political control, the less need for politically divisive issues. It could also be interpreted as the lack of support shown by those in the Democratic Party for these bills. As discussed in this paper, Islam has become a partisan issue within the ‘culture war’ divide with Democrats showing more support for the Muslim community. In response, Muslims have increased their support of the Democratic Party. The first Muslims elected to Congress (Keith Ellison, André Carson, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar) have all been elected as Democrats. Increasingly, Muslims have supported the more progressive branch of the Democratic Party (Khan, 2020; Jalalzai, 2020; Mogahed and Mahmood, 2019).
Although less significant than the other factors, the percentage of anti-Muslim hate groups out of all hate groups in a state is a marginally significant factor for the existence of an anti-sharia law. As the percentage of these groups increases by one there is a 10.7% increase in the odds for policy existence. The operation of these groups in the different states could be having an impact on anti-sharia law adoption. It should be noted that despite these groups being designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, those on the political Right do not see them as this way. Groups like ACT! For America have access to various politicians who do not hide their interactions with this group.
The other variables in the model were not statistically significant including the percentage Muslim and Evangelical in the state, ideological distance between states, legislative professionalism as measured by the Squire index and the percentage of those with higher education in the state. The insignificance of the size of the Muslim population is counter to the assumptions of the perceived threat from this community as it grows in size. The presence of the Evangelical community also does not matter as much as the other factors in the model. Religious salience, not religious affiliation seems to matter more for policy adoption. Professionalism and education, which were assumed to impact the odds for the existence of this law in a negative way, also did not matter.
The robustness of these results was tested by including all 50 states with the elimination of the Ranney index from the model. The results remained relatively the same with the same factors significant as in the previous model. The significance decreased, but remained at the .05 probability level for all significant factors except for the percentage of anti-Muslim hate groups which remained at the .10 probability level. These results are shown in Table 5.
Cox regression results without Ranney index.
Note: N = 50. *ρ ≤ .10; **ρ ≤ .05. Optimism-corrected Harrell’s C statistic = .815. Optimism-corrected Somers’ D statistic = .645. Chi-square (df: 9) = 31.620 (significantly different from the null model at .0001).
The follow-up analysis using the number of anti-sharia bills introduced in a Poisson regression revealed some different results. As before, the first model included only 49 states because of the inclusion of the Ranney index as a factor. In this analysis, political competition and the percentage of those with higher education were the most significant factors contributing to the number of times these bills were introduced in the state legislature. As in the previous analysis, an increase in the political competition score i.e. a movement towards Democratic control decreases the odds for introducing this bill. A one unit increase in political competition decreases the odds in bill introduction by 55.2%. See Table 6.
Poisson regression results with Ranney index.
Note: N = 49. *ρ ≤ .10; ***ρ ≤ .01. Pseudo R2 = .592. Chi-square (df: 38) = 81.093 (significantly different from the null model at .0001).
The percentage of those with a higher education also decreased the odds for the introduction of this bill. According to these results, an increase in this percentage by one decreases the odds of introducing this bill by 10%. This was the expected direction for this relationship given the assumption that educated voters and their politicians are less likely to support discriminatory legislation like the anti-sharia laws.
The percentage Muslim of the total state population was marginally significant at the .10 probability level. This was not significant in the Cox regression models. The Poisson regression results indicated that an increase of the percentage Muslim by one increased the odds of introducing the bill by 32.3%. This would confirm the assumption about the perceived threat of Muslims as this population expands increasing the likelihood that an anti-sharia bill is introduced in the legislature.
The percentage of neighbors adopting the law was also marginally significant at the .10 probability level. This is less significant than with policy existence in the Cox regression models and in the opposite direction. As the percentage of neighbor adoption increases by one there is a 1.1% increase in the odds of introducing the bill. This is in alignment with the assumptions in policy diffusion that neighbors adopt similar laws. In this case, it’s not policy adoption, but policy introduction.
The other variables in the model were not statistically significant including traditionalist states and religiosity. These variables were significant in predicting whether a state had the law, but not on how many times a state introduced the bill. The percentage of anti-Muslim hate groups was also not significant in this regression.
The second Poisson regression also revealed somewhat different results with the percentage of anti-Muslim hate groups and the percentage with a higher education as the only significant factors. Education is the most significant factor in the same direction as the previous model. The anti-Muslim hate group variable remained marginally significant and a positive influence on the introduction of anti-sharia bills. See Table 7.
Poisson regression results without Ranney index.
Note: N = 50. *ρ ≤ .10; **ρ ≤ .05; ***ρ ≤ .01. Pseudo R2 = .531. Chi-square (df: 40) = 92.873 (significantly different from the null model at .0001).
The results in Tables 4 to 7 have several consistencies across them. In three of the four models the percentage of anti-Muslim hate groups was marginally significant with a positive influence on the odds for policy existence/introduction. Neighbor adoption was also significant in three of the four models, but regarding policy existence the effect was negative and more statistically significant and with policy introduction the effect was positive and less statistically significant. Based on these findings, the presence of anti-Muslim hate groups appears to marginally matter for policy introduction and the existence of the law in a positive direction while the adoption by neighboring states is contradictory between the two equations.
In the models with political competition for both policy existence and introduction an increase in this score decreased the odds for whether the law existed or was introduced in a state. As noted earlier, this could be interpreted in two ways. The first interpretation is that a reduction in political competition reduces the odds for both the introduction and adoption of an anti-sharia law. This could mean that political competition increases the use of policy proposals and their adoption that appeal to populist and often prejudicial zeal. The second interpretation is that states under Democratic control are less likely to introduce or have an anti-sharia law because those within the Democratic Party are less prejudiced towards Muslims and Islam. It could also be a combination of these two reasons. For certain, not a single anti-sharia law has been introduced by a Democrat in any state at any time.
Religiosity and traditionalist states are significant factors only for whether a state has the law. Nearly every state has introduced these laws, some more than once. It takes much effort and consensus around a bill for it to pass the legislature and be signed by the governor. This has been the case for only 11 states as of the writing of this article. In these states, religious salience and a traditionalist culture mattered the most for why these states have these bills. This means that lobbying by anti-Muslim hate groups or whether the state is Democratically-controlled does not matter as much as how religious or traditional the people are of a state. Certainly, religious/traditionalist states are typically controlled by Republicans and the anti-Muslim hate groups concentrate their efforts there. Despite this apparent cross-over, the test statistics for multicollinearity did not reveal problematic correlations between these factors. This means that each factor contributes to the model independently. In essence, there is something unique about religiosity and traditionalism with the anti-sharia movement.
Education also did not matter for policy existence, but it mattered for policy introduction. Education had a very significant and negative relationship with the number of times the anti-sharia laws were introduced across the states in both models. The more educated the people of a state the less likely those states will introduce the legislation. In the second Poisson regression it was the only factor significant at the .05 probability level or higher. This accords with research on this topic that higher education corresponds to lower Islamophobia (Clemons et al., 2019).
The take-aways from this analysis are the meaningful impacts of the presence of anti-Muslim hate groups, political competition, religiosity, traditionalism and education in either the frequency of anti-sharia law proposals or their existence. The other take-aways are the consistent non-significance of the size of the Evangelical population, ideology and legislative professionalism. One may conclude from these findings that states that are considered traditionalist with more anti-Muslim hate groups and higher levels of religiosity are more likely to have an anti-sharia law. Another conclusion is that states under Democratic control or with less political competition and with higher rates of higher education are less likely to introduce these bills let alone pass them into law.
Discussion
The contribution of religious zeal to the existence of these bills merits more discussion. The United States remains a religious country when compared to other Western countries. Religion has been an important aspect of the culture (Braunstein, 2018). Religious liberty was so important to the founders of the nation that the First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees it (Merriman, 2015). However, there continues to be an ongoing tension between religious believers and the state over this liberty.
At the same time, these constituencies lobby for more state intervention in the private lives of those they consider deviant as a manifestation of the ‘culture war’ (Dunn, 2016). The anti-sharia laws fall within this scope. The product of this movement has been a deterioration of relationships between religious Muslims and Christians as well as religious followers of other faith communities that have supported these bills (Rauf, 2016). These centrifugal forces have not been helpful in developing a cohesive multicultural society. Instead, it has led to the establishment of oppositional blocs that have engaged in zero-sum thinking regarding the gains of one group over another. The religious liberty struggles of Muslims are not seen within the bigger picture of religious liberty for all groups (Uddin, 2019). Instead, any increase in religious liberty for Muslims is seen as a loss for their group. It is difficult to see how Muslims having a place to pray or bury their dead is a loss for other religious groups unless one views this within the larger context of the ongoing ‘culture war’.
It should also be noted that despite the findings in this analysis, not all non-Muslim religious believers are Islamophobic. When comparing the states on religiosity there are a number of states that have higher percentages of their population that are very religious than the average of those states that have adopted anti-sharia laws. Alabama, Utah, South Carolina and Georgia all have a higher religious population than adopting states yet they have not adopted an anti-sharia law as of the writing of this article. See Figure 3.
Percent Very Religious for States without Bill Passage.
Utah has a very religious population that is predominantly of the LDS faith. Their own experiences with religious discrimination in history and the present-day along with their profound historical memory has made them sympathetic to all people of faith of minority communities (Penning, 2009; Petrzelka and Jacobs, 2016; Uddin, 2019). Given these realities, it is highly unlikely that Utah will pass an anti-sharia law.
One cannot discount the contributions towards this movement by anti-Muslim groups in the United States and abroad. Although the factor remained marginally significant in this analysis, the direction of the effect was consistent. An increase in the presence of anti-Muslim groups in a state positively contributes to the introduction and existence of an anti-sharia law. One could debate that a population in a state that has an Islamophobic predisposition would naturally have more anti-Muslim groups. This introduces the endogeneity concerns with this analysis. Despite this, theoretically, the association is plausible given what is known about the impact of lobby groups on the legislative process and the influence that anti-Muslims groups have on the media, government and public opinion (Bail, 2016).
As explained previously, these groups may be labeled hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, this designation has not delegitimized them for those on the political Right. Many of those involved in these groups have served within President Trump’s cabinet and worked on his campaign. Disturbingly, saying anti-Muslim things or harboring anti-Muslim beliefs have not disqualified people from public office; however, it did not work as an electoral strategy in the midterm elections in 2018 (Running on hate, 2018).
Still, there are many states that have greater concentrations of anti-Muslim hate groups than the average of state adopters yet they have not adopted an anti-sharia law. These include Delaware, Montana, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, Connecticut, California, Washington and Indiana. This list of states contains those states that have a Democratic majority i.e. Democratically-controlled which as found in this analysis significantly matters for whether a state introduces and/or has this law. The other states can be considered outliers. These include Idaho, Montana and Indiana which are states heavily controlled by Republicans. See Figure 4.
Percent Anti-Muslim Groups for States without Bill Passage.
There is a need for more research on this topic including a qualitative look at why a state chooses to have one of these laws. At this point, the quantitative results point to a number of factors that contribute to their introduction and ultimately to the existence of these laws in the states. This may explain many of the reasons, but ignores those outliers. The case of Utah seems to have a plausible explanation, but what about Alabama which has much in common with Mississippi and Tennessee which both have anti-sharia laws.
When comparing Republican-controlled or Republican-leaning states that have an anti-sharia law with those that do not on the significant factors there are clear differences. Figure 5 shows that Republican states that have not passed the law have a lower percentage of their population that are not very religious. The same can be seen with the percentage of anti-Muslim hate groups. Those Republican states that have not passed this law also have a smaller number of anti-Muslim hate groups. See Figure 6. The predicted probability of law existence for states with a traditionalist political culture is much higher than for states without this political culture. See Figure 7.
Percentage Very Religious by Law Existence for Republican States.
Percentage Anti-Muslim Hate Groups by Law Existence for Republican States.
Predicted Probability for Republican States with Traditionalist Culture with Law.
These figures show that being a Republican-dominated or leaning state is not nearly enough to predict the existence of an anti-sharia law. Although the ISPU data showed that these laws were mostly introduced by Republican politicians, the odds of having this law in a state are more favorable when religious salience is high, the percentage of anti-Muslim hate groups is high and the political culture is traditionalist.
Conclusion
The findings in this study contribute to research on the anti-sharia laws. Unlike previous studies on these laws, religious salience was included as a factor. This factor was the most significant towards understanding why a state had an anti-sharia law. When comparing Republican-dominated or leaning states on whether they had the law those states with a higher percentage of those that identify as very religious were more likely to have the law. The reason for this association could be based on theological understandings of the faith and the perception of a threat from Islam. More research at the individual-level would be needed to understand these relationships.
Another unique contribution of this research is the inclusion of a factor measuring the presence of anti-Muslim groups in a state. The size of the presence of anti-Muslim groups also had a significant association with whether a state had an anti-sharia law. This significance was not at the same level as some of the other factors, but it was consistent across most of the models. When comparing Republican-dominated or leaning states on this factor those states with more anti-Muslim groups had an anti-sharia law. As previously discussed, this could be evidence of a reciprocal relationship in which states with more Islamophobic beliefs also tend to have more anti-Muslim groups or it could be evidence of the impact these groups are having on public opinion and thereby the propensity to have this law. More research on the impacts of the operations of these groups is needed to fully understand how effective they have been in influencing public opinion and ultimately legislators who are introducing and voting on these bills.
The inclusion of political culture as a factor in this research was also another unique contribution of this research. Those states categorized as traditionalist were more likely to have an anti-sharia law. When adding these three factors together which did not show significant problems with multicollinearity, one can conclude that traditionalist states with higher levels of religiosity and more anti-Muslim groups are more likely to have an anti-sharia law.
The usefulness of these findings beyond furthering the research in this area is in addressing those factors that lead to discriminatory legislation. States that may not have these laws yet, but are more likely to pass one based on these underlying factors may serve as places of contestation in which counter-messages could be supplied to the public and legislators. In essence, an important step would be reducing the role of these laws in the ongoing ‘culture war’. In the absence of this change, the next step would be the courts. Although Beydoun (2017) observed that the proliferation of these laws had stalled, the presidency of Donald Trump has given new life to them. The stop of the spread of these laws as well as the elimination of the laws currently enacted is an important step in eliminating Islamophobic bias in the United States.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
