Mohamed Hussein, a self-identified conservative and practicing Muslim, went to the Texas Republican convention this year seeking common ground.
Instead, during a panel discussion about Judeo-Christian values, he was told to convert to Christianity — or leave the country.
The encounter left Hussein disillusioned with the current Texas Republican Party, he said during a panel discussion at the Texas Tribune Festival Thursday, and wondering, though he identifies as a conservative, whether he still has a place in the party.
“I can’t recognize conservatism when I see the Texas Republican Party or this language,” Hussein said. “How do you demonize a religion and be a conservative? It doesn’t make sense to me.”
Hussein’s remarks came during a panel discussion on what it means to be Muslim in Texas today, moderated by the Tribune’s newsletter writer Yasmeen Khalifa. Anti-Muslim rhetoric has surged during the past two years as Texas Republicans have increasingly made a litany of moves to target the state’s Muslim population.
Some of those actions include:
- Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton targeted the developers of a master-planned North Texas community marketed to Muslims, who initiated multiple investigations on the grounds the development was discriminatory on religious grounds.
- Last year, Abbott declared the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil rights group in the United States, a terrorist organization.
- Abbott also threatened to withhold funding from major airports in Dallas and Houston because washing stations used by Muslims before prayer at the airfields are illegal.
- The Texas State Board of Education in August greenlit a rewrite of the state’s social studies curriculum that paints Islam in a negative light.
- In ads and on the campaign trail, Texas Republicans have increasingly deployed anti-Muslim rhetoric to mobilize conservatives in a tough election cycle.
Republicans, including Abbott, have said they’re trying to stop Islam from being given special treatment compared with other religions and prevent the spread of sharia law, a term for Muslims’ religious way of life. Conservatives have insisted sharia is a competing legal framework incompatible with state and national laws, a view Muslim leaders and scholars reject as a willful misreading of sharia.
Living in Texas as a Muslim has largely been a good experience, the panelists agreed, but hostility against Muslims is clearly on the rise. Zeeshan Hafeez, a tech executive who unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic nomination for a Dallas-area congressional seat, recounted an instance in which he and his family had to leave an Austin pizza restaurant to escape a racist encounter with a man who was physically threatening them.
Since his run-in at the Texas GOP convention, Hussein said he “experienced several months where I felt like a stranger.”
“I don’t know how many people are carrying this belief or sentiment that Muslims should convert or leave and are just not telling me,” Hussein said. “Nevertheless, I believe that this is an aberration. I know that my Texan neighbors do not really desire this, and I know that we’re better than that.”
Abdullah Antepli, president of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, painted the rise in visible Islamophobia — as well in anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia — as a threat to democracy and all Americans.
“Once you make hating one community kosher permissible, once you mainstream dehumanization for any minority, that doesn’t stay with that minority,” Antepli said. “It affects the entire society.”
Republicans, in particular, have left Muslim Texans out to dry, panelists said. Antepli and four other Muslim scholars circulated an op-ed they wrote pushing back against Republican rhetoric regarding Sharia law among Texas lawmakers and pushing legislators to meet with them, Antepli said. Not a single Republican welcomed a conversation with them, Antepli said.
There are bright spots, panelists said. Hafeez name-checked Frisco Mayor Mark Hill, a Republican who took office this year, as a Republican who “has stood on the right side of history and spoken up against the hatred and vitriol.”
Combating Islamophobia will take a multi-pronged effort to educate people about Islam and have serious and difficult interfaith conversations. If Muslims push back against racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism within their community, Antepli said, they’ll gain credibility in pushing against anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Hafeez suggested taking friends and relatives who fear Islam to a mosque, or a Yemeni chai shop.
“The average Muslim is your doctor,” Hafeez said. “The average Muslim is your teacher. The average Muslim is your neighbor who is just trying to be a part of the American fabric.”
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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