New Bill Would Ban Radical Religious Leaders From Entering the United States

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Rep. Chip Roy introduced the Inhibiting Militant Adversarial Mullahs (IMAM) Act on Monday that would bar radicalized leaders of certain religious denominations from being admitted into the United States.

“The United States should never roll out the red carpet for foreign clerics who preach anti-American hatred, celebrate terrorism, or serve as mouthpieces for radical regimes,” the Texas Republican told the Daily Signal in a statement.

If passed, the simple two-page bill would amend Section 101(a)(15)(R) of the immigration code to prevent nonimmigrant religious worker visas for “an alien with the title of Imam, Grand Imam, Shaykha, Mufti, Grand Mufti, Ayatollah or Grand Ayatollah from entering the United States.”

Roy, a co-founder of the congressional Sharia Free America Caucus, introduced the legislation following reports that some Muslim clerics have promoted hostility toward the United States.

“For years, adversarial religious figures have manipulated loopholes in our immigration laws to enter this country under so-called religious visas while spreading extremism,” Roy said. “The Inhibiting Militant Adversarial Mullahs (IMAM) Act sends a clear message. America will not import militant ideology disguised as ministry. If you promote the values of enemies of the West, you should not get a visa to come to the United States—period.”

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, there have been instances of Muslim religious leaders in the U.S. making statements critical of the West and calling for jihad.

For instance, In 2010, The New York Times reported that after 9/11, Anwar al-Awlaki—who was a 30-year-old imam at a mosque outside Washington, D.C. at the time of the attacks—later became a radical jihadist who declared war on the United States. Al-Awlaki had previously moved to the United States as a college student in 1990 to attend Colorado State University.

Two of the terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks heard al-Awlaki’s sermons at his mosque in San Diego, California in the 1990s, before he moved to Virginia. The FBI investigated al-Awlaki in 2002 over his alleged connections to the 9/11 plot. Al-Awlaki, who was already making public satements critical of U.S. foreign policy, left the country later that year and eventually relocated to Yemen.

“America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil,” al-Awlaki said in a statement posted on extremist websites in 2010, according to the Times. Al-Awlaki added that he eventually concluded that jihad against America was an obligation for himself and other able Muslims.

Roy argues, however, that the incident was not isolated.

During a sermon in the early 2000s, Imam Siraj Wahhaj—a prominent Muslim leader in the United States—urged followers to engage in what he described as “gun-free jihad” and to “march through the city of New York,” according to a foreign intelligence assessment obtained by The New York Post, with a stated goal of sending arms for Muslims in Bosnia to defend themselves.

“I pray one day Allah will bless us to raise an army, and I’m serious about this,” Wahhaj said during the sermon, which was first reported by Islamist Watch and cited in the intelligence report.

“I’m asking for us to greet the duty for jihad here in America,” he continued. “How? By helping our Muslim brothers and sisters by sending money over there and bringing weapons to Bosnia to the Muslims by any means necessary.”

In 2025, Wahhaj appeared alongside New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in a publicly shared photograph.

Other Western nations have faced similar challenges.

In England in 2005, four individuals inspired by jihadist ideology carried out coordinated attacks on London’s public transportation system, killing 54 people and injuring more than 770 others.

The bombers were “initially depicted as ‘ordinary’ British Muslims who had been ‘brainwashed’ by extremist Islamist preachers and radicalized by the war in Iraq,” according to the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

As concerns grow over the influence of extremist clerics, Roy said his legislation is meant to stop the spread of radical ideology before it reaches American communities.

The bill’s introduction also comes after the proposal of the East Plano Islamic Center, or EPIC City for short, outside of Dallas. The planned 400-acre community would include housing, a mosque, schools, and commercial businesses. Construction on the project has stalled after conservative officials, including Roy, Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, called for a halt and an investigation over fears of the city’s possible enforcement of Sharia law.

However, the leaders of EPIC City have denied allegations they plan to enforce Sharia law.

As noted by the Jerusalem Post, the Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Texas) has previously refuted the claim about the 402 acre compound, now rebranded as “The Meadow,” deeming the allegations against it “Islamophobic witch hunts and politically driven regulatory harassment.”

One of the development’s attorneys, Dan Cogdell, called claims of the community aiming to implement Sharia law “a lie,” asserting that the project has always been intended to follow state and national law.

However, Roy fears that religious compounds such as EPIC City may act as grounds for the cultivation of anti-Western terror.