Texas Republicans Plan to Banish Muslims

At the True Texas Project conference in Fort Worth, per the Spokesman, Texas State Representative Andy Hopper (R-Wise County) stood in front of 350 people and asked them if they’d like to banish Muslims, and the audience responded with applause.

The conference featured anti-Muslim legislation that Texas Republicans are planning to push forward in 2027. State senators and representatives showed up for sessions like “Strategy For Stopping Islam” and “Islamization and TX Lege.”

As State Rep. Salman Bhojani (D, the first Muslim elected to the Texas House) told the Dallas Morning News: “When sitting lawmakers discuss these ideas at an organized conference, it’s no longer fringe. It’s the actual agenda.”

Here’s the actual blueprint they laid out, and no I’m not making any of this up:

• Ban the sale of halal foods

• Ban hijabs, niqabs, and burqas in public schools

• Require school lessons on the “violence and political domination of Islam”

• Ramp up financial and regulatory investigations of Muslim organizations

• Shutter Islamic charter schools

• Deny state contracts to companies that employ H-1B visa holders

• Refuse to issue professional licenses to Muslims (this would strip thousands of physicians, nurses, teachers, and other professionals)

• Define Islam as a “political ideology rather than a religion” so the First Amendment doesn’t apply

• Have Texas take over federal immigration enforcement so the state can “forcibly remove” people

• Bring back banishment as a form of punishment

State Sen. Bob Hall (R-Edgewood), said blocking Sharia is the state’s “top priority.” He warned the room: “It’s coming after us. We’ve got to get in the way of it, and we’ve got to stop it.”

State Rep. Andy Hopper (R-Wise County) is the one who laid out most of the plan, referencing a toolbox of things they would be able to do to stop Muslims. His words: “There are so many ways and opportunities we can take to make life difficult for people who should not be here and are trying to thwart our existence. We have a lot of tools in the toolbox.”

State Rep. Brent Money also spoke. State Rep. Wes Virdell (R-Kerrville), who sits in the House “Sharia Free Texas” caucus, said he won’t vote for measures that violate the First Amendment. Congratulations, Wes, for meeting the lowest possible constitutional bar (extreme sarcasm font).

“Texas Muslims are not a threat to this state. We are part of it. We built it. We serve in its military, run its businesses, teach its children. We deserve better than a blueprint that treats us like an enemy.” said State Rep. Salman Bhojani (D, Tarrant County).

University of Texas religious liberty scholar Douglas Laycock called it “egregious anti-Muslim hatred, stirred up for political reasons to appeal to the base.”

Khalid Hamideh, legal counsel for the Islamic Association of North Texas: “Our community is fearful, but we’re not going anywhere. We love America just as much, or even more, than these fear-mongerers do. This is our home.”

I hope that you know this wave of anti-Muslim legislation didn’t appear out of nowhere. The Center for the Study of Organized Hate traced the surge in Islamophobia in Texas back to 2025 when Governor Greg Abbott retweeted an anti-Muslim influencer calling EPIC City (a Muslim-centric residential development in Collin County) a “Sharia city.” That retweet unleashed a flood of anti-Muslim hate across Texas on social media and proposed bills. Abbott also signed a law banning Muslim residential developments last September and designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a “foreign terrorist organization.” Abbott’s spokesman told the Dallas Morning News the governor plans to sign a “complete ban on Sharia law in Texas” in the 2027 legislative session. When Greg Abbott finds someone he wants to pick on, he really digs in. Ken Paxton’s filed lawsuits against multiple Islamic organizations also, so it’s not just Abbott behind all of this.

That’s what’s most concerning about the Fort Worth conference. It’s not just a bunch of fringe freaks that don’t leave their homes cooking up a scheme no one’s going to hear about. They are the ones coming up with the ideas that become reality through legislation.

Let’s start with the clothes, because we’re not about to have men dictate what we’re going to wear. Catholic nuns cover their hair with habits, Orthodox Jewish married women cover their hair with tichels or sheitels (wigs), Muslim women cover their hair with hijabs. All three of these groups of women are exercising their faith with what they wear, and the First Amendment protects every one of them. Since when does a government decree dress code for civilians? I expect this to face legal challenges but that’s an issue in itself. Republicans throw 100 horrid things at a wall and see what sticks. Just because this one part (about clothing) may fail legally doesn’t mean other laws won’t succeed.

Now onto the food bans, which I’ve written about before. Halal and kosher are both almost identical practices. You have specific guidelines for slaughter and no pig products. Ban halal at Texas grocers and you basically ban kosher too.

Only 2% of Texans identify as Muslim and less than half a percent of Texans identify as trans. These are the two groups of people the Republican Party of Texas have decided are the greatest threats to the state because bullies always pick on the most vulnerable. Republicans have to invent enemies because they can’t actually solve any of the real problems this state faces WHICH THEY CREATED. Making up threats about hijabs and selling them is way easier for these guys than actually fixing the electric grid or admitting to voters that they sold our state off to data centers. Distraction is the whole game.

All this is why I chuckle when Republicans bring up the Taliban or ISIS. Republicans have spent 20 years telling Americans that ISIS and the Taliban are barbaric because they tell women what they can and can’t wear in public… while Texas Republicans are literally proposing to tell Muslim women what they can and can’t wear.

Republicans say they’re all about small government, but here they are laying out legislation so they can outlaw an entire religion. They’ll be checking on what your kid is eating in school or what little girls are wearing to class and still pretend like they’re about less government regulations.

The religious group Texas should be worried about is Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is the movement that funded and defended hate groups like the KKK, and it’s the exact same crowd now demonizing immigrants while playing the victim. If Texas Republicans actually cared about protecting our state from a violent religious movement, that’s where they’d start.

I was born in New Orleans and raised in Houston by my Pakistani parents. I’ve known nothing but American life. I was a sophomore in high school when the planes hit the towers. I watched it happen from my classroom, and honestly at first I wasn’t sure it was real, it looked more like a movie than something happening in America. I wasn’t sure what was happening, if it was a movie we were watching, but I was certain it wasn’t happening here in America, right? Wrong. Everything changed on 9/11. Before that day, I never felt like an “other.” After it, I did. It was the way strangers and neighbors and classmates started talking to me, or talking at me, like I was suddenly something to be scared of. They were all learning their talking points (or reasons why they hated me) because of a media narrative that George W. Bush started that never stopped. I’ve watched this exact wave of anti-Muslim hatred rise, fall a little, and rise again over the last 25 years. The next rise is happening right now.

Islamophobia, to me, is part of a marketing scheme and it’s a dependable tactic they’ve used when they were losing public favor before. Now, Republicans are watching Gina Hinojosa poll within one point of Greg Abbott and Vikki Goodwin up two points on Dan Patrick since the senseless THC ban. They suck at governance and they’ve got no record to run on. So they’ve propped up politicians so cartoonishly evil I don’t even understand how they win elections, and now these unqualified DEI hires need somebody for the base to be scared of. Muslims are the pick this cycle.

Meanwhile, American Muslim public servants like Abdul El-Sayed and Zohran Mamdani are running on affordability, healthcare, and housing, and winning over voters that Republicans thought had checked out. Abdul and Zohran aren’t making headlines by cheating on their wives, or making millions of dollars in shady deals. That’s why you’ll notice Republicans constantly trying to talk down about them.

I wish Texas Republicans cared about stopping hunger or school shootings even half as much as they care about stopping Muslims from practicing their own religion. There are real problems to work on. The Epstein files. Actual rapists and killers walking around free. An electric grid that can’t handle a Texas summer. 200 school districts down to four-day weeks because they can’t afford a fifth. Instead, they’re workshopping how to make life “miserable” for 600,000 Texans who have done absolutely nothing to them.

To the Republican Muslims that may find this article, know that you aren’t the exception. You may be a token “good” Muslim to them, but tokens get spent. The Republican party sees you as the enemy they are fighting against…use your vote to fight back.

1. Read the reporting by Sarah Bahari at the Spokesman.

2. Support CAIR-Texas and Muslim civil rights organizations in your area.

3. On November 3, vote Gina Hinojosa for Governor against Greg Abbott. Vote James Talarico for U.S. Senate against Ken Paxton. Vote Vikki Goodwin for Lieutenant Governor against Dan Patrick. Vote Democrat down-ballot. Register at votetexas.gov by October 5.

4. Send this to a Texan who thinks “freedom” is a Republican brand. Show them how Texas Republicans are butchering the First Amendment.

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See y’all tomorrow.