Why We Wrote This<\/p>\n
In a case echoing far beyond this North Texas city, critics say a planned Islamic group housing development is exclusionary, while supporters call the opposition political targeting, sparking a heated legal and civil rights debate.<\/p>\n
Much of the opposition has centered around accusations of exclusionary practices, with critics saying it will be a \u201cno-go zone\u201d for non-Muslims, something the project\u2019s developers deny.<\/p>\n
Republicans have warned about \u201csharia cities\u201d for years, with legislators at the state and federal levels introducing legislation<\/a> to prevent sharia<\/a>, or Islamic law, from superseding U.S. laws and customs, though there is no evidence that this is occurring. Nowhere has the issue been more prominent than in Texas, where opposition to The Meadow has become a rallying cry for GOP officials.<\/p>\n This month, the state Republican Party added to its official platform a demand<\/a> that the \u201cadvocacy or implementation\u201d of sharia law be declared \u201ca seditious criminal act, worthy of criminal punishment, disqualification for public, military, and law enforcement service, denaturalization, and [deportation].\u201d<\/p>\n Last fall, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law<\/a> a bill he said would stop housing developments in Texas from using religion \u201cas a form of segregation.\u201d State Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for the U.S. Senate, has launched multiple probes and lawsuits against The Meadow. The GOP nominee to replace Mr. Paxton as attorney general has vowed to \u201cstop sharia law in Texas<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSharia law won\u2019t be operating in this compound,\u201d says Ashley Loudon, one of the conservative activists gathered at the mosque in Plano. \u201cSharia law is not compatible with Western civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n Muslim groups call the opposition to The Meadow an Islamophobic \u201cwitch hunt<\/a>\u201d and accuse Republican politicians of fearmongering for electoral gain. They note that Muslims are entitled to the same First Amendment protections as other religious groups in the United States, and say the development will follow the same laws and regulations as any other planned community in Texas. Supporters were heartened by a district court ruling<\/a> in May in the developers\u2019 favor, though that decision is under appeal.<\/p>\n When size matters<\/p>\n Texas has one of the largest Muslim populations in the country, at more than 300,000<\/a>. Still, in a state of some 31 million people, that\u2019s only about 1% of the total population<\/a>, and the proportion hasn\u2019t been growing \u2013 despite claims about the \u201cIslamification\u201d of Texas. In the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, the number of Muslims actually decreased<\/a> between 2010 and 2020, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives.<\/p>\n But the Muslim population grew in Collin County \u2013 home to the East Plano Islamic Center and The Meadow.<\/p>\n Khalid Hamideh, a spokesperson for the Islamic Association of North Texas, says that The Meadow never intended to be a closed community. \u201cThey never filed any kind of, like, deed restriction record saying, \u2018Only Muslims can live here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnybody\u2019s welcome,\u201d he adds. \u201cThey did want to build a mosque and a Muslim school,\u201d he adds. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with that? Nothing. Is it illegal? It definitely is not. And the Justice Department investigated, and they came to the same conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n Sameer Siddiqui, the president of the East Plano Islamic Center, says he would welcome an honest dialogue with critics. \u201cI would like them to learn about us, and about Muslim people,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \t\t\t \t\t\tHenry Gass\/The Christian Science Monitor\n<\/p>\n Sameer Siddiqui, president of the East Plano Islamic Center, on March 20, 2026. Senior officials in Texas allege that the mosque is behind an effort to establish “sharia law” in the state through a real estate project. “I feel disappointed that we\u2019re listening to this rhetoric,\u201d he says. \u201cMost of it is not factual.” <\/p>\n But that kind of conversation has been hard to come by in Texas. Residents have flooded city council and county commissioner meetings about The Meadow, raising concerns about everything from the strain on utilities to noise complaints about early morning calls to prayer.<\/p>\n At one such meeting<\/a>, in neighboring Hunt County in March, a resident said he would not have moved to the area had he known that \u201cland purchases were [already] being talked about, how we\u2019re going to supply water to a 4,000- or 5,000-[person] community.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want Islam in my backyard,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cI don\u2019t want to listen to a prayer tower call me to pray on a belief system I don\u2019t believe in.\u201d<\/p>\n Daniel Ray, general counsel Hunt County, told commissioners at the meeting that a map submitted by The Meadow\u2019s developers had some problems \u2013 problems, he hastened to add, \u201cbased on technical, regulatory and legal deficiencies in the application itself. [They are] not based on race or religion.\u201d<\/p>\n The commissioners went on to vote unanimously against The Meadow\u2019s preliminary map. In response, the room burst into applause.<\/p>\n Resistance to Muslim immigrant communities<\/p>\n Earlier this year, amid tensions around the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, several Republican lawmakers caused an online stir by posting pointedly intolerant statements about Muslim immigrants.<\/p>\n Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee wrote on X<\/a> that \u201cMuslims don\u2019t belong in American society,\u201d adding later<\/a>, \u201cAmerica and Islam are incompatible.\u201d Florida Rep. Randy Fine posted<\/a> that \u201cthe choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.\u201d Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who is running for governor, reposted<\/a> a picture of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim, next to a picture of the World Trade Center being hit by a plane on 9\/11, and wrote: \u201cThe enemy is inside the gates.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama walks through the U.S. Capitol, June 2, 2026. <\/p>\n These comments drew widespread condemnation<\/a> from Democrats, as well as some Republicans. They did not, however, draw a rebuke from President Donald Trump, who at the start of his first term in 2016 imposed a ban on immigration from several majority-Muslim countries. His current administration has imposed near-total travel bans on 39 countries<\/a>, many of which have large Muslim populations.<\/p>\n In December, GOP lawmakers in the House created a \u201cSharia-Free America Caucus\u201d that now boasts more than 50 members<\/a> from 22 states. Caucus co-founder Chip Roy of Texas said at the group\u2019s launch that \u201cSharia adherents masquerading as \u2018refugees\u2019 \u2013 and in many cases, sleeper cells connected to terrorist organizations \u2013 are threatening the American way of life.\u201d<\/p>\n Some Republicans have been calling for stronger laws against admitting immigrants, Muslim or otherwise, who they say show little interest in assimilating, or in some cases express hostility to American values.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy do we continue to import people who hate us?\u201d Mr. Roy asked this spring, when introducing a bill called the MAMDANI Act<\/a>. The bill would deport, denaturalize, or deny entry to anyone belonging to a \u201csocialist party, a communist party, the Chinese Communist Party, or Islamic fundamentalist party.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a far cry from the message put out by President George W. Bush in the tense aftermath of the 9\/11 attacks. Visiting the Islamic Center in Washington, Mr. Bush declared<\/a> \u201cIslam is peace,\u201d and that Muslims in the U.S. should not face hostility. \u201cThose who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don\u2019t represent the best of America,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \t\t\t President George W. Bush delivers a statement as he stands with Muslim religious leaders during a visit to the Islamic Center of Washington, Sept. 16, 2001. The event came less than a week after the 9\/11 terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n To some historians, the rhetoric on the right today bears a strong resemblance to other nativist movements that arose after big surges in immigration. In the early 1900s, some Americans worried that the nation\u2019s ethnic stock<\/a> \u2013 then predominantly English, German, and Nordic \u2013 was being diluted by Jews and Catholics from Southern and Eastern Europe. \u201cThe claims that [migrants] will prove unassimilable have been made in every anti-immigrant movement in American history,\u201d says Rogers Smith, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies citizenship and race.<\/p>\n In a 2025 survey conducted for the Manhattan Institute<\/a>, 57% of Trump voters said Arab and Muslim immigrants had \u201cnot done enough to assimilate [into] American culture and values.\u201d<\/p>\n The Muslim community itself sees the matter differently: In one 2015 survey<\/a>, 90% of Muslim respondents said they were \u201chappy to be Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s no evidence that today\u2019s immigrants, including Muslims, are less interested in assimilating than previous generations, Professor Smith says. What has changed, he adds, is that the U.S. has become \u201cmore celebratory of diversity and equality than ever before.\u201d<\/p>\n And while the left has long celebrated diversity of all kinds as an American strength, some conservatives argue it has gone too far in recent years. They denounce an unchecked flood of illegal and legal immigration that they say has weakened societal cohesion by undermining a sense of shared American identity.<\/p>\n Adherents of National Conservatism, or NatCon, a faction that counts Vice President JD Vance among its allies, reject the idea that America is a nation bound solely by democratic ideals \u2013 such as the Declaration of Independence \u2013 to which anyone can accede. Instead, they emphasize that European Christian settlers<\/a> founded the U.S. and say this Western heritage also should be specifically celebrated and preserved.<\/p>\n \t\t\t Vice President JD Vance speaks during a gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference, in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Feb. 20, 2025.<\/p>\n Too much diversity, they contend, can ultimately destabilize or dilute a nation to the point of its extinction. Yoram Hazony, the NatCon movement\u2019s Israeli-born convener, argues that once a country surpasses 15% foreign-born residents<\/a> \u2013 the current level in the U.S. \u2013 it \u201cliterally starts falling apart.\u201d<\/p>\n A darker strain of thought on the right, extensively amplified by trillionaire Elon Musk on his social media platform X, posits that there has been a left-wing conspiracy to import non-white immigrants<\/a> to replace white, native-born Americans, intentionally changing both the country\u2019s demographics and its political loyalties to favor Democrats, as supposedly has happened in France and other European countries.<\/p>\n Questions of discrimination, assimilation, and respect<\/p>\n For Muslims in Texas, anti-Islam rhetoric is nothing new \u2013 but the recent surge has been unnerving nonetheless.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s more extreme than we\u2019ve ever seen it,\u201d says Mr. Hamideh, the Islamic Association spokesperson. \u201cYou get politicians talking about, \u2018How can we ban Islam? How can we get rid of Muslims?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Hamideh points to a political meeting<\/a> held this spring at Light of the World Church, an evangelical megachurch in Fort Worth, where a Republican state lawmaker floated the idea of banning the practice of Islam in Texas by classifying it as a political system rather than a religion.<\/p>\n The event was hosted by For Liberty & Justice<\/a>, the church\u2019s political arm. Carlos Turcios, the group\u2019s director of operations in Tarrant County, is among those opposed to The Meadow. He wants the project stopped because he believes it violates anti-discrimination laws.<\/p>\n Mr. Turcios says he doesn\u2019t believe that being Muslim is inherently antithetical to being American. But it all comes down to assimilation, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can be a Muslim, a practicing Muslim, and still assimilate in America and still respect American laws,\u201d he adds. \u201cUnfortunately, a lot of people that have come here from the Muslim world … don\u2019t have the same mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n The Meadow\u2019s developers, a private company set up by EPIC, say that the residences will be open to people of all faiths, though the local school will be Islamic. The Justice Department said when it closed its 2025 investigation<\/a> that the group had agreed to revise its marketing materials to comply with the Fair Housing Act. The developer, Community Capital Partners, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n Authorities in Texas secured a legal victory in March, however, when a judge issued a restraining order<\/a> against a municipal water utility, which the state accuses of helping the developers bypass regulations.<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:https:https:\/\/images.csmonitor.com\/csm\/2026\/06\/0626_NTXISLAM_Siddiqui.jpg?alias=original_600\")
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