In the run-up to the Texas primaries, the issue taking center stage in the Lone Star State is not affordability, inflation or the border. It’s religion. Specifically, Islam.
What began as a crowded field of Republican hopefuls jockeying for attention has devolved into a campaign of bigotry.
This isn’t fringe language. It’s now part of the mainstream GOP campaigning strategy.
This isn’t fringe language. It’s now part of the mainstream GOP campaigning strategy.
“The Muslim community is the boogeyman for this cycle,” Texas GOP consultant Vinny Minchillo told Politico with disturbing candor. “One hundred percent this message works — there’s no question about it.”
For Republican candidates, the most effective lever they can pull to draw attention increasingly is fear, not facts.
One GOP candidate for Texas attorney general has ads asserting that politicians have “imported millions of Muslims into our country.” Without citing evidence, the ad links them to crime, terrorism and even claims that Muslims want “illegal cities” in order to “impose Sharia law.”
Another candidate publicly withdrew from a community event at a mosque, saying his security advised him against attending, and later bemoaned “how much more dangerous the Islamization of Texas has made our state.”
Another Republican candidate burned a Quran and declared that “your daughters will be raped and your sons beheaded unless we stop Islam once and for all.”
In state and federal primaries across Texas, Republican candidates are speaking about a Muslim invasion into their communities to impose Sharia law. Many are vowing to “fight radical Islam.”
Even Sen. John Cornyn and his most prominent challenger, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, have invoked fear of Muslims in their campaign ads.
Even Sen. John Cornyn and his most prominent challenger, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, have invoked fear of Muslims in their campaign ads.
Perhaps, on some level, this lowest-common-denominator approach is not surprising. The Republican Party’s standard-bearer, President Donald Trump, is the peddler-in-chief of conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim rhetoric. Immediately upon taking office in 2017, Trump imposed a travel ban from several majority-Muslim countries. He regularly disparages a Muslim congresswoman and attacks the religion of nearly two billion people as incompatible with the West.
To be clear, there are no jurisdictions in Texas — or elsewhere in the United States — where Sharia law is imposed as civil law. Nor have credible experts pointed to anything resembling an organized effort by Muslim Americans to impose such. Yet hate and fearmongering in some GOP races is having an effect.
A January Rasmussen Reports survey found that a staggering 77% of likely voters say they are concerned about the influence of “radical Islam” in the U.S. Of those, 41% say they are very concerned. Only 18% say they are not concerned.
Congress actually has a Sharia-Free America Caucus with more than two dozen members, spearheaded by Texas Republicans Chip Roy and Keith Self. Roy’s declaration that Sharia law is a “direct threat to the Constitution” and that Western civilization must be protected from it isn’t grounded in any evidence.
Along with allies such as Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. — who has said of radical Islam that “the enemy is now inside the gates” — this caucus embraces language and imagery straight out of the post-9/11 playbook: An external culture is threatening our American way of life.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has moved beyond rhetoric. In November, he declared the country’s leading Muslim advocacy organization — the Council on American Islamic relations (CAIR) — a terrorist organization. Such a designation has real consequences on the organization’s ability to offer services to the 300,000 Muslims in the Lone Star State.
Many Muslims in Texas — a fast-growing segment of the state’s non-white population — are becoming wary of how they are seen by neighbors, co-workers and even law enforcement. This month, a man in Plano disrupted a student group’s prayer services, insulting and harassing worshippers. A project to build a thousand homes around a mosque north of Dallas has drawn legal challenges and anti-Muslim criticism from several local and state officials. This is what the lived experience of a faith community becomes when politicians paint people as threats or otherwise less than human. Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., drew national attention recently over a social media post in which he wrote that if forced to choose, “The choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” Civil rights groups and prominent Democrats reacted swiftly, calling his remarks Islamophobic, bigoted and deeply damaging to the fabric of American pluralism. Some urged censure, removal from committee assignments or even resignation. No other religion in America is denigrated so openly by politicians, officials and leaders at every level of society. That must stop. Equally telling — and far more troubling — was the silence from most GOP leaders. Days after Fine’s comments went viral, House Speaker Mike Johnson was among those who had not publicly condemned or distanced themselves from fellow Republicans’ rhetoric. That absence of rebuke speaks volumes about what has become acceptable in parts of the GOP coalition — not just in one statehouse but nationally. No other religion in America is denigrated so openly by politicians, officials and leaders at every level of society. That must stop. This moment should trouble us all. Fear has always been a potent force in politics, but when it is stoked against whole communities on the basis of religion, it betrays a core promise of this country: that no American should be viewed as suspect because of their faith. Remaining silent in the face of this Republican strategy — ignoring when dog whistles become full-throated campaigns, or when officials dehumanize Americans because of their faith — risks far more than ugly headlines. We risk erosion of the idea that the U.S. is a pluralistic democracy grounded in dignity and equal rights for all.
Ayman Mohyeldin is a host of "‘The Weekend: Primetime" and an MS NOW political analyst. 
