When Islam Is Not a Religion: Inside America's Fight for Religious Freedom

by Asma T. Uddin

A galvanizing look at constitutional freedoms in the United States through the prism of attacks on the rights of American Muslims.

American Muslim religious liberty lawyer Asma Uddin has long considered her work defending people of all faiths to be a calling more than a job. Yet even as she seeks equal protection for Evangelicals, Sikhs, Muslims, Native Americans, Jews, and Catholics alike, she has seen an ominous increase in attempts to criminalize Islam and exclude Muslim Americans from those protections.

Somehow, the view that Muslims aren’t human enough for human rights or constitutional protections is moving from the fringe to the mainstream—along with the claim “Islam is not a religion.” This conceit is not just a threat to the First Amendment rights of American Muslims. It is a threat to the freedom of all Americans.

Her new book reveals a significant but overlooked danger to our religious liberty. Woven throughout this national saga is Uddin’s own story and the stories of American Muslims and other people of faith who have faced tremendous indignities as they attempt to live and worship freely.

Combining her experience of Islam as a religious truth and her legal and philosophical appreciation that all individuals have a right to religious liberty, Uddin examines the shifting tides of American culture and outlines a way forward for individuals and communities navigating today’s culture wars.

Genres: Politics, Religion, Nonfiction, Islam, Spirituality, Cultural, Law

336 pages, Hardcover

Published July 9, 2019

About the author

Asma T. Uddin is Senior Scholar at the Freedom Forum Institute in Washington, D.C., and a Visiting Scholar at Brigham Young University. She also holds non-residential fellowships at UCLA and Georgetown University. Uddin previously served as counsel with Becket, a nonprofit law firm specializing in U.S. and international religious freedom cases, and as director of strategy for the Center for Islam and Religious Freedom, a nonprofit engaged in religious liberty in Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority contexts. She is widely published by law reviews, university presses, and national and international newspapers. She is also an expert advisor on religious liberty to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and a term-member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In addition to her expertise in religious liberty, Uddin writes and speaks on gender and Islam, and she is the founding editor-in-chief of altmuslimah.com. She graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, where she was a staff editor at the University of Chicago Law Review.

Reviews

[Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Islam is not a religion." That is some advanced level redneckery. If you were to say Scientology is not a religion, I'd think you'd have a case. But Islam? As Uddin pointed out, it's a millennia-old, established religion.

When I first heard that phrase, frequently uttered by right-wingers, I wondered why they were saying that. The reason, as Uddin explained, is because fundamentalist Christians want their religious freedom protected without granting the same rights to Muslims.

As a Latter-day Saint, I'm not a stranger to these crazy classifications created by fundies. (Mormons aren't Christians because they worship a "different Jesus." That's the trashy argument. The scholarly argument is that Christianity has been defined by the Nicene Creed for millennia.) Although there are nutjobs who believe The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a corporation, I never hear that Mormonism isn't a religion.

In a calm, non-acerbic tone, Uddin exposes the hypocrisy of Christian fundamentalists on this issue.

This book is very thorough on the current religious freedom issues. One important section contrasts the religious liberty cases involving the Colorado baker and the Trump Muslim ban. The Supreme Court ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission acted wrongly because they showed contempt for the baker's beliefs. Yet Trump was overtly hostile to Islam. One reason is because for the baker, they used the free-exercise clause, while for the Muslim ban, they used the establishment clause. I wonder if it's because the ACLU took up the Muslim ban case, and secularists don't like to use the free exercise clause.

Uddin also covers issues like opposition to mosque-building, domestic surveillance, the hijab, and is sympathetic to the cause of Christians in defending their religious freedom, in spite of the fact that they are the majority. She demonstrates how current conservative hostility towards Muslims trips up their own case. She wants more unity between Christians and Muslims on this issue. In fact, she worked at the Beckett Fund. (Senator Hatch's endorsement is on the dustjacket.)

I was proud that Utah was the only state in which Republican politicians haven't made Islamophobic comments, a fact she cited in this book.

Issues I have with this book: She claims that ISIS is the completely the result of political factors, and and not theology-dependent, noting that its interpretation of the Koran is universally rejected by Muslim scholars.

I think it'd be more accurate to say that there are different strains of Islam, and some strains, like Wahabbi, spawn stuff like Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Furthermore, she didn't contrast the much higher levels of radicalization in European Muslims in relation to their American counterparts. Understandable; those issues would distract readers from her main point, that is to stop denying Muslims their First Amendment rights, because we're all in this together.

[Becca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book review is so long I am going to spoil the whole thing to spare most of you.

When Islam is Not a Religion looks at the bizarre litmus tests, double standards, and discrimination that American Muslims practicing their faith are subject to. To sidestep concerns about how Islamophobia undermines Americans’ fundamental religious freedom, naysayers simply claim that Islam is not a religion. Kind of like “The Second Amendment is for white people,” but “The First Amendment is for Christians.”

Members of all three branches of governments (presidents, judges, representatives) have put forth measures to curtail the rights and safety of Muslim Americans. Trump’s Muslim ban and anti-sharia laws are two main examples in this text. When such efforts face legal challenges, instead of preventing Islamophobia, these hiccups merely teach Islamophobes the ins and outs of an obstacle course they can maneuver through to still get what they want.

For example, with Trump’s Muslim ban — newer revisions refuted claims of religious discrimination by throwing non-Muslim majority countries into the mix (e.g., North Korea, Venezuela). Or, anti-sharia statutes are used to discriminate against Jewish Americans in addition to Muslims, to “prove” Islam is not being solely targeted.

Instead of not doing the thing anymore, they cast a wider net of bigotry, muddying the waters to give themselves plausible deniability. I mean, not very plausible. The underlying goals and biases are still obvious. But, this makes it trickier to isolate in the legal apparatus, which gives cover to not only the actors but also to sympathetic conservative judges. On the flip side, sometimes people will sacrifice their own religious liberty to erode religious liberty for Muslims. The sentiment being, “My rights are not your rights. If forced to pick between extending them to you, or removing them for everyone, I will pick the latter to ensure you never have them.”

Many Islamophobic measures position freedom/liberty and security/safety as zero sum. Infringing on the rights of Muslim Americans is viewed as an easy trade (by non-Muslims, to be clear) for enhanced national security. But in other instances, Islamophobic politicians and citizens argue fiercely for freedom over everything, unable to muster any concern for safety (e.g., when it comes to gun violence, or wearing a mask during a global pandemic).

Worse still, the measures to “increase national security” do not do that. They are wildly invasive, wildly expensive, and wildly ineffective. In fact, they are worse than ineffective. Research shows that policing religious and personal conduct in this way increases animosity. When the law condones Islamophobia, it emboldens vigilante violence against Muslims, undermining security and safety.

Islamophobic stereotypes cast all Muslims as terrorist threats, yet as a result, Muslims are targets of actual terrorism. Street harassment and physical violence, headscarves ripped off of lone women. Mosques and Islamic community and childcare centers are at risk for bomb threats, vandalism, mass shootings, and arson.

Living surrounded by these material threats in turn prompts Muslims to consider ceding religious and cultural practices which are important to them, which they would otherwise embrace and choose. For example, not wearing a hijab or speaking Arabic in public. Islamophobes contend that Muslims harbor secret anti-American or anti-Christian attitudes, but Islamophobia forces new secrecy where previously there was none, in that it causes some Muslims to conceal aspects of their faith and background out of fear.

More liberal refutations of Islamophobia often feed into the same baseline stereotypes. Major Democratic politicians have argued against alienating Muslim Americans so that the good patriotic Muslims who are on America’s side will eagerly report all the jihadists they definitely know personally.

This is merely a (preposterous) reinforcement of the same racist assumptions. As if Muslim communities are not already being surveilled. The book gives examples about a police informant who attended a white water rafting trip a group of Muslim teens went on. The War on Terror now includes cops going undercover to…summer camp?

Underpinning monitoring of and urging self-reports by Muslims is the idea that being a real, full American, is something white Americans can choose to bestow or withhold from their fellow countrymen. It reminds me of recent discourse about how people protesting ICE should not wave flags for countries other than the US because it’s “bad optics.” I promise you the fight for racial justice and religious liberty will never be won by performing assimilation good enough, by increasing palatability and deference to a greater order which distorts difference and diversity into inherent threats to “our” women, children, or way of life.

When Muslims are represented in popular media, often the portrayals are more cultural than religious, or actively subverting stereotypes. Secular, progressive representations matter, and they are valid and important. But at the same time, omitting any positive Muslim representation for more traditional or conservative adherents to Islam can still cast the faith and people as Other. Where is the Duck Dynasty for Muslims? I have waited long enough.

While this book helped me understand how Islamophobia is justified by people who are discriminating on the basis of faith, race, or both, I was not sold on Uddin’s general argument about religious liberty and the need for consistency. It just feels a little dated and naive in 2025.

There is a lot of reassurance about the checks and balances of US government and law, which, lol. Uddin is currently caring for her husband amid a new cancer diagnosis, so of course I do not expect her to be working on a fresh manuscript about second term Trump weaponizing white evangelicalism to stoke fears and ire about Islamophobia under the guise of fighting antisemitism.

I was just thoroughly underwhelmed by 2019 Uddin’s conclusion and base argument. I simply do not buy that asking Amy Coney Barrett questions about her faith before she is made a Supreme Court justice and a young woman having her clothes ripped off her on the street by a stranger are the same thing, or even on the same spectrum, if I’m honest.

I do not think consistency has the self-awareness or teeth to differentiate between threats of white Christian nationalism and threats TO Muslims spewed forth by those white Christian nationalists. I do not buy into the idea that an attack on one religious person is an attack on all our religious liberty, when some (backed by enormous money and power) are using their religious liberty to bombard others’ religious liberty.

More minor qualms: Uddin says that this book is for everyone, including people who are not religious. As someone who is not religious, I did not feel like that was particularly true. Which is totally fine, that’s not why I picked up this book. But, I think Uddin does sidestep points about how others’ religious beliefs can be imposed in the workplace or legally in blanket defense of preserving religious liberty. I am interested in what she thinks about that, or in her view about why, say, atheists should be invested in defending religious liberty.

I am considering purchasing a copy (high praise from a library worker), because this was very thought-provoking.

[Umar Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an important book on an important topic dealing with the subject of religious liberty and American-Muslims. Asma Uddin spends a lot of time debunking the ludicrous claim put forward by many conservative activists and GOP lawmakers that Islam is a political ideology rather than a religion. As bizarre as this theory may sound there are those on the right who have been promoting it for years.

Asma then discusses other issues such as the frequent protests over mosque construction and highlights the case of Murphysboro, Tennessee and several other places where mosques were both legally and physically targeted. The central theme becomes there are those, primarily on the white Christian Right, who are staunch defenders of religious liberty, as long as it is their own, but are adamantly opposed to the granting of religious liberties when it comes to Muslims.

The post 9-11 "Muslim-liberal alliance" means that Muslims are often in political relationships with people who are vehement secularists who want to use the power of the state (in addition to media and entertainment) to decrease the influence of religion in public life. Asma addresses the complexities of this coalition (which I believe has reached a peak BTW and the Muslim vote in the future will become more competitive between the two parties. A feature of this will more than likely be a gender divide among Muslim voters, but I see no reason to believe Muslims in America will always vote Democrat or be a small part of the left-coalition, and to bolster my point polls suggest Trump made significant gains with the Muslim vote in the 2020 election).

Now to my criticism of the book. When discussing the issue of African-American prisoners Asma noted that only a small fraction of Black prisoners are "Wahabbi" which she says is the group most extremists come from. She is wrong on both counts. First, there is no such thing as a "Wahabbi" as there isn't anyone who self identifies as such. Wahabbi is a pejorative term akin to calling a Catholic a "Papist". The correct term is Salafi and on that note the Salafi Movement has been the dominant force among Black American prisoners for the last 25 years (at least). Salafeeyah has become so dominant in Black American Muslim life that in many cities its hard to find any Black Muslims fifty and under who aren't either Salafi or Salafi adjacent. Asma lives in the Maryland suburbs of DC. I encourage her to go the vibrant Black Salafi masjid in Northeast DC on 18th and Monroe and see the prison to masjid pipeline first hand. In effect being anti-Salafi is often anti Black Muslim in many places including DC, Maryland, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and St. Louis.

This brings me back to the first chapter where Asma mentioned a Northern Virginia Muslim imam and a Bay Area Muslim scholar with a Mauritanian sheikh. The Northern Virginia imam has been a key participant in the CVE program which was an astonishing assault on the civil liberties of American-Muslims. Most CVE opponents attack the program using the language of the left in which religious liberty isn't often a focus. My criticism has always primarily been from the point of defending religious liberty. CVE, in effect, created "correct theology" deemed non threatening and "incorrect theology" deemed as sufficient to make the believer a target of an investigation. How to determine who has correct or incorrect theology? Turn houses of worship into intelligence gathering centers, train the staff in monitoring worshippers, and as a yardstick see if they agree with the good "moderate" imams. As most imams will never encounter any ISIS supporters they'll report who they see as dangerous or looks odd- Black Muslims, converts, Salafis, and Deobandis. This will in turn lead to government harassment for those whose only suspicious activity was attending a masjid. If that isn't an assault on religious liberty I don't know what is. While this activity would by unthinkable in American churches or synagogues it may not be a stretch for many who follow overseas clerics with strong relationships with intelligence agencies and autocratic regimes (as the above mentioned Mauritanian sheikh does).

In closing I'll say that while many on the racist right are conspiratorial and don't see Islam as a religion they seem to be joined by many Muslims, albeit from a different angle. The post-911 "reframing of the narrative" has largely sought to promote Islam as a brown immigrant upwardly mobile ethnic identity absent of Islam. Whatever is upsetting to white people we discard. Enough with all of that halal and haram stuff. This attitude seems to have become somewhat normal as you can now hear entire lectures by Muslim activists with absolutely no mention of religion. Free Palestine and I don't eat pork. That seems to be the entirety of it.

To end on something positive I enjoyed hearing about South Florida and her father. Not just because I love South Florida, but because he seems like he was a great man and reminded me of some of the old pioneers I knew in St. Louis.

[Warren Wulff · Rating 3 out of 5]

What this author says is undeniably true: Muslims in the US are not treated on equal footing in law and in day-to-day life. However, while this book provides many salient and moving examples, I feel that it lacks in a couple areas. One is a proper rebuttal to claims made by Islamophobes. I agree that their arguments are bunk and hateful, but I feel the author needs to more adequately show that with statistics, more than the anecdotal experiences she often gives of how regular Muslims are normal people. I know that already and agree, but I feel that something more is warranted, either in stats or a more rigorous analysis. As a devout Muslim and noted defender of religious rights, I knew that the author would come from that angle. However, as I am a humanist, a Canadian, and a believer in human rights, above and beyond religious rights, I kept feeling that a defence on human rights grounds would be a stronger argument than simply saying “the First Amendment says freedom of religion is the first freedom.” Okay, but as a Canadian that holds no water for me and I simply feel that it is a lesser right to stand on than on a universal set of human rights shared by believers and nonbelievers alike the world over. Finally, a stronger copy edit would be helpful. I read the same sentence twice at the end of two neighbouring paragraphs, and it only made sense at the end of one of them. There are other word usage and spelling issues that detract from the reading experience. Overall, a worthwhile read for the contemptible hypocrisy shown by the US religious right towards those they have deemed “others.”

[Sarmat Chowdhury · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a deeply fascinating read, and is still very much relevant for today's discourse on religious freedom, and how it covers American Muslims in the American legal system. Though the book is labeled as Current Affairs because of the topics that Uddin discusses with the reader, I would argue that the book does deserve a legal classification - as Uddin, an experienced religious liberties lawyer, presents the reader with the facts and reasonings of cases that have made it to the U.S. Supreme Court and that take on the topic of religious liberty.

Stemming from a moot argument that was made to deny an Islamic community the permit to build their mosque in Middle Tennessee back in 2010, the Uddin documents the role of the First Amendment and religious freedom in the United States, and how it does indeed protect the rights of Muslims. She also references another one of my favorite books from Denise Spellberg, "Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an" to document how the founders were aware of Islam as a religion, and used the hypothetical Muslim American at the time to debate in favor of religious freedom and liberty for all faiths.

Uddin walks the reader through the various pitfalls of religious liberty being applicable, and how Muslims are seen less than to other American citizens by those on the left and the right during these debates, being used by either side to justify or hinder their arguments on religious liberty.

It is still a timely read, and one that I recommend for those that either attempting to enter the legal field, or wish to further understand the real ramifications of what it means to be an American Muslim in a post 9/11 world.

[Paulina · Rating 4 out of 5]

What percent of the U.S. population is Muslim? 1.2%. Far lower than I would have initially guessed. This statistic, which was one of the first facts to reel me in, illustrates one theme that the author poignantly makes throughout: that Muslim people take up a far larger part of our news cycle and general consciousness than that statistic represents (for good or for bad).

This book brought remnants of religious liberty constitutional law out of the depths of my brain (shout-out Dr. Dow) and intertwined it beautifully with modern issues. Yes, it took me time to get through it, but I think that speaks more to the complexity and depth of the writing than a lack of interest in the material.

The last section of the book twisted and contorted my brain between comfortably held assertions and uncomfortable dissonance. I found myself agreeing with one sentence, and disagreeing with the next. Do I agree that we must treat all religions with the same respect? Yes. Do I agree that we must treat everyone’s sincerely held beliefs with the same respect? Maybe. Do I agree that a religious sincerely held belief outweighs a sincerely held belief about how society should function? I don’t know.

A book gifted to me that then sat on a shelf for far too long. Absolutely recommend for those interested in where the hell our Supreme Court will take religion next.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned so much from this book. It’s the kind of book that should be read more than once. Eye-opening and filled with critical facts.

[Erin WV]

Setting this aside for now. It's very important subject matter and compelling to me in the abstract. However, I'm super burned out and decided to skip book club, and also it's not terribly well-written.

[Marilyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my attempt to better understand, and not fall for the scaremongering technique so often used today, I turned to Asma Uddin, religious liberty lawyer and Muslim. The focus of the law should always be on negotiating differences in a way that best protects EVERYONE's fundamental rights. I appreciate the work Uddin has done and is doing in this area. We may think that the belief of another is wrong, but the premise behind religious freedom is that people have the right to be wrong. Having studied many different religions, I find that we are more alike than we are different; and, none of us get it exactly right all the time. The journey toward faith is different for everyone. In regards to the First Amendment, either we are all equal, or the whole thing is a sham. My religious freedom cannot come at the cost of another's religious freedom. When you find yourself fighting for or against a cause, I simply urge you to "locate the human at the center of the story."

[فاروق · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good dive into the history and currents state of religious freedom in the United States from the perspective of the courts; longer review on this book forthcoming shortly insha'Allah

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very challenging and thought-provoking book, written to be understood by laypeople without a legal education. Much of it discusses how many politicians and others, in the fight against terrorism, have targeted Islam and argued that it is not a religion, and thus Muslims are not entitled to religious liberty protections. Many of her illustrations have to do with discrimination against building mosques, or women wearing the hijab. She argues for the importance of religious liberty

For me, much of the thought-provoking portion came when applying this to conservative Christians and Catholic institutions. She becomes less persuasive to me when she moves beyond building mosques and wearing hijab (and saying Inshallah or speaking in Arabic) to discuss things such as the Hobby Lobby case. She does a good job of describing the owners' deeply held personal beliefs and the admirable things this has led them to do, but in arguing that Hobby Lobby was rightly decided, she misses that this is a large corporation and the owners' exercise of their beliefs means the imposition of their beliefs on potentially thousands of people. She is dismayed that liberals and people on the left are less protective of religious liberty and wide-ranging tolerance (with potentially adverse effects on the less powerful) because of their fear of the powerful imposing their beliefs on minorities and women, but she doesn't really come to grips with the fact that, although it may be a very small number of cases (e.g., Hobby Lobby), the powerful are using religious-liberty protections to protect their beliefs in ways that adversely impacting thousands or millions of others.

The author values religious liberty extremely highly (and I do too), but she also is clear that there is a balancing test between religious liberty and other rights under the Constitution. The excellence of her book is exemplified in that she has me wrestling with these issues in my own mind and that she has succeeded in personalizing the people with whose beliefs I disagree.

[Saeeda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is more about religious freedom and how it impacts Muslims than it is about explaining what Islam is. If your intent is to learn about Islam itself rather than the lives of Muslims practicing it in America, I recommend reading a different book. That being said, this book endeavors to dispel the myth propagated by the intolerant and fearful that Islam is just a dangerous political ideology not a legitimate religion. The significance of spreading this propaganda is that it makes it easier to create policies that infringe upon citizens’ first amendment rights. The author also takes times to emphasize that Islam is NOT a monolith and is practiced differently by adherents in different countries, communities, and even the same household. As with Christianity or any other religion, one cannot make sweeping statements about what the faith means to all its adherents or how they will behave because of their faith and to do so alienates large swaths of people both in America and abroad.

I personally came away with a deeper understanding of how American religious liberty should be enacted for all religions. The author hammers the point that our freedom of religion was established so the government could protect believers, not their beliefs, on which they should remain neutral. It seems logical that the government should only step in when a particular behavior harms others but the author points out various cases where Muslims are being legally discriminated against despite our Founding Fathers’ best intentions. I found this book well worth the read.

[Bookworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the title and concept. Islamophobia unfortunately remains prevalent in the United States and understanding how Muslims and Islam have been excluded. The author discusses a wide range of topics, ranging from how Islam is not a political ideology (which is a lie that continues to be pushed), the debate over building mosques, etc.

The author takes these issues and tells the stories and anecdotes of people who are directly affected by this and the impacts it has had on them. The stories are thoughtful and cover a wide range of issues/viewpoints.

That's pretty much it. Overall I found this book pretty hard to read-it might be because Uddin's background as a lawyer but for me the writing style was hard to get into. That said, it's certainly ane extremely important book for something that continues to manifest in unhealthy and painful ways.

For those who have an interest in Muslims in the US, legal issues that they face, or perhaps an interest on specific topics Uddin covers, this might be a good book for you. I'd recommend this as a library borrow but was fine with buying this as a bargain buy to read on my own time.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book looks at American Muslims and religious freedom issues surrounding them. The first part looks at issues of discrimination. The second part looks at how American Muslims cope, often by downplaying their religious/cultural heritage or even converting to a different religion. I thought the first part of the book was pretty good, although the author is somewhat polemical, often offering only anecdotal evidence. The book isn't as scholarly as "Sacred Liberty," another work on religious liberty that I read recently, although the author does make historical comparisons. The second half of the book is weaker. I have known many people who have converted/changed religions, both towards and away from Islam, and most are motivated by sincere spiritual motives, as opposed to a desire to fit in. I thought the author had many good points to make, but could have explained them better.

[Fiona Garguilo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Asma Uddin is an articulate scholar of the first amendment and breaks down the inequities in America's "religious freedom" with such clarity. Her analysis on the harm done to American Muslims is grounded in data, facts, and numbers without losing the sense that Muslims in America are humans, not just statistics. This made me want to study constitutional law.

[Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an American Muslim convert whose mosque was recently vandalized, reading some sections of this book was terrifying and very hard to get through. I did think the explanation of political shifts was interesting. It really highlighted how we don't really have a place in the current political landscape.

[Cristine Mermaid · Rating 4 out of 5]

required reading for my law class. I learned a great deal about Islam in America and the perceptions of Americans. Asma's style was very easy to read and filled with engaging narratives. Educational and interesting.

[Łukasz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book answered none of my questions. The author writes in a generalised fashion about Islam. If you have problem falling asleep, this is a recommended book.

[Victor Begg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for all who care of the 1st Amendment

[TJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insight into religious freedom from a Muslim perspective. If you know anyone who thinks Islam isn't a religion, this is a must read.

[nimet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Touched upon points that I’ve never even seen mentioned before. A must read.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a phenomenal book. This is essential reading for anyone interested in building a more inclusive America or upholding religious freedom (or both).