ISLAMIFICATION OF PLANO, TEXAS

Texas Muslim city rebrands with unthreatening new name after Governor Greg Abbott accused it of trying to bring Sharia law to Lone Star State

 

By James Reinl, Joe Hutchison and Maryann Martinez 

 

Daily Mail

Dec 3, 2025

 

 

 

Located in Plano, Texas, the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) anchors an Islamic community. Dozens of two-story homes around the mosque. Businesses that cater to Muslims are also nearby  

 

An Islamic group hoping to build a 'Muslim city' in eastern Texas has rebranded their project after Governor Greg Abbott accused them of wanting to enforce Sharia law.

Developers looking to push forward with the large community have opted to change the name from EPIC City to The Meadow, according to the Houston Chronicle.

The East Plano Islamic Community (EPIC) is behind the development and have yet to move beyond the planning stages, break ground or even submit permits. 

The cleric behind the community, Yasir Qadhi, has a decades-old record of preaching hatred, homophobia and Holocaust-denial to his followers. 

In one of his chilling diatribes, Qadhi even advances a wild theory Jewish people have infiltrated religious departments of American universities in a bid to 'destroy' Muslims.

Such revelations sparked the concerns of Abbott and other Republicans who started probing the development over allegations they are looking to implement Sharia laws.

Sharia laws refers to a body of religious law inspired by Islam's holy scriptures, including the Koran and Hadith, sayings of the prophet Mohammed. 

In some Muslim countries, Sharia law is associated with capital punishment for adultery and homosexuality, which involves death by stoning. 

Developers looking to push forward with the large community have opted to change the name from EPIC City to The Meadow

Such revelations sparked the concerns of Abbott and other Republicans who started probing the development

 

The investigations have yet to uncover anything untoward, with EPIC posting on social media that they are a law-abiding non-profit. 

Audio files show Qadhi openly calling in the 2000s for the execution of gay people and adulterers - as well as calling the Holocaust a 'hoax.'

In one of his chilling diatribes, Qadhi even advances a wild theory Jewish people have infiltrated religious departments of American universities in a bid to 'destroy' Muslims.

The case raises questions about Texas' fast-growing Muslim population, Islamophobia, and whether the views of clerics put the faith at odds with US values.

Sam Westrop, a counter-extremism analyst at the Middle East Forum, which unearthed the recordings, says Qadhi and his followers are dangerous fundamentalists who want to turn the clock back to the 7th Century.

'Qadhi and his mosque, EPIC, have radicalized generations of Muslims not just in the Dallas area, but across the US,' Westrop told the Daily Mail.

'Any sort of compound such as EPIC City will serve to radicalize future generations of Muslims.'

Qadhi's group, he claims, seeks to 'advance Sharia and other theocratic threats away from the checks and balances of Texas law and order.'

 

Yasir Qadhi once said that gay people and adulterers should be put to death under Islam

The sprawling East Plano Islamic Center in suburban Dallas is large enough to accommodate 3,200 worshippers. The mosque is flanked by homes of Muslims on either side

 

They're planning a neighborhood some 40 miles northeast of Dallas, with 1,000 homes, a mosque, Islamic schools, clinics, stores, parks, and a nursing home on a site across Collin and Hunt Counties.

Organizers say the properties sold out fast and have since announced 'ranches' of bigger homes nearby. Construction is set to begin in 2026 or 2027.

The group brands itself a 'multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multilingual, non-sectarian, diverse, and open community' with opportunities for men and women that's open to non-Muslims.

But when he's behind closed doors and addressing his followers, Qadhi's private comments over previous decades cannot be further from the liberal values espoused by his organization.

In one recording, which appears to be of Qadhi preaching in the US in about the early 2000s, about the wide array of vices that mandate executions under Islam.

'This is a part of our religion, to stone the adulterer … and to kill, by the way, the homosexual. This is also our religion,' he says in the recording.

His comments recall the atrocities of the Islamic State, which imposed harsh Sharia law in Iraq and Syria in the 2010s and flung gay men off buildings to their deaths.

In a particularly revelatory comment, Qadhi tells his followers that his austere version of Islamic law was not suitable in the West.

'This doesn't mean we go do this in America,' he said. 'No, we're not allowed to do this in America, you know? But I'm saying if we had an Islamic State, we would do this now.'

In another recording, Qadhi shared his views about how most Jewish people today are of European descent and have few ties to the Middle Easterners in the Old Testament.

'Look at them: white, crooked nose, blonde hairs. This is not the descendants of Jacob,' he says.

Nazi Germany's genocide of six million Jewish people is 'false propaganda,' he adds, and 'Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews.' He urges his listeners to read 'The Hoax of the Holocaust.'

He then shares a wilder theory that Jewish people make up 95 percent of the students of Islamic Studies courses in the US — a dastardly plan to spread 'disunity' among Muslims and to 'destroy us.'

Qadhi has since described them as an 'error' and a 'one-time mistake,' saying he fell down a 'slippery slope' into extremism when he was 'young and naïve.'

He nowadays offers in public a gentler, more polished and tolerant version of the religion of some 2 billion people globally.