Mary Miller closed her speech at a Republican fall banquet in Hancock County, Illinois, by naming her three biggest worries for the country: voter apathy, election integrity — and Islam.

"I encourage you to inform yourself. They are not at the gate. They are inside the gate, and right now they're trying to control the levers of power," the congresswoman said, according to Muddy River News, which was in the room.

Then she went further.

"Islam is not a religion. It is a form of government that is incompatible with our form of government."

The crowd burst into applause, the paper reported.

"We cannot allow that. They are very, very aggressive. Illinois is one of the top five states for the number of mosques that are being built here. When they build a mosque, in their mind, they have just conquered that area."

Muddy River News made a point of noting one thing: Miller was not asked about the topic. She brought it up herself, in a 20-minute speech to the party faithful.

Who she was talking about

Miller represents Illinois' 15th District. The banquet was at a hunting lodge near Hamilton, with several dozen people there — local party members, county officials, law enforcement, school board members and veterans, WGEM reported.

The people she described as an invading force have neighbors in her district. Nearby in Quincy, Dr. Mohamed El-Bermawy — a professor at Culver-Stockton College and president of the Quincy Islamic Center — spoke at a city council meeting the week before. He said, according to Muddy River News:

"In the U.S., we are about 5 million Muslims. They are doctors, professors, scientists, engineers, researchers, students, 11% reported military service, businessmen, etc. We are sincere, faithful. We are productive. We are hardworking members of this community. We are citizens of this country and we love the reality that we are not going anywhere."

That's who a sitting member of Congress just told a room full of local officials is "inside the gate" and "very, very aggressive."

Calling Islam "not a religion" isn't a throwaway line. The First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion — and a faith that isn't counted as a religion would fall outside that protection.

She has done this before

This isn't new for Mary Miller. Her report card already documents a long record of telling Americans whose faith doesn't match hers that they don't belong.

• In June 2025, after a Sikh guest chaplain gave the morning prayer in the House, Miller posted that it was "deeply troubling that a Sikh was allowed to lead prayer" and that "America was founded as a Christian nation." An earlier post had wrongly called the Sikh man a Muslim. Both were deleted.
• By January 2026, she had joined the "Sharia Free America Caucus," saying she was "proud to join" and "stand firmly against this radical ideology." Muddy River News describes her as one of the caucus's founding members.
• The Council on American-Islamic Relations designated that caucus an anti-Muslim hate group — the first time in its history CAIR has given a congressional caucus that label — warning that its legislation "would effectively render the practice of Islam illegal in the United States." CAIR's Chicago office called on Miller to withdraw. She didn't.

And on January 5, 2021, the day before the Capitol attack, Miller told a rally that "Hitler was right on one thing." She later apologized.

Part of a bigger push

Miller isn't the only Republican on this site saying this kind of thing in 2026. At a Republican donor summit, Randy Fine called the "rise of Islam in America" the elephant in the room, and Brandon Gill called Islam "fundamentally incompatible with our way of life" — we covered that here. In Arkansas, a "Sharia takeover" panic pushed by Republican officials traced back to a hate group's blog post and a small subdivision that had been there for two decades.

Miller's "incompatible with our form of government" line is the same argument, nearly word for word.

What it adds up to

At a Hancock County Republican banquet, unprompted, Rep. Mary Miller listed Islam as one of her three biggest concerns, told the crowd it "is not a religion," said Muslims are "inside the gate" and "trying to control the levers of power," and claimed that a new mosque means "they have just conquered that area." It follows her deleted post objecting to a Sikh chaplain's House prayer and her membership in a caucus that CAIR has designated an anti-Muslim hate group.

Source

Muddy River News: U.S. Rep. Mary Miller warns that "Islam is inside the gate"