Sharia in America Would Be No ‘Day at the Beach’

One of America’s most popular oceanside resorts is Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. Some 20 million people per year vacation at this “Grand Strand,” coming from all 50 states and internationally.

Because my grandparents ran a seasonal hotel there for three decades, we’ve vacationed at Myrtle Beach most summers of my life. We’ve seen a lot change over those years. But during the last two summers I’ve noticed something that this veteran beach bum had never seen: Muslim women swimming in the ocean, garbed in full burqa coverings. Of course, Islamic families are as welcome at the beach as anyone. But the dynamics visible between the Islamic couples are striking: The men are there, sunning in normal swimsuits, while the women stand to the side, garbed in black from head to toe.

You couldn’t help but feel sorry for the women huddled over to the side, covered in black in the sweltering heat. A slight flick of the husband’s finger, and the wife is cued to get him a beverage out of the cooler. Then, the hijab-ed woman would return to “the huddle” with her peers. I was reminded of the John Milton quote, “They also serve who only stand and wait.” But to be an observant Islamic woman on the beach in 100-degree heat is not just serving, but servitude.

When several of the women did get into the ocean, I thought about how heavy it all must be: Swimming in yards of fabric, what amounts to a complete set of bed linens—soaked in water. Heavy, indeed.

The burqa and niqab clothing for Muslim females, having grown in use since the Islamic fundamentalist renaissance of the 1970s, is said to be about modesty and decorum. But observing Muslim families at the ocean, the men made no effort to disguise their, um… staring at females whose beach attire would most certainly not comply with hijab protocols.

Clearly, a day at the beach for an Islamic man is vastly different than for that of an observant (or, a forced-to-be-observant) Muslim woman.

“How can 21st-century, ‘liberated’ feminists be OK with this?” I wondered.

Islam, Marxists, and Democrats: Suicidal Utilitarianism

This election cycle has seen the codification of unlikely political unions that have been years in the making. Up until just recently, America’s Democrat party would have had big problems with the human rights abuses of Islam (which include mistreatment of women as part of ‘canon law’). Even ‘tax and spend’ liberals would have objected to today’s new Marxists’ calls for abolition of a free market economy, abolition of private property ownership, abolition of law enforcement, and promises to criminalize the accumulation of wealth.

But Democrats, Muslim activists, and Marxists now share at least four common foes. Two are societal, and two are spiritual. These onerous entities, against which an unholy trifecta of alliance has been forged, are: Donald Trump and Constitutionalism (societally), and Christianity and Israel (spiritually).

But 1,400 years of Islamic history show that Islam yields ground to nothing. It truly is, “conquer at any cost.” Since the Ayatollah took Iran in 1979, we’ve watched purist Islam slaughter its way to domination in real time. For all American voters who… just don’t like the Republicans… let it be said as emphatically as possible: Stoking the presence of Islam is not the answer; if not arrested, it will be the absolute end of the United States.

Sharia Law as a Subset of American Law: Will It Happen?

Will Muslims in the United States someday be able to demand that American courts settle their disputes under Sharia law? Is this a First Amendment, “freedom of religion” issue, as Sharia proponents say? The United States cannot remain a constitutional republic if different citizens are governed by different systems of law.

But what is actually possible under American law? A Muslim American cannot simply walk into an American courthouse and demand that a judge replace American law with Sharia. American courts are bound by the Constitution, federal and state statutes, and the established legal authority of the United States.

There is no parallel system of Sharia courts with governmental jurisdiction over American citizens. And there should never be.

During the 2010s, several states considered or enacted legislation addressing foreign or religious law in American courts. Oklahoma’s 2010 constitutional amendment went further, expressly prohibiting courts from considering Sharia law. A federal district court blocked the amendment, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld the injunction. The litigation demonstrated a fundamental constitutional problem: Government generally cannot single out one religion for disfavored treatment.

Civil-liberties organizations argue that laws specifically opposing Sharia threaten religious freedom. The First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion, and government cannot simply declare that the religious practices of Muslims—or Christians, Jews, Catholics, or anyone else—receive fewer legal protections because officials disapprove of those beliefs.

But there is another constitutional principle that should unwaveringly be pointed out: Religious freedom does not create a parallel source of governmental authority.

An American Muslim is free to believe that Sharia represents God’s law. Muslims may worship according to Islamic teachings, consult imams, enter religious marriages, and seek religious counseling according to their traditions. None of that creates an alternative American government.

The legal distinction becomes particularly important when private agreements are involved. American law permits parties, under appropriate circumstances, to agree to arbitration rather than conventional litigation. The Federal Arbitration Act provides a legal framework for enforcing arbitration agreements, and courts may enforce an arbitration agreement without adopting the religious principles of the arbitrator as American law.

Some may ask why we don’t have laws that specifically prohibit Christianity or Biblical morality from having undue influence in American courts. The difference is that Judeo-Christian moral precepts not only comport seamlessly with American law, but in fact, natural law / self-evident truth / the Bible’s Ten Commandments provide the philosophical foundations of the U.S. Constitution.

Such cannot be said of Sharia law. Sharia is the ideological opposite of our constitutional, representative republic, guaranteeing protection for individual liberties. Sharia and Constitutionalism are (to say the least), “incompatible.”

To summarize: People may voluntarily arrange their private affairs in ways the law permits, provided those arrangements remain subject to American law. The Constitution in no way requires that Muslims receive a special privilege.

The First Amendment and ‘Limits of Privilege’

It is an error to believe that religious freedom requires Americans to tolerate competing governmental systems of law.

It does not.

A Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, atheist, or anyone else stands before the law as an American citizen. The Constitution does not establish separate courts for separate faiths.

Concerns about Sharia are not born of religious discrimination. They are motivated by constitutional convictions. We will not have one law for Christians and another for Muslims. We need one law for everybody.

Private religious belief deserves the fullest protection the First Amendment provides. But governmental power must remain subject to the Constitution and the duly enacted laws of the United States and the states.

Let us say it like this: Freedom of religion for every American, special legal privilege for none, and one constitutional rule of law for all.

Otherwise, we’re in for some stormy seas that our country may not survive.

©2026 Alex McFarland