Right-wing politicians and pundits are intensifying their appeals to anti-Muslim bigotry in an apparent bid to solidify and energize the Christian Nationalist base of the Republican Party as polls show the party’s fortunes fading as we head toward the fall midterm elections.
While last year’s election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani gave bigots a big new target, right-wing demonization of American Muslims is nothing new. For years, religious-right leaders have undermined their posturing as champions of religious liberty by calling for discrimination against Muslims. Hard-core Christian Nationalists like Doug Wilson, invited by Pete Hegseth to preach at the Pentagon, does not believe Muslims or other non-Christians should be allowed to worship publicly or hold public office.
Sometimes religious-right leaders justify their hypocrisy by falsely claiming that the First Amendment was intended only to protect Christians. Sometimes they do so by falsely claiming that Islam—the second biggest religion in the world—is not even a religion, a fiction that some Republican legislators in Texas are scheming to put into law.
One of this year’s Republican strategies is fomenting fear and anger about the supposed threat that Sharia law is on the verge of replacing the U.S. Constitution—even though American Muslims represent well under two percent of the population.
One energetic practitioner of the Sharia-scare strategy is U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL). “Islamists are RIGGING our elections and planning their takeover of America,” screams a bold-face line in a recent email raising money for Tuberville and the Republican National Committee—with no evidence whatsoever to justify such a claim. It goes on:
Radical Islamists have infiltrated every corner of our country. They are in our government, our schools, and our communities. They are moving forward with their plan to take over America.
And unless you take a stand right now, they will be one step closer to eliminating our Constitution and replacing it with Sharia Law. …
The future of America is at stake.
It’s up to us to end the chaos right now before these Islamists change “In God We Trust” to “In Allah We Trust.”
Not over my dead body.
A different Tuberville-RNC email sent this week puts a harder partisan spin on the fearmongering:
The Democrats are doing it right under our noses.
They’re letting Sharia Law take root on American soil. Right Now. …
This is the red line.
We BAN Sharia Law today, or our children will live under it tomorrow.
MAGA religious leaders like Trump-promoting pastor Lorenzo Sewell are all too eager to lend a hand. The energetically pro-Trump Pentecostal-oriented outlet Charisma on Friday promoted a made-for-social-media tirade Sewell delivered at the Dearborn City Council earlier this week.
“America, we have lost this city,” Sewell shouted. “This is a city that is no longer up under American laws. We are up under Sharia law. We will not have it anymore. Enough is enough.”
“We are not a nation of Muslims,” Sewell yelled. “We are a nation of Christians. We are one nation under God, indivisible—the God of the Bible, the God of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the God in whom we serve.”
Sewell recently hosted and prayed over far-right provocateur and violent Jan. 6 rioter Jake Lang, who is on a “crusade” against American Muslims. Lang who told Sewell’s congregation that Muslims are “mongrel Third Worlders” who are “multiplying like cockroaches.” Said Sewell, “I love you, man.”
In another video Sewell posted this week, the pastor embraces Lang, who asserts that Islam is not a religion but “an insidious parasitical political movement.” Sewell urged Lang to promote an anti-Muslim rally he said he is planning to hold in New York City on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks that, Lang said, “the Muslims did on our people.”
Earlier this year, Lang was captured on video protesting outside AIPAC and declaring, “White Christian men are not going to sit around while you turn our children into a bunch of n****r lovers.”