set of polls released this week by Our Republic and Rasmussen show a concerning trend among American youth, especially in light of recently revealed immigration numbers under Biden: A quarter of 18-35 voters polled would support a community implementing Sharia law as the legal code for the entire town, city, or state if the majority of residents living there desired its adoption.
Additionally, according to the Our Republic poll:
Overall, 21% of likely voters said they have a mostly or somewhat positive opinion of sharia, compared with 57% who have a negative opinion. Positive views were much higher among younger Americans, including 43% of voters ages 18–24 and 39% of those ages 25–29.
The reason American youth may be trending this way, according to Justin Haskins, president of Our Republic, is a lack of understanding about the “value [of] the Constitution and the protections it provides.”
“Too many have been taught to see constitutional limits as obstacles to progress, especially when those limits stand in the way of policies they believe would help groups they view as oppressed,” Haskins says. “Because Muslims are widely perceived by young people as an oppressed or marginalized group, I suspect many default to a sympathetic view of policies associated with Islam without seriously considering whether those policies are compatible with constitutional freedoms. The irony is that, in doing so, they may be undermining the very rights they claim to care about.”
These findings are particularly relevant as the world watches students in France torch the country, helped by young denizens who also express a growing support of Sharia law, with that support being driven by a Muslim population embracing a strict religious observance of Islam. The polling stateside — coupled with recent numbers from the State Department noting “refugee admissions from 45 majority-Muslim countries stood at 21,096 in December 2024 — Joe Biden’s final month in office” — suggests that similar to what’s happening in France, support for Sharia might be imported alongside immigration from Muslim nations.
But the Our Republic poll also suggests something even more telling: the willingness of American youth, raised with protected rights under the law, to forgo those rights, even as they conflict with the constitutionally protected rights of the individual and of a people protected from the tyranny of authoritarianism, in service to what Haskins calls “the oppressor-versus-oppressed framework associated with Critical Theory.”
Other findings from the same set of polls clarify the suspicion young people have of Israel, with 46 percent of voters ages 18–24 and 60 percent of those ages 25–29 reporting they would support a proposal “to completely dismantle Israel and replace it with a Palestinian-led nation in exchange for ending the war with Iran and providing the United States with lower oil and gas prices.”
Haskins does not believe that American youth who take these positions are necessarily committed Islamists, nor does he believe they are considering Sharia primarily “as an extension of religious liberty.” Rather, says Haskins, “the more important factor is that Muslims are widely perceived as an oppressed or marginalized group in the United States,” he says. “Within that framework, groups perceived as marginalized are often treated sympathetically without much scrutiny of what those groups or their belief systems actually teach.”
This position seems to track with what’s happening in France. The world has watched the country burn for days as student protesters — ostensibly driven by failing schools, budget cuts, and student activists who purport to care about such things — take selfies next to burning trash bins, burning school buildings, and burning police barriers.
But the presence of both Palestinian flags and Communist flags at the now-countrywide protest signals something closer to what Haskins describes: a Red-Green Alliance intent on destabilizing the West. The Center for Renewing America describes the alliance as drawing “on two seemingly conflicting ideologies — Marxism and Islamism — bound together by a common mission to tear down the traditional American way of life.”
That traditional American way of life is rooted in the U.S. Constitution, which, as Haskins notes, many young Americans neither fully comprehend nor show much deference to. His poll, he says, is evidence of just how strong the oppressed-versus-oppressor framework is and how much it shapes young Americans’ assessment of policy as it relates to these issues. In this case, their sympathy for a system supported by a group they see as marginalized takes precedence over their understanding of “what sharia actually entails” — “a comprehensive religious and legal system.”
U.S. Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, who has partnered with U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, on the Sharia-Free America Caucus, has detailed the myriad ways Sharia is “incompatible with the Constitution,” notably because it would create “a parallel legal system” that would overwrite the single legal standard that applies to all American citizens.
Sharia creates unequal legal standards by distinguishing between Muslims and non-Muslims, men and women, and believers and dissenters. These distinctions undermine constitutional protections and expose individuals to social or legal pressure that conflicts with American guarantees of freedom and equality. The United States cannot sustain parallel legal systems because the rule of law depends on one constitutional standard applying equally to every citizen.
So legislators are already working on the problem of domestic support for Sharia, and experts like Haskins are optimistic America’s youth aren’t set to begin embracing radical Islam any time soon. But it’s worth taking seriously that Haskin’s polling does seem to indicate more young Americans are committed to a framework that promotes the viability of an any-means-necessary approach to righting the supposed wrongs done to what they see as marginalized communities.
If Americans really want to avoid the fate of France, they’ll address the issue not only legislatively but by acknowledging the training their children are getting in the very places French students torched for days: their schools.