In a September 10, 2025 interview on The Michael Waddell Podcast — clips of which resurfaced on social media on March 23, 2026 — Tucker Carlson argued that Islamic countries governed by Sharia law are tolerant, diverse, and thriving, while Western colonialism is to blame for anger and terrorism in the Muslim world.
“Those people are happy,” he said, speaking of Islamic countries. “They’re welcoming of others. They’re tolerant of diversity. Like always tolerant of diversity. There’s none of that here.”
He added: “You go to a country like Japan or the Emirates or Qatar or Saudi Arabia and you see that when people are self-confident, when they’re really pleased with what they’re doing and they believe that their system is the right system, that self-confidence results in a kind of welcoming attitude.”
Tucker specifically singled out Saudi Arabia which he noted is “a Muslim country governed by Sharia Law,” as particularly welcoming towards Christians.
Anger and terrorism in the Muslim world, he said, is the fault of Western “colonial powers.”
“You notice like with ISIS or al-Qaeda or like the Muslim extremists, they’re all from like collapsed, pathetic societies dominated by colonial powers. They’ve been degraded and that’s why they’re so angry.”
Tucker also claimed that “not a single Western city is thriving” today.
But a closer look at the facts tells a very different story.
What Sharia Law Actually Prescribes
To evaluate Tucker’s claim that Sharia-governed societies are tolerant and diverse, it helps to start with what Sharia law actually is. Sharia is an authoritarian legal system derived from the Quran. It mandates the death penalty for apostasy — abandoning Islam — and corporal punishment for alcohol consumption. Non-Muslims living under Sharia are required to pay a special tax called the jizya as a condition for practicing their faith. The Quran itself contains repeated calls to fight non-Muslims and to enforce Islamic law across society.
These are not fringe interpretations or the product of extremist regimes that have distorted an otherwise peaceful tradition. They are codified, mainstream features of Sharia governance that have been endorsed by Islamic legal scholars across centuries. A legal system that treats non-adherents as second-class citizens who must pay for the right to worship, and that executes those who leave the faith, is not a tolerant or diverse system by any reasonable definition of those words. It is a system built around the supremacy of one religion and the subjugation of all others.
The Reality for Christians in “Tolerant” Muslim Countries
Tucker cited Qatar and Saudi Arabia specifically as examples of Muslim countries that are welcoming to Christians. The documented record in both countries directly contradicts that claim.
In Qatar, Christianity is heavily restricted by law. Churches cannot display visible crosses, advertise services, or engage in any form of evangelism. Proselytizing is a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment. Public Christian worship is limited to a single government-controlled compound in Mesaimeer, built on state-owned land — meaning Christians worship only where and how the state permits. Possessing missionary materials is penalized, organizations perceived as promoting non-Islamic religions are criminalized, and eating or drinking publicly during Ramadan — regardless of one’s religion — can result in fines or jail time. Converts from Islam to Christianity face particularly severe consequences, as apostasy is a criminal offense under Qatari law.
Saudi Arabia is no better. Open Doors’ World Watch List, which systematically tracks Christian persecution globally, ranks both Saudi Arabia and other Sharia-governed states — including Sudan and Iran — among the 50 worst countries in the world for Christians. None of these countries are meaningfully under Western colonial influence today, which makes their persecution records difficult to explain away using Tucker’s colonialism narrative.
Islamic Intolerance Has Also Spread to Western Cities
The effects of Islamic intolerance are not confined to Muslim-majority countries. Take the United Kingdom. In British cities with large Muslim populations, including London and Birmingham, national symbols such as the Union Jack and St. George’s Flag have been torn down while Palestinian flags are proudly flown.
Around the time Tucker’s original comments aired, Dearborn, Michigan Mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud told a Christian resident protesting the renaming of intersections after a figure linked to Islamic terrorism that the man was “not welcome” in the city. In other words, in an American city, a Christian exercising his First Amendment rights was told by a Muslim mayor that he does not belong there.
The Terrorism-Colonialism Connection Doesn’t Hold
Tucker’s argument that Western colonialism is the root cause of Islamic terrorism is one of the most commonly repeated claims in progressive circles, and it is worth examining carefully.
Consider the largest terror attack of the 21st century: 9/11. The hijackers came predominantly from Saudi Arabia, a country that was never colonized by a Western power. If colonial grievance were the primary driver of jihadist terrorism, one would expect terrorists to emerge disproportionately from the places most brutalized by colonialism: sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America. Instead, the most prolific exporters of jihadist ideology tend to be Gulf states and countries whose relationship with the West has been defined more by oil wealth and strategic alliance than by colonial subjugation. Qatar, for example, finances Hamas. Iran finances Hezbollah. Neither was colonized by the West.
The colonialism argument also struggles to account for the data on global violence. Research shows that while the world as a whole has grown more peaceful over the past several decades, the Muslim world has not followed that trajectory. The majority of the world’s active armed conflicts are concentrated in Muslim-majority countries, many of which have no significant history of Western colonial domination. Muslim countries are also overrepresented in measures of one-sided political violence, repressive human rights practices, the use of capital punishment, and interstate warfare.
Muslim Migration and Crime in Western Countries
The crime data from Muslim migration to Europe directly undermines Tucker’s thesis. In Germany, Syrian migrants commit crimes at more than four times the national average rate, followed by Afghans.Syrian teenagers are five times more likely to commit crimes than German peers, Moroccans 19 times, and Algerians 56 times. In Spain and Italy, Algerians commit crimes at 10 and 17 times the native rate respectively.
Sweden is the cautionary tale. Following large-scale Muslim migration, its per-capita gun murder rate reached 30 times higher than London’s by 2022, and it recorded nine times as many deadly shootings in 2024 as its three Nordic neighbors combined. Three in four murders are now committed by migrants.
The migration wave has also corroded free expression. Quran burnings triggered riots injuring hundreds. Artist Lars Vilks lived under police protection for 14 years after drawing Mohammed, had a bounty placed on his head, and was killed in 2021 along with two bodyguards. Muslim communities have effectively imported a norm that criticism of Islam warrants violent punishment — displacing Western free speech values by force.
Western Cities Are, In Fact, Thriving
Tucker’s claim that not one Western city is thriving is simply not true. Quality-of-life and liveability indices consistently place Western cities at the very top globally. Copenhagen, Vienna, Zurich, Melbourne, and Vancouver routinely occupy the top positions. Not a single Muslim-majority city appears in any top-ten global liveability ranking.
But the most powerful refutation of Tucker’s thesis is human behavior. Millions of Muslims each year choose to move to Western countries — not away from them. They cross deserts and seas, at enormous personal risk and expense, to reach the societies Tucker describes as non-thriving and uniquely oppressive. Meanwhile, almost no one from Western countries is attempting to migrate to Qatar, Iran, or Saudi Arabia in search of a better life.
Takeaway
Tucker Carlson’s cheerleading for Sharia-governed regimes cannot be written off as ignorance. He opposed those same regimes earlier in his career. This is a deliberate choice. Whatever is driving it — contrarianism, an affinity for authoritarian order, or financial entanglements in the Gulf — the effect is the same: providing cover for Islamic oppression and terrorism while actively deceiving the Western conservative audience that trusts him. A man who built his career on defending American values and freedoms is now shilling for an ideology that would annihilate them. It’s a betrayal.
Sources
The Michael Waddell Podcast, DOJ, Quran, Quran, US State Department, Open Doors, Open Doors, Daily Mail, Fox News, The Washington Institute, Washington Institute, Mideast Journal, Washington Institute, Research and Politics, Remix, CNBC, MCC, Forbes, Pew Research Center
