Counterprotesters hold signs and shout slogans during an anti-Shariah rally in Seattle on June 10, 2017. Photo courtesy of Reuters/David Ryder
Counterprotesters hold signs and shout slogans during an anti-Shariah rally in Seattle ona June 10, 2017. Photo courtesy of Reuters/David Ryder

If Muslims have their way, said the man with the megaphone, there will be no justice for America’s goats.

“Why do Muslims rape their goats so much?” Jim Gilles asked his fellow protesters gathered on Saturday, June 10 outside one of the largest Islamic worship centers in the Dallas area. “It’s because they’re perverted, demonic, sex-crazed … sick perverts.”

Such outlandish statements appeared to seem completely plausible to many of the 200 or so participants of the rally held outside the Islamic Association of North Texas in the suburb of Richardson.

The demonstration was one of about two dozen “Marches against Shariah” organized Saturday in cities across the country by ACT for America, a self-styled grass-roots national security organization.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups including neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and black separatists, considers it to be a hate group. The SPLC says that since ACT for America’s founding 10 years ago, it “has grown to become the largest grassroots anti-Muslim group” in the country, with 1,000 local chapters and a claimed membership of 280,000.

There were also anti-Sharia rallies in major cities such as Boston, Chicago, Denver and Seattle. In some places, the protests were met by counter-demonstrations, and in some cases there were scuffles between two sides. In Manhattan, the counter rally was significantly larger, the New York Daily News reported.

As it turned out, there was no such court—Van Duyne heard about it through a chain-letter rumor, which proved to be false. But that didn’t stop her from pushing for passage of an American Laws for American Courts bill in the Texas Legislature. Muslims, she warned, were intent on “bypassing Texas courts, bypassing American courts.”

This spring, after Van Duyne opted not to seek a third term as Irving’s mayor, President Donald Trump selected her as a regional administrator of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, overseeing federal housing programs in Texas and four surrounding states.