Ghulam Kehar rose before dawn in early June to attend the day’s first prayer at his local mosque in Irving, Texas, before heading off for a monthslong deployment with the U.S. Coast Guard.
He had been deployed before, but this time was different. He felt apprehensive about leaving his wife and four children behind in Texas, even for a short while.
Rhetorical attacks on Muslims by top Texas leaders had become more pronounced, and seemed to be trickling down. At his mosque, the Valley Ranch Islamic Center, and others across the state, congregants and religious leaders swapped stories of ugly comments directed at them while praying in public or sitting in public parks.
In recent months, a man was arrested and charged with making a terroristic threat at a major new Islamic center in Houston. Not far away, in Conroe, a woman told Muslim shoppers at a grocery store they were “not welcome in this state or this country” — after losing her job, she received nearly $250,000 from supporters after video of her comments circulated widely. In McKinney, a Dallas suburb, a woman grabbed a former mayor and stuffed paper with an anti-Muslim message down his shirt during a heated City Council hearing over a mosque expansion.
“Leaving them alone in this environment, it would be a little worrisome,” Mr. Kehar said of his family. “It’s just the fear of what’s being spewed out there.”
He arranged for his family to join him on his deployment near the Canadian border as soon as they could get there.
Mr. Kehar, who grew up in California, is part of a growing number of Muslims who moved to Texas in recent decades in search of good schools, affordable homes and a thriving community of fellow believers. The Dallas-Fort Worth area has been a particularly strong magnet for families like his. Dozens of mosques have opened. Some are expanding. Others, like the glittering DeSoto House of Peace, south of Dallas, aim to provide new anchors for Muslim communities in Texas.
“This is the place to be for American Muslims,” said Tammam Alwan, who moved to Irving from Detroit after discovering the community through religious videos online. “I made a prayer: Please, God, send me to Irving.”
But as the communities have grown, so has the resentment against Muslims.
The promise to combat “radical Islam” has long been a part of Republican politics. The rhetoric has only intensified nationally, as Muslims like Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist mayor of New York City, and Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, won major races.
But politicians in Texas have gone beyond words, turning the power of the state against some Muslim groups.
A major turning point arrived in early 2025, after members of the East Plano Islamic Center unveiled plans for a real estate development centered on a new mosque in farmland east of Dallas. The opposition was immediate and intense.
State leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, have since opened investigations into Muslim institutions across Texas. They’ve sought to block the real estate development and investigate religious divorce counseling. Mr. Abbott threatened to take state funding from Texas airports that provide ritual washing stations for Muslim travelers, ordered the cancellation of a private water park party celebrating a Muslim holiday and labeled the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national civil rights group, as a terrorist group — a step that even the Trump administration has so far not taken. (Florida followed Texas in applying the same label to CAIR.)
Efforts by Republican state leaders to restrict Islamic practice have coincided with a push to expand Christianity’s place in public life. In June, Texas became the first state to mandate Bible readings in public schools, where lawmakers had already required prayer time and the posting of the Ten Commandments.
For many conservative voters in Texas, Islam has replaced the border as a major concern since early last year, Republican consultants have said. Anti-Muslim activists and hard-right candidates have increasingly described Islam as incompatible with American values. They warn that the United States could soon look like Europe, where Muslim populations are larger.
“I won’t rest until every Muslim is gone,” one statewide Republican candidate, Bo French, wrote on social media this summer.
Muslim leaders in Texas have debated how to respond. Some counseled outreach. Others were frustrated with the return of rhetoric that had been largely dormant since the 9/11 attacks despite years of trying to foster interfaith understanding.
“We’ve constantly tried to point to our record and hope that our record will organically speak for itself,” Dr. Omar Suleiman, a prominent Muslim scholar, said in an interview at the Valley Ranch mosque. “We tried that, and it did nothing for us.”
The moment called for a posture of “strength,” Mr. Suleiman said, and a robust legal defense against what he said were false attacks. “We have to actually make lying legally and politically costly to these people,” he said. “We have to fight them back.”
He pointed to the religious protections afforded by the U.S. Constitution as the basis for such a defense. But recently, hard-line conservatives have been looking for a way to deny those protections.
In what would be an apparent first, one avenue being explored in Texas is to try to use state law to ban or regulate some Islamic cultural practices, such tribunals for marriage and other decisions governed by religious rules, often referred to as Shariah law.
Some want to do it as soon as the Texas Legislature meets next year.
“One of the first things we’re going to try to do is define what a religion is,” said State Representative Alan Schoolcraft, a San Antonio Republican. “Islam itself is not just a religion. It’s much more than a religion.”
Texas’ Muslim population remains small, around 1 or 2 percent of all residents. Precise figures are hard to come by, because the census does not ask about religion, but surveys by the Pew Research Center, and estimates by state officials, put the population between 300,000 and 500,000 people. Among the most populous states, only New York and Illinois have a higher share of Muslims than Texas.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area has been a popular destination. In recent years, one of its growing communities is in Irving around the Valley Ranch Islamic Center, the city’s second mosque. Founded in 2009, the mosque has a large campus and is planning a 31,000-square-foot expansion, with a cafe and basketball court. At a recent nightly prayer, families struggled to find parking.
“We’re growing faster than expected,” said Sheikh Yaser Birjas, who has led the congregation since 2010.
Mr. Birjas said the mosque’s success was in part thanks to its early embrace of technology. New people discovered its services online. Some moved to Texas to join.
One indication of the growing community comes from census data on international migration from Muslim-majority countries to the United States. That population grew in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area to more than 159,000 in 2024, from about 79,000 people a decade earlier — growing five times faster than the population as a whole.
Another indication can be found in the increasing number of Muslim congregations.
In the four biggest Dallas-Fort Worth counties, the number of mosques nearly tripled to 76 by 2020, up from 28 two decades earlier, according to data from the Association of Religion Data Archives. In Collin County, a fast-growing suburban area north of Dallas, the number quadrupled, to 12 from three.
The increase was notable, but the number of mosques remains small. By comparison, the four counties have more than 3,000 evangelical Christian congregations.
How Islam Became a Republican Focus
Nearly every speech at the Texas State Republican Convention in June included some expression of anti-Muslim sentiment. Multiple conference panels warned of a Muslim invasion. Combating Shariah law — the Islamic code that guides the observant — was named a top legislative priority.
In the convention hall, the Texas House’s new Sharia-Free Caucus had a booth. Amy Mekelburg, a prominent anti-Muslim influencer, presented a video warning that Texas barbecue restaurants were being replaced by “Arab shopping plazas” — part of a coordinated “takeover.”
The focus on Muslims gained new traction with President Trump’s first White House run. In 2015, the mayor of Irving, Beth Van Duyne gained national attention by railing against Shariah law. (She is now a member of Congress.) Two years later, Texas Republicans passed anti-Shariah legislation as part of a wave of bills pushed by the Center for Security Policy, a hard-right Washington think tank.
For a time, the party moved away from Islam to concentrate on immigration, the pandemic and gender politics.
But some on the far right began focusing on a different and more contentious message: that Islam is not a religion but a political ideology.
Then came the proposed real estate development with a mosque outside Dallas, known at the time as EPIC City. “This is how the West falls,” Ms. Mekelburg wrote on social media in February 2025.
Her rhetoric caught Mr. Abbott’s attention, and he soon initiated state investigations into the proposed development and the mosque community, the East Plano Islamic Center, or EPIC, that supported it.
Anthony Holm, a Republican political consultant, said concerns about Islam were an extension of Republican voters’ fears about illegal immigration — and help explain Mr. Abbott’s focus. “Anything he does is poll-driven,” Mr. Holm said of the governor.
Mr. Abbott has used his terror designation of CAIR to try to restrict other Islamic groups. The council is challenging the designation in court.
“We experience waves of Islamophobia,” said Shaimaa Zayan of CAIR’s Austin chapter. “This is the worst wave.”
Seeing a Looming Religious ‘Conflict’
About 300 people gathered at a Dallas movie theater in late May to watch a documentary film billed as revealing “the disastrous effect of Islam in America.”
The event’s sponsors included a nearby Christian ministry, a group of Jewish conservatives, several Republican women’s groups and two local county Republican parties.
“Most of the people that are speaking up are Christian,” Frank X. Panico, the film’s director, who is Catholic, said as he mingled by the popcorn machines.
As the Muslim population has grown in Texas, an assertive Christianity has also taken root. Hard-line conservative Christians characterize the situation not as a demographic shift, but as a spiritual battle.
The documentary, “The Great American Conflict,” contained a mix of theological, political and cultural warnings. It depicted Islam as a force that could pull communities to the left — citing Mayor Mamdani of New York — and also threaten women’s freedom.
The audience heard Texas was at the center of this cultural struggle.
“This is the battlefield right now,” Erick Stakelbeck, a host on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, said at the event.
Barbara Isaacs, an activist in Collin County, distributed a pamphlet encouraging Texans to get involved with their local governments to prevent or slow the construction of mosques.
“Share this with your friends, your church members,” she urged the crowd.
What Does It Mean to ‘Assimilate’?
Farhat Shaikh, a doctor living in Frisco, north of Dallas, stood outside a polling place during a sharply contested mayoral runoff election in June.
For many on the hard right, Frisco — with its large South Asian and Muslim populations — was the epicenter of the fight for Texas’ future.
Dr. Shaikh urged voters to support Mark Hill, a former school board trustee, who vowed to unite the city. Mr. Hill’s opponent, Rod Vilhauer, talked about the need for Muslims to assimilate into American culture, and some of his supporters warned of a Muslim “takeover.”
Mr. Hill prevailed in the election. Still, for Dr. Shaikh, the divisive campaign put Muslims like her in a kind of bind.
Assimilation means joining institutions and being “part of the decision making,” she said. “I’m part of the P.T.A., I volunteer for my community, I’m a practicing physician. I am assimilating.” But being active can also be attacked as trying to “take over,” she said.
The question of assimilation has animated Texas legislators like Mr. Schoolcraft, and fueled calls for a definition of religion in Texas law. Mr. Schoolcraft hoped such legislation would encourage Muslims to more fully assimilate and not create enclaves, such as the EPIC City development.
“I’m not saying totally abandon your culture,” Mr. Schoolcraft said. “But try to become a citizen where you’re living. Otherwise there’s going to be conflict.”
Texas Republicans have warned of Muslims seeking to create a parallel justice system. Some pointed to a small decade-old organization based in Dallas, the Islamic Tribunal, which provides religious consultation to women seeking divorce, including in abusive marriages. Mr. Paxton began an investigation.
A lawyer for the organization said its religious guidance — like that of a Jewish rabbinical court or a Catholic tribunal — was protected by the First Amendment.
“We are not a court,” said Taher El-Badawi, who founded the Islamic Tribunal.
Recasting Islam as a political ideology would be unprecedented as a legislative strategy, said Asma T. Uddin, a religious liberty lawyer, and “a way of winning the religious liberty fight before it starts, by defining the other side out of the category.”
American courts have avoided defining religion over the years. In 2010, Tennessee residents tried to stop a new mosque, arguing it was not entitled to be treated as a house of worship because Islam was not a religion.
The Justice Department responded in a brief that “Islam is plainly a religion” protected by the First Amendment. Whether the department under Mr. Trump would take the same position was an open question.
For now, local Muslim institutions have defended themselves on constitutional and legal grounds, and promised to continue their work.
