When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that his administration would designate the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a “foreign terrorist organisation,” civil-rights lawyers were stunned — not merely by the inflammatory rhetoric but by its utter legal invalidity. Under United States law, only the federal State Department may issue such designations after a formal intelligence review and congressional notification.
No governor holds this power. Yet the declaration was made publicly, widely amplified, and politically weaponised. It was never meant to be law — it was spectacle. And it fits squarely inside a long American tradition: transforming Muslims, and the idea of Sharia, into domestic enemies during moments of political anxiety.
Florida’s move did not emerge in isolation. Weeks earlier, Texas Governor Greg Abbott had taken an almost identical step — publicly declaring that both CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood should be treated as “terrorist organisations,” despite the fact that no governor possesses any such authority. Abbott paired the announcement with directives cutting ties between state agencies and Muslim civil-society groups, effectively translating baseless accusations into administrative sanctions.
The move relied on no evidentiary findings, no criminal investigation, and no statutory authority — only political theatre masquerading as counterterrorism. Together, the Florida and Texas actions reveal a coordinated escalation: right-wing governors converting conspiracy rhetoric into executive action, deploying the language of terrorism to stigmatise constitutionally protected religious and civil-rights organisations.
This latest episode is not isolated. It is part of a multi-decade cycle often described as “Sharia panic,” in which Islamic law — a moral-ethical system rather than a state code — has been repurposed as a political horror story. The panic began not with Muslim Americans but with global geopolitics. Following Iran’s 1979 revolution and later the trauma of the September 11 attacks, Sharia became chained to images of violence and authoritarianism in Western media. A civilizational vocabulary emerged: Islam was not simply different — it was portrayed as inherently incompatible with democracy.
That narrative proved politically useful. By demonising Islamic law abroad, the United States justified endless war. By demonizing Sharia at home, it normalised surveillance, detention, and civic exclusion. Programs like the Patriot Act, NSEERS — which forced tens of thousands of Muslim men to register with authorities without producing a single terrorism conviction — and FBI mosque infiltration campaigns entrenched a bureaucratic habit: treat Muslim identity itself as an indicator of security risk.
By 2010, this mindset migrated into state politics. More than forty states introduced or passed so-called “foreign law bans,” explicitly tailored to eliminate the imaginary threat of Sharia from American courts — despite the fact that no court had ever attempted to apply Islamic law over constitutional law. Oklahoma even amended its constitution to ban Sharia outright before federal judges struck the measure down as unconstitutional.
The panic then shifted into civic life. In Texas, for example, a small Muslim mediation panel — operating legally under the Texas Arbitration Act, just as Jewish beth din courts or Christian reconciliation ministries do — became the subject of a state investigation after the governor alleged it was a “parallel judicial system undermining the Constitution.” No complaints existed. No coercion occurred. Yet suspicion alone triggered state action.
Weeks earlier, Texans witnessed another episode when a Muslim-led housing cooperative offering interest-free ethical financing was branded a “Sharia colony” online. Viral rumours accused the project of imposing religious governance and excluding non-Muslims, none of which was true. The project complied fully with zoning and fair-housing law and welcomed all residents. The only “offence” was its Islamic ethics-based financing model — once enough to mark it as foreign.
Elsewhere, hysteria escalated into litigation. In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, mosque opponents argued in court that Islam was not even a religion deserving of First Amendment protection. Courts eventually rejected the claim, but the litigation delayed construction and cast Muslim worship as a constitutional anomaly.
In Dearborn, Michigan — home to one of the largest Arab-American communities in the country — fabricated news stories and manipulated videos have repeatedly circulated claiming the city is now under “Sharia rule.” These hoaxes persist despite exhaustive debunking.
Earlier, the now-notorious “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy over the Park51 Islamic community centre in New York turned zoning law into a symbolic battleground for post-9/11 fear politics. Even organisations like the Anti-Defamation League opposed the project, arguing that misplaced emotional sensitivities justified resistance. A decade later, the ADL formally apologised for having erred.
Political participation itself has not been immune. Muslim elected officials, including Ilhan Omar and New York Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, were accused of plotting to impose Sharia or halal edicts — none of which appeared in their policy agendas focused on housing and transit reform.
Across all these cases runs a single thread: Muslim normalcy becomes interpreted as hidden subversion.
The irony is that Islamic jurisprudence deeply influenced Western legal traditions. Renowned scholar John A. Makdisi’s research demonstrates that jury procedures and charitable trust doctrines originated partly in Islamic legal institutions transmitted during medieval cross-cultural exchanges. Even the U.S. Supreme Court once honoured that heritage: when its chamber was unveiled in 1935, the Prophet Muhammad was included among history’s great lawgivers.
The Sharia panic is not ignorance. It is selective amnesia deployed for power.
Florida’s attack on CAIR — following Texas’ parallel targeting of both CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood — marks a dangerous new escalation: the shift from rhetorical demonisation to administrative persecution. When baseless accusations morph into executive actions, the wall separating political theatre from state repression begins to erode. These symbolic denunciations encourage harassment, delegitimise Muslim civil-rights advocacy, and weaken the constitutional norms meant to restrain the abuse of power.
This should concern all who believe in democratic governance. History teaches that scapegoating never remains confined to one group. Once fear displaces law, entire populations become conditional citizens.
The real danger is not Sharia. It is the politics of fear masquerading as patriotism.
(Faisal Kutty is a Toronto-based lawyer and regular contributor to The Toronto Star. His articles also appear in Newsweek, Al Jazeera, Zeteo, and Middle East Eye. You can follow him on X @faisalkutty)