Pastor Jack Hibbs told his Chino Hills church that the republic ended on Election Day, and that 255 Muslims elected that Tuesday cannot swear allegiance to the Constitution. The claim sits beside a school board his congregants have often controlled, and beside a Senate swearing-in that is still on the calendar.
On Nov. 10, CAIR-LA condemned what it called a series of anti-Muslim sermons and said Executive Director Hussam Ayloush found Hibbs encouraging the congregation to view Muslim neighbors with suspicion and hostility. The 255 in the sermon is the number CAIR uses for officials already serving, not a slate it described as elected that night.
What He Told the Church
After the midterms, ChurchLeaders reported, Hibbs told Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, "The republic ended on Tuesday." The head count came in the next breath. "Two hundred and fifty five Muslims were elected to office in the United States of America on Tuesday."
CAIR-LA quoted the oath claim he attached to that figure: "255 Muslims who cannot, cannot swear allegiance to the Constitution. It is forbidden in Islam. They must swear allegiance to Sharia law." He dated the end of the republic to the day those candidates, in his telling, won.
The Daily Bulletin reported Thursday that Hibbs, in sermons and podcasts, alleged Muslims elected to office were part of an invasion plan. The paper also reported that he said he wanted to find Christians who did not vote, throw them into the street and beat them up, and that he shared a post-election sermon on social media. The same pastor who said Muslim officials cannot keep an American oath was, by that account, prepared to have nonvoting Christians dragged outside.
A Directory, Not a Tuesday Sweep
Hibbs was citing a CAIR report. What the report counted, and what he said the count proved, are different claims.
CAIR and CAIR Action said their 2026 directory identified a record-breaking 255 Muslim elected officials serving across 26 states. The release describes people in office. It does not describe all 255 as winners on Nov. 3. The groups said the figures were the most current information they had identified and verified at publication, and that the count could change as more officials were identified or positions changed.
The Daily Bulletin reported that Hibbs misstated the directory by treating every one of those 255 as someone elected on Nov. 3. It also reported that more than 250 Muslims already held elected office in the United States before that election. A directory of people already serving cannot, on its own wording, be the night the constitutional order expired.
This year's winners are a separate column. The Conversation, citing CAIR, reported that at least 97 American Muslims won federal, state and local races in 2026. Interfaith America reported Nov. 4 that at least seven Muslims won congressional elections, a record.
CAIR counted 255 Muslim officials serving across 26 states. That directory describes officials already in office, not a one-night replacement of the republic.
Sermons the Church Still Posts
CAIR-LA said it was answering a series of sermons, not a single clipped sentence. The church's own site shows how the subject has been shelved.
The teaching library at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills lists "External Polemics – The Problem with Islam's Origins," "Cultural Polemics – The Irrelevancy of Islam today," and "Internal Polemics – Confronting the Qur'an & Muhammad." A separate page, Political Islam In America, offers the sermon as an MP3 and posts the notes for download.
The titles do the sorting. Origins are a problem. The culture is irrelevant. The Qur'an and Muhammad are listed as something to confront. Political Islam gets its own audio file, still sitting on the church's server for anyone who wants the argument in the pastor's own distribution, not only in a critic's press release.
The Daily Bulletin reported that Calvary Chapel Chino Hills did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The listings did not need a reply to remain public.
A Majority on the School Board
Hibbs has been politically active for a long time, the Daily Bulletin reported, and members of his congregation have often held a controlling majority of the Chino Valley Unified school board. The post-election sermon was national in its target. The votes have been local.
The paper described a board that banned LGBT pride flags from classrooms and opposed transgender students participating in girls' sports and accessing girls' bathrooms. It ordered school employees to notify parents if a student wanted a name or gender different from the one on a birth certificate. It created a system allowing board members to ban school library books after community complaints.
Those are board actions, not lines from Tuesday's sermon, and the paper did not tie each vote to a Hibbs script. They are still the reason a Chino Hills pulpit is not a spectator sport in this district. Parents in Chino Valley Unified have already lived with a board on which his congregants have often held the majority, deciding which flag can hang, which books can stay, when a parent must be called, and who may use a girls' bathroom or play a girls' sport.
The Oath, as Muslim Leaders Describe It
Salam Al-Marayati, who leads the Muslim Public Affairs Council, rejected the claim that a Muslim cannot take the oath and serve. He said elected office is compatible with practicing Islam and that Islam requires obeying the law of the land.
In the Daily Bulletin's account, sharia is Islam's religious code of conduct. The Arabic word means a path leading to the watering place.
Ayloush said Muslims are taught to respect people of all faiths and to honor Jesus and the prophets through love, mercy and tolerance. None of that is a court ruling on the oath of office. It is the religious answer Hibbs's sermons invited, set against a claim he stated as if it were settled law.
A Senate First, Still Ahead of the Oath
The cycle's most prominent Muslim candidate did not run as a sermon illustration. Abdul El-Sayed, whom the Daily Bulletin described that way in the congressional field, said he was running for the U.S. Senate and happened to be Muslim. Michigan voters elected him on Nov. 3 with 52.5 percent of the vote. The Conversation reported that they elected him the first Muslim to the U.S. Senate. He is to be sworn in on Jan. 3, 2027.
The vocabulary around him was already Hibbs's vocabulary. In October, Donald Trump called El-Sayed a jihadist and a “Muslim Brotherhood guy.” Vice President JD Vance separately accused him of supporting sharia law in the United States. The Conversation reported that anti-Muslim posts targeting El-Sayed online rose about twentyfold in the week after he won the primary.
A pair of experiments from May 2022, also reported by The Conversation, found a different reaction once Muslim officials were simply visible. People who saw a city council with visibly Muslim members judged it fairer and more legitimate than people who saw the same characters without religious symbols. Muslim participants who saw visibly Muslim leaders were about 5 percentage points more likely to say they planned to do things like contact a public official in the coming year.
El-Sayed's oath is Jan. 3. CAIR says the directory of 255 can still move as offices change. The audio under Political Islam In America is not waiting on either date. It is already posted in Chino Hills, beside a teaching list that calls Islam's origins a problem and its culture irrelevant, in a district where Hibbs's congregants have often held the school board's majority.
