Democratic lawmakers in the Old Dominion are conflating rejection of Sharia law with hatred of Muslims and trying to turn “Islamophobia” into a leftist political cudgel that would ultimately kill the Bill of Rights and its freedoms of conscience, religion, speech, and public debate.
This article is a lightly edited transcript of the “Here’s the Point” podcast by Ryan Helfenbein, executive director of the Standing for Freedom Center.
Virginia State Sen. Saddam Azlan Salim, D, has introduced SB 624, legislation that would enshrine “Islamophobia” into Virginia’s hate crime statutes. The bill defines Islamophobia as “malicious prejudice or hatred directed toward Islam or Muslims” — applying even when the victim is not actually Muslim.
SB 624 amends Virginia’s assault and battery laws by creating a statutory definition of “Islamophobia” and mandating that the Virginia Department of State Police incorporate this definition into the state’s hate crime reporting system.
But here’s what makes this particularly troubling: Virginia already has comprehensive hate crime legislation. During Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s term, the legislature passed SB 7, which enhances assault charges for anyone who “intentionally selects the person against whom a simple assault is committed because of his race, religious conviction, gender, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, color, or ethnic or national origin.”
That bill already covers Muslims.
So why introduce a new bill that does nothing more than add “Islamophobia” in a special category where it isn’t even needed? The reason is, this bill isn’t about protecting Muslims from violence — it’s about creating special legal status for Islam as a religion itself.
And that opens the door to new kind of secular blasphemy law, carving out a privileged status for Islam, a religion that has no historic claim on America, especially Virginia.
The definition matters because of this: SB 624 doesn’t just prohibit prejudice toward Muslims — it prohibits prejudice toward Islam as a religion. In the U.K., burning a Quran has been prosecuted as hatred toward Islam itself. When government criminalizes “prejudice” towards a religion rather than towards people, it crosses from protecting citizens to policing conscience and speech.
So how should Christians think about this? Four points:
First, assault and battery are crimes of action — speech and conscience do not meet the same legal criteria.
Just look at the rhetoric the left makes regarding the Christian faith or political adversaries on the right. Like when Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones made comments about former GOP House Speaker Todd Gilbert. The left understands speech when it applies to them.
SB 624, the Islamophobia bill, blurs this fundamental distinction by attaching criminal penalties not to assault itself (already illegal) but to alleged prejudice behind it. Critique of Islam is not assault. Theological, cultural, and political disagreement is not violence. Rejecting the Quran’s teaching is not a hate crime — especially when people do so out of grave concern for the threat it poses to the Constitution.
Second, this bill ignores the obvious realities of Islam and the totalizing demands of Sharia law.
Islam, particularly through Sharia, makes comprehensive claims on every area of life — law, government, economics, family structure, and civil society. Sharia is not merely religious observance, like prayer or kosher meals, but a complete legal and political system fundamentally incompatible with constitutional republican government.
And we have said repeatedly on this program: There is no compatibility with Islam and the Constitution. There is no separation of mosque and state when it comes to Islam. It includes compulsory religious observance through the hijab; honor killings to preserve family reputation; halal requirements extending Islamic law into commerce; apostasy laws punishing those who leave Islam; and blasphemy laws criminalizing criticism of Mohammad or the Quran.
This is the actual “Handmaid’s Tale” — a totalizing system that subordinates women, criminalizes dissent, and demands universal compliance.
Yet SB 624 would make expressing disagreement towards these practices under the banner of Islam a hate crime.
Third, President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about communism applies equally here.
In his famous speech given about communism in 1952, Eisenhower said this: “The Bill of Rights contains no privilege for a group of people to destroy the Bill of Rights. A group — like the communist conspiracy — dedicated to the ultimate destruction of all civil liberties cannot be allowed to claim civil liberties as its privileged sanctuary from which to carry out this subversion.”
In other words, can freedom extend protections to ideologies seeking to destroy freedom itself?
And the answer, of course, is “No.”
The Bill of Rights does not contain the seeds of its own destruction. In fact, as the Constitution was written in the backdrop of Deuteronomy, the Ten Commandments, and the understanding that the American government is a Christian form of civil government, the separation of church and state was a Christian principle not meant to emancipate government from God or from Godly authority but to protect Christianity from coercive governmental power.
Fourth, if Virginia passes this without successful legal challenge, it becomes a template for other states.
Virginia is fast becoming a new laboratory for progressive experiments, just like California. Virginia is becoming even more progressive than New York or Massachusetts. If Virginia successfully criminalizes “prejudice towards Islam” and mandates state police track “Islamophobia” as a distinct hate crime category, other blue states may soon follow.
Christians must also recognize that while there are political threats and challenges immediately in front of us, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is of greatest importance because it contains the very answer for the challenge of Islam and progressive secularism.
Jesus Christ came to seek and save the lost. He died, was buried, and rose again to ransom sinners, sinners just like you and me. While Christians must reject Islam, and while Islam is incompatible with the Constitution and the West, Christians do not hate Muslims but love them enough to tell them the truth about Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Jesus Christ alone is the Savior of the world.
That message is the very foundation upon which Western civilization and the United States government was built.
Eisenhower’s biggest regret as President was appointing two Supreme Court justices that were the greatest influence in destroying our Christian legal tradition.
Virginia is the birthplace of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Patrick Henry. It is the birthplace of our Constitutional Republic. Citizens with courage and good will must ensure it does not become the graveyard of religious freedom and conscience.
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