Flags fly at half staff in honor of Harris County Precinct 4 Deputy Constable Maher Husseini as community members and law enforcement gather for funeral prayers at Masjid Al Salem Mosque, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Spring. Husseini was shot and killed in his vehicle while heading to work along Richmond Avenue on Tuesday, Sept. 3, in southwest Houston.
Jason Fochtman/Staff photographer
Faizan Atiq remembers a time when his neighbor, U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls, stood with Fort Bend County’s sizable Muslim community.
As the county’s Republican sheriff, Nehls touted his connections with prominent local mosques such as the Maryam Islamic Center, where Atiq worships, as part of what made Fort Bend “one of the safest counties” in Texas. When Nehls ran for Congress in 2020, he established a “Muslim Americans for Nehls” coalition, saying the community’s “contributions to American society” were “immeasurable.”
This year, though, anti-Islamic rhetoric has risen to the top of the GOP platform, and Nehls co-sponsored the “No Shari’a Act” introduced by U.S. Rep. Keith Self, R-McKinney. The bill would prohibit the application of Sharia law in America, though “Sharia” merely refers to the religious and ethical guidance of Islam and is not codified into any American legal system.
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Houston-area Muslims say Nehls and other elected Republicans have betrayed tens of thousands of their constituents as GOP politicians use ordinary developments like new halal restaurants or mosques to warn of an “Islamic takeover of Texas” and signal their intent to make the issue a focus of the upcoming legislative session.
What was once a fringe position for Republicans has firmly taken hold in the halls of power, as GOP leaders consider ways to clamp down on Muslims’ ability to publicly practice their faith, such as by blocking Muslim-led developments and religious accommodations.
In the diverse Houston region, Atiq said his representatives’ failure to publicly defend their Muslim constituents speaks volumes.
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“We feel abandoned for sure,” Atiq said.
Nehls’ office didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Fort Bend Republicans silent
For all of the clamor about the “Islamification of Texas,” Muslims make up just 2% of the state’s population, according to the Pew Research Center.
Still, the Houston area’s Muslim population has grown in recent decades, particularly in Harris and Fort Bend counties, which were home to a combined 74 mosques in 2020, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives.
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Fort Bend is especially religiously diverse, said Kerby Goff, a religion researcher at Rice University. Muslims account for about 6% of the population there and have developed positive relationships with other faith communities in the area, he said.
Unlike in Harris County, however, most of Fort Bend County’s legislative delegation is Republican, putting the lawmakers in an awkward position between the party line and the demographic reality of their districts.
State Rep. Gary Gates, R-Richmond, said he’s not sure what Sharia law is and isn’t aware of anyone trying to codify it into Texas law. But he stopped short of denouncing his party’s rhetoric.
“There are issues that other people have that may not be my priority, but if they feel passionate about it then go for it, present a bill and see if you’ve got the votes,” Gates said. “If some Republicans who live in a different area of the state where there is more of an attempt for Sharia law, I could see where that might be offensive to some and if they want to put some limits, good for them.”
Fort Bend Rep. Gary Gates answers Pleasantville residents’ concerns over his purchase of the Pleasant Village Apartments during a town hall meeting Saturday, March 5, 2022, in Houston.
Yi-Chin Lee, Photographer / Staff photographer
State Rep. Stan Kitzman, R-Pattison, whose district covers a sliver of Fort Bend County and is part of a Sharia Free Texas Caucus that state House members formed this year, lost his primary for reelection in March.
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Kitzman and two other Republican state lawmakers whose districts overlap Fort Bend County — Rep. Matt Morgan and Sen. Lois Kolkhorst — did not respond to requests for comment.
In a statement, Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican whose district extends into Fort Bend, touted her 2017 bill that bans Sharia or “other foreign legal systems” from being used in Texas family courts. She signaled support for further measures to “vigorously defend Texas sovereignty” from “any foreign legal system” in the legislative session that starts in January.
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Muslims have become part of the fabric of Fort Bend County, making the lack of support from the area’s Republican officials feel like a betrayal, said Sameeha Rizvi, the Texas Policy and Advocacy Coordinator of CAIR Action, the political arm of the Council on American Islamic Relations.
Rizvi, 25, was born and raised in Fort Bend County, attended the University of Texas at Austin and knows no other home but Texas.
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“There are people that are so proud about being Texan but they aren’t indigenous or native to this land, they also came from another country or continent,” Rizvi said. “What makes you able to say that I am less Texan than you, because I follow a different faith or my skin color looks different?”
GOP focus on Muslims
The extent to which anti-Islamic fervor has gripped the GOP was evident earlier this summer at the Texas Republican Party Convention, hosted at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston.
Gov. Greg Abbott said in his address that the party needed “to leave no doubt by totally banning Sharia law” in the 2027 legislative session, and there were multiple panels on “Sharia law” that framed the fight against Islam as a battle for the soul of Texas.
Muslim Republican delegates were told they had no place in the party, and Muslim state Reps. Suleman Lalani, D-Sugar Land, and Salman Bhojani, D-Euless, were pictured in a presentation that said “Texas or Pakistan? Your state is being radically transformed.”
Lalani said the incident stood in stark contrast to his experience in Fort Bend County, where Republicans historically have courted Muslim support because of their voting power.
“Our growing population and influence in business and civic organizations made us very attractive to the GOP,” Lalani said. “But now they still ask to come to the mosque while remaining silent when Abbott, (Attorney General Ken) Paxton and others attack our community.”
The convention was just one example of Republican lawmakers using the increased visibility of Muslims in Texas to push claims that they’re imposing Sharia law on the state.
Some 38 Republicans in the state House this year formed the Sharia Free Caucus, including Kitzman and four other lawmakers from the Houston area: Rep. Briscoe Cain, R- Deer Park, Rep. Lacey Hull, R-Houston, Steve Toth, R-Woodlands, and Terri Leo Wilson, R- Galveston.
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Once the focus of far-right politicians like former Tarrant County GOP Chair Bo French, the issue burst into the mainstream early last year when Abbott launched a regulatory attack on the East Plano Islamic Center, which was developing a large master-planned community known as “EPIC City” around a mosque in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Abbott also designated CAIR, the Muslim civil rights group, a terrorist organization – something CAIR stringently denies.
Barely a year after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called for French to leave the party over his “antisemitism and religious bigotry,” the party has coalesced around French — who has said the GOP should openly embrace Islamophobia and remove Muslims from the state — in his race for Railroad Commissioner.
Patrick has made “preventing Sharia law” the first interim charge he gave the Texas Senate ahead of the 2027 legislative session, and lawmakers have proposed bans on halal foods and hijabs in an effort to make Muslims’ lives “miserable.”
More recently, Abbott forced DFW Airport to abandon plans for an ablution room which would allow Muslims to wash before prayer, and has attempted to make Bush International Airport in Houston do the same. He has asked the Department of Justice to investigate both airports.
The ablution room at George Bush Intercontinental Airport has come under fire from Gov. Greg Abbott, who claims it’s an example of religious discrimination.
Adrian Ashford/Houston Chronicle
While attacks against Muslims are sure to alienate some voting blocs, including Muslims themselves, Republican strategist Vinny Minchillo said it’s savvy politics for a party trying to rally its base ahead of the November midterms.
Developments like EPIC City strike fear into conservative voters who are quick to believe claims that Muslims are building a “Sharia compound,” as Abbott described the development, in their backyard, he said.
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“It’s a legitimate fear,” Minchillo said. “Whether (Sharia law) is happening or not, I couldn’t tell you, but are people afraid of it? Yes, 100%, and perception is reality.”
The focus on “Sharia law” is a distraction from actual issues that have taken root over 30 years of Republican leadership, said Nabila Mansoor, executive director of the Asian Texans for Justice Action Fund.
“We’re fighting high inflation, an economy that is going south and our school systems need a lot of work,” said Mansoor, a Fort Bend resident. “But let’s not do that, let’s take one community and vilify them so we don’t actually have to answer to the community for all the failures that we’ve done.”
Muslims targeted in public
The primary uproar over “Sharia law” in Texas has occurred in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which is also home to a growing number of Muslims.
Earlier this month, hundreds of McKinney residents packed the Dallas suburb’s city council chambers for a routine meeting to approve the expansion of a local mosque. An elderly woman physically accosted a former McKinney mayor for speaking in defense of the mosque and Texas Monthly reported that Muslim speakers were called “pigs” and “dogs” by others at the hearing.
Self, the McKinney congressman, spoke against the expansion, as did the city’s GOP state representative, Keresa Richardson.
“We must STOP the spread of Sharia in Texas,” Self wrote on X in a post about the meeting.
Houston hasn’t been exempt from incidents of bigotry.
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Earlier this year, a man was arrested for driving to the new Ismaili Center in Montrose and threatening to “kill all the Muslims and Jews.”
In Conroe, two Muslim women were confronted at a grocery store this summer by a woman in medical scrubs who told them they “needed to leave” because America was “not a Muslim country” but a “Christian country.”
After the video went viral, the woman raised more than $125,000 from conservative supporters around the country.
Mansoor said such insidious discrimination creates a chilling effect within Muslim communities, even during polite interactions.
“That’s what is so vicious about Islamophobia, is that you meet someone and they can be perfectly cordial, and I’m thinking in my heart ‘how do they really feel about me?’” Mansoor said. “That’s always playing in the back of my mind, and it’s not a good way to live.”