{"id":19831,"date":"2026-03-10T17:01:46","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T17:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/mike-johnson-declines-to-condemn-republicans-anti-muslim-remarks\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T17:01:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T17:01:46","slug":"mike-johnson-declines-to-condemn-republicans-anti-muslim-remarks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/mike-johnson-declines-to-condemn-republicans-anti-muslim-remarks\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Johnson declines to condemn Republicans\u2019 anti-Muslim remarks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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DORAL, Florida \u2014 Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he has discussed \u201cour tone and our message\u201d with the two House Republicans who have made anti-Muslim remarks in recent days but defended the right of the lawmakers to oppose \u201cthe imposition of Sharia law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, there\u2019s a lot of energy in the country, and a lot of popular sentiment, that the demand to impose Sharia law in America is a serious problem,\u201d Johnson said at a news conference during the House GOP policy retreat at the Trump Doral resort. \u201cThat\u2019s what animates me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sharia law refers to a set of religious principles that guide devout Muslims, and Republicans often refer to it in the context of Islamic fundamentalism. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) posted on social media<\/u><\/a> Monday that \u201cMuslims don’t belong in American society.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPluralism is a lie,\u201d he added, later following up with a graphic<\/u><\/a> showing \u201cwhat Islam offers\u201d \u2014 some examples of which included \u201crape,\u201d \u201cbeheadings\u201d and \u201cburning people alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) wrote in a post on X<\/u><\/a> last month that \u201cIf they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither Ogles nor Fine differentiated between the Muslim faith and Sharia law.<\/p>\n

Johnson has been under pressure to condemn the rhetoric, particularly from Ogles, but the Louisiana Republican suggested Tuesday only that he regretted the choice of words, not the sentiment.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Constitution is the greatest in the world. \u2026 And one of the principles that we believe in, stated first in the nation’s birth certificate, is that all of us are created equal by God,\u201d said Johnson Tuesday. \u201cWe respect everyone’s beliefs and their right to live out their beliefs and to speak freely about their beliefs, and have that conviction.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when you seek to come to a country and not assimilate but to impose Sharia law \u2026 that is the conflict that people are talking about,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s not about people as Muslims, it is about people who seek to impose a different belief system that is in direct conflict with the constitution.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DORAL, Florida \u2014 Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he has discussed \u201cour tone and our message\u201d with the two House Republicans who have made anti-Muslim remarks in recent days but defended the right of the lawmakers to oppose \u201cthe imposition of Sharia law.\u201d \u201cLook, there\u2019s a lot of energy in the country, and a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}