Maggie Siddiqi on Religious Freedom, Sharia Law, and American Pluralism

What does religious freedom actually protect when people are afraid of someone else’s faith? Maggie Siddiqi, Senior Advisor at Interfaith Alliance and former Director of the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the U.S. Department of Education, joins Faithful Politics for a conversation about Islam, pluralism, public schools, Christian nationalism, and the fear surrounding Sharia law.

Maggie shares her own story of growing up Baptist, converting to Islam, and still holding deep respect for her Baptist roots. She also explains why religious freedom works best when it protects every community equally, including Christians, Muslims, Jews, and people of no faith. The conversation gets into antisemitism, Islamophobia, public school religious expression, the politics of anti-Christian bias claims, and why Sharia law is often used as a political scare tactic. At its core, this episode is about how fear of religious difference can weaken democracy, and how pluralism gives Americans a better way to live together. 

Relevant Links & Resources

Interfaith Alliance
URL: https://www.interfaithalliance.org/

Guest Bio

Maggie Siddiqi is Senior Advisor at Interfaith Alliance, where her work focuses on religious freedom, interfaith solidarity, public policy, and standing against hate. She previously served as Director of the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the U.S. Department of Education, where she worked on religious freedom issues including antisemitism, Islamophobia, and church-state separation. She has also served as Senior Director of the Religion and Faith team at the Center for American Progress and is a Non-Resident Fellow on Muslim-Jewish Partnerships at MPAC. Her background in Christian-Muslim relations, public policy, and faith-based advocacy makes her a strong guide for this conversation about pluralism, democracy, Islamophobia, and religious freedom in American public life. 

Support Sarah Stankorb’s work and preorder Damned If She Does: Why Women Quit Church and What It Means for the Future of Religion, Releases September 15, 2026.  Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798889837091

Website: https://www.sarahstankorb.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It is broadly understood as sort of every aspect of religious life. So how to pray, how to fast, belief itself is part of Sharia. It is not a set of laws. There is no Sharia book, right, that has, oh, here are all the laws that you follow. There are comparable other kinds of religious law, halakha, Catholic canon law. The sort of descriptions of specific rules that are many and multifaceted depending on the particular Islamic tradition, we would call a different word entirely.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Hey there, folks. Welcome to another episode of the Faithful Politics Podcast. My name is Josh Bertram. I'm the faithful host here on Faithful Politics, where we and we figure out all sorts of stuff that's going on and talk about all sorts of stuff that's going on in this world and politics and religion in America. And of course, I'm joined by our political host, Will Wright. Will, it's good to see you.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

It's good to be the resident record button pusher. It's good to be here.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Everyone needs a resident record button pusher. You know, I well, I don't want to get sidetracked, but I have some thoughts on that that I can share with you later. But today we're super excited to have Maggie Sadiqi is a senior advisor at Interfaith Alliance, where she focuses on religious freedom, interfaith solidarity, and Muslim Jewish partnerships. She is a Muslim activist and public policy leader. Previously served in the U.S. Department of Education Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Her work sits at the intersection of faith, democracy, public education, civil rights, and the fight against Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and Christian nationalism, which makes you a very busy and stressed-out person, I might add. That you're fighting all these things, Maggie. That's a pretty tall order. Thank you so much for coming on the show and talking a little bit about your experience. Thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Absolutely. And you know, part of your bio that I didn't mention, though, that I'll just let the uh our listeners hear from you is you have an interesting story in terms of a conversion story and where you started and where you've ended up. So could you help our audience understand who is Maggie Siddiqui and how did you did you grow up Maggie Siddiqui? And if not, how did you become Maggie Siddiqui?

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Sure, yeah, that is my that is my married last name. So Sadiqi is a product of marriage, not a not a conversion. But yeah, I grew up Baptist. I grew up in a actually come from a long line of Baptist clergy. My grandparents were Baptist missionaries in Chile, which is where my dad grew up and met my mom. They moved to the United States when he started uh college. And yeah, very politically progressive family, very committed Baptists. And so I was very much on that path myself to becoming clergy or being involved in religion professionally in some way, when I felt like I needed to learn more about Islam and picked up a Quran from the local library and felt like it was God's voice. The best way I could describe it is if, you know, in the olden days, pre-email, and you got a letter from a friend before you even got to the signature at the end, like you knew who that friend was, like you knew it was from them. That's how it felt for me reading the Quran. Like this was another message from God. The voice was just so similar. And it really threw me for a loop. I was a freshman in college and you know, committed Baptists. And, you know, in some ways it's because of those Baptist roots, that sense of this soul freedom and freedom of conscience. I felt like my soul had chosen another religion for me. And now my mind and body had to figure out what the heck to do with that. So it was it was very much by accident that I ended up converting to Islam. It is absolutely my home and and where I am happiest to this day. But it is, you know, my Baptist roots are also still very, very dear to me.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

That is such an interesting story. There's so many different adjectives that I could probably use, all good ones. And it's, but I have so many questions about this, right? Because most of the conversion stories I heard growing up were all Muslim to Christian. You know, and that was probably intentional, or it was Christian to Muslim, but that was meant to incite fear and to incite, like, hey, we need to do something about this. Christians need to do something about this because Islam is taking over the world and Islam is taking over our country. And once Islam comes in and takes over the country, that's when things get bad. Essentially, that was the message that I either heard directly or heard indirectly and absorbed through osmosis of my context. And then hearing this, it's it's it's it's striking to me. It's challenging to me. And I gotta ask, when you were digging into this, um, what was this process like? I I can imagine that it was a very painful process as well. As obviously you had uh some joy in it, right? Things that you found fulfillment, felt like you found a home, I heard you say. That is really that is like just so striking to me. What was that process like internally and even with your family and friends and everyone? Like, what was that like as a as a social experience to move from converting to being Christian to converting to Islam in a country that is majority Christian, Christian in many of its ways? What was that like for you?

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think there were a number of cultural, social, familial challenges along the way. You know, first of all, the majority of Muslims in America do have a recent story of immigration. It's the most ethnically diverse religious community in the country, so there's no real shared culture. There's a sense of what does it mean to be an American Muslim that looks lots and lots of different ways. There's an African-American Muslim tradition. There is not a half-white, half-Latina Muslim tradition that is very clearly defined. And so, you know, having to kind of carve out for myself what the cultural practice of a white and Latina American Muslim might look like was sort of a at times very lonely experience. So, yeah, that was somewhat challenging. My family, so much credit to them. I don't know if they thought it was a phase and at some point realized it wasn't, but they were very accepting along the way of the journey that I had chosen. And at my wedding, actually, years later, my my dad said, you know, essentially what I've what I shared at the top, which is because of this notion of soul freedom, he learned in seminary that if any Baptist tells another what to believe, he ceased to be ceases to become a Baptist. Like that is how how much that sense is ingrained into being Baptist. So he said, You're still a Baptist. Of course, I wish he had not said this in front of all of my Muslim in-laws who I think did not quite understand what he meant by me still being a Baptist. But they've been very accepting and very embracing. And I'm so, so fortunate to not have had the kinds of challenges that many others with conversion stories do, no matter what religion they change to or from.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

I um I love that. And and it's interesting because I I came to the faith much later in life. I'm a Christian, came, you know, came to the faith in 2008, and was almost like I entered into this entirely new world with all of its own, you know, practices and customs. Although, I mean we're we're American Christians, right? So it's like it just means go to church on Sunday. But but like there was there were so many things I did not know. And we attended a small church at the time, and I'm I'm also musically inclined. So the pastor, knowing I just converted, asked if I wanted to be part of the worship team to play guitar. My wife, who was a worship leader at the time, you know, was was picking all the song. So I remember like asking if we could if we could play the song hallelujah, like that, like that, that song that's on the right, because I didn't know. I'm like, it they say hallelujah in it, right? Like, so that has to be a something you can play at church, right? And and my wife looks at me, who's a PK also, she's like, uh no, no, we're not, we're not doing hallelujah, you know. So I I'm curious, like, were there were there like moments like that, kind of in your conversion, where you're like, whoa, like there's a lot here, and I have a lot of like learning to do. So I'd love to just kind of hear just sort of like that evolution of like, how did you learn to become a Muslim?

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Oh, that was complicated. Yeah. I mean, I was very fortunate that we had a Muslim chaplain at my college. So somebody I could ask all of my many, many, many questions for hours each week. And he insists, though I I didn't remember this as clearly, he insisted to me that I just remain Christian. Why the heck do I want to convert to this religion? But I was not interested in his opinion on that matter at the end of the day. Yeah, there were certain things. I think, for example, you know, we I grew up with a very specific sense of physical dress, right? And what that meant, your outward appearance. So, this notion of modesty of covering your hair, I didn't do that initially for many, many years, did not understand how outward modesty could relate to inward modesty in any way. That is something that I have since come to kind of adopt for myself, but initially was not at all part of my practice of Islam. I saw the hijab as very much a cultural manifestation of the religion. But many religions, as we all know, have a mandate to cover one's head. There is an encouragement to cover one's head in for both men and women in Islam. And I can't even put it into words, but one day I had this kind of spiritual experience and I just wanted to cover my head. I just had this urge and I said, I finally, I get it. Right. But that initially for me was like, I don't know why how you dress matters to your face. Like it didn't, I didn't really get it. And so that may be one of the steepest learning curves, but one's the one that I came to embrace for myself.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

Yeah, I can imagine that would be a challenging thing. And then to work through that when you don't understand it, you don't just want to do it because everyone's telling you you should do it, but you don't really see the purpose, or there's not something with it that, you know, feels like this is right or senses that this is the right thing for you to do. And yet there's sounds like there's a moment of clarity for you that clicked. And yeah, do you mind if I I ask you about that a little bit, the moment of clarity? So, like I'm thinking about like I've had moments of clarity in my life, right? Where I felt like the Lord was speaking to me very, very clearly, where God was speaking to me to come plant this, the church that I planted in Richmond, Virginia. That was one very clear, it seemed to me, at least, and and a lot of confirmation around. I've had many times where I felt like God was speaking to me. And and even in very precise words sometimes. For instance, I've had times where I even wrote down in journals something God was like I since he was saying it, it actually came true, even about some uh a student loan that we had that we my wife and I had given away some money before we came and planted the church, and we were gonna use it to pay the student loan. But I felt like God told me, hey, you do this, and I'm gonna I'll pay off the student loan. Like literally, that was the thing. I wrote it in my journal, and then like four or five months later, it happened. And I'm looking at this and I'm like, these, like I see these connections between, hey, this is, and all this kind of confirms my faith, right? And and then I hear you talk about how you have these experiences, this spiritual experience, almost like a knowing. It wasn't even like a thinking, like a moving to or a processing to get to some conclusion. It was a it was a knowing. And I would just love to hear your thoughts on how do you how do you suss that out? As a Muslim in America, with so many Christians, so many people talk about hearing from God, God's word. And of course, the Islam and the Quran and the Bible have many similarities, and even many similarities in how the way Muslims think about the Quran is very similar to the way Christians think about the Bible in in many ways, or at least probably more so at some at other times and even places in Christianity, depending on where you go. But I guess I'm I guess I'm wondering how how do you work through that? And what is that experience like of hearing God's voice? Like, is it that you're hearing God's voice? Is it more of a feeling? Is it more of an of a knowing? How do you how did you work through that? Even transitioning, did did God's voice sound similar to you when you're Christian versus when you're Muslim, did you not hear? I know I'm asking a ton of questions, but really I'm just trying to get around like what was this experience like? And how do you compare it to kind of maybe what you hear me say about my experience? And and I don't know, I just want to dig into that a little bit more because I think that there's a lot of times where we're like, hey, I had this experience, and this proves to me that what I believe is true. And then you hear someone else who has a similar experience and they believe in something different, and so it starts making you think, huh? And I guess I'm wondering, how do you work through that in your own life, even from the opposite angle of Islam? Does that question make sense? I can I can't. No, it does.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

I mean, I think I would describe it as there have been times when I have felt that sense of knowing for sure. You know, in Islam we think of it as, you know, seeing God's signs also in different ways. So I absolutely have we we have this idea in Islam that if you if you give money in charity, that you get it back tenfold. And there are spiritual sort of spiritual ways we get it back tenfold, but sometimes we literally get it back tenfold. And I've had that happen to me so many times at this point. You know, giving an extremely painful thousand dollars in charity when I didn't feel like I had that to give, and then getting a ten thousand dollar scholarship the next day, like just very clear, like one to ten ratios. But then there have been, yeah, these sort of moments of just kind of knowing, right? Seeing a sign and just knowing, right, that that's a sign from God. That's just not just a thing, but that's a that's an actual sign. Yeah, it's kind of hard to describe, but I will say I don't feel like my relationship with God is different being Christian versus being Muslim. To me, those particular religious traditions were different ways that I sought to deepen my relationship with God. I was obsessed with religion as a small child. I talked about religion all day on the playground, asked people what their religions were, asked them about their favorite Bible stories. I, because I was Baptist, I was I wasn't baptized as a baby. I chose to be baptized at 11, which is, you know, it can be a little bit young compared to some others, but I said I wanted to dip into a Christian life, and the pastor said, you're ready. And, you know, so for me, this was just another way to become closer to God. Another way I can describe it perhaps is I remember one time we used to always, you know, pray before meals, right, growing up. And my we spoke English at home, but my parents spoke to each other in Spanish. They're both native speakers of Spanish, they didn't teach it to us. And so one day I asked my mother, why is it that when we pray and it's your turn to lead, you always speak in Spanish, even though two of us don't know what you're saying. And she paused for a moment and she said, Spanish is it's the language that I met God in. So we keep talking in that language. And in some ways, it's like, yeah, I met I met God as a Christian. At some point, maybe my my my language changed, but the relationship was still there, right? And in some ways, like there's just this continuity throughout my life that has not God is still God.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

You know, just switching gears here for a second, you previously served as the director of the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the uh Department of Education under Biden Harris, I believe, right? And I I recently just read the uh 565-page report by the Anti-Christian Baez Task Force. Um, it technically it's like 200 pages, it's like 300 pages of like addendums or whatnot. But all that to say is that there's an accusation that Biden was going after Christians in a systemic like way. As a person on the inside, I'd I'd love for you to just kind of give us a little bit of context on on exactly like what it is that you did kind of in your role, and and maybe just a little bit more about like like what was sort of like their approach to you know religious pluralism and maybe even the needs of Christians.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Sure. So I'll start with, you know, my role was every sort of center for faith-based and neighborhood partnership at different agencies is designed a little bit differently. My role was designed as both outreach to faith-based and other community-based organizations and as the senior advisor on issues of religious freedom. And when the White House initiated its work on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, that was also assigned to me under that banner of religious freedom. So I advised the secretary on those issues, worked to help with other outreach efforts specifically to those communities. And I have to say there are absolutely no merits to the idea that there was any widespread anti-Christian bias under the Biden administration. The Secretary of Education himself was a deeply, deeply committed Christian. We had lots of conversations about faith. The head of the White House Office of Faith based in neighborhood partnerships is a Christian, the president of the United States was a Christian, the vice president was a Christian, all of them deeply committed to and outspoken about their faiths. I think what I found a lot of in that report were policies that specific, more conservative members of some Christian communities objected to. And they saw their objecting to certain policies as somehow evidence of discrimination against them. We are always going to have discrimination about policy concerns, uh right, always across the political spectrum between different religious communities. I don't think that there's any way that you could say this discriminates specifically against Christians. I don't even think you could say that, you know, I I don't even know that a majority of Christians would object to the policies that they objected to. So like to even make that kind of correlation would even be false. So that that report was I heard one person, I think it was Jim Simpson at Georgetown call it advocacy dressed up as investigation. And I thought that was a really good description.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

Yeah, I I I understand, you know, you want to make sure that you're taking any instance of any kind of religious persecution or religious prejudice that's right unethical or illegal or unconstitutional, right? We want to take all that seriously. And yet it seems like in this case there is definitely an overlap of a little bit more, definitely an agenda and some and some propaganda in there, it seems, on trying to paint a picture of religious persecution for Christians in America that is, well, and especially a certain type, right? Subtype or subcategory of Christian. And that just reminds me about how much power is involved in all this and how much power makes things difficult. And how much power, I mean, it doesn't necessarily make things difficult, it complicates everything. Because when you have power, you want to keep power. And when you have power, you try to do things that that keep yourself in power for your constituents or to get the votes or whatever. And it's like politics is power, and everyone's trying to get power, and it seems like they're not really considering where other people are, or how to listen to other people, or how to understand other people. And and power is at the center of I think a lot of people's fears. When I'm thinking about Christians, they're fears of Islam or The fears of some kind of Muslim takeover. I hear this in my conservative circles a lot, or Sharia law. I would love for you to kind of talk on, and as a person who is having an experience of a Muslim in America, what is the relationship and the proper relationship of religion to power in our nation? What should it be? Where do you see the where religious freedom is working at its at its most optimal in its most optimal way? What what would you say is the where we should be in terms and how we should think in terms of religious freedom and especially our group's relationship to power?

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Ooh, relationship to power. I think by that you mean sort of our participation in in politics, like political power?

SPEAKER_02 23:04

For sure, yes. For sure, political power, yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

Yeah, I mean, I think religious freedom, as with all forms of freedom, means that we should be able to be ourselves, right? Without undue government interference, without one community having complete power over others. I think faith communities, like every community, are going to bring their convictions, the way that they see the world, what they believe to be just and unjust, they're going to bring that to their politics, they're going to bring that to their advocacy. That is beautiful and wonderful and to be expected. The ways that religion can be weaponized, right, to assume power, right, is when it's then used as a way of saying, therefore, my community should get special treatment over all others, or now you have to adopt my religion, right? That's that's when it becomes harmful when you see either of those two strategies at play. But to come and say, hey, this is my faith, this is why I believe such and such about this policy, right? That that is that's no different than you know an elected official saying, you know, I'm a child of veterans, or I love dogs, or I grew, I, you know, I'm a child of a single mom, right? That's no different from them saying, I am a Christian, I'm a Muslim, and therefore that has led me to these conclusions, right? But you don't then assume, oh, the whole rest of the nation has to be a child of a single mom, right? Like it just doesn't make sense, right? So thinking about what is it that has led me to my deep convictions that I hold and recognize that everybody else may not share those convictions, but we all do share some base values, right, to work from. And we all do share an obligation to figure out how to live together. Right. And so that's ultimately what freedom is about is how can we all live freely together.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

You know, working for um interfaith alliance, I know you all do a lot of work really kind of pushing for religious pluralism in in this country. In in your mind, like what do you think is the biggest threat to religious pluralism right now?

SPEAKER_00 25:28

There are a lot of different threats. I mean, as you alluded to with political power, one of the things that I worry most about are the deployment of divide and conquer tactics. So whenever you have a group that's trying to seize power, such as I think the the authoritarian movement we're seeing right now in this country, the only way you can do that is by having a people that's not united. Right. If people start to see one another as the enemy, then they will not be able to, right? They won't be able to conceive of pluralism in any form and figure out what it means to come together as a democracy and build something that works for us all. And so you do see nowadays these uh political tactics of accusing one community of being the reason why another is being harmed. In, you know, the religious pluralism work that I do, the sort of juxtaposition of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia is one way that that really shows up. That if you work on anti-Semitism somehow, that means you don't care about or even want to see more Islamophobia, and vice versa, that if you work on Islamophobia, that somehow means you don't care about anti-Semitism or even participating in it. And that sort of divide and conquer tactic really pulls people away from each other. I don't know if y'all saw this Pew study that came out in March that showed that of about 25 different countries surveyed, Americans think more than any other country, that our fellow Americans, our fellow citizens, are morally bad. So that was really devastating to see that. But I was like, you know what? That actually makes a lot of sense for where we are in this moment in our country. It's not always been that way. But the sense of my neighbor probably doesn't have my best intentions at heart, like that is that is a really dangerous starting place. And so for me, it's not just religious pluralism, but pluralism in general that I see as being under threat, but also being the antidote to the polarization we're experiencing, to the authoritarianism we're all witnessing, right? Finding ways to come together and to recognize that there are people who benefit from at our expense from having us in you know at odds with each other. Recognizing that, being able to kind of zoom out and see that big picture can really help us, I think, come together.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Yeah, I I agree. And I, you know, I I I definitely see it. I I see probably more Islamophobia than I do anti-Semitism, or at least that that's what the algorithm showed me. But but but I but I know it exists. And I and I'm curious on what to what degree do you think Christian nationalism kind of as a whole plays on sort of the rise in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia?

SPEAKER_00 28:28

I think it's it's all deeply intertwined. I should say I am equally worried about anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as a Muslim. They manifest in very different ways, but anti-Semitism is the way it has operated within Christian nationalism, within white supremacist movements as well, is the sort of conspiratorial, like this is the scapegoat community, right? If if you happen to see the the the what is it called, treatise manifesto that was released by the the shooter at the Tree of Life Synagogue or the shooters at the Islamic Center of San Diego, there's this accusation of Jews as the reason for Muslims being in the country. So there's a way that those two ideologies operate together, right? This notion of Muslims as the external threat to our Christian way of life, that somehow Muslims are going to invade, as you know, Josh, you alluded to this troping out there. This dates back to the Crusades, by the way. This stuff is like hundreds of years old. That Jews were essentially experienced as the internal threat to the Christian way of life, the enemy within that that's going to sort of bring our downfall from within. That was the sort of scapegoat that got set up. And Muslims were seen as the external threat, right? The thing against which sort of Christians formulated their own sense of identity. If we're civilized, then those people out there are uncivilized, right? It was sort of how they identified themselves, how they formed in some ways Christian identity, right? If we if we see ourselves as this way, how do we juxtapose ourselves to some other? But in its worst manifestations, such as in the Crusades, this was, you know, a violent threat. And those ideas are still showing up. I mean, even in the halls of Congress, you hear people using all kinds of the same language of accusations of Jews as controlling how things are happening within our country and accusations of Muslims as coming to invade. And it's really horrifying to see that. Something that should have ended hundreds of years ago with those ideas still being alive and well and very much wrapped up in each other. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:45

Yeah, they they really are. And you know, you wonder what the bottom of it is. Like when we get to the bottom of it, what it's definitely fear. It's definitely the fear of the unknown. And I think it's the fear of hey, it's all good if if you guys are here, we'll let you be here, you guys. Like, and I'm speaking like of I'm kind of abstracting myself up to think through the persona of someone who would have this attitude, right? Of Islamophobia. Like, look, you can come here, but you need to stay within very strict guidelines, right? Because if you get too much power, again goes back to power, if you get too much power, then sure, maybe you're nice now because you have to be. You're in the minority. You can't not be nice. If you're not nice, the majority will crush you, right? That's how people, you know. I go to, if I go to a Muslim country, majority Muslim country, I'm not likely going to go there speaking badly about the Quran, speaking badly about Allah, speaking badly about Muhammad. I'm not gonna go there to make or to say all these things. Why? Because the majority, not that I would do that here necessarily, right? But even if I wanted to be honest about something, or even if I wanted to criticize it, I would be much more reticent to do that if I was in a Muslim country than I was in America. I think the reason I'm thinking that is because the Muslim country, it's majority Muslim. And the majority makes the rules and laws and all that kind of stuff, and and what they that that kind of public opinion typically wins out. And even if there are people that don't want to do that, or they or they wouldn't want to punish someone, or they wouldn't want to crush opposition, they kind of give into groupthink and what the what the society might want. And so you have this like again coming back to power in people's fear. And one of the places that this shows up, right, is in schools. Big time people are afraid what's gonna happen to schools because they're afraid what's gonna happen to their children and how their children are being taught. And it's the same thing, I think that same fear that's like screaming about Sharia law and an evangelical Christian would be the same fear that might be screaming about a secularism or LGBTQ agenda or something like that within the school system. And but of course, like interestingly enough, we've had Muslims and Christians connect in in, I'm thinking of Mahmoud v. Taylor, in particular on this one, but we've had there's been coalitions of Muslims and Christians surrounding maybe implementation of policies in in curriculum in the school systems. And I just would love to hear, like, from your experience as a Muslim in working with Muslims who are in the American school system, dealing with the with the issues of power in that, who gets to decide what we learn, how we learn it, all that kind of stuff. What do you think evangelical Christians or Christians in general should know? What do you want them to know? The guy always being the persona, what do you want him to know about Muslims, about Islam, and and in particular in the school system, what is this like? What is this like for Muslim kids, for Muslim families, and and what would you want Christians to know about that, about that experience?

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Okay, so we you touched on so many different topics there. So I want to start. I know that from the beginning, I think, first of all, I think what most people don't realize is a lot of the Muslims that live here in America also couldn't talk about Islam or practice Islam the way that they do here in many Muslim majority countries around the world, right? So a lot of them, you know, maybe here because they're fleeing religious persecution of, you know, uh along sectarian lines, or, you know, simply there are no sort of akin to First Amendment rights there in the way that there are here. So I think that's that's important to remember, number one. But second is, you know, part of the reason why religious pluralism and religious freedom in this country works is because it's it should work no matter who is in the majority, right? I think Muslims would have a very long way to go to get anywhere near the majority. We're probably one or two percent of the whole American population right now. But you know, the idea behind it, right, is that if we ensure everyone has rights and that no one is imposing their religion on another, that, and then everyone can, you know, freely exercise their rights, then it shouldn't matter in any given community, let alone the nation as a whole, you know, who is in the majority of the population. So that fear, in a way, it makes me kind of question is that person interested in imposing their religion on everyone else and then thinks everyone else shares that same impulse and could maybe work toward policies that would ensure that they themselves can't impose their religion and that nobody else in the majority could do that either. When it comes to the public school system, what was really exciting, I think, about my role at the time at the US Department of Education was not only talking about the many, many religious freedom rights that we currently have, I think a lot of people have no idea, by the way, how much religious expression in public schools is constitutionally protected. A lot of people think, oh, religion's been banned from public schools. We have to fight to get religion back in public schools. No, religion is very much allowed and is present in public schools. There are some people who think the opposite, by the way, that uh religion should be banned from public schools, but is everywhere, right? No, so there are some really clear constitutional protections and guidelines, right? So school officials are government officials, they're government employees. So they cannot, you know, mandate religion for students. But there are all kinds of student-led activities that are possible where students will organize prayer on their own and the school can help facilitate a room for them to engage in prayer, where they can find different ways to celebrate holidays. I've seen school systems where they actually set up cultural and religious holiday observances where students can talk like share for three minutes during the homeroom, right? A video from home about a holiday. It could be a secular cultural holiday, right? A national holiday, could be a religious holiday, but just like here's what our school community is doing this week, right? That's completely constitutionally protected, right? It's not proselytizing, it's just saying, this is what I'm doing in my home. Now you've learned something about me. That's called religious literacy. So one of the things that was exciting at the US Department of Education was not only to do all that education about what the constitutional protections already are, but also help people imagine what is an inclusive learning environment where no matter your background, no matter your religion, your sexual orientation, your gender identity, what does it look like for every student to be able to feel free to be themselves in the classroom and for everybody to be able to welcome them in the school community, right? And that can be a complicated question at times. But when you got down to it and you talked about what are policies that work for each student and what are policies that work for every student, it would start to click for people. Right. I'm very much on the opposite side of the Mahmoud V. Taylor uh conversation that you raised there. You know, because I really do believe that there's there's an importance to being exposed to the diversity in our school communities, to ensuring that students have access to books about a variety of communities and and, you know, actively right, families can can decide for themselves sort of the the religious, political, and and cultural boundaries around what they deem to be appropriate and inappropriate. But but yeah, that that sort of notion of an inclusive learning environment and what religious accommodations could look like and what inclusive school policies could look like was very was a very exciting work. And and I think it requires that kind of imagination to get us to the place where we want to go in America. What could things look like? Not just what are we afraid of, but what do we want the school to look like? What do we want every student's experience to feel like when they go to school?

SPEAKER_02 39:14

I think that's a great question.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

Yeah, it really, it really is. And and I'm I'm a big advocate of you know having kids be exposed to all kinds of like just new experiences, new what have you. I mean, like, like obviously for for the podcast, I mean, those that watch know that Josh is the conservative like host and I'm the progressive one. So it's like I'm all for like you know, drag queen story hour. Like, like I I live in a very trumpy part of Virginia, so like our local library will never host one. But but like I really do think that's important for kids to just be aware of because like these are people that are they may run into, you know, and I don't want it to be very like weird because here's here's a funny here's a funny story. So my my wife's white, and for for those that are listening out and watching, I'm black. So my son he came home from school one day, and he was like, he heard about some other person's dad being in the army, and it's a white friend of his, and he and he asked me as sincerely as he could, he's like, I didn't know white people could be in the army, because I knew that you were in the army and and you're black. I didn't know that white people could be and I'm like, oh, anybody can be the army, you know, and but but that's because like he only had one frame of reference, right? He only had one person he knew that was in the army, so that's how well that's that's what colored this entire worldview. That wasn't my question. My question was actually about Interfaith Alliance and the work that you all do there. We we didn't really get into it much at the top, but I figured, you know, I I I I think it's really important for our audience to just better understand. Well, what all do you guys do at Interfaith Alliance?

SPEAKER_00 40:57

And right now is serving as a pro-democracy organization led by people of diverse religious and non-religious backgrounds. Religious freedom, we believe, is central to how our democracy works. And so that plays a central role in how we conceive of the work around promoting democracy. But yes, a lot of it has to do with countering the very same weaponization of religion that we see right now in authoritarian movements.

SPEAKER_02 41:25

Yeah, that um that makes sense to me. And I I'm very disturbed by the authoritarian tendencies that I'm seeing around the world, not only in America, worldwide. And you know, I could you talk about Sharia law a little bit? I just I just know a little bit, like, you know, small topic, but I just know that, right, one of the things I'm hearing, because part of what I'm wanting to do, Maggie, right, is I'm trying to take one, I I have Muslim friends that I love very dearly. And although I I I think I'm right, I don't think I would believe what I do if I didn't think I was right, right? And obviously there's a sense in which I have a choice there, and there's a sense in which, like you said, your soul kind of seems like it's going in a direction sometimes, and you're kind of following. It's weird the way that works. But all I have to say is I want to take the fear out of Islam for my friends. I can say, hey, talk to Maggie, listen to this. No, she doesn't. Obviously, you don't represent every Muslim. Of course. And we know that there are radical Muslims, just like they're radical Christians, and there's there are Muslims that would want to impose Sharia law. My question, though, is help us understand, you know, in the 10 minutes we have left, everything about Sharia law. Just help us understand it from your perspective. Like, what is it? Is it something to be feared? Is it something that you imagine will happen in America? The things that people are saying that are causing fear. This is what I'm trying to hit, and hit hear a reasonable, a reasonable perspective from a practicing Muslim on these issues and help people take it and kind of relieve that fearsome so that it's not so much of pointing fingers and anger, and what about Sharia law? Don't you know they're gonna try to do this, this, this, and this. Because that's literally what I hear in conversations when I talk to people. I've literally said, Well, I have Muslim friends that I love, and I wouldn't, you know, let's just take a step back. And and they're offended by that. They I'm woke and I'm trying to, I'm basically, you know, a spy for Islam, trying to make it, you know, take over America at that point. So I'm trying to kind of help bring the temperature around the conversation and bring some perspective.

SPEAKER_00 43:51

I appreciate the question. So, yes, there is a lot of talk about Sharia law right now, mostly by politicians. In fact, there was a study done recently that it all boils down to a few key elected officials that are raising this concern. I should make absolutely clear: there is not a single American Muslim group advocating for Sharia law in the United States. There is not a single court in the United States that would recognize Sharia law, our church-state separation, our US laws all prevent the adoption of any other law, such as Sharia. But to clarify what it is, Sharia literally means the path to water. It is broadly understood as sort of every aspect of religious life. So how to pray, how to fast, belief itself is part of Sharia. It is not a set of laws. There is no Sharia book, right, that has, oh, here are all the laws that you follow. There are comparable other kinds of religious law, halakha, Catholic canon law. The sort of descriptions of specific rules that are many and multifaceted depending on the particular Islamic tradition, we would call a different word entirely, fiqh, which means Islamic jurisprudence. So I think when people talk about Sharia, they're actually talking about fiqh in a totally different word.

SPEAKER_02 45:20

Interesting. See, this is the kind of stuff that's really good to know.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

And there are many, many Muslim-majority countries, right? Many of them have secular governments, to be very clear. They have secular governments, even though the majority of their population are Muslim. For the ones that have attempted to adopt Islamic ideas into their the way that they govern, they will use the term sharia to talk about sort of the guiding principles for that. But as we all know, there are many different ways that that can go. That can be really scary and really problematic and really theocratic. Or it can be, you know, here's some religious ideas that we incorporated into this otherwise kind of very pluralistic sort of book governance model. And so there's a whole range that even looks for places that are majority Muslim. When you say you want to ban Sharia in the US, to the average American Muslim, it sort of means nothing on paper, right? Because there is an idea within the Sharia that you follow the laws of the land you're in. It means nothing concretely. Nobody is advocating for it, like I said. So it doesn't really change anything on paper. What it does really do is harm us in terms of putting a putting a target on us, suggesting that we are the danger, right? Suggesting that we're trying to do something harmful. And saying that you should ban something that includes a testament of faith, right? To say you want to ban our whole sort of religious values, essentially. Like I said, you know, we are protected by the First Amendment as well, right?

SPEAKER_02 47:01

We are protected by the That's like a Catholic saying you can't cue Catholic, like canon law, like banning canon. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 47:08

It's it's similar. I mean, there nothing is exactly what it is.

SPEAKER_02 47:10

I understand.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

It's not very similar to say, yeah, you can't you can't follow canon law, right? Obviously, there's no way to impose that really because of religious freedom, or which we're very grateful for. But really, what the harm is, is creating this conspiratorial idea. Nobody has been talking about Sharia as a problem for several years now, right? The last time was again around a key election cycle, right? Right around the 2015, 2016, we saw a lot of talk about Sharia. Sharia was going to take over then. We saw lots of laws passed, lots of laws that were introduced that weren't passed to ban Sharia. And then all of a sudden it went away because the political scapegoating of American Muslims was not needed in, you know, for a few years. And then they said, let's dust that Sharia conspiracy theory off the shelf and let's br let's reintroduce it. And so we're just seeing this wave that I really thought was gone 10 years ago, coming right back again. And it's it's very saddening and it leads to violence, like we saw in San Diego. Senator Ted Cruz had a hearing scheduled to talk about the threat of Sharia the same week as the Islamic Center of San Diego's the shooting that happened there. And he canceled or he postponed the hearing after that shooting happened, which I am very grateful for, but also really proves that he knows there is no real threat. He was just trying to fear-monger for political reasons against this vulnerable community in this moment. And and um I hope he never reschedules it.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Yeah. So this is my last question. We're coming up on the 250th anniversary of the country or the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I haven't really quite figured out the right way to describe it. But the uh we're we're also at a time in a country where where things just seem really, really bad. Um there's like a convergence of of issues that that are going to hit. So I'm going to ask you an impossible question. Um, and that question is like, what is it that that gives you hope during this during this moment?

SPEAKER_00 49:28

I I think that I see so many beautiful ways that people are showing up right now. I think when it gets darkest is sometimes it makes it more visible where the light needs to be shun, right? And we saw that, for example, in Minneapolis and so many places across the country when we had two American citizens there, right, that were shot and killed by ICE. And the ways that communities, including communities of faith, showed up powerfully and visibly, people who weren't really activists, but just said, don't hurt my neighbors. And if it means I gotta stand out in the, you know, extreme sub-zero temperatures to tell you not to hurt my neighbors, that's what I'm gonna do. And that shows me that people really do care and people are committed to finding a way together. I wish it didn't take such darkness and such division for us to realize how much we need each other and how much we have to show up. But when we do, it is powerful. And we have proven that in the midst of a politics that thrives on division and despair, the acts of solidarity and of hope are the most powerful antidote. And I think we keep proving that over and over again, and that's going to create a movement full of that solidarity and hope. So I am I am absolutely hopeful. I see movement in that direction. I think things may get a little worse before they get better, but I have faith that they will.

SPEAKER_01 51:11

Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Maggie Siddiqui. Siddiqui, actually, which means friend, right? Um, in Arabic. So uh thank you for uh stopping by, Faithful Politics. We really, really appreciate uh having this conversation with you.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

Thank you so much. Appreciate you having me.

SPEAKER_01 51:27

And uh and to our audience, hey, thanks again for stopping by. And as always, make sure you keep your conversations not right or left, but up, we'll see you next time. Take care.