Fact check: 'Sharia patrol force' won't roam Minneapolis if police force is dismantled

Ella Lee, USA TODAY
·6 min read

The claim: Muslim group in Minneapolis intends to patrol streets with “Sharia patrol force” once the city’s police department is dissolved

In the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police, calls to defund and dismantle law enforcement swept the country. In Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, city officials said they will do that, and publicly committed in June to dissolving the Minneapolis Police Department.

But viral posts on social media claim that once the police are gone, other groups plan to take over patrolling the city’s streets.

“A Muslim group in Minneapolis said that it intends to begin patrolling the streets with a Sharia patrol force once the city eliminates its police department,” reads the Facebook post, a screenshot from an Instagram post that appears to have been deleted. “Anyone who didn’t see this coming is an ignorant fool!”

The person who made the Facebook post did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment or clarification.

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A state representative’s unfounded comment gets distorted as fact

The origin of this claim can be traced back to comments Minnesota state Rep. Steve Green, a Republican, made at a county board meeting in June.

At the meeting, Green said antifa and Muslim organizations plan to “police Minneapolis under Muslim rule,” according to the Park Rapids Enterprise, which first reported the statements. His comments were made during a conversation about defunding the police and whether there was an alternative plan for public safety.

“What you’re looking at, in my humble opinion, is communism moving into Minneapolis and St. Paul,” Green was quoted as saying.

Green represents Fosston, which is over four hours away from Minneapolis. He did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment.

Four days after Green made those statements, conservative magazine FrontPageMag picked up the story, but took an editorial spin, evaluating what self-policing would look like in the city.

The magazine wrote that “Sharia patrols” have popped up in Germany, Britain and New York, insinuating that this is what would happen in Minneapolis with self-policing. It referenced New York's "MCP," or Muslim Community Patrol, which is "decked out in uniforms that strong resemble New York Police Department uniforms, and drives cars carefully designed to look like NYPD cars, to enforce 'fundamentals of the Sharia.'"

To back up its point, the magazine pointed to comments by Siraj Wahhaj, a Muslim leader in Brooklyn, New York.

“The mosques need protection and the MCP cars can help stop people who were not following the rules and regulations of the sharia, doing what they’re not supposed to be doing, but still doing it,” FrontPageMag quoted Wahhaj as saying.

The magazine then cited an unnamed Muslim individual involved with the MCP as saying it would stop Muslim women from being out after dark, Muslim men from doing drugs and all Muslims from drinking alcohol.

FrontPage Magazine, a conservative news site, is described by Media Bias/Fact Check as having an extreme right bias, promoting "conspiracy theories regarding Islam as well as propaganda that only reports negatively on Islam."

USA TODAY reached out to FrontPage Magazine for comment.

The facts were further distorted when the Washington Sentinel, a conservative website, ran a story based off FrontPageMag’s reporting and presented it as fact, using the headline “Minneapolis Muslim Group Plans to Start Sharia ‘Police’ Once City Ends Police Force.”

“Muslims in Minneapolis are letting the cat out of the bag that they intend to loose these roving bands of gangsters once the city’s police are gone,” the Sentinel wrote, pointing to Wahhaj’s comments and painting him as the leader of a Minneapolis group (which he is not).

The Washington Sentinel has not responded to USA TODAY's request for comment and clarification regarding the publication's article.

USA TODAY found no evidence of any Muslim group in Minneapolis saying it would patrol streets with a “Sharia patrol force” once the Minneapolis Police Department is dissolved.

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Photo in post taken in Germany, not Minneapolis

The photo in the Facebook post was used by the Washington Sentinel as its lead image for its misleading story, but the photo wasn’t taken in the U.S.

Exact copies of the picture pop up in German and Swiss media. The photo was taken in Germany in 2014, after a group of men in orange vests that read “Shariah Police” appeared several times in Wuppertal, Germany. The Frankfurter Neue Presse, a German newspaper, reported the group members were “radical Muslims.” NBC News also reported on the demonstration in 2014.

The demonstration’s organizer, called Sven L. by the Neue Press, said he chose to write “Shariah Police” on the vests in English to avoid a criminal offense.

“I started out with carnival costumes. It also says ‘Police’ on it, and it is not punishable,” Sven L. said in court, according to the Neue Press.

Sven L. was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for “other machinations as a terrorist supporter,” and the proceedings regarding the “Sharia Police” vests were dropped, the Neue Press reported.

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Our rating: False

We rate the claim that Muslim groups in Minneapolis have said they intend to patrol streets with a “Sharia patrol force” once the city’s police department is dissolved as FALSE because it was not supported by our research. Several conservative publications twisted the already-false comments made by a Minnesota state representative about Muslim organizations “policing Minneapolis under Muslim rule.” The photo in the Facebook post was taken in Germany in 2014, not in Minneapolis.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: 'Sharia patrol force' won't police Minneapolis