To prove that anti-Sharia legislation is directly tied to moneyed right-wing American political movements, the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas Institute further highlighted the fact that the majority of anti-Sharia legislations in recent history were introduced in calendar years prior to midterm and/ or presidential election cycles (to ensure turnout from conservative Republican voters). For example, they showed that fifty-six anti-Sharia bills were introduced in 2011, thirty-five bills were introduced in 2013, and thirty-five bills were introduced in 2015. By contrast, fourteen, twenty-five, fifteen, and fourteen anti-Sharia bills were introduced in the election years of 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016, respectively.

XREF: Connects to research on how wedge-issue legislation is timed to galvanize voter turnout in US political cycles. QUESTION: Worth digging into whether similar election-cycle timing appears in other anti-religious or culture-war legislation (e.g., abortion, immigration).

XREF: Relates to research on manufactured outrage and wedge issues deployed for electoral turnout, paralleling Wright's discussion of moral panics as political tools.

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Gl…, loc. 634