Islamophobia is on the rise in the US, with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), a civil liberties group, reporting sharp increases in anti-Muslim violence and rhetoric over the last two years.
In Texas, the issue has come to the fore in high-profile incidents, including the case of a Euless woman who was initially released on a $40,000 bail after attempting to drown two Palestinian American children.
Now, a brewing legal battle between Texas’s hardline Republican governor, Greg Abbott, and Cair represents a new chapter in the state’s long struggles with Islamophobia.
On 18 November, Abbott issued a proclamation designating Cair and the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations – a move only the federal government is able to make. “This designation authorizes heightened enforcement against both organizations and their affiliates and prohibits them from purchasing or acquiring land in Texas,” Abbott’s missive read, while linking to a broader proclamation.
Two days later, the governor directed his state’s department of public safety to investigate the civil liberties group. In response, Cair’s Texas chapters are suing Abbott and the state attorney general, Ken Paxton, in federal court.
The suit claims the proclamation violates constitutional protections – including free speech, due process and property rights – and points out that Cair has never been declared a terrorist group by the US government.
Cair has won multiple lawsuits against the governor in recent years, including free speech suits defending Texas students and a schoolteacher who were voicing support for the Palestinian people.
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, Cair’s national deputy director, believes these recent wins have “drawn Governor Abbott’s hostility”. In an interview with the Guardian, he argued the governor was trying to turn conspiracy theories into policy.
For instance, the governor’s proclamation names eight people who have supposed ties to “terrorism-related activities”.
“In terms of the specific people mentioned, some of these people have no connection to Cair whatsoever,” Mitchell said. “Some of them may have committed a crime and were rightfully prosecuted for that crime, which Cair had nothing to do with. And in some cases, Cair actually has stood up for someone who was wrongfully charged with a crime they did not commit.”
The Guardian reached out to Abbott’s office with multiple questions for this story, but in response, the governor’s team shared the original declaration and statements about the investigation and so-called “Sharia tribunals”.
“We did not see any sort of systemic push to discuss the Sharia controversy or the Muslim Brotherhood for years,” Mitchell said. “It all of a sudden came back over the summer.”
The Cair leader points to an investigation of a planned Muslim community in north Texas and fearmongering about Sharia law in the state as further proof of a troubling rise in Islamophobia in Texas.
Other advocates agree.
Dr Omar Suleiman, an imam and the founder of the Dallas-based Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, called the Cair declaration “political theater”.
“Throughout Governor Abbott’s tenure, Islamophobia has become increasingly normalized and instrumentalized in Texas politics,” Suleiman said. “Muslims have repeatedly been used as convenient targets – not because our community has ever posed a threat, but because fear of Muslims has proven politically expedient.”
Charles Swift is the gruff, quick-talking lawyer for the Muslim Legal Fund of America who is leading Cair’s case against Abbott. He told the Guardian his organization has seen an uptick in Islamophobia-related lawsuits since the 7 October attacks by Hamas and subsequent military onslaught by Israel, which many humanitarian groups have classified as a genocide.
Swift also called the designation of Cair as a terrorist group an “escalation” on the governor’s part, and the lawyer’s reasons for working on the case are simple.
“It’s constitutional,” he said, “and the governor is trying to exercise powers he does not have.”
Mitchell, Cair’s national leader, echoed that point.
“No one has to agree with Cair’s criticism of the Israeli government or our position on anti-Muslim bigotry to recognize that no governor should have the power to unilaterally declare a civil rights group he disagrees with a terrorist group and try to shut them down,” Mitchell told the Guardian.
But Abbott isn’t the only Texas politician attacking the Muslim community.
Earlier this year, Valentina Gomez, a Republican running in the state’s 31st congressional district, posted a video in which she burned a copy of the Qur’an with a flamethrower. She has also called Islam “the religion of rape, incest and pedophilia”, and she has filmed herself eating popcorn while watching Israeli strikes on Gaza.
Sid Miller, the Texas agriculture commissioner, also has a long track record of violent, Islamophobic rhetoric. Most recently, he shared a social media post depicting Islam as a snake being killed with a knife. When Cair denounced the post, Miller endorsed a Republican-led resolution denouncing Cair.
Before Abbott’s broadside against Cair, the state government engaged in a legal battle with the developers of Epic City, a planned community in north Texas that will include more than 1,000 homes, a mosque, a K-12 school and senior housing.
In March, Paxton launched an investigation on the grounds of alleged consumer-protection violations, while Abbott ordered multiple state agencies to investigate the development for potential fair-housing violations. Days later, the US Department of Justice opened a civil rights inquiry that claimed Epic City’s marketing and membership policies might discriminate based on religion.
Advocacy groups, including Cair, swiftly defended the development.
Mustafaa Carroll, executive director of the organization’s Dallas-Fort Worth office, argued Abbott and Paxton were disseminating “hateful misinformation” about Muslims and Islam.
“They pose a serious physical threat to the lives and safety of Muslim children, families, and communities in schools, homes, and spaces throughout north Texas and statewide,” he told reporters in April.
The justice department closed their investigation in June without filing any charges, yet the project remains under state investigation.
What’s more, the same month the justice department ended their inquiry, the Texas legislature passed a bill prohibiting certain residential developments from using “religious-organization” exemptions that previously allowed faith-based groups to develop housing communities.
“The Epic City case is one of the clearest examples of Islamophobia shaping policy,” Suleiman told the Guardian. “Rather than addressing genuine issues with transparency and neutrality, the law institutionalized suspicion toward Muslim-led community planning, effectively singling out Muslim civic ambition for special scrutiny.”
Suleiman admitted that, “it’s hard to legislate Islamophobia”, which is why lawmakers often use coded language. He argues this rise in Islamophobia is yet more reason to elect leaders who affirm Muslims living in Texas, rather than make life harder for them.
Suleiman spoke to the Guardian before a shooting in Washington DC, in which a member of the national guard was killed. The shooting was allegedly carried out by a man from Afghanistan who previously worked for CIA-backed anti-terrorism units. He was admitted to the US in 2021 under a post-Afghan war resettlement program, and after the shooting, the Trump administration halted all asylum decisions.
This hardline stance was echoed by politicians in the Texas suburbs.
In a newsletter titled Islamic Ideology Has No Place in the West, the Texas Republican congressman, Brandon Gill, wrote: “The question remains: why was an ‘Afghan national’ living in the United States in the first place?
“How many times do we have to hear “Allahu Akbar” in America before we recognize Islam is a problem?” he continued. “The reality is that not all cultures are morally equal. Islam is incompatible with our culture and our governing system. Radical Islamists seek to fundamentally destroy our way of life. Why would we allow them to immigrate here?”
Such comments go against what Suleiman thinks all Texans need to hear.
“We need leaders willing to affirm publicly that Muslims are integral to Texas, serving as doctors, teachers, firefighters, business owners and public servants,” he said. “We need leaders who refuse to weaponize fear for political gain.”
