Anti-Muslim protesters took to the streets throughout the U.S. this weekend, hoping to spread a message of Islamophobia ... but their plan backfired.
While dozens of demonstrators came out in New York, Chicago, Seattle and other major cities to protest against Islam and Shariah, hundreds came out to stand in solidarity with Muslims and to protest the protestors.
According to NPR and TIME, across the country, anti-Muslim demonstrations were met with equally as large or larger movements of people supporting Muslims and countering the hate.
The national "March Against Sharia" was organized by the right-wing organization ACT for America. Rights groups have classified ACT as a hate group. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls it the "largest grassroots anti-Muslim group in America, claiming 280,000 members and over 1,000 chapters."
"I don't believe Islam can peacefully co-exist with the Constitution," Seattle anti-Muslim demonstrator Aaron Bassford told TIME.
"I'm not going to tell them they can come here and take away my Second Amendment right. We need unity in this country under no ideology and no banner except the Constitution of the United States of America," he said.
Other protestors echoed similar sentiments, demonstrating a clear misunderstanding of Shariah, Islam and the reality of demographics in the U.S.
Muslims currently comprise about 1 percent of the country's population, making it extremely unlikely they would have enough influence to legally enforce any kind of ideology in the foreseeable future.
Furthermore, as Muslim leaders and academics routinely point out, Shariah is simply a code of principles intended to guide the lives of adherents to the religion. While some Muslim majority countries enforce a conservative interpretation of Shariah that rights groups criticize, the same can be said regarding laws in other countries derived from Christian or Jewish teachings.