Virginia Town Became Home To Roadside Islamic Rally

The town of Woodbridge, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C., was recently home to a public roadside march of Islamic supporters who chanted sayings in a foreign language, beat their chest and flew flags written in Arabic.

The scene was captured in a video posted on X.

Amy Mek, founder of the Rise, Align, Ignite, Reclaim Foundation, described the march on social media as an organized event from the Mohammadia Center of Virginia, a group that describes itself as “a cornerstone for the Shia Muslim community in the Washington metropolitan area.”

The Mohammadia Center of Virginia did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.

“Another show of force in the Old Dominion. Democrats are celebrating their demographic conquest,” Mek wrote. “Shia Muslims marched through the streets of Woodbridge yesterday in a full Ashura Juloos – flags flying, chants echoing, the whole imported ritual on public roads.”

Mek accused the marchers of starting and ending the rally “at the site of their new mosque being built on Prince William Parkway.”

“This wasn’t some quiet religious gathering in a basement,” Mek continued. “This was a public procession to make sure Virginia knows they’re here, organized, and growing.”

Rallies like these, portraying the growing strength of Islam in the United States, helped prompt conservative members of Congress to found the Sharia Free America Caucus last fall.

The caucus, whose membership has expanded to almost 70 members, serves to highlight and acknowledge the growth of Islam in the United States and, primarily, the concerns that Islamic civilizations could bring with them to the United States, which the caucus believes are incompatible with the U.S. Constitution.

In a previous interview with the Daily Signal, co-founder of the Sharia Free America Caucus Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, said that he founded the caucus because he acknowledged that “we are losing the race to stop the Islamification of America.”

“My issue is what we don’t know about Islamic law,” Self continued. “One of those things is that a Muslim has the right to four marriages. The Muslim community is so insulated and closed off that we don’t know.”

The other founder of the caucus, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told the Daily Signal that “well-funded and highly organized Islamic organizations” have brought the “march of Islam” to American town’s and cities because they “understand how to navigate and exploit America’s political and legal systems to advance their agenda.”

“We cannot allow elected officials to dismiss these concerns by claiming the First Amendment leaves us powerless to act,” Roy added, before calling on Congress to continue using “its lawful investigative powers to expose these groups and fight back.”

The group Mek claimed was behind the rally includes members predominantly from Pakistan and India, and recently expanded to welcome members with Iranian, Afghan, and Iraqi backgrounds.

The countries represented in the Mohammadia Center of Virginia’s membership have each experienced their own variation of Sharia and Islamic rule.

Sharia law and strict Islamic rule, the broad moral and legal framework derived from the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, often open the door to controversy and criticism due to concerns about treatment of women and non-Muslims, female genital mutilation, restrictions on education, and other human rights issues.

For instance, according to the Canopy Forum, Pakistan’s 1973 Constitution declared Islam is the state religion, the head of state must be Muslim, and all laws must conform to Quranic and Sunnah injunctions. Article 227 of the nation’s Constitution established the Federal Shariat Court, which is a component of the country’s Supreme Court, to review laws for Islamic conformity, and the Council of Islamic Ideology, which provides advisory guidance.

The other countries now included in the group’s membership, Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq, arguably maintain stricter Islamic enforcement.

Iran, for example, rebranded itself as the Islamic Republic of Iran after its 1979 revolution, enforcing strict Shia Muslim norms, seen by many as oppressive toward women and non-Shia Muslims, as detailed by the nonprofit organization No Labels.

Similarly, since 2021, Afghanistan has been under the rule of the Taliban, an Islamist fundamentalist group that has subjected the country’s population to Sharia rule.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Taliban rule has caused Afghanistan’s economy to “flounder,” while “malnutrition has soared, and more than half a million jobs have been lost.”

“Most women and girls over twelve have been banned from working and attending school,” the Council on Foreign Relations added.

In Iraq, the International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences has described the country as operating under contract law that is heavily influenced by Sharia teachings.