The 25th anniversary of the 11 September attacks comes amid sharp political polarisation in the US. This election season offers the Democratic Party promising prospects of winning control of both chambers of Congress — the Senate and the House of Representatives — after two years of Republican control of the legislative and executive branches. As candidates backed by Trump and his cronies suffer successive defeats, while progressive Democrats achieve unprecedented and surprising success in the primaries, Republicans are turning to their familiar tactic of Islamophobia to frighten voters, stoke hatred and mobilise racist crowds.
Several factors have made Islamophobic rhetoric the Republican Party’s favoured means of securing political gains and concealing its failures on pivotal domestic and international issues. What are those factors? How have Republicans deployed this rhetoric? What significance does the current election season hold? And how have American Muslims confronted these recurring challenges?
This article seeks to answer these questions and others.
Islamophobia returns: Familiar politics
In the wake of the 11 September attacks, US lawmakers introduced 231 bills opposing Sharia in an attempt to institutionalise the exclusion of Muslims from public policy under the pretext of protecting Americans from the application of “foreign law.” Many were based on model legislation drafted by attorney David Yerushalmi, known as the “godfather of the anti-Sharia movement” in the US. A 2018 report by UC Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society revealed that Yerushalmi’s draft served as a template for 18 anti-Muslim laws in 12 US states between 2010 and 2016.
Yerushalmi also helped prepare a report published by the Center for Security Policy in 2010 under the title Shariah: The Threat to America. The centre, affiliated with Frank Gaffney, an architect and purveyor of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, is one of the main organisations promoting research rooted in Islamophobia that right-wing lawmakers use to advance discriminatory legislation. The report recommended barring individuals who “adhere to or support Shariah” from serving in the US government or armed forces. It also urged the prosecution of mosque imams and leaders of Muslim groups calling for the implementation of Sharia in the US on charges of treason and incitement to unlawful activities.
Imad Salem, a board member and former president of the Texas Democratic Caucus, compares the current Islamophobic campaigns with those seen in the US after the 11 September attacks. He says today’s campaigns are more intense and dangerous because they can rapidly reach broad sections of the public who are easily misled and manipulated.
Texas, for example, one of the MAGA movement’s largest and most important strongholds, has seen widespread mobilisation against Muslims. For years, this has been led by both the Tea Party movement, the umbrella movement from which MAGA emerged, and the far-right Act for America movement. Through town hall meetings discussing the danger of the “Islamization of America”, demonstrations rejecting the “mass migration of Muslims to the states,” and Governor Greg Abbott’s designation of CAIR as a terrorist organisation, Republican officials have mobilised sections of the state’s public to attack Muslims, their representatives and their gathering places.
Texas Republican Representative Keith Self described plans to build mosques as a blatant expression of political Islam. He then introduced a bill in Congress to ban jizya, prompting widespread ridicule. He was joined by Ken Paxton, who incited opposition to the EPIC City project for the state’s Muslim community.
In Alabama, Republican gubernatorial candidate Tommy Tuberville is the most aggressive face of the state’s Islamophobic campaign. Tuberville has built his election platform around a single issue: hostility towards Muslims and the need to get rid of them. His campaign materials feature images of Mamdani beside the World Trade Center towers destroyed in the 11 September attacks, alongside the phrase “the enemy within the walls.” In his appearances and speeches, he repeatedly stokes fears about the imposition of Sharia law in the US and invokes the need to stop “radical Islam” before it destroys American culture.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, has designated Tuberville an anti-Muslim extremist, making him the first US senator added to its list since last year. The council called on him to visit mosques and speak with Muslim community leaders to better understand their beliefs. The Republican candidate nevertheless continued his attacks on the Muslim faith and its religious and cultural practices.
Republican Representative Barry Moore of Enterprise, who is seeking to succeed Tuberville, is also campaigning aggressively to stop what he described as the alarming spread of Sharia in the US. Moore created the America Without Sharia Caucus, which includes 60 Republican members of Congress pushing a package of bills aimed at preventing the adoption of Islamic laws or practices in the US legal system. Foremost among them is the Defeat Sharia Act.
Moore’s slogans appear to be little more than empty rhetoric intended to win votes and mobilise the public through fear and intimidation, rather than meaningful, legitimate measures. The US Constitution already bars any foreign legal system from superseding federal law or interfering with the judiciary, which is governed by the Constitution and local laws.
These examples show that the state itself, as well as members of the public and mobs of agitators, is implicated in an anti-Islam, anti-Muslim programme systematically pursued at the highest levels of state government. In her book Seasons of Rage, journalist Rozina Ali examines the roots of Islamophobia in the US. She says the US government played a pivotal role in spreading fear of Islam and Muslims: law enforcement agencies routinely monitored Muslim communities even without legitimate security grounds, believing they harboured the seeds of terrorism.
Why now?
A study by Equality Labs found that more than 4.7 million posts hostile to Islam and Muslims circulated on social media in the US during 2025. Texas led the spread of anti-Muslim disinformation, with about 279,000 posts recorded there promoting rumours such as the “Muslim invasion theory,” the imposition of Islamic law, calls to investigate Muslim organisations and leaders, and demands to deport Muslims.
A CAIR report also noted a marked escalation in Islamophobia last year, with Muslim Americans filing 8,683 discrimination complaints in 2025 alone.
Several major developments helped bring Islamophobic rhetoric back to the fore: a fierce assault on immigrants since Trump began his second presidential term; scrutiny of Israeli interests and US-Israeli relations after the genocidal war in the Gaza Strip; the appointment of progressive people of colour and people of immigrant origin to sensitive US government posts; and, finally, Washington’s war with Tehran and the increasingly exaggerated portrayal of a radical foreign enemy.
Yet the Trump administration has long made Islamophobic rhetoric a cornerstone of its domestic and foreign agenda, beginning with its policy of deporting immigrants and banning immigration from Muslim-majority countries. Although Trump’s policy of deporting people living in the US illegally fuelled xenophobia more broadly, Muslim communities faced a double burden when Trump used derogatory labels for Somalis, Sudanese and Afghans, making them targets of hatred and discrimination.
Muslim candidates’ electoral victories have drawn support from beyond Muslim communities. The Trump administration’s campaigns of abuse have also targeted communities of colour and immigrant communities more broadly, under the racist Christian nationalist slogans of the MAGA movement from which Trump emerged. Latino communities helped Abdul El-Sayed win the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan, along with eight Latino candidates seeking a range of legislative, judicial and administrative offices.
Latino turnout rose by 10 per cent compared with the 2022 midterm elections, with about 144,000 Latino voters casting ballots in Michigan’s 4 August election.
The midterms: Peak season for Islamophobia
The Republican Party has long portrayed particular groups as “less American” and hostile to the lofty values it claims to represent, using them as scapegoats to conceal its failures and mobilise voters. In the 2020 election, the party directed its anger at the Chinese community in the US, accusing it of causing the pandemic that reverberated through the US and global economies. In the 2024 election, it cast gay and transgender people as enemies it sought to eliminate through its conservative electoral platform.
The current election season, however, shaped by the genocide in the Gaza Strip and placing relations with Israel at its centre, has brought to prominence an unprecedented number of Arabs, Muslims and progressives. They defy the norms of US politics and threaten even the entrenched foundations of the Democratic establishment to which they belong.
Given this sudden, dramatic shift, and the successive setbacks and fundamental threats it poses to pro-capitalist and pro-Israel US interests, it seems logical that Republicans and the conservative wing of the Democratic Party would return to their favourite tactic: stoking fear of Muslim influence and Muslims’ assertive emergence in US political life. This is despite Muslims making up only 1 per cent of the US population, according to the Pew Research Center.
Ironically, a 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that 42 per cent of Muslims in the US lean towards the Republican Party and share its conservative social and economic views, compared with 53 per cent who lean towards the Democrats. Even so, the Republican Party appears unwelcoming to Muslims within its ranks, viewing them as compromising the purity of its political vision and distorting its lofty values, which reject immigrants, people of colour and Muslims in general.
The Trump administration and conservative right-wing lawmakers are now organising a concerted Islamophobic campaign ahead of next November’s midterm elections. They are using anti-Islam and anti-Muslim slogans in an attempt to mobilise crowds and reshape public opinion, seeking to secure more Republican seats while demonising a Democratic Party whose electoral base has increasingly shifted towards progressives and socialists.
Immediately after Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan was announced, anti-Muslim hate rose by 1,895 per cent. A report by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate recorded 12,000 anti-Muslim posts on US social media the day after his victory.
Trump’s remark after the victories of Abdul El-Sayed and other American Muslims in their states’ primaries — that “jihadists are being elected all across the United States” — fits this broader pattern. Anti-Muslim rhetoric was a central pillar of his platform during his first period in office, 2016–20, and remains so during his second, now nearing the end of its second year. Trump has put that rhetoric into practice through numerous presidential decisions and executive policies targeting Muslim-majority countries, while inciting hostility towards Muslim communities in the US and imposing restrictions on them.
The commemoration of the 11 September attacks offers a prime opportunity to advance this Republican agenda. In the run-up to the 25th anniversary, right-wing influencers and officials have stirred controversy by linking Muslims to the attacks. Some victims’ families have asked New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani not to attend the commemoration planned at the site. The fiercely anti-Mamdani New York Post claimed that the petition had gathered 42,000 signatures so far. The families base their request on allegations that Mamdani supports and sympathises with terrorists and believes America deserved the attacks — claims he has repeatedly denied.
Some petition signatories openly resent Mamdani’s support for Palestinian rights and sharp criticism of Israeli policies. They regard him as a supporter of terrorism, directly linking the 11 September attacks in the US with 7 October in the occupied territories. They pointed to earlier slogans used by Mamdani and his father, Columbia University academic Mahmood Mamdani, about the “globalization of the intifada,” which they interpreted as a call for the elimination of Jews worldwide. New York City is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the US.
War in the Middle East: A clash of civilisations
A report by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate tracked a rise in Islamophobic rhetoric since the start of this year, noting a steady increase with the outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Iran. It documented activity between 28 February and 5 March, when 25,348 anti-Islam and anti-Muslim posts were recorded on X. Including reposts, the total reached 279,417 — 11 times the number of original hate posts.
The posts ranged from dehumanising descriptions of Muslims as rats and insects to portrayals of them as a plague that must be eradicated entirely to defend western civilisation. Some called for Muslims to be excluded and detained in special centres, and for their mosques to be demolished in preparation for their deportation to their countries.
The hostilities against Tehran, given a Christian nationalist framing by Trump and his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, coincided with a marked increase in Islamophobic campaigns on US social media, according to the Center for the Study of Organized Hate.
Israel’s war of extermination has also become a pivotal factor in the smear campaign. A report by Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative pointed to the Israeli foreign ministry’s role in fuelling the current Islamophobia campaign. The ministry highlighted the effectiveness of incitement against Muslims in distracting Americans from the genocidal war it is waging in the Gaza Strip. Republican officials — described in the report as the most supportive of “Israel” — then adopted the ministry’s recommendations as an election campaign strategy.
The tangible shift in Americans’ awareness of and sympathy for the Palestinian cause after the events of 7 October has directly helped generate popular support for progressive candidates who openly criticise US-Israeli relations and unconditional support for Israeli colonial policies in the Middle East. A 2026 Gallup poll showed this shift clearly: 41 per cent of Americans sympathised with Palestinians, compared with 36 per cent who sympathised with Israelis. The organisation’s findings just a year earlier had put sympathy for “Israel” at 46 per cent and for Palestinians at 33 per cent, illustrating the substantial change in US public sentiment.
This shift was particularly visible among New York Jews. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll earlier this year showed that they preferred Mamdani to Netanyahu, with 61 per cent believing that “Israel” had committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip and 40 per cent describing events in the enclave as genocide.
Britton O’Shields, the attorney for CAIR’s Alabama chapter, believes that the demonisation of Muslims and their portrayal as the sole enemy of American culture form part of efforts by the Zionist lobby and its allies to silence Muslims and halt their legitimate criticism of Israel’s genocidal policies in the Middle East — efforts now bearing fruit in the current election season.
According to O’Shields, the current Islamophobia campaign distracts voters from more serious issues and challenges facing the US, such as the economy, the war with Tehran and the Epstein files, which Republicans have so far failed to manage. He singled out Tuberville among Republican candidates, calling him a “coward” trying to cover up his failures as a Trump-backed senator, a supporter of war and someone concealing the Epstein files by directing voters’ anger towards innocent Muslims. Those Muslims now face a real danger from retaliatory campaigns in Alabama, where they make up 1 per cent of the population, according to the Pew Research Center.
The response: American Muslims’ strategy
Although history is repeating itself, Muslim communities in the US are responding to organised Islamophobic campaigns in an entirely different way. Insular, fearful and apologetic in the aftermath of 11 September, they are now organised communities seeking strong political representation and boldly confronting these attacks in public spaces and government institutions.
The 11 September attacks marked a pivotal change in the US political landscape for Muslim communities. In the years that followed, American Muslims showed a strong desire and made determined efforts to secure important political offices to confront the demonisation and disinformation campaigns directly affecting their lives and their families’ safety.
American Muslims now have a notable presence in US public life compared with past decades. A total of 255 Muslim Americans hold political office in 26 states, including four members of Congress, 46 state legislators and 11 mayors of cities across the country. The upcoming midterms could also bring the first Muslim into the US Senate if Michigan candidate Abdul El-Sayed wins. Seven other Muslims have strong chances of entering the House of Representatives, which would mark an unprecedented number.
Zohran Mamdani’s victory gave Muslims in the US a glimmer of hope that the era of demonising them and linking them to terrorism for political gain might be beginning to fade. His campaign succeeded despite racist attacks portraying him, because of his religion, as a threat to American civilisational identity and as someone who was not fully and truly American.
Although Muslim Americans prefer to align themselves with the Democratic Party, its establishment’s alignment with “Israel” in its genocidal war on the Strip has pushed many Muslims to loosen their party allegiance and seek an alternative political home outside its official structures. This shift has been aided by the technological boom driven by social media platforms, which have offered a significant alternative means of communicating directly with voters rather than relying on official institutions. Both Mamdani, who appeared in spontaneous videos strolling through Manhattan, and Abdul El-Sayed, who appeared in light-hearted clips dancing Zumba and taking part in community events, benefited from this development, connecting more directly with voters.