Muslim U.S. Senate candidate grilled again for comparing canon law with sharia law
Michigan Senate candidate Abdulrahman “Abdul” El-Sayed has compared Catholic canon law with sharia while responding to questions about his Muslim faith and religious liberty. CatholicVote president Kelsey Reinhardt says the comparison is a false equivalence: canon law governs the Catholic Church internally, while sharia has historically functioned in some countries as a broader legal system. El-Sayed has said the U.S. Constitution protects people’s freedom to follow religious law but prevents them from imposing it on others. Catholic Answers’ Todd Aglialoro and Islamic studies scholar Gabriel Said Reynolds also discuss sharia’s scope and its relationship to civil law.
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Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdulrahman “Abdul” El-Sayed is facing renewed criticism for comparing Catholic canon law with sharia while arguing that the U.S. Constitution protects Muslims’ and Catholics’ freedom to follow their religious obligations. Catholic commentators say the analogy can make a point about religious liberty but risks obscuring significant differences between the two legal traditions. 1
In an Aug. 24 interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters, El-Sayed described canon law as “Christian law” and said he hoped neither Muslims nor Christians would seek to impose their religious rules on others. In a later video responding to concerns about his faith, he told a Christian town-hall questioner that the Constitution allows people to live according to canon law but not enforce it on anyone else; he also said he would swear an oath to the Constitution if elected. 1
The comments have resurfaced in the closing days of the Senate race, after El-Sayed released an advertisement saying that he prays every day. CatholicVote president and CEO Kelsey Reinhardt said she accepted his right to religious liberty but objected to what she called repeated “false equivalences” involving Catholics and the Church. 1
Reinhardt described canon law as the Catholic Church’s internal legal order, governing matters such as sacraments, dioceses and clergy discipline, rather than a nation’s criminal code. She contrasted that with what she called classical sharia, which she said has historically addressed family law, criminal punishment and state governance, and is incorporated into the constitutions of some countries. 1
Catholic Answers’ Todd Aglialoro similarly said that sharia can function as part of civil and criminal law in some Muslim-majority countries. He also pointed to debate in Western countries about religious judgments operating alongside or in conflict with state law. 1
Gabriel Said Reynolds, a University of Notre Dame professor of Islamic Studies and Theology who serves on the Vatican’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue with Muslims, said that for Muslims, “God’s will for humanity is sharia.” The article also notes that Islamic law has included provisions affecting non-Muslims, such as the jizya head tax on Jews and Christians, and reports historical cases of abduction, enslavement, subjugation and forced conversion of Christians in parts of the Islamic world. 1
David Long, a canon-law professor at The Catholic University of America, said the comparison can illustrate that believers may seek freedom to observe religious obligations without claiming authority to impose them on others. But, he said, that constitutional argument does not show that the two traditions have equivalent sources of authority or jurisdiction. 1
Long cautioned against treating every Muslim’s religious observance as a proposal for state enforcement, while also noting that Islamic jurisprudence includes rules for civil government, including rules affecting non-Muslims. He framed the central concern as the distinction between religious freedom and coercive state authority. 1
The report says El-Sayed’s campaign staff had not responded to a request for clarification by publication. 1*
Religious law and civil authority in pluralistic societies
In a pluralistic society, Catholic teaching rejects both a religious state that simply turns one faith’s rules into civil law and a public order that treats moral questions as beyond debate because citizens disagree. It distinguishes the proper authority of religious communities from the authority of the state, while holding that citizens—including religious citizens—may argue publicly about moral truths relevant to the common good. The central challenge is to protect freedom of conscience and religious practice without reducing law to a mere reflection of whichever beliefs currently hold political power.
Religious law governs a community’s religious life: its doctrines, worship, internal governance, and practices. Civil law, by contrast, is directed to the common good of the whole political community, including the protection of rights, peace, and just social coexistence. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith warns that identifying religious law with civil law can threaten religious freedom and other human rights. It also says specifically religious activities fall outside state responsibility, except where public order is at stake.
This distinction does not require religious communities to retreat from public life. It means that the state should not take over religious functions, and that religious authorities should not assume the state’s coercive power simply because they teach moral or religious obligations. The CDF also stresses that civil and political rights, and access to public services, must not depend on a person’s religious convictions or activities.
The distinction is sometimes described as the autonomy of the civil or political sphere. In Catholic teaching, this means that political institutions have their own proper responsibilities and procedures; it does not mean that public life is morally neutral or exempt from ethical judgment. The CDF explicitly affirms the civil sphere’s autonomy from the Church and religion, “but not from that of morality.”
Pluralism means that people with differing beliefs can participate in public life and seek peaceful, lawful ways to address their disagreements. It does not require everyone to regard all moral positions as equally true, or to exclude religious arguments and citizens from civic discussion. Catholic citizens may defend moral principles concerning justice, freedom, human life, and human rights through legitimate means; the fact that the Church also teaches those principles does not make their advocacy politically illegitimate.
Catholic teaching also rejects the opposite mistake: invoking pluralism to justify policies that undermine fundamental ethical requirements. The CDF says such requirements are rooted in human nature and belong to the natural moral law—a term for moral principles understood as accessible to human reason, not only to believers in a particular revelation. On this account, Catholics may argue for such principles not as special privileges for their faith, but as claims about human dignity and the common good.
That argument must still be made within legitimate civic processes. A scholarly account in the supplied material emphasizes that the Church may seek to influence civic culture through ordinary public deliberation and free legislative procedures, including by offering arguments grounded in natural law. Religious conviction can motivate a citizen’s position, but political advocacy does not itself authorize coercion or exemption from the rules of civic deliberation.
Civil law has a more limited purpose than the whole of morality. In Evangelium Vitae, John Paul II says civil law cannot replace conscience or dictate norms outside its competence. Its role is to serve ordered coexistence and the common good by recognizing and protecting fundamental rights and promoting peace.
This limitation matters in a pluralistic society. Not every sin, religious disagreement, or moral failing should automatically become a civil offence. At the same time, the Church does not regard legality as the sole measure of justice: a law’s existence does not make every act it permits morally right. John Paul II argues that basic human rights are not created or erased by a state or majority; public authority must acknowledge and protect them. He gives the right to life as a fundamental example.
The distinction between tolerating something and endorsing it is therefore important. A government may sometimes judge that prohibiting a harmful practice would produce still greater harm, and therefore refrain from banning it. But that prudential decision is not the same as declaring the practice a right or morally good.
Religious freedom is not only an individual’s right to hold private beliefs. The supplied scholarly discussion of Catholic teaching describes it as also requiring room for the Church’s public life: worship, institutions, education, charity, and internal governance. It argues that civil authorities should not unjustly intrude into a religious community’s determination of its own religious norms and practices.
That freedom is not unlimited in every setting. The same discussion recognizes the state’s legitimate concern for the natural and civic order, while stressing that disputes can arise over what properly belongs to religious freedom and what falls within the state’s responsibility. The general principle, then, does not settle every case by itself: a specific dispute may require careful judgment about the rights involved, the state’s legitimate purpose, and the effects of the restriction.
Catholic sources support public religious witness but warn against confusing religious authority with political authority. One scholarly interpretation stresses that religious communities can contribute to the flourishing of society and that a society may reasonably recognize or support religious practice. Another emphasizes that the state’s task is not to conform society to Catholic religious truth through coercion, but that Christians influence society through evangelization and the lay apostolate. These are scholarly interpretations rather than equivalent magisterial statements; the more direct CDF guidance establishes the key boundary: civil autonomy, protection of religious freedom, and legitimate public advocacy for moral truths.
Accordingly, a religiously informed political position is not automatically an attempt to impose religion. The relevant questions are whether the claim concerns a genuine common good, whether it can be argued through legitimate civic means, whether it respects the equal rights of others, and whether the state is being asked to perform a religious function that is not properly its own. Catholic teaching leaves room for disagreement about how best to apply those principles in particular laws and circumstances; the supplied texts do not resolve every contested case.
The Catholic approach is therefore neither theocracy nor moral relativism. Civil authority must not absorb religious governance or make civil status depend on religious identity, but pluralism does not require religious citizens to silence their moral convictions. In a just pluralistic order, religious communities retain genuine freedom, citizens can seek to persuade one another in public, and the state remains accountable to the protection of human dignity and the common good.