{"id":453195,"date":"2026-10-01T13:42:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T13:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/453195\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T13:42:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T13:42:13","slug":"texas-lawmakers-brainstorm-anti-muslim-laws-at-faith-fest-the-more-uncomfortable-they-are-the-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/453195\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas lawmakers brainstorm anti-Muslim laws at Faith Fest: \u2018The more uncomfortable they are, the better’"},"content":{"rendered":"

CEDAR PARK – At Texas Faith Fest on Saturday, conservative state lawmakers and pastors brainstormed how to stop Muslims<\/a> from living and practicing their faith in the state.<\/p>\n

“The more uncomfortable they are, the better,” Rep. Keresa Richardson, R-McKinney, said during a panel called “Don’t Sharia My Texas.”<\/p>\n

Speakers at the annual event hosted by advocacy group Texas Values<\/a> said they wanted to prevent public vouchers from going to Islamic schools<\/a>. They called for banning schools, prisons and other public institutions from serving halal food and for banning calls to prayer from playing over loudspeakers where non-Muslims could hear.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Hundreds of private schools are being shut out of Texas’ voucher program<\/a><\/p>\n

The slew of policy proposals provides more evidence that Texas Republicans’ increasing focus<\/a> on Islam won’t stop at rhetoric and angry press releases. Rather, lawmakers and lobbyists advocated for reshaping the relationship between government and religion, encouraging the state to promote Christianity and discourage Islam.<\/p>\n

Several religious liberty scholars said in interviews they worry that allowing the government to use its authority to openly favor one religion over another would not only deprive Muslims of rights bestowed by the First Amendment, but also weaken freedom of speech and religion for everyone.<\/p>\n

Muslim people make up about 2% of the population in Texas and 3% in the Houston metro area, according to Pew’s 2023-2024 Religious Landscape Study<\/a>. They’ve become an increasing focus of Texas politicians since a mosque north of Dallas broadcast its plans to build a “Muslim-centric” neighborhood.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott denounced that project, directing a series of state agencies to investigate it. He went on to call for funding freezes and investigations into airports<\/a> that had facilities intended for Muslim pre-prayer washing. At the Republican National Convention<\/a> in Dallas earlier this month, he made a sweeping promise to “fully ban sharia law in Texas.”<\/p>\n

Sharia describes the religious tenets and practices of Muslims. Muslim-majority countries may base their laws on the teachings of the Quran, as some Christian-majority countries do with the Bible.<\/p>\n

But Islam itself does not dictate a single, agreed-upon legal code. Muslim scholars debate how to interpret and apply Islamic scripture, and generally agree<\/a> that it requires believers to follow the law of the land in which they live.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: What is sharia?<\/a><\/p>\n

A blueprint for future policies<\/p>\n

During the anti-sharia panel, lawmakers made clear that they were affronted by the number of Muslims living in Texas and the tenets of their faith. “We are basically being extorted by a hostile civilization, hostile alien civilization whose intent is to do nothing less but undermine our founding principles,” said Wise County Republican Rep. Andy Hopper.<\/p>\n

He said lawmakers have a responsibility to “peel out all of these little infestations of ideas that are contrary to our way of life” by ensuring Texas students learn “how awful Islam is.”<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The “Don’t Sharia My Texas” panel at Texas Faith Fest in Cedar Park, Texas discusses religious freedom on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2026. (Jack Myer\/Contributor)<\/p>\n

But those lawmakers also acknowledged that the law currently protects Muslims’ freedom to practice their religion. In conversations with the Houston Chronicle, they said that the policies they propose would apply fairly to people of all faiths.<\/p>\n

Rep. Brent Money, R-Greenville, suggested that the state ban public institutions, like prisons, from providing any kind of religiously required food, which would also bar kosher offerings for Jewish people. “Let’s just not use state resources to provide religious foods in state institutions,” he said.<\/p>\n

YOM KIPPUR: Houston rabbis offer an antidote to a divided culture<\/a><\/p>\n

Elizabeth Reiner Platt, director of the Law, Rights and Religion project at Union Theological Seminary, said such a proposal would still conflict with federal law. A 2000 law<\/a> signed by President Bill Clinton bars prisons from stopping someone from practicing their religion, unless officials show they are doing so in the least restrictive way and furthering a compelling state interest.<\/p>\n

Rep. Richardson suggested banning public broadcasts of the call to prayer. She told the Chronicle her goal wasn’t to stop Muslims from praying, but to prevent an inconvenience to everyone else. “I’m not telling you you can’t pray five times a day, but just don’t, don’t disrupt the rest of us while you do it,” she said.<\/p>\n

Francis Beckwith, a professor of philosophy and church-state issues at Baylor University, said a ban on public prayer broadcasts could withstand legal scrutiny if it applied to all faiths. “But if it permits prayers of other faiths while excluding Muslim prayers, the policy is unlikely to survive judicial scrutiny,” he said. A litany of Supreme Court decisions has held that the government can’t single out one religion with special restrictions, Beckwith said.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: 4 Islamic schools admitted to Texas voucher program after suing comptroller’s office<\/a><\/p>\n

To Platt, such a policy wouldn’t be constitutional, even if it didn’t explicitly single out Muslims, because lawmakers made it clear that their goal is to target Muslim prayer calls specifically. “There’s a distinction between a neutral noise ordinance and a law that is intentionally crafted to suppress a particular religious exercise or religious community,” she said.<\/p>\n

Questioning Islam<\/p>\n

Panelists at Faith Fest went further than just suggesting that the government restrict religious practices. They also questioned whether Islam deserved religious protections at all.<\/p>\n

“I think there’s a very real conversation we need to have of whether Islam is a religion or not,” Money said during the anti-sharia panel. In an interview afterward, he said there was nothing “metaphysical” about Islam.<\/p>\n

“People think Islam is a religion, and that’s where they have had such traction under our freedom of religion laws,” John Bean, a Texas Values board member, told the Chronicle in an interview. He said that the Quran instructs adherents to kill all non-Muslims, even when Muslims say otherwise. Mainstream Muslim scholars say<\/a> the passages used to support<\/a> such claims are about ongoing military conflicts and not a broad call to violence.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Houston Muslims say Republicans have ‘abandoned’ them amid anti-Sharia push<\/a><\/p>\n

“We basically have to make it so uncomfortable for them, and make them feel so unwelcome, that they want to leave,” he said. “That’s my ultimate goal.”<\/p>\n

\"Melissa<\/p>\n

Melissa Hafer of Leander and her 6-year-old daughter Sydney browse buttons and brochures at Turning Point USA’s booth at Texas Faith Fest in Cedar Park, Texas on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2026. (Jack Meyer, Contributor)<\/p>\n

Asma Uddin, a religious liberty lawyer and the author of the 2019 book “When Islam Is Not a Religion,” said she’s worried that such rhetoric has grown more popular. In an email to the Chronicle, she said arguments that Islam is a political ideology or separate legal system, not a religion, gained some popularity after Sept. 11, 2001, but took time to move from “fringe anti-Muslim circles” into the mainstream.<\/p>\n

She argued that other religions, like Christianity and Judaism, include teachings about law, politics, or family life. If the government were to pick and choose which religions were authentically spiritual and which were too political, it would get into “precisely the theological line-drawing business that our constitutional tradition tries to keep it out of,” she wrote.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Houston Muslim leaders tout voter mobilization as they bash new social studies curriculum<\/a><\/p>\n

“You do not protect religious freedom by deciding which religions deserve it,” Uddin said. “Once we give government the authority to decide that a faith is ‘too political,’ too unfamiliar, too threatening, or too different from our conception of what religion is supposed to look like, we have created a principle that can be turned against other religious communities as well.”<\/p>\n

But for the speakers at Faith Fest, the best America for people of any faith was one rooted in biblical truth.<\/p>\n

“It’s not about picking on them,” Rep. Richardson said of the anti-sharia policies she was proposing. “We want to witness to our Muslim neighbors. We want to win them to Christ.”<\/p>\n

Subscribe<\/p>\n

There’s more to Houston with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25\u00a2.<\/a><\/p>\n

This article originally published at Texas lawmakers brainstorm anti-Muslim laws at Faith Fest: ‘The more uncomfortable they are, the better’<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CEDAR PARK – At Texas Faith Fest on Saturday, conservative state lawmakers and pastors brainstormed how to stop…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2536,155741,40066,155740,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-453195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-cedar-park","tag-keresa-richardson","tag-muslims","tag-public-institutions","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}