Eighteen months ago Republicans in Texas took on a new fight. It began in February 2025, when Greg Abbott, the governor, described a housing development proposed by the East Plano Islamic Centre as an example of “sharia cities”. A dozen state agencies then launched investigations. In November he designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (cair), America’s biggest Muslim civil-rights group, a “foreign terrorist organisation” and barred it from buying land in the state. In March the state comptroller shut Muslim schools out of Texas’s new voucher scheme. The state Republican Party now ranks “Stop the Islamification of Texas” second on its list of legislative priorities.
A growing number of politicians view Islam, in particular, as a threat to the country’s identity. In the 13 months to March, 46 Republican elected officials across America published 1,111 anti-Muslim posts, a 15-fold increase in monthly volume, according to the Centre for the Study of Organised Hate, a watchdog group. Many painted Islam as a death cult working to indoctrinate children and take over society. dTommy Tuberville, a senator from Alabama, shared a post that paired photos of New York’s Muslim mayor with the burning twin towers, warning that “the enemy is inside the gates.” Andy Ogles, a Tennessee congressman, said that “Muslims don’t belong in American society!”