In the bitter and expensive US Senate runoff between John Cornyn, the incumbent, and Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, the state’s Muslim community has been a frequent target for campaign ads and legal challenges.

Both candidates have tried to portray the other as either too soft on the supposed threat of Islam or insufficiently aggressive toward Muslim institutions.

“Every time it’s an election year, this is one of the favorite cards that the GOP plays to get votes,” said Shehla Faizi, a Texas Muslim running for state comptroller as a member of the Green party. “We have a boogeyman, the boogeyman are Muslims, and we’re going to use that to make people afraid and force them to vote for us.”

Yet the many experts and advocates interviewed for this story all agreed that the frequency and vitriol of this year’s anti-Islam attacks seems to have reached a fever pitch – an observation backed up by data.

Specifically, Paxton and Paxton-allied groups ran ads accusing Cornyn of supporting “Muslim mass immigration” and having “a special place in his heart for radical Islam”. Cornyn, meanwhile, has responded by emphasizing his record “fighting radical Islamic extremism” and drafting a bill aimed at “[stopping] the spread of Sharia Law in the U.S.”

Even though the Senate campaign will come to an end with the 26 May election, Texas Muslims say Republican politicians are fanning the flames of anti-Muslim bigotry that’s already been at the center of many racist incidents in Texas.

“[Politicians] took an oath as an elected official to do the right thing, and the future of our state and our country depends upon it,” said Sameeha Rizvi, a Texas-based civic engagement coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “What you are doing right now by instilling hate and fear and misinformation is only going to create more division, more hate crimes and more attacks like what we saw in San Diego.”

Neither Cornyn or Paxton responded to questions for this story.

‘Sharia law’ concerns

For much of the last year, both Cornyn and Paxton have taken turns criticizing a real estate development planned by leaders of the East Plano Islamic Center.

Cornyn was one of several Republican leaders who raised concerns that the development could involve discriminatory practices or the influence of “Sharia law”, claims organizers denied.

The senator successfully urged the US Department of Justice to open a civil rights investigation into the development.

The DoJ ultimately closed its investigation without taking any formal action, but Paxton has picked up the fight at the state level, pursuing multiple kinds of litigation against the real estate project and its affiliates.

“The idea that Texas courts would ever be enforcing Sharia law, or that anyone would be involuntarily subjected to the dictates of Sharia law is pretty farfetched,” said Dr Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University who studies religion and politics. “And yet, we keep seeing this referenced in these campaigns.”

Wilson points out that less than two percent of the Texas population identifies as Muslim, but several factors, including the current war with Iran, make criticisms of Islam resonant with Republican voters. Additionally, both Wilson and Dr Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, point out that Republican primaries today ultimately come down to who can most clearly align themselves with president Donald Trump.

The president made his “Muslim ban” a core feature of his first campaign and first term as president, arguing that halting immigration from Muslim-majority countries was a matter of national security. He renewed those calls after the 7 October attacks perpetrated by Hamas.

Pew research during Trump’s first term showed 70% of Republicans believed the Islamic religion is likelier than others to encourage violence among its followers, while more recent research from the University of Maryland shows a sharp decrease in “favorable” attitudes towards Muslims between 2016 and 2024. In that same study, among groups like white Americans, Christian Americans and Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans were considered the least likely to “strengthen” American society.

Meanwhile, a vote for Trump was one of the strongest factors associated with Islamophobic attitudes in the 2025 Islamophobia Index published by the Institute for Social Policy & Understanding.

“The primary runoffs are about the molten core of what the base wants politically,” said Dr Rottinghaus.

As such, the veteran political scientist sees Cornyn and Paxton’s focus on Islam as part of their broader efforts to generate turnout among the most fervent members of the Maga base.

Both Cornyn and Paxton spent months aggressively courting Trump’s endorsement, treating it as the defining prize in their runoff after neither captured 50% of the vote in the primary. Trump ultimately endorsed Paxton a week before the runoff vote, praising him as a “true MAGA Warrior” while criticizing Cornyn for being “very late” to support his 2024 comeback bid.

Wilson and Rottinghaus both added that this runoff has pulled Cornyn even further to the right – and his focus on issues like “Sharia law” could backfire.

“John Cornyn talking about these issues is really only motivating people who are likely to back Ken Paxton,” Rottinghaus said. “Priming only the most conservative issues is just narrowing the electorate, because obviously these are the most committed voters, but these committed voters are likely to back Paxton.”

Islamophobia is not limited to the Cornyn-Paxton race or to Texas.

In Florida, Randy Fine, a Republican House representative, recently tweeted: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” Andy Ogles, a GOP House rep from Tennessee, said “Muslims don’t belong in American society.” And Tommy Tuberville, a college football coach-turned-Alabama senator, said Islam is a cult.

“Islamists aren’t here to assimilate,” he’s also said. “They’re here to conquer.”

But purported concerns over Islam seem to be playing an outsized role in Texas politics, where two Congressmen recently founded a “Sharia-free America” caucus. Wilson, the SMU professor, points out that Islam has even been central to the race for Texas Railroad Commissioner.

Bo French, one of the contenders for commissioner, once created a Twitter poll asking people to vote on where Jews or Muslims are a bigger threat to America. The poll drew sharp rebukes from many Republicans, including Cornyn, but French’s candidacy for railroad commissioner has drawn endorsements from a host of other Republican politicians. Most recently, he said “Islam poses an existential threat to Texans’ way of life.”

Greg Abbott, the governor, designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) as a foreign terrorist organization under Texas law, a move Cair has challenged in court. The governor also sent sheriffs and local district attorneys in two North Texas counties a letter urging them to work with Paxton, the state attorney general, “to investigate efforts by entities purporting to illegally enforce Sharia law in Texas”.

“Governor Abbott’s actions are targeted at radical groups who support terrorism and seek to forcibly impose Sharia law on Texans,” a spokesman for the governor said.

Many of the people interviewed for this story – including professors, aspiring politicians and Texas students – say there’s another reason Islam has become a central focus for the Texas GOP.

The Republican party at large has long aligned itself with Israel, and during what many human rights organizations say is a genocide against Palestinians, both antisemitism and Islamophobia have risen. Multiple Texas Muslims interviewed for this story say criticism of Israel is often conflated with antisemitism, which, in turn, leads to backlash against Islam and Muslims.

“Conflating our criticism of the Israeli government with hate towards the Jewish community is very hurtful to see, because it’s not true,” Rizvi said. “I’ve seen some resurgence in that, and it’s becoming to the point where they’re refusing to address the real hate crimes that we’re facing, but they still want to focus on the fact that us criticizing Israel is antisemitic.”

Sarah Khalid, a member of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Texas at Dallas, said “anti-Muslim rhetoric and the repression of Palestinian organizing” is “manufactured by the same machine, manufactured by the same system”.

As she puts it, that “machine” includes politicians and universities, many of whom have cracked down on pro-Palestine protests in recent years. Her SJP chapter is suing the University of Texas at Dallas, alleging the school violated their constitutional rights through surveillance, excessive force, retaliatory discipline and wrongful arrests. The lawsuit claims that, during those arrests, university police used chokeholds and other force against protesters.

That’s just one example of Texans standing up for one another amidst bigotry, even when it’s difficult. Shehla Faizi, the comptroller candidate, says recent hate crimes “make it difficult to come together without fear of retribution”.

In 2020, Faizi started a podcast called “I’m A Muslim (And That’s Okay!)“ She produced it for about five years, during which time she included a segment called “Ask a Muslim”, in which she encouraged listeners to ask her anything. She laughs with joy thinking about the questions she got, including, “Do you shower with a hijab?” She didn’t mind them; It’s clear she enjoyed the podcast and saw it as an opportunity to educate people. However, she recently realized “the time for just discussion was over. It was a critical point that we had to do more as opposed to speak more.”

That’s why she’s running for office.

“We are heading in a direction where we need more people to resist authoritarian power, oligarchy overreach,” she said. “All of these things are no longer acceptable, especially for the common people. And that’s who I wish to represent.”

Rizvi said Muslims have long been a part of Texas and the US, and they’re eager to live in peaceful community with their fellow Texans.

“Muslims in America in general have been here for a very long time, all the way back to the enslaved ships,” she said. “Leaders like Thomas Jefferson studied Islam. Muslims are not your enemies in Texas. We’ve always existed with each other. We are your neighbors.”