Trump claims London wants Sharia law as he attacks Sadiq Khan at UN General Assembly

President Donald Trump used his address at the United Nations General Assembly in New York to claim that London wants to adopt Sharia law and to renew a long-running critique of Mayor Sadiq Khan as a "terrible" leader. In remarks that mirrored his broader warnings about immigration and Western borders, Trump told world leaders that the UN is funding what he called an assault on Western countries and their borders. He said, "Europe is in serious trouble. They have been invaded by a force of illegal aliens like nobody's ever seen before." He then turned to London, asserting, "I look at London, where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor, and it's been changed. Now they want to go to Sharia law. But you are in a different country, you can't do that." He added that immigration and what he described as suicidal energy ideas would be the death of Western Europe if not checked immediately, framing the issue as a fundamental threat to Western civilization.

Sharia law, the Islamic religious law governing public and private life, remains a sensitive topic in Britain. While Sharia councils exist in England, they do not have any legal jurisdiction. Trump’s reiteration of the claim comes amid a feud with Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, who has long been a target of the Republican president. The two have traded barbs since 2015, when Khan condemned Trump’s call to ban Muslims from traveling to the United States. The exchange intensified after Khan’s handling of responses to terrorism in London, including the London Bridge attack, and even after a 2018 episode in Parliament Square during Trump’s visit in which an inflatable Trump as a baby was permitted to fly above Parliament Square during a protest at Trump’s presence.

Trump’s remarks at the UN were part of a broader narrative he has used to frame European security as worsening under immigration and liberal governance. In New York, he asserted that London’s relative crime concerns and immigration policy exemplified the failures he attributes to globalist approaches to borders and culture. He also claimed that Khan had sought an invitation to participate in what he described as his UK state visit, an assertion Khan later denied.

Asked to respond to Trump’s claim about the state visit, Khan said on Sunday that he was "indifferent" to the president and had "more important things to worry about". Khan’s office has previously indicated that he did not seek nor expect an invitation to events tied to Trump’s state visit, arguing that the dispute between the two leaders should not distract from local issues facing Londoners.

The public feud between Trump and Khan stretches back to at least 2015, when Khan condemned Trump’s proposed Muslim ban. The disagreement intensified after Khan criticized Trump’s reaction to the London Bridge attack. In 2018, Khan’s office granted permission for an inflatable Trump to fly in Parliament Square during the Republican’s UK visit, a moment he later described bitterly. During Trump’s first term, Khan called the president’s rhetoric a sign of resurgent fascism, a warning that drew global attention as Trump sought to mobilize political support abroad.

As Trump began a second term, Khan warned that rising authoritarian and far-right politics posed a global threat, a refrain that has echoed across European capitals amid debates over immigration, security, and national identity. The UN appearance, with its global audience, underscored the way Trump’s domestic contentious issues have continued to collide with international diplomacy.

In Britain, the episode fed into a broader conversation about how political leaders address metropolitan security, integration, and the limits of religious accommodation within a secular state. Khan and his supporters have urged a measured approach to policing and community relation-building, emphasizing that London remains one of the world’s most diverse, dynamic cities. Trump’s comments, by contrast, have been widely characterized by critics as inflammatory and historically polarized, aimed at energizing his political base rather than offering practical policy prescriptions.

Overall, the exchange illustrated how foreign leaders and city mayors can become focal points in a larger debate over immigration, identity, and the stability of Western democracies. For Londoners and other European residents, the episode underscored concerns about rhetoric and its impact on social cohesion, even as cities continue to navigate complex security and integration policies in an era of global movement.