Politically Unstable: Girl Scouts under fire for Islamic badges pushing conversion

Video

Saturday, September 26, 2026

OPINION:

Why is Islam the only faith with its own Girl Scout badge program for sharing the religion with friends?

Girl Scout troops sponsored by mosques are reportedly offering badges tied to Islamic faith-sharing — including one for sharing Ramadan with a friend — with no equivalent badges for Christianity or Judaism.

On this episode of Politically Unstable, host Kelly Sadler talks with Maggie McKneely of Concerned Women for America about how the badges spread nationwide, what happened at a Sacramento troop event, and why critics say it’s a departure from the Girl Scouts’ founding mission.

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[SADLER] We’re going to talk about something about the Girl Scouts and trouble within the Girl Scouts, in a column that Maggie wrote for us. Maggie, I’m going to let you jump right into this, because when I was reading the column, I could not believe this was actually happening. But the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts, they just keep stepping in it, in terms of the wokeism. So describe to me your column, the problems and the concerns that you have with the Girl Scouts.

[MCKNEELY] This is such a crazy and troubling story. The Girl Scouts was founded back in 1912 to help empower women. This was back before women had the right to vote. And so this organization was started to help enable women to go pursue their dreams, pursue careers they thought they would be best at, and to enable and encourage their talents. And yet now, fast forward to 2026, and we have the Girl Scouts giving a platform to Islam, a religion that does not allow women to even have their hair uncovered.

For most of the Girl Scouts’ history, a lot of the troops — you can have freestanding troops, but you can also have Girl Scout troops that are sponsored by a church, by a cathedral, or a synagogue. But apparently you can also have troops that are sponsored by a mosque. And so there was a recent report that came out recently that showed that there are a lot of troops that are not just encouraging girls to deepen their Islamic faith, but also to share it with the non-Muslim communities. So there’s now an organization called the Islamic Community of Girl Scouting. And what they have done is create a number of badges related to Islam. So you can be the Girl of Islamic Faith, which requires a number of steps to go through to get this badge, to be the Girl of Islamic Faith. But what’s more insidious is that there are also badges related to sharing Islam. Like, you can get a Share Ramadan With Your Friend badge. You can get all sorts of badges related to actually sharing Islam with the non-Muslim community.

And a number of these troops are also putting on events to share Islam. There was a troop out in Sacramento that had an event to bring the non-Muslim community in, and they had things like a try-on-a-hijab booth or a learn-about-Palestine booth to create empathy — I’m using air quotes there — with the Palestinian cause.

It seems really endemic. We’re seeing this all across the nation. It’s not just California. We’re seeing it in Virginia and Florida and New York and Indiana. So it is — it’s all over the place. And it’s just really troubling because it’s such a departure from what the Girl Scouts was originally meant to be.

[SADLER] And the proselytizing, that’s the other thing. It’s not only if you visit a mosque you get a badge — it’s how many people can you convert? Are there similar badges for the Catholics? Is there similar badges for the Baptists, for the evangelicals? Is there similar badges for the Jews?

[MCKNEELY] No, no, there’s not. There’s no Share Communion With Your Friend, no Have Shabbat With Your Friend badge. This seems to be specific just to the Islamic-sponsored troops.

[SADLER] And it’s just really incompatible. Islam is incompatible with Western values. As you mentioned, there is no freedom of religion for women in Islamic countries — in Iran, in Afghanistan. If you look at Afghanistan under Taliban rule, women can’t even get an education. They are subject to childhood marriage at around nine years old, before they even mature. They’re already sold off from their families to a man who could have multiple wives — not even, not even one wife.

So why do you think all of this is taking hold in American, Western culture, where Girl Scouts was founded, women got the right to vote, we had the suffrage movement. If you look at Title Nine and what that’s achieved — now, we’re not going to do the trans debate — but why do you think that the Girl Scouts of America is embracing this?

[MCKNEELY] I think it’s a few reasons. One of them is that we’ve become a very tolerant society. We are very hesitant to hurt anyone’s feelings and say that any particular belief system is incompatible with the West, or with American values. And so we have — and we have let all of these different cultures and religions, certainly Islam at the top of that list, to come into our American institutions and embrace them, and say that they are equal to the values and the faith system that our country was founded on.

When most Americans hear freedom of religion, they think that means all religions are equal. But that’s not true. America would not exist if it were not founded on Christianity, on Judeo-Christian values that say all men are created equal. We simply — we simply wouldn’t exist. But there is a tragic misunderstanding about that concept today.