Click here to read the full text: Manufacturing the Muslim Threat

Manufacturing the Muslim Threat

This report maps how Republican elected officials built a coordinated anti-Muslim campaign involving 1,111 social media posts, eight bills, and a 62-member congressional caucus in just thirteen months. Many posts satisfy all five criteria for speech likely to inspire violence.

Executive Summary

Anti-Muslim bigotry by Republican Party elected officials across the United States has surged dramatically since early 2025. In more than 1,100 posts on their official social media accounts, Republican members of Congress and governors have promoted conspiracy theories about Muslim Americans, called for the deportation and denaturalization of Muslims, promoted negative portrayals of Islam, described U.S. cities with significant Muslim populations as “conquered” or “invaded”, weaponized domestic terror attacks to vilify Islam and Muslims even when no Muslim had anything to do with them, used dehumanizing language, and invoked claims of a supposed Muslim takeover of the United Kingdom and Europe to whip up anti-Muslim hysteria and fearmongering at home. 

This wave of hateful, false, frightening rhetoric puts Muslims in danger. The ongoing rhetoric paints any and all Muslims as threats, and it constitutes dangerous speech1 — since it can make people more likely to commit or condone violence against members of another group, in this case, Muslims. This rhetoric is especially dangerous because it carries the imprimatur of elected officials. One of the primary vehicles through which these elected officials have promoted anti-Muslim bigotry is social media. They post Islamophobic content on their official accounts, which amplifies and promotes anti-Muslim hate broadly in the United States. Further, the fact that bigotry and lies are echoed by people holding public office lends conspiracy theories an alarming veneer of legitimacy. 

For this report, we analyzed social media posts by 46 GOP elected officials, including members of Congress (House of Representatives and the Senate), governors, and an attorney general, that reference Muslims, Islam, or anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. The dataset covers content posted from February 2025, when we first observed a marked surge in officials targeting Muslims in a domestic American context, through March 31, 2026.

Key Findings

• The hate campaign originated with a single post by Texas Governor Greg Abbott on February 24, 2025, amplifying a claim by anti-Muslim provocateur Amy Mek that a Muslim housing development near Dallas was a “Sharia city.” Within thirteen months, it grew into a coordinated movement spanning social media, legislation, and a formal congressional caucus.

• Forty-six Republican elected officials published 1,111 posts targeting Muslim Americans with bigotry and conspiracy theories between February 2025 and March 2026. Monthly volume increased by 1,450 percent over the study period.

• Five members of Congress produced 73 percent of all posts. Rep. Randy Fine alone accounted for 29 percent.

• Texas and Florida-based officials produced 71 percent of all posts.

• The “Sharia” conspiracy appeared in 48 percent of posts, serving as the campaign’s master frame. The language of “invasion,” “conquest,” and “Islamification” mirrors the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, recasting Muslims as a population threat engaged in deliberate civilizational conquest.

• Nearly a third of all posts (322) framed Muslims through the lens of terrorism and national security. Sixty-four called explicitly for the deportation or denaturalization of Muslims. Sixty-three used dehumanizing language, labeling Islam and Muslims as “demons,” “death cult,” “cancer,” and “plague.”

• Eight bills referencing Sharia were introduced across both chambers of Congress between June 2025 and March 2026, sponsored or co-sponsored by 48 Republican lawmakers. A tightly coordinated core of four members of Congress drove the legislative effort.

• The Sharia-Free America Caucus, launched in December 2025, grew to 62 members within four months.

• In total, 89 Republican elected officials participated in at least one track of the campaign: social media, legislation, or caucus membership.

• The posts satisfy all five criteria of the Dangerous Speech Project’s framework for speech likely to inspire violence.

Genesis of the Anti-Muslim Campaign

The current campaign of anti-Muslim bigotry from elected Republican officials can be traced to a specific point of origin. On February 24, 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott shared an X post2 from prolific anti-Muslim provocateur Amy Mek,3 who in the preceding weeks had published dozens of posts4 targeting a proposed Muslim-led housing development near Dallas, Texas called East Plano Islamic Center city, or EPIC city, claiming it was a “Sharia city” and singling out local Islamic preacher Yasir Qadhi, who also serves as a resident scholar at the EPIC. Her posts carried headlines such as “Alert Texas,5” “Warning Texas,”6 and “Sharia City is Being Built in Texas—And YOU Are Helping Fund It!”, which were collectively viewed by millions of people. Governor Abbott’s repost of Mek’s EPIC city post, in which he said that “Sharia law” was not permitted in the state, was viewed 3.6 million times and received over 57,000 likes.