Elected officials across Texas are increasingly treating ordinary Muslim religious practice – prayer, dress, marriage counseling, even mosques themselves – as evidence of a political threat and saying so openly.
“I won’t rest until every Muslim is gone,” Bo French, the Republican nominee for Texas railroad commissioner, wrote on social media in June 2026. Since late 2025, Texas officials have investigated plans for a Muslim-friendly housing development outside Dallas, as well as a small Dallas organization that offers religious divorce counseling. Gov. Greg Abbott also designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country’s largest Muslim civil rights group, a foreign terrorist organization under Texas law.
