WASHINGTON — Aaron Reitz aired his first television ad
Wednesday pitching himself to voters as the best Republican candidate
for Texas attorney general. But his commercial didn’t highlight his
endorsement from outgoing attorney general Ken Paxton or his work under
President Donald Trump. He didn’t discuss border security or election
law.
Instead, Reitz pledged to target a religion practiced by hundreds of thousands of Texans.
“Politicians have imported millions of
Muslims into our country,” Reitz said in the ad. “The result? More
terrorism, more crime and they even want their own illegal cities in
Texas to impose Sharia law. Not on my watch.”
Reitz’s ad is the latest example of Texas GOP
candidates making anti-Muslim rhetoric a central piece of their
messaging this cycle. As conservative activists push Republicans to take
a harder line against Muslims, and the GOP and its factions debate what
constitutes American identity, opposition to Islam has become a key
campaign pillar for some Texas Republicans in statewide races and
beyond.
Muslim civil rights groups say the negative
messaging from Republicans around Islam is broader, more extreme and
more frequent than in years past, and they worry about the cumulative
effect of both heightened rhetoric and anti-Muslim policies.
“It’s definitely more coordinated than it was
before,” said Sameeha Rizvi, the policy and advocacy coordinator for
the Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “We’re
seeing it on a national and state level, and we’re seeing so-called
influencer activists on the far right using this as a tool to further
burn the flames of anti-Muslim rhetoric and hate.”
There are over 300,000 Muslims in Texas —
more than all but four states — and long-established Muslim communities
in Houston and North Texas.
The candidates characterize their opposition
to Islam as an immigration issue, criticizing Muslim immigrants for not
properly assimilating and claiming they wish to proliferate their values
among other Texans .
“This is a coordinated political effort to
Islamify Texas, and you’ve got to say it, you’ve got to mean it, you’ve
got to push the Legislature to pass laws,” U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, who is also running for attorney general, said
in an interview with Steve Bannon. “We’ve got to tweak the Texas
Constitution. Whatever’s necessary to protect Texas from being
Islamified by the radical Marxists.”
In an interview with The Texas Tribune, Roy
said he respects freedom of religion and has no problem with people who
hold different beliefs but love America. The problem, he said, is when
the practice of their religion becomes political — and he believes Islam
to some extent is inherently political.
Roy and Rep. Keith Self,
R-McKinney, formed the Sharia-Free America Caucus in December. Both are
sponsors of a bill that would deny anyone who “adheres to Sharia law”
entry into the U.S. and mandate the removal of non-citizen Sharia
adherents.
It’s not just campaign rhetoric. In November, Gov. Greg Abbott
issued an executive order designating the Muslim Brotherhood and the
Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, as terrorist
organizations. Numerous Republican politicians in Texas have attempted
to stop the proposed East Plano Islamic Center, a planned residential
development in North Texas that has become a flashpoint in state GOP
politics as Republicans accuse leaders of attempting to create an
exclusive community that enforces Sharia law. Developers say the
community is open to all Texans, regardless of religious background.
Muslim civil rights organizations are fighting
many of these actions in court, and are confident that items like
Abbott’s CAIR proclamation violate the Constitution. CAIR has vehemently denied Abbott’s accusations that it has any ties to terrorist groups, and The Houston Chronicle reported that the organization worked with the FBI to stop an attack on President Donald Trump.
But advocates say even if the policies are
unenforceable or legally dubious, the political rhetoric around Islam is
intended to undermine Texas’ Muslim community and members’ ability to
practice civic engagement.
“It forces impossible choices,” Marium Uddin,
the legal director at the Muslim Legal Fund of America and a longtime
Texas lawyer, wrote in an email. “Under this framework, Muslims are
punished for ordinary civic participation. Organize? You may be
designated extremist. Donate? Your charity may be weaponized decades
later. Build a community? It may be labeled a ‘compound.’ Speak out?
Your speech becomes evidence against you.
“This is not regulation,” she said. “It is systematic exclusion.”
In campaigns
In the attorney general’s race, both Roy and
Reitz, a former deputy attorney general, are pledging to use the office
to go after what they call Islamification, including the East Plano
Islamic Center development, which is now called The Meadow.
Roy told the Texas Tribune as attorney
general, he could use deceptive trade practice law and look closely at
the finances of organizations he believes are promoting political Islam —
legal tools, he said, that do not infringe on freedom of religion.
Reitz, meanwhile, has said he will “create a
legal environment so inhospitable” to Islamists — or people who believe
Islam should influence public life and government — that they’ll
self-deport or go to jail.
In an interview with OAN in November, Reitz
criticized “squish Republicans” who believe the First Amendment, which
enshrines freedom of religion, prevents politicians from taking on CAIR
and developments like the one in North Texas. Reitz told the Tribune he
believes “terror-linked outfits” have “burrowed” into Muslim communities
in Texas, and that they pose an “existential threat to our
civilization.”
Reitz said he plans to treat “Islamism”, as
he’s referred to it, like federal prosecutors treated organized crime
syndicates— successfully going after them for process crimes.
“As Texas Attorney General, I’ll crush this
sprawling web of Sharia supremacists just like the feds dismantled the
Mafia, unleashing every tool in my legal arsenal: corporate crackdowns,
nonprofit shutdowns, environmental enforcements, health and safety
violations, regulatory hammers, criminal prosecutions, financial
seizures, property forfeitures, and constitutional challenges,” Reitz
said. “We’ll starve them out until they have no choice but to pack up
and crawl back to where they came from.”
In the hotly contested U.S. Senate primary,
candidates have used Sharia law as a cudgel to go after one another.
Paxton, who is challenging Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary, sued
the East Plano Islamic Center development and its leaders in December.
But Cornyn has kept the heat on Paxton over the development, saying in a
digital ad
as early as April that Paxton is “too corrupt and compromised” to
protect Texans from what the ad’s narrator calls a “safe haven for
Sharia law.” The Cornyn campaign has routinely attacked Paxton for
sharing a personal lawyer with the Islamic Center’s developers.
On Thursday, the Cornyn campaign launched a TV ad
called “Evil Face” in which Cornyn, narrating and speaking to the
camera says, “Radical Islam is a bloodthirsty ideology” and notes his
efforts to revoke CAIR’s tax-exempt status.
Paxton, meanwhile, called Cornyn’s attacks a
“desperate hail mary that can’t erase the fact that he helped radical
Islamic Afghans invade Texas” — referencing a visa program for Afghans
who helped U.S. forces to come to the country after a significant
screening process. Both Cornyn and Hunt have supported the program, though Cornyn said in 2025 he does not have confidence in the vetting process.
Houston Rep. Wesley Hunt’s campaign released a digital ad of his own called “Sharia John”, using clips of Cornyn wishing Muslim Texans a good fast for Ramadan.
In a statement, Hunt framed the debate as one about immigration.
“As someone who served in combat in the
Middle East, I have witnessed firsthand the devastating consequences of
Sharia law,” Hunt said. “It is fundamentally incompatible with the
values that define America, individual liberty, equality under the law,
and freedom of conscience. We are a welcoming people and a nation built
by immigrants, but America does not survive without assimilation.”
House hopefuls are also jockeying to be more stridently opposed to Islam than their opponents.
State Rep. Steve Toth launched a primary
campaign against Houston Rep. Dan Crenshaw in July, and has attacked him
on a number of issues, bashing his support for Ukraine aid and his rebukes of fellow Republicans who contested the 2020 election. But in his first campaign ad, Toth went after Muslims.
“Dan Crenshaw’s immigration plan is dangerous, demanding we allow more Muslim immigrants,” a narrator says in Toth’s ad. “Crenshaw even voted to bring thousands more from Afghanistan to our neighborhoods.”
Crenshaw’s campaign called Toth’s ad
disingenuous and disrespectful. The congressman has supported resettling
Afghans who assisted U.S. forces in the wake of the Taliban takeover of
the country in 2021, with proper vetting, through Special Immigrant
Visas.
“After the Taliban seized control, our allies
who survived were forced into hiding, hunted by terrorists, or murdered
for their cooperation with the United States,” the Crenshaw campaign
said in a statement. “Abandoning them was a moral failure — and
pretending their protection is reckless immigration policy only
compounds that disgrace.”
Implications
Texas’ Muslim community has grown in size and
in political power over the years. The first two Muslim state
legislators, both Democrats, were elected to their positions in 2022.
But Muslims are an increasingly swingy political group. The Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Survey
found that 42% of Muslim adults lean Republican, and that while the
majority have preferences on immigration and the size of government that
align with Democrats, majorities also have social beliefs on sexuality
and gender identity, for example, that are more aligned with
Republicans.
Texas lawmakers who traffic in anti-Muslim rhetoric could be isolating potential voters.
“[Anti-Muslim rhetoric] is a familiar pattern
in Texas politics,” Rizvi said. “They’re just recycling the same
political tactics, but intensifying it through their own political
advocacy. But at the same time, they’re also seeing how Muslim and
non-Muslim communities have been responding. We’re also organized. We’re
also effective.”
