May 14, 2026, 1:43 PM MST / Source: Reuters

By Reuters

President Donald Trump disclosed a flurry of at least $220 million in financial transactions earlier this year in the securities of major U.S. companies, according to two new financial disclosure forms released Thursday by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.

Qasim Rashid at Let's Address This:

There is a coordinated campaign underway in America today, operating simultaneously at the federal and state level, targeting one of the country’s most fundamental guarantees: the right of every American to freely practice their faith. And the same war hawks who, this week alone, militarily threatened Pope Leo, bombed the Rafi Nai Synagogue in Iran, and murdered more than 300 Christians and Muslims in Lebanon, are also behind this dangerous domestic campaign. Its architects have dressed it up in the language of national security, constitutional order, and Western values. But strip away the buzzwords, and what remains is something far older and far uglier—the deliberate use of fear, ignorance, and disinformation to scapegoat a religious minority for political gain. The weapon of choice? Two words: Shariah law. Before we examine what is happening and who is doing it, let’s start with what those two words actually mean. Because if you are going to wage a campaign against something, the least you can do is understand what it is.

What Shariah Actually Is

The word “Shariah” comes from the Arabic word for a path to life-giving water. Remarkably, the root of the Hebrew word Torah means precisely the same thing. Shariah, in other words, is not some alien concept hostile to the West. No, it is, at its linguistic and theological root, an expression of the same Abrahamic impulse toward divine guidance that gave the world the Torah and the Gospel. Shariah is comprised of five main branches: adab (behavior, morals and manners), ibadah (ritual worship), i’tiqadat (beliefs), mu’amalat (transactions and contracts), and ‘uqubat (punishments). Together, these branches form a framework for a life rooted in justice, compassion, and personal accountability before God.

Critically—and this is the fact most frequently buried under the political noise — Shariah forbids that it be imposed on any unwilling person. This is not a footnote. It is a foundational principle. The Qur’an states plainly: “There is no compulsion in religion.” (2:257) Prophet Muhammad himself, even as the de facto ruler of Arabia, codified this in the Charter of Medina, under which Muslims were held to Shariah and Jews to the Law of the Torah. Not a single non-Muslim was held to Islamic law, because Islamic law itself prohibits such coercion. In other words, Islamic Shariah specifically and explicitly rejects theocracy. Do Muslims want Shariah to impose itself on American law? No. Shariah is a personal relationship between a believer and God. American Muslims are, in fact, obliged by Shariah itself to be loyal to their nation of residence and to uphold its laws. The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land—and Shariah does not conflict with that. It demands that. What does Shariah say about other religions? It champions absolute freedom of conscience. The Qur’an goes so far as to oblige Muslims to fight on behalf of Jews, Christians, and people of other faiths and to protect their churches, synagogues, and temples from attack (22:41). To be Muslim, a person must testify to the truth of all past prophets—including Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Krishna, and Buddha—and must respect their adherents.

And what about the countries that oppress people in the name of Shariah? They have ignored the fundamental requirement of justice that sits at the heart of Islamic law, using religious language to sanctify what is, at its core, a power grab. As I have written previously, not a single genuinely “Shariah-compliant” country exists today. Ironically, the country that most closely reflects Shariah’s core values—freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of thought—is America itself. Or, at least it is supposed to be. Those who oppress in the name of Shariah are no more justified than the “Christian” enslavers who claimed the Bible gave them the right to hold Black people in bondage.

France is trying to move on from Microsoft Windows. The country said it plans to move some of its government computers currently running Windows to the open source operating system Linux to further reduce its reliance on U.S. technology.

Linux is an open source operating system that is free to download and use, with various customized distributions that are tailored and designed for specific use cases or operations.