Although it might seem like ages ago, as recently as November 2024, Republican candidates actually made gains with Arab American and Muslim voters. Almost two years later, a striking number of GOP officials have suggested they don’t even want Muslim voters’ support.
Late last week, for example, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina published an item to social media that read, “Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic. We refuse to be silent.”
When her post generated attention, the GOP congresswoman leaned into the sentiment, adding, “If not wanting to be blown up, stabbed, or rammed by a car by a radical Islamist in the United States of America makes us Islamophobes, then so be it.” As the weekend progressed, Mace ultimately boasted of her position, “Total Islamaphobe here.”
It’s worth emphasizing for context that Mace isn’t trying to pander to radical elements in the Republican Party’s base to advance her electoral ambitions. She’ll soon exit Capitol Hill in the wake of an embarrassing fifth-place finish in a recent South Carolina gubernatorial primary.
Mace, in other words, is pushing anti-Muslim bigotry because she wants to, not because she thinks she has to.
Worse, she has plenty of company, especially as Abdul El-Sayed’s Democratic Senate candidacy advances in Michigan, which has sparked a fresh round of unambiguous GOP bigotry.
It was just a few months ago, for example, when Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee published a message to social media that argued, “Muslims don’t belong in American society.” A day earlier, Republican Rep. Randy Fine of Florida, whose track record of peddling Islamophobic rhetoric was already well established, wrote that Americans should “be afraid of Islam” and that Muslims should be expelled from the country.
This followed related recent bigotry from Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who also recently called for the U.S. to deport Muslim Americans because of their religion. Meanwhile in Texas, where concerns about border security have waned, GOP officials and candidates have begun shifting their focus from Latino immigrants to the state’s growing Muslim population.
Indeed, during his failed state attorney general campaign in the Lone Star State, Republican Rep. Chip Roy took aim at Muslim immigrants — “No more Muslims,” he wrote in one online post — and soon after, Muslim delegates and attendees to the state GOP convention were told they were not welcome at the party gathering because of their faith.
Stepping back, I’m struck by two things. First, the degree to which subtext has become text is notable. These Republicans aren’t relying on coded language or innuendo to express their hate; they’re instead skipping past the winks and nods and relying on overt bigotry toward a religious minority without resort to subtleties.
Second, it would be incredibly easy for President Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson or Senate Majority Leader John Thune to tell the public, “The Republican Party does not support religious bigotry of any kind.”
But they haven’t said anything of the sort. On the contrary, GOP officials appear to be sending an unmistakable signal: In the contemporary Republican Party, anti-Muslim attitudes are, at a minimum, tolerated, if not encouraged.
The Bulwark’s Joe Perticone wrote late last year, “Almost a decade removed from President Donald Trump’s attempt to ban Muslims from entering the country during his first term — a vile passion project that has been given new life in his second presidency — a growing number of House and Senate Republicans are taking Islamophobia to a new level, actively calling for discrimination against Muslims and even arguing that some should be denaturalized and deported from the United States.”
Perticone’s piece was published nearly eight months ago. Republicans like Mace aren’t just proving his thesis; they’re also working to make the problem worse.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
The post Too many Republicans keep pushing anti-Muslim bigotry, as GOP leaders remain silent appeared first on MS NOW.
