Muhammad Abdullah watched Sept. 11 unfold from a high school classroom in Atlanta. A teacher wheeled in a television set, and the class of sophomores sat stunned, trying to make sense of what was happening.
Taunts soon followed. Students joked that he and other Muslims were dropping bombs. In the hallway, a group of boys ripped off a girl's hijab. Abdullah found his religion being dissected under a national microscope.
Twenty-five years after the attack, orchestrated by a radical fringe Muslim terrorist group, Islamophobia is again surging. Yet Abdullah and other North Texas Muslims who spoke with The Dallas Morning News say the rhetoric has grown more alarming and vicious than what many experienced in the aftermath of 9/11. Texas, home to a thriving Muslim population, has emerged as a hotspot.
For many on the right, Islam has replaced immigration as a top concern. A swarm of social media influencers and the state's top elected Republicans have warned of the "Islamification of Texas," a political narrative describing a perceived Muslim takeover.
"It's a political stunt," said Abdullah, 41, now an imam at Masjid Al-Islam in South Dallas, one of the oldest mosques in Texas. "America always has a scapegoat, and right now we are that scapegoat."
Roughly 1% to 2% of Texans describe themselves as Muslims, with various estimates ranging from 300,000 to 500,000 residents of the state's population of 32 million. Dallas-Fort Worth, with a booming business climate and relatively affordable housing, has become a magnet for Muslim families moving to Texas. More than 110,000 Muslims live in the region, which is home to dozens of mosques.
With the anniversary of the terrorist attack falling on a Friday, a holy day in Islam, Masjid Al-Islam and area mosques are on heightened alert. An armed anti-Muslim protest is planned outside a mosque in Plano, and Muslim leaders have warned there could be more.
Still, mosques across the region plan to gather for usual Friday prayers, albeit with more security. Many had already hired additional guards and added cameras in recent months, as verbal attacks grew against Muslims praying in parks, walking into their mosque or even grocery shopping.
Marium Uddin, a Dallas-area attorney who has represented Muslims in discrimination cases, said much of what is happening - suspicion, hate, bullying, surveillance and employment consequences - echoes the aftermath of 9/11.
"What feels different to me," she said, "is the source, institutionalization and political legitimacy of some of the hostility."
In the March primary, a ballot proposition asked Texas Republicans if the state "should prohibit Sharia law." Nearly 95% responded yes. Some Republicans have called Shariah - the moral code laid out in Muslim scriptures - incompatible with U.S. values, and the GOP adopted a resolution called "Don't Sharia My Texas" as part of its official platform.
Related: Ban hijabs and halal foods? Texas Republicans offer early blueprint of plan to 'stop Islam'
Animosity escalates
This year alone, a Muslim principal at a Fort Worth high school was reassigned days after the district announced her hiring and included a photo of her wearing a hijab, which ignited a storm of online hate. In Conroe near Houston, a woman wearing medical scrubs told two Muslim women shopping at an H-E-B that they were "not welcome here" and "this is not a Muslim country." The woman lost her job after a video of the confrontation went viral but received nearly $250,000 in donations from supporters.
The Texas state Board of Education this month approved an updated social studies and history curriculum that ties Islam to violence and slavery while removing details about Muslim contributions to algebra and astronomy. Members passed the curriculum over the objections of educators, historians and Muslim community members.
Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has threatened to pull state funding for cities and organizations that accommodate Muslim groups. Last month, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport scrapped plans to build additional wash stations for Muslim travelers after the governor threatened to withhold money. Abbott later asked the Department of Justice to review existing wash stations at Texas airports.
Under a similar threat, Grand Prairie in May canceled a private party for Muslims at a city-owned water park they had rented for the day.
In a statement Wednesday, Abbott's Press Secretary Andrew Mahaleris said government facilities funded by tax dollars must serve all residents.
"Texans demand leaders who uphold the rule of law and relentlessly pursue those who threaten it," Mahaleris said. "Governor Abbott will take decisive action against any group that seeks to violate our Constitution and laws - regardless of faith."
The Grand Prairie event was organized by Abdullah, the Dallas imam, and his wife, Aminah Knight, who received a flood of vicious phone calls and text messages from strangers.
"My faith is not something to fear," Knight told The News.
Abdullah said the rhetoric falsely portrays Muslims as anti-American foreigners who want to destroy the American way of life.
"We are American, and we are Muslim," said Abdullah, who was born in Brooklyn and moved to Texas in 2018 with his wife and children. "We don't have to compromise either identity."
Related: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declares CAIR, Muslim Brotherhood foreign terrorist groups
Unsettled, then and now
Munira Sarfani moved to the United States in 2000 from Hyderabad, a city in India with a large Muslim population. One year later, on the morning of the 9/11 attacks, she was sitting in a macroeconomics class at a private university in Topeka, Kansas. She remembered crowding around a television with other students, then calling her fiance from a payphone.
Sarfani, 46, remembers feeling unsettled and nervous about how she would be treated because of her religion. She does not cover her hair, but she hid her traditional Indian clothes in the back of the closet.
"I was here to love this country," she said, "but I didn't know if it would love me back."
That uneasiness dissipated within a few years, and she and her husband settled in Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City. Five years ago, they moved with their three daughters to Frisco to live closer to family.
Personally, she said she has felt welcome in Texas, a sharp contrast to what has played out at city council meetings, where speakers have assailed city leaders for approving site plans for mosques.
In nearby McKinney, a woman grabbed former Mayor George Fuller and stuffed a piece of paper with an anti-Islamic message in his shirt pocket during a contentious meeting over a mosque's expansion. In Frisco's mayoral race, a candidate called Islam a "terrorist group" and South Asian immigrants "rats." The candidate, Rod Vilhauer, lost by a wide margin in a runoff to Mark Hill in June.
Sarfani again feels unsettled, much like after 9/11.
"Some days it feels very scary," she said. "Some people have tried to keep the flame of hate building. Now it feels like they've doused it with gasoline."
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim rights nonprofit, received 8,683 civil rights complaints last year, more than it has received any year since 1996. Its report named Texas a hotspot. Abbott last year designated CAIR a foreign terrorist organization.
A shift in Islamophobia
Public attitudes about Islam have shifted since 9/11. By some measures, they are more negative now than immediately after the attack, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. In March 2002, six months after the attack, one-quarter of U.S. adults said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence. Earlier this year, more than half of those surveyed shared that view.
Politically, the issue reflects a sharp divide, Pew figures show. Roughly 76% of Republicans and right-leaning voters said the religion was more likely to encourage violence, compared to 29% of Democrats and left-leaning voters.
That partisan gap was much smaller immediately after the attack, when then-President George W. Bush, a Republican, addressed the public from a mosque in Washington, D.C., calling Islam a "religion of peace."
In contrast, some Texas Republicans have pushed the idea that Islam is not a religion at all, but rather a political ideology, and have suggested passing a law that defines it as such. Doing so, they contend, would enable cities and counties to ban mosques while skirting religious freedom laws. Some have proposed banning Islamic dress, such as hijabs, and restricting Muslims from receiving professional licenses.
"Islamophobia has shifted from accusations of terrorism to a culture war," said Khaled Beydoun, a professor of law at Arizona State University who studies Islamophobia. "It's now people saying 'We don't want these Muslims to come in and change our way of life and take over.'"
"Like racism," he added, "Islamophobia can be adapted to align with the political and economic interests of those in power."
The response to the EPIC City development helped ignite the anti-Islamic backlash in Texas. In a post last year, a far-right influencer called the proposed Islamic development a "Sharia city." Both Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton soon launched investigations into the development, which is about 40 minutes northeast of downtown Dallas in Collin and Hunt counties.
Now called The Meadow, the development is expected to include more than 1,000 homes, a faith-based school, a mosque, retail shops and sports fields, but it has faced an onslaught of legal challenges.
Aneela Charania, 49, a lifelong Texan who moved to Collin County earlier this year, said the hatred directed at her religion in the past two years has reminded her in many ways of the years after 9/11.
Charania, who covers her hair, spoke at city council meetings this year in Frisco and McKinney in support of proposed mosques. Before the meeting in Frisco, she asked a neighbor to walk with her from the car to city hall. At the McKinney meeting, a group told her to go home and that she was not welcome.
"I was extremely scared," she said. "I have never seen this level of hate in Texas."
Charania and others in the community now wonder when this wave of Islamophobia will subside.
Many say they are hopeful it will die down after the midterm elections.
Khalid Hamideh, legal counsel for the Islamic Association of North Texas, said the Muslim community is working to demonstrate their faith's tenets of kindness, empathy, compassion and patience, as it did 25 years ago.
"This, too, shall pass," he said. "We just don't know when."
Related: Texas advances controversial social studies curriculum despite protests over portrayal of Islam
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