Republicans are vowing to defeat what they call radical Islam, which is groups within the faith they say are trying to impose their religious laws on everyone else.
Author: Daniel Perreault
Published: 5:52 PM CST February 5, 2026
AUSTIN, Texas — As Republican candidates make their pitch to voters ahead of the March primary, they are running ads on TV, pledging to target Islam and crack down on what they believe is the “Islamification” of the state.
Islam is a faith practiced by an estimated 313,000 Texans. Only four states have a larger Muslim population than Texas.
“Islam is not compatible with Western civilization,” Republican attorney general candidate Aaron Reitz says in a recent TV ad. “Politicians have imported millions of Muslims into our country. The result is more terrorism, more crime, and they even want their own illegal cities in Texas to impose Sharia law. Not on my watch.”
That ad is one of a handful in which Republicans have made anti-Muslim rhetoric a centerpiece of their campaign, vowing to take a harder line in a crackdown on Muslims and Islam.
State Sen. Charles Schwertner (R-Georgetown) framed his opposition to Islam in a recent campaign ad as “our country and values” under attack.
“We follow the Constitution, not Sharia law,” Schwertner says in the ad. “Those who follow radical Islam need to be deported from our country.”
Shaimaa Zayan, the CAIR-Austin operations manager, said listening to the rhetoric is dehumanizing and scary for the Muslim community.
“When we listen to them, we feel like you don’t see us as families and communities and how this will harm us,” Zayan said. “We just need one crazy person listening to that and just go and bomb something or burn something.”
In November, Gov. Greg Abbott declared the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy groups in the U.S., as a foreign terrorist organization and transnational criminal organization.
That designation authorized heightened enforcement against both organizations and allows Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to sue to shut it down. It also prevents the group and its associates from purchasing or acquiring land in Texas. Abbott accused CAIR of being a front group for Hamas and trying to impose Sharia law. CAIR denied those allegations and filed a lawsuit over the proclamation.
The Texas Attorney General’s Office ramped up the legal battle on Thursday between the state and CAIR.
On Thursday, the AG’s office filed a lawsuit against the council and its chapters in Austin, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, seeking to ban them from operating in the state.
The suit comes after Abbott put pressure on the AG, sending him a letter urging him to strip CAIR of its nonprofit status.
Paxton continued making similar accusations in the new lawsuit. He’s asking a judge to side with the governor’s proclamation, stop their chapters from operating in Texas, and pay for any legal fees the state incurs in the case.
In a release announcing the lawsuit, Paxton wrote in part, “Sharia law and the jihadists who follow Sharia law have no business being in Texas.” Paxton also said he supports the governor’s declaration and that “radical Islamic terrorists are antithetical to law and order, endanger the people of Texas, and are an existential threat to our values.”
CAIR and its Texas chapter responded to the lawsuit, calling it “another frivolous, politically motivated anti-Muslim publicity stunt that wastes more taxpayer dollars.”
“We have also defeated Mr. Abbott’s attacks on Texas Muslims and the Constitution three different times in a row,” the groups added. “We look forward to doing so again, god willing.”
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has an ad running that outlines his opposition to CAIR. In it, he ties radical Islam to the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel and the attack on a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach in December, which killed 15 people.
“I’m fighting to revoke the tax-exempt status of the Council on American-Islamic relations,” Cornyn says in the ad. “Let me be clear: no organization that supports terrorists should receive taxpayer benefits, and Sharia law has no place in American courts or communities.”
Republicans frame their opposition as an immigration issue, arguing that Muslim immigrants have not properly assimilated into American society and accuse them of trying to spread their religion, values, and views onto Americans.
“If we are talking about working hard and contribute and pursuing education and contributing to this country, in all fields,” Zayan said. “Definitely, Muslims assimilate, and definitely, Muslims have been here for a long time. We are not new here.”
In an interview with KVUE’s Ashley Goudeau on “Texas This Week,” Congressman Chip Roy (R-Austin), who is also running for Texas attorney general, said he believes there is a coordinated effort to “Islamify” Texas.
“We want to stand up for the people of Texas and continue to defend the state of Texas, secure our borders, make sure we stop this sort of rapid Islamification of the state of Texas, things like Epic City, the Islamic Center in Houston,” Roy said. “Now we’ve got stuff going on here in Austin and issues that are raising real concerns for people.”
Samuel Westrop, the director of the Islamist Watch project at the conservative thinktank Middle East Forum, said there is a growing realization that Islamist networks operate across Texas.
“We track seven major ones and another 20 smaller ones,” he said. “There is a serious problem here. Very few people are talking about it with the specificity that it deserves.”
He said politicians need make a clearer distinction between those who peacefully practice their religion and what calls “Islamism,” those who interpret Islam in ways that can endanger and threaten others.
“Islam is a 1400-year-old faith with a variety of schools, movements, reformers, radicals, all sorts,” Westrop said. “Islamism is a modern political ideology that has only been around for a few hundred years. Policymakers do not yet understand this point.”
Westrop called what Abbott and Paxton have done a good first step, but said they should look at other “Islamist networks operating across the state with equal seriousness” and enlist Muslim allies to help.
He said leaders need to both limit the influence of those groups and ensure public funding does not go to those groups.
“We have to watch out for the subsidy of those extremists in our midst,” Westrop said. “It’s an all too common problem.”
Zayan said the anti-Muslim rhetoric this campaign season is more extreme and frequent than they have seen before.
“Even after September 11, we have never seen this kind of anti-Muslim rhetoric and the way the GOP uses it in the election for political gain,” Zayan said. “Basically, GOP candidates are competing to see who is more anti-Muslim, who is more of a bigot when it comes to the Muslim community, banning the Muslim community, deporting the Muslim community, and harming the Muslim community.”
Zayan said it is a boogeyman that Republicans are using to try appeal to voters.
“It’s all about the Muslim invasion, and you create the monster, and then it’s easy to overcome this monster because it’s not there,” Zayan said. “If this is your campaign, there is no accountability because then you will go and say, okay, I defeated the Islamic invasion, and no one would know because it’s an imaginary monster that you created.”
Republicans are hoping the rhetoric will turn out voters in next month’s primary.
“It’s dehumanizing. It’s affecting our mental health, our families, our level of security and safety and we don’t know how this will continue,” Zayan said. “We still have the primaries, and it will continue after the primaries till the general election in November.”
Zayan pushed back on the idea that Muslims are trying to force people to adopt Sharia Law. Sharia laws lay out the moral and behavioral principles that Muslims should follow, like prayers, fasting and generosity to those who are less fortunate. They are drawn from religious texts, such as the Quran and Hadith.
It does include references to punishments, but many Muslim countries do not apply Sharia law to criminal law.
“We are not imposing it on anyone, and a part of Sharia law, even in the Muslim majority countries that apply Sharia law, gives the minority the option to follow it or follow their religion and their law,” Zayan said. Muslims are 1% percent of the population in the US and in some cities in Texas, maybe up to 3% maximum. There is no way, even logically, for us to impose any law against people’s will.”
In Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, 42% of Muslim voters in the US said they identify with the republican party.
Zayan said all this rhetoric could alienate voters.
Categories: The Muslim Times
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