Which countries have or had constitutional bans on Muslims holding political office?
Executive summary
A careful reading of the provided reporting finds no documented example in these sources of a country whose written constitution explicitly bars Muslims from holding political office; much of the material instead documents U.S. immigration travel restrictions that targeted citizens of majority-Muslim countries and debunks domestic myths that Muslims are legally barred from office in the United States [1] [2] [3] [4]. The reporting does show other forms of religiously discriminatory laws—such as bans on certain religious groups or limits on religious expression in several countries—but the specific claim that any constitution expressly forbids Muslims from public office is not supported by the documents supplied [5] [6].
1. The claim under scrutiny: are constitutional bans on Muslim officeholders documented in these sources?
None of the supplied sources identifies a constitution that explicitly disqualifies Muslims from holding political office; instead the materials focus heavily on U.S. policy controversies over immigration and travel restrictions that critics labeled a “Muslim ban,” and on debunking viral myths that U.S. law ever barred Muslims from government service [1] [2] [3] [4]. FactCheck.org, cited here, directly rejects the viral claim that U.S. statutes like the McCarran–Walter Act ban Muslims from serving in office and emphasizes that “such a policy would defy the U.S. Constitution” [4].
2. What the sources actually document: travel bans, immigration policy and bans on religious groups, not constitutional office bans
The bulk of the supplied reporting chronicles successive U.S. executive orders and proclamations that restricted entry by nationals of predominantly Muslim countries—what became widely known as the “Muslim ban”—and the ensuing litigation and political debate [1] [2] [3] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]. Those are immigration measures, not constitutional provisions removing political rights from Muslims; the Brennan Center, ACLU timelines, and other documents make that distinction repeatedly while arguing those policies discriminated against Muslims [3] [7] [8] [11]. Separately, Pew Research reporting in the supplied set documents that some countries ban certain religion-related groups (for example, targeting Jehovah’s Witnesses, Bahá’ís, and Ahmadis), which is a different legal phenomenon than a constitutional bar on Muslims holding office [5].
3. Where the confusion comes from: myths, conflation and selective legal categories
The supplied sources illustrate how different legal tools are conflated in public debate: immigration restrictions affecting nationals of Muslim-majority countries are often labeled “Muslim bans,” and bans on specific sects (for example, legal restrictions on Ahmadis in Pakistan) are sometimes misread as blanket bans on Muslims generally [2] [5]. FactCheck.org specifically traces viral misinformation claiming a U.S. statutory ban on Muslim officeholders back to misreadings of older immigration laws and hoaxes, concluding there is no U.S. legal prohibition against Muslims serving in government [4]. The Brennan Center and ACLU materials similarly frame the U.S. measures as constitutionally suspect discrimination rather than as clauses disqualifying Muslims from office [3] [7].
4. Limits of the reporting and what cannot be concluded from these documents
These sources do not provide a global catalog of constitutions to definitively prove the nonexistence of any constitutional ban on Muslims in every country; they document U.S. travel bans, legal challenges, and research on bans of specific religious groups in some countries (p1_s1–[10], [5], [1]4). Therefore, while the supplied reporting contradicts common claims that the United States or its constitution ever barred Muslims from public office [4], it does not supply comprehensive primary-source citations for every national constitution worldwide; a definitive global inventory would require direct examination of individual constitutions and statutory codes not contained here [5] [6].
5. Bottom line and alternative viewpoints
On the record in these documents: no constitution is shown to explicitly ban Muslims from holding political office, and prominent U.S. cases of alleged “bans” are immigration measures and have been legally contested and labeled discriminatory by advocates and courts [1] [2] [3] [7] [11]. Alternative viewpoints supported in the sources argue that governments do use laws to restrict religious groups or certain nationals, and such measures can have equivalent practical effects of exclusion even when not phrased as constitutional disqualifications [5] [6]. The supplied reporting therefore rebuts the specific claim about constitutional office‑holding bans in the United States and points toward a more complex global picture that the current materials do not fully map.