A Muslim religious leader in North Texas used a livestreamed fundraising event last week to lay out an explicitly religious vision for the United States, telling viewers that Muslims should not shy away from wanting Islam to shape the country.
Shaykh Uthman ibn Farooq spoke at the Sufaraa Center in McKinney, Texas, according to The Federalist, which reported on the event. The livestream was hosted by Authentic Ilm Mission, a group that is raising money for a 40,000-square-foot Islamic facility on a four-acre campus between Richardson and Plano.
Constitutional rights and the case for Sharia
Farooq framed his argument in constitutional terms, saying Muslims are fully entitled to adhere to Sharia law under the First Amendment’s protections for religious belief.
“We love this country,” Farooq said, according to The Federalist. “We want good for this country. And that’s why we want Islam for this country, ’cause we think that’s the best thing. And we’re not going to be ashamed of that.”
He continued: “We’re Muslims. That’s our identity, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The Constitution of this country protects that. That’s our right to believe in the Sharia. Yes, I said it. That’s our right.”
Farooq went on to compare Muslims to other groups he said operate openly in American life — communists, socialists, and even Satanists, noting he had personally debated members of the Church of Satan. He also took a swipe at President Donald Trump, saying he did not know what the president’s actual beliefs are, and adding that he doubted Trump does either. The point, Farooq argued, was that the Constitution protects everyone’s right to hold and express their convictions.
A campus planned on a former church site
Authentic Ilm Mission, which is led by Dr. Karim AbuZaid and Farooq, is seeking to build what its website describes as a multipurpose Islamic community center and school “in one of the most densely Muslim-populated areas between Richardson and Plano.” The property was formerly the site of a Christian church, and the group’s website includes a graphic that lets visitors swipe to replace an image of the old church building with a rendering of the new mosque.
The facility is planned to house Islamic K-12 education, a seminary, and training in Da’wah — Islamic proselytization. According to the group’s website, the project has raised $300,000 of the $800,000 it says is needed, with donations from 1,500 individuals across 50 countries.
During the livestream, Farooq said the classes at the Da’wah center would help “educate our youth to have that knowledge … [and] refute Christian apologists and Islamophobes and hadith-rejectors and anybody else that’s trying to deviate Islam.”
Warnings against compromise
Farooq also cautioned his audience against watering down Islamic principles, using the history of Muslim rule in Europe as a cautionary tale. He said Portugal, Spain, and Sicily were under Muslim control for roughly 700 years, and argued that the eventual loss of those territories came about because of accommodation and compromise.
“Seven hundred years of compromise, of trying to accommodate ended with what? the Muslims losing,” he said, according to The Federalist’s account.
The event’s host organization has drawn scrutiny before. Farooq works with the One Message Foundation and has built a substantial social media following — 430,000 on Instagram and 1.4 million on YouTube, The Federalist reported. The One Message Foundation’s website claims that it and partner groups converted nearly 1,500 people to Islam during the World Cup. Farooq’s videos have included commentary describing polygamy as legitimate and speculating about whether Trump may be an evil spirit.
In 2023, then-U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper barred Farooq from entering the United Kingdom over remarks that were characterized as justifying sexual relations with female captives, a practice The Federalist noted was endorsed by Muhammad in the Quran. Farooq nonetheless visited Europe in April 2025 and spoke at a mosque in Birmingham, where he said, “The future is ours. Every ideal nightmare of a Muslim Europe will come true.”
A growing Muslim presence in Texas
Texas is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the United States, with more than 300,000 residents, a significant share of whom live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The proposed Authentic Ilm Mission site sits roughly 20 minutes southwest of the East Plano Islamic Center, a mosque with 10,000 members that has drawn nationwide attention for its efforts to establish what critics describe as a Muslim city. The legal fight over EPIC’s planned development of more than 450 housing plots remains ongoing.
Nationwide, the number of mosques in the United States has surpassed 3,000 in recent years.
The livestream event and the fundraising push behind the Plano-area project come amid a broader national conversation about religious pluralism, immigration, and the place of religious law in American life — debates that have intensified as Muslim communities grow in size and visibility across the country.
Source: thefederalist.com — https://thefederalist.com/2026/09/25/we-want-islam-for-this-country-muslims-in-texas-lay-out-vision-for-islamic-america-1/