07/01/2026
In law school, I helped organize a public prayer service for Christians persecuted by Islamists.
I also refuse to treat every Muslim Texan as a threat.
During law school, as pressure on Egypt’s Coptic Christians grew, I started a Dallas effort called Prayer for Martyrs. Catholic and Methodist bishops, Lutheran and evangelical pastors, and Coptic priests stood together for an ancient Christian community facing persecution in its homeland.
We knew that religious liberty wasn’t an abstraction.
Freedom of conscience either survives political inconvenience, or it is a slogan we repeat when it costs us nothing.
That conviction is one reason I serve in the Constitutional Law Section of the State Bar of Texas.
I am as red-meat as they come. I believe America carries a deeply Christian historical and philosophical inheritance. Scripture is indispensable to the Western canon, and churches are free to preach that this is a Christian nation without apology.
The constitutional order also demands that citizens be judged by conduct, not reduced to a religious label.
I am not writing from headlines. I have studied fiqh, Islamic jurisprudence, and spent real time with Muslim scholars and insitutions. That study left me with concerns about political Islam, extremism, coercion, separatism, and the failure of assimilation. It also taught me that precision matters.
At the Republican Party of Texas convention, Islam and “Sharia” were everywhere.
Islamist extremism is real. Terrorism is real. A movement that seeks to place religious authority above civil law is a genuine threat. Immigration without assimilation fractures a country. Texas should confront all of it head-on.
Two businesses may voluntarily use Islamic commercial principles in a contract dispute, subject to Texas law and judicial review. Ordinary. Legal.
Those principles cannot displace Texas law in criminal court, family court, civil-rights cases, or public authority. The Constitution governs. Period.
Republicans rightly preach individual responsibility. Apply it here. Judge a Muslim Texan by conduct, loyalty to the constitutional order, and treatment of neighbors.
Treat “Sharia” as a catch-all scare word and we look unserious. We blur actual threats, miss actual violations, and hand extremists an argument that America hates their peaceful neighbors.
America turns 250 this week. We need to distinguish extremist ideology from ordinary worship, unlawful conduct from protected belief, and real concerns about immigration from blanket suspicion toward millions.
This brings incoming fire from my own flank. I am posting it anyway.
The oath I’ve taken on numerous occasions to protect and defend the Constitution carries no exception for people whose theology I reject.
