Based on 18 months of ethnographic field research in terrorism courtrooms in New York City and Washington DC, this paper will demonstrate how terrorism suspects utilize the secular legal space of the sentencing hearing in order to invoke Islam in ways that challenge not only the court's interpretation of their 'crime', but also in order to inform and educate the court and it's public audience about Islam. Terrorism suspects use the space of the sentencing hearing in order to both directly invoke the Quran, hadith, and Islamic legal concepts, as well as to reflect upon the historic dominance of Islam, comment upon the contemporary challenges facing Muslims around the world, and speak to and about the ethical failures and obligations of the Muslim ummah. In the process, the discourse of terrorism suspects also poses explicit and implicit challenges to secular law; particularly it's configuration of the domain of 'the religious' as necessarily distinct and oppositional category to the domains of 'the political,' 'the ethical,' and 'the public.' The space of the sentencing hearing is of crucial importance in this paper insofar it compellingly demonstrates the limits and extents of recognition that can be attained through secular courts. In theory, the sentencing hearing is an event and space in which liberal ideals are exercised and reaffirmed; the accused is endowed with the freedom of speech, given the opportunity to present the "natives point of view". And yet, this 'freedom' is extended under particularly confining circumstances: following conviction. This paper therefore argues that while the sentencing hearing provides terrorism suspects with an opportunity to invoke Islam, to present rhetoric and explanations that the trial - neither in theory nor in practice - is built to accommodate, the conditions that enable this accommodation speak directly to the ways in which secular law defines, delimits and calibrates how the actions and imperatives of terrorism suspects - and through them, ideas about Islam - are ultimately understood and granted recognition before the law, as well as in the court of public opinion.