Federal terrorism cases are increasingly involving teenagers, and new polling shows that younger Americans are far more receptive to Islamic sharia law than their parents and grandparents. Taken together, the two developments point to a generation being shaped by influences that previous generations would have rejected outright, and they raise urgent questions about what the country will look like when today’s teenagers become its leaders.

The individual cases show how early the path can begin, and the numbers behind them are difficult to dismiss. Researchers at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center identified 42 minors arrested across Europe in 2024 for involvement in Islamic State attacks, planning, or propaganda activity, a sign that the same pattern visible in American court filings is playing out across the Atlantic.

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From the Daily Wire:

Laith Adil Shehzad was only 17 years old when a grand jury indicted him under Texas’s terrorism statute. Authorities found a handgun, ISIS propaganda and recruitment material, information related to explosives, and communications with an ISIS terrorist imprisoned overseas. Prosecutors said he was preparing for a mass-casualty attack. Shockingly, he had been on law enforcement’s radar since he was just 13. In 2021, he reportedly acknowledged that he had self-radicalized into ISIS ideology. He later entered the juvenile justice system over allegations involving homemade explosive devices. By 17, prosecutors alleged that he had a handgun, was communicating with ISIS-linked individuals, and was preparing for mass violence. Roughly four years separated that first warning from the terrorism indictment.

There’s a pattern developing in terrorism cases in our homeland, with individuals growing radicalized at younger ages than ever before. In 2025, eight of the 11 alleged actors involved in seven ISIS-inspired attacks or disrupted plots in the United States were teenagers. Four were 17 or younger, and six of the seven incidents involved at least one teenager. The year before, six of eight ISIS-inspired plots involved at least one teenager. The problem is getting younger, and the individual cases show how early the path can begin.

There is still an opportunity to recognize what is happening to these kids early and intervene, before the only institution left to deal with them is the FBI.

Abdullah Haji Zada was 17 when federal authorities arrested him in Oklahoma in October 2024 alongside his older brother-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, an Afghan national who entered the United States following the withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to federal prosecutors, the two planned an ISIS-inspired attack for Election Day and sought AK-style rifles and ammunition. Haji Zada was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison. In July 2026, the Justice Department initiated removal proceedings against his mother, Nazira Haji Zada, alleging that she supported ISIS and helped radicalize family members. Those claims remain allegations. In Michigan, three of the five alleged participants in a disrupted fall 2025 plot were teenagers. Christian Sturdivant was 14 when the FBI first encountered him in North Carolina in 2022, and 18 when authorities encountered him again in late 2025. Humzah Mashkoor was 16 when his investigation began; he was arrested at 18 at Denver International Airport attempting to travel overseas to join ISIS. More than 190,000 Afghans have settled in the United States through resettlement efforts since the 2021 withdrawal, including children who have now spent formative years here.

Now consider what younger Americans say they believe. A Rasmussen Reports and Our Republic survey of 1,026 likely voters, conducted Sept. 20, 2026, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, found that 21 percent of likely voters hold at least a somewhat positive opinion of sharia, while 57 percent view it negatively. Among voters ages 18 to 24, positive views reach 43 percent. Among those 25 to 29, the figure is 39 percent. Just 16 percent of voters 40 and older view sharia positively. While 83 percent of all likely voters oppose allowing sharia to become the legal code for everyone in an American town, city, or state even if a majority of residents wanted it, 27 percent of voters under 30 would support such a move, compared with 2 percent of those 40 and older. Only 8 percent of voters would support requiring public schools to teach the benefits of sharia, but 24 percent of those ages 18 to 24 and 31 percent of those 25 to 29 would back such a law, against 3 percent of voters 40 and older. On threat perceptions, 43 percent say sharia poses a greater threat to America’s future than the U.S.-Israel alliance, while 25 percent see the Israel alliance as the greater threat. Compared with traditional Christianity, 55 percent see sharia as the greater threat, 13 percent name Christianity, and 23 percent say neither. The partisan split is sharp: 32 percent of Democrats say the Israel alliance is a greater threat than sharia, versus 23 percent of Democrats who name sharia, while 68 percent of Republicans see sharia as the greater threat.

What connects these two developments is the online environment. The National Counterterrorism Center has warned that violent extremists use social media, encrypted messaging, and online gaming platforms to recruit and plot. A teenager alone in his bedroom may be physically isolated, but he is not radicalizing in isolation. The same tools that deliver jihadist propaganda also deliver the messaging that softens cultural resistance to sharia. What looks to parents like a disciplinary problem, isolation, or an unhealthy fixation on violence can sit alongside something much more serious than any of those things alone. None of it makes a teenager a terrorist, and the overwhelming majority of young Muslims in America will never be involved in extremism. But a willingness to consider sharia alongside a growing social circle for violent ideology is a combination no free society should dismiss.

Scripture is clear that God’s people are to pursue justice and protect the innocent. Proverbs 24:11 commands us to rescue those being taken away to death, and Proverbs 29:2 warns that when the wicked rule, the people groan. A legal system that would place a religious code above the Constitution is not a neutral cultural preference; it is a direct threat to the religious liberty that allows Christians and Jews to worship freely. The First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise exists precisely because governments that impose religious law inevitably suppress dissent. Romans 13:1-4 tells us that governing authorities are ministers of God, accountable for how they use their power, which means believers have every reason to speak when a generation is being taught to accept a system that would deny them that accountability. Psalm 94:20 asks whether a throne of destruction, one that frames mischief as law, can be allied with God. The answer has not changed.

Let’s pray for teenagers being targeted online by extremists, that they would be reached by families, churches, and mentors before ideology hardens into violence. Let’s pray for parents and school officials who see warning signs, that they would have the wisdom and courage to intervene early rather than wait. Let’s pray for the Afghan families building new lives in America, that their children would find genuine belonging in communities of faith rather than in networks that exploit their search for identity. And let’s pray for a generation growing up with a more favorable view of sharia than any before it, that the church would reach them with the truth and that America would remain a nation where no religious law stands above the Constitution.

How are you praying about this issue? Share your prayers and scriptures in the comments below.

(Excerpt from the Daily Wire. Extra sourcing from the Rasmussen Reports. Photo Credit: Rizky Sabrlansyah/Pexels)