Actress Justine Bateman delivered a blunt constitutional reality check Tuesday after Rep. Nancy Mace circulated an old video of Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed attacking Oklahoma’s attempt to prohibit state courts from considering Sharia law.
“If they feel Sharia Law is part of their religion, there is separation of church and state here,” Bateman wrote on X.
“If they mean to inject Sharia Law into the legal structure of the United States of America, we have freedom of religion, not freedom of law,” she continued. “Take that law somewhere else. We don’t allow that here.”
That distinction—worship however you choose, but America operates under one civil Constitution—struck a nerve with Americans who have watched Europe struggle with parallel religious tribunals and growing demands for special legal treatment.
Mace was even more direct.
“Here is Abdul El Sayed clearly advocating for Sharia Law in the U.S.,” the South Carolina Republican wrote Sunday. “VOTE LIKE OUR LIVES DEPEND ON IT.”
If they feel Sharia Law is part of their religion, there is separation of church and state here.
If they mean to inject Sharia Law into the legal structure of the United States of America, we have freedom of religion, not freedom of law.
Take that law somewhere else. We don’t… https://t.co/LZX2dSc17D— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) August 10, 2026
The video has returned to center stage following El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary. The speech was delivered at an October 2022 event held by the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
In the full remarks, El-Sayed recalled Oklahoma’s State Question 755, a 2010 constitutional amendment directing state courts to rely on federal and state law while specifically prohibiting consideration of Sharia and international law.
“What does that mean? I don’t know,” El-Sayed said of the measure. “And yet the voters banned it anyway.”
Then came the historical blender.
El-Sayed claimed the “same exact forces” responsible for driving Native Americans from their land, destroying Tulsa’s Black Wall Street and bombing the Oklahoma City federal building were also responsible for attempting “to ban Sharia law.”
“You can’t understand a Sharia ban without understanding the Trail of Tears,” he declared. “You cannot understand the efforts to uproot Muslim Americans without understanding the Tulsa Massacre.”
“You cannot understand the challenges we face today without understanding white supremacy.”
That is an extraordinary comparison. Disagreeing about whether American judges should consult religious law is one thing. Comparing voters who wanted an American-law-only amendment to forced removal, racial slaughter and domestic terrorism is quite another.
The electorate’s position was hardly ambiguous. State Question 755 received 695,650 “yes” votes—just over 70% of the total—although the result was never certified after a federal court intervened, according to Oklahoma election records and the reported vote totals.
Federal courts ultimately blocked the amendment because it singled out Islam, finding that its explicit treatment of Sharia likely violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. That legal ruling did not give Sharia supremacy over American law. It held that Oklahoma could not constitutionally target one religion for special legal disfavor.
Mace’s caption goes beyond what El-Sayed expressly said. The speech shows him condemning Oklahoma’s Sharia ban, invoking the Quran and portraying opposition to the measure as part of a white-supremacist history. It does not contain an explicit demand that Sharia replace the Constitution or become America’s governing law.
Bateman did not attack Muslims for practicing their faith. She articulated the boundary El-Sayed and every other candidate should be willing to affirm without hesitation: religious freedom is absolute until someone attempts to substitute religious authority for American civil law.
Mace, meanwhile, has broadened her criticism well beyond El-Sayed. She recently declared that “every single Muslim holding public office” is a threat—a claim that drew pushback even from Fox News and led to a heated CNN confrontation over constitutional protections for Muslim officeholders.
El-Sayed’s defenders say the controversy is part of an organized campaign to portray ordinary Muslim expressions and political participation as evidence of a religious takeover.
Fine. Saying “God willing” is not a revolution, and Muslim Americans enjoy the same constitutional rights as everybody else.
But El-Sayed’s own words remain fair game. A man seeking a United States Senate seat chose to equate opposition to Sharia’s consideration in state courts with the Trail of Tears, the Tulsa massacre and white supremacy. Michigan voters are entitled to ask what, exactly, he believes the proper relationship should be between Islamic religious doctrine and American jurisprudence.
MY QUICK TAKE
Bateman found the constitutional bull’s-eye: one nation, one Constitution and one civil legal system—for Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists and everybody else.
Mace is right to demand scrutiny of El-Sayed’s speech.
The easiest way for El-Sayed to settle the matter is also the most obvious: state plainly that the Constitution and democratically enacted American law are the sole governing legal authorities in the United States—and that no religious code may override them.
No historical lecture. No white-supremacy detour. No campaign consultant’s fog machine.
Just answer the question.
