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islamophobia
Most Jewish Voters Backed El-Sayed Despite Relentless 'Antisemitism' Smear by Israel Apologists
Meanwhile, a new poll revealed that a supermajority of Jewish Americans believe that the actions of Israel and AIPAC fuel antisemitism.
Nov 06, 2026
Despite an expensive campaign to distort his vocal criticism of Israeli crimes in Palestine as "antisemitic," progressive Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won his US Senate race with the support of a majority of the state's early Jewish voters, while a survey published Thursday revealed that 8 in 10 Jewish Americans believe Israel's actions and lobbying increase antisemitism.
An analysis of Michigan voting data published by the Jewish newspaper The Forward found that El-Sayed, who will be the first Muslim senator in US history, received approximately 60% of the vote among Jewish early voters.
The survey's results imply a rebuke of the efforts by groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which spent nearly $30 million on opposing El-Sayed and supporting his primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.).
"The media spent October obsessing over Abdul El-Sayed's 'problem' with Jewish voters," writer and labor organizer Joe Wrote said on social media, noting that corporate outlets including The Washington Post, New York Times, Associated Press, and NPR "ran constant articles."
"In the end, El-Sayed got 60% of the Michigan Jewish vote, 1.3% less than Elissa Slotkin did in 2024," he added, referring to Michigan's Democratic junior US senator, who is Jewish. "The mainstream media is a joke."
While AIPAC's enormous spending helped make the contest one of the most expensive Senate primaries in US history, El-Sayed's focus on issues affecting working families—the affordability crisis, fixing the nation's broken healthcare system via Medicare for All—in addition to broader topics like getting money out of politics and ending US militarism and aid to Israel, led to his Tuesday victory.
AIPAC—whose super political action committee, United Democracy Project (UDP), only started financially supporting congressional candidates in 2021—has flexed its electoral muscles in recent years. In 2024, it helped defeat progressive Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.). However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) survived a UDP spending blitz during the previous midterms in 2022, and El-Sayed's victories in both the Michigan primary and general election demonstrate the limits of its largesse.
El-Sayed's victory coincided with the release of a new GBAO survey commissioned by the liberal Jewish lobby group J Street showing that overwhelming majorities of Jewish Americans believe the actions of Israel and AIPAC contribute to antisemitism in the United States.
According to the survey, 80% of respondents believe that Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank increase hatred of Jews, while 66% said that AIPAC funding advertisements against candidates who criticize Israel worsens antisemitism, and 60% agree that "Jewish organizations that condemn harsh criticism of Israel as antisemitic are exploiting concerns about antisemitism to defend unpopular Israeli government policies."
Tellingly, more respondents believe that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza (31%) than that Israel deserves unconditional support (30%).
A United Nations Commission of Inquiry, as well as many experts, including Israeli and other Jewish scholars, say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. A genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and formally backed by nearly 20 nations is proceeding through the International Court of Justice.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation, committed during a war that has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead or wounded and nearly 2 million people forcibly displaced.
In the illegally occupied West Bank, Israel has been accelerating its decadeslong campaign of apartheid, settler colonization, land theft, and ethnic cleansing, expanding illegal settlements and outposts while systematically dispossessing Palestinians of their homes, farms, and ancestral lands.
The far-right Netanyahu government has openly embraced annexation, with ministers pushing to formally absorb Palestinian territory into Israel and explicitly declaring their intention to prevent the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
Armed Israeli settler-colonists, frequently operating with the protection, participation, or complicity of Israeli occupation forces, have unleashed increasingly brazen pogroms against Palestinian communities, burning homes, mosques, and vehicles, destroying olive groves, stealing livestock, beating residents, and killing Palestinians.
Appearing Thursday on MS NOW's "Morning Joe," El-Sayed was asked by host Willie Geist what message he had for Jewish voters who had been concerned about his positions and how he would protect them against antisemitism.
"I was really privileged to grow up in a community where about 40% of my high school class was Jewish," he said. "I grew up going to synagogue, going to Seder, going to bar and bat mitzvahs growing up. I have so much respect for the Jewish faith and Jewish contributions to American life."
"I also know what it's like to be discriminated against for how I pray," the senator-elect continued. "And I want an America where nobody is discriminated against under our Constitution."
"I know what it's like to drop off my kids to a mosque and wonder if they're going to be safe, and am I going to be able to pick them up safely afterwards," El-Sayed continued. "I'm committed to the safety of Jewish children like I'm committed to the safety of my own children."
"But I want to ask us this," he said. "We spend billions of dollars subsidizing a foreign government unconditionally buying bombs and tanks that have been used to do genocide and apartheid and make war we have no business fighting."
"And we're told that if you want to stand up against the murder of innocent Palestinian children, that that's somehow about hate for anybody. It's not about hate for anybody," El-Sayed stressed. "It's about equal love for those Palestinian children, as you would have for a Jewish child growing up in the Holy Land."
"So if I stand up and say, hey, maybe we shouldn't be sending our money to do the worst things to other people, people are like, well, it must be because you hate the people who are doing the worst things," he said. "I'm like, that's insane."
"We have to separate between Judaism and the Jewish people and Israel and its actions," the senator-elect asserted. "And by the way, I apply the same approach to the government of Egypt where my family came from. And I would hate that somebody would assume that I would be OK with the human rights abuses of the government of Egypt simply because I share the ethnicity of the majority of people who are in Egypt."
El-Sayed concluded by saying he wants to see a world in which "a Palestinian child and a Jewish Israeli child growing up in the Holy Land can look forward at their life and say, my life is not going to be curtailed by somebody's violence."
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Michigan Voters Repudiate Grotesque Islamophobia Aimed at Abdul El-Sayed
El-Sayed’s defeat of this sleazy prejudice is the most American thing in the world. I have gone blue in the face pointing out that the Founding Fathers explicitly recognized freedom of religion and conscience for Muslims, as well as for Jews, Catholics and others.
Nov 04, 2026
The ugly tactics of the Republican Party in Michigan, targeting Abdul El-Sayed for his Muslim faith, were not unprecedented in American history. Catholics, Jews and other minorities have been dragged through the mud for not being white Protestants. Bigots warned that Jack Kennedy would be a tool of the papacy. American Jews were accused of being greedy bankers and dangerous Communists, often in the same breath. Hatred doesn’t need to be logical or consistent. Indeed, the haze of hatred allows people to believe in dozens of impossible things before breakfast.
In the case of El-Sayed, this exemplary American citizen, born in Rochester Hills, raised by an Egyptian Muslim father and a white Christian step-mother, became a physician, taught medicine at Columbia University, and ran health services in Wayne County, Michigan. He was nevertheless configured by Donald Trump and Mike Rogers, both of whom have committed state terrorism against thousands of victims, as a terrorist sympathizer. Rogers who when he was a congressan was a cheerleader for the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohammad Morsi in Egypt, had the nerve to accuse El-Sayed of being a Muslim Brother or receiving support from them. Muslim Brotherhood fundamentalists do not, however, support LGBTQ rights, as El-Sayed does. El-Sayed, a convinced capitalist, was accused of being a Communist, though Communists are typically atheists, so you can’t be both a Communist and a Muslim Brother. It is very like the contradictory charges launched at Jews by antisemites like Henry Ford, Elon Musk’s predecessor.
El-Sayed won a majority of Michigan Jews, who did not buy the GOP smear, perhaps having been sensitized to these sleazy tactics by seeing them deployed by Christian white nationalists against their own community. It has to be admitted, however, that right wing Zionists were among the prominent purveyors of bigoted talking points. The plummeting power of the latter, however, was clearly demonstrated by the bath their candidates took almost across the board. Attempts were made to imply that African-American support for El-Sayed in Detroit and Flint was lukewarm, but it was that vote that will put him over, and in majority-Black precincts he did better than Kamala Harris had.
El-Sayed’s defeat of this sleazy prejudice is the most American thing in the world. I have gone blue in the face pointing out that the Founding Fathers explicitly recognized freedom of religion and conscience for Muslims, as well as for Jews, Catholics and others.
As I previously wrote, the Founding Fathers explicitly mentioned Islam when they spoke of religious freedom. And quoted:
George Washington asked in a March 24, 1784, letter to his aide Tench Tilghman that some craftsmen be hired for him: “If they are good workmen, they may be of Assia, [sic] Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans, [Muslims] Jews, or Christian of any Sect – or they may be Atheists …
In his letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, RI, Washington pledged that the “Children of Abraham” would not be made afraid in the United States (implicitly contrasting the new nation’s liberties and personal security with the pogroms of the Old World). It should be noted that Arab Muslims consider themselves, as well, descendants of Abraham through Ishmael:
- The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security.
If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good government, to become a great and happy people.
The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—-a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my administration and fervent wishes for my felicity.
May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.
Washington underlined that in the new social experiment that is the United States, toleration is not merely the indulgence of one group of people by a dominant elite. It is a right, which requires only that the individual be an upright citizen of the new country, which “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
Ben Franklin, the founding father of many important institutions in Philadelphia, a key diplomat and a framer of the US Constitution, wrote in his Autobiography concerning a non-denominational place of public preaching he helped found “so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.” Here is the whole quote:
- And it being found inconvenient to assemble in the open air, subject to its inclemencies, the building of a house to meet in was no sooner propos’d, and persons appointed to receive contributions, but sufficient sums were soon receiv’d to procure the ground and erect the building, which was one hundred feet long and seventy broad, about the size of Westminster Hall; and the work was carried on with such spirit as to be finished in a much shorter time than could have been expected. Both house and ground were vested in trustees, expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire to say something to the people at Philadelphia; the design in building not being to accommodate any particular sect, but the inhabitants in general; so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service
Not only did Ben Franklin not want to ban Muslims from coming to the United States, he wanted to invited them!
Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 1777 Draft of a Bill for Religious Freedom:
- that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right . . .
The idea of religious liberty enshrined in the First Amendment was based on an act passed in 1786 by the Virginia state legislature that had been authored by Thomas Jefferson, and which said in part:
Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
One of the arguments raised against this act in the Virginia legislature was precisely that it would allow the free practice of Islam in the Commonwealth. Jefferson’s opponents tried to limit religious freedom to Christianity. Jefferson battled back and won.
James E. Hutson explains:
- Campaigning for religious freedom in Virginia, Jefferson followed Locke, his idol, in demanding recognition of the religious rights of the “Mahamdan,” the Jew and the “pagan.” Supporting Jefferson was his old ally, Richard Henry Lee, who had made a motion in Congress on June 7, 1776, that the American colonies declare independence. “True freedom,” Lee asserted, “embraces the Mahomitan and the Gentoo (Hindu) as well as the Christian religion.”
In his autobiography, Jefferson recounted with satisfaction that in the struggle to pass his landmark Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), the Virginia legislature “rejected by a great majority” an effort to limit the bill’s scope “in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan.”
Jefferson was ambassador in Paris in 1787 when the Constitution was being drafted, but he corresponded with Madison and strongly urged him to draft a bill of rights that would address religious liberty. Madison was influenced by the 1786 Virginia statute.
That is, the legislative history of the First Amendment demonstrates conclusively that it is rooted in Enlightenment conceptions of religion that saw Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism as all constituting “religions,” belief in which is a matter of conscience over which civil magistrates should have no control. So I would say that the Constitution implicitly recognizes Islam as a religion, even for an originalist who reads it through eighteenth-century eyes.
Here is Jefferson again: “The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.”
Or: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
The US Senate, full of founding fathers, and the Adams government, approved the Treaty with Tripoli (now Libya) of 1797, which included this language:
“As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
The treaty is important for showing the mindset of the fashioners of the American system.
The second Trump administration has been the most corrupt and crime-ridden in American history. The Trump family has made billions from nepotism and favoritism. He allowed Stephen Miller to reconfigure ICE to illegally assault and detain hundreds of American citizens, to murder American citizens in the street, to engage in racial profiling, and to parade cruelty and sadism before the public. The US military has been misused to murder Latin American and Caribbean fishermen. Trump has launched wars without seeking Congressional approval, which have severely weakened the country’s security posture. Trump has illegally tinkered with tariffs, a Congressional sphere of responsibility, even after the Supreme Court found against him. He has plunged the country into a severe energy crisis from which there is not obvious way to extract it. Trump has also arranged for his political allies to take over major US media, with the Ellisons of Oracle and Skydance fame getting their hands on the throats of CBS News, CNN and TikTok. This is the way that Turkiye’s Tayyip Erdogan tamed Turkish media, by having his cronies take over the major companies. In 2013 when there were street protests in Istanbul, CNN Turk showed documentaries on penguins. We can expect a similar gutting of investigative journalism in the US, with a concomitant nuking of democracy.
The blue tsunami is welcome, but Democrats have to restore the rule of law and reclaim the power of the purse. Trump administration officials who diverted congressionally mandated monies and declined to spend money on the things Congress mandated they be spent on, must be punished. The new big pro-Trump media monopolies have to be broken up. Comity is all very well, but we don’t need fascists to love us, we need them to fear us.
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Young Arab Americans Describe How Islamophobia Throughout Election Has Made Them Feel Unsafe
"I'm more in danger of going through a racist event, a dangerous event, than I was like five years back, especially in school and public places," said one young Michigander.
Nov 03, 2026
Lawmakers and political operatives from both sides of the aisle, with varying degrees of subtlety, have spent the 2026 midterms campaign insisting that Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat, has endangered or threatened Jewish Americans with his campaign.
But young Arab Americans in Michigan this week said the pervasive anti-Arab and anti-Muslim comments of President Donald Trump along with innuendo by some Democrats have made them feel unsafe in their own communities.
"Seeing us so misunderstood, it's really disheartening," a student named Mina Abdel-Khalek told Sam Robinson of The Michigan Chronicle on Monday. "Because I honestly don't know anyone who's as evil as we're painted out to be."
Aasiya Yaasiin added that "it's like going back in time."
"I'm more in danger of going through a racist event, a dangerous event, than I was like five years back, especially in school and public places," said Yaasiin.
El-Sayed supporters Aasiya Yaasiin, Mina Abdel-Khalek and Faduma Hassan say Islamophobic rhetoric in TV ads is making them feel less safe at school and in public. “It’s like going back in time. I’m more in danger of a racist event now than five years ago,” Yaasiin says. https://t.co/aQzqoU5bNH
— Sam Robinson (@samueljrob) November 2, 2026
The corporate Democrat-aligned think tank Third Way kicked off months of attacks on El-Sayed long before the August primary that focused on his decision to campaign with streamer Hasan Piker, who has said the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel was a “direct consequence” of US and Israeli actions. His association with Piker, the group suggested, was an act of antisemitism. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and a number of Democratic operatives have amplified the claim.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said point-blank recently that El-Sayed would put Americans' lives at risk should be win the Senate seat and serve on the Senate Intelligence Committee, while the candidate has been asked repeatedly about his views on Israel's "right to exist" by journalists who have said nothing about his comments on fighting antisemitism.
Meanwhile, a number of political observers have noticed that the corporate media has said far less about rampant Islamophobia and how the safety of Arab Americans and Muslims in the US has been impacted by the persistent attacks on El-Sayed.
Stevens has accused El-Sayed of being "disrespectful to women," and focused intently this week, as she struggled to explain why she had decided to endorse Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in the race, on El-Sayed allegedly becoming "angrier and angrier"—suggesting the Muslim former public health official is an "angry antisemite," as Matt Sledge wrote at The Intercept.
The former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party also asserted that El-Sayed, an outspoken critic of US funding for the Israeli military, is an "extremist" and urged Democrats to vote for neither the Democrat nor the Republican.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump and Cruz have openly called El-Sayed a "jihadist," the president has mocked his Arabic name, and Rogers has claimed he has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood—a movement based in Egypt which Rogers himself has previously said he would be open to working with—and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy baselessly mused at an event for the Republican candidate that hundreds of millions of Arabs across the world had contributed nothing to science and literature.
A speaker at a Rogers rally also claimed that the Michigan-born candidate, whose family immigrated from Egypt, is "not an American."
While interview questions, rally speeches, and articles have fixated on whether El-Sayed has endangered or could endanger Jewish communities, whom he has engaged with through a "deep canvassing" campaign in the final weeks of the race, observers have noted that Rogers and Trump have not been asked whether their comments on the candidate may endanger Arab Americans and Muslims.
"Mike Rogers has run a bigoted, openly Islamophobic campaign that endangers millions of our fellow Americans," said Dylan Williams of the Center for International Policy. "That some pro-Israel groups have assisted him by spreading lies about Abdul El-Saued should be a source of shame and cause for reflection among many who should know better."
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Where Is the Outrage When Islamophobia Comes Straight From the Top?
We constantly hear warnings about the rising tide of antisemitism in this country. But what about the tsunami of anti-Arab racism and anti-Muslim hatred that is not just coming from ordinary citizens, but from the highest levels of our government?
Oct 31, 2026
The Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate coming from the highest levels of our government are absolutely outrageous. From President Donald Trump to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to members of Congress, including Sen.Ted Cruz and Rep. Nancy Mace, we are hearing vile, ignorant and dangerous attacks that must be denounced not just by the communities and individuals under attack, but by all of us.
When RFK Jr. was campaigning in Michigan for Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, he insulted the entire Arab community worldwide—all 500 million of them—saying that Arabs “don't produce science, they don't produce literature, and they don't win Nobel Prizes or other prestigious international awards.”
His remarks were not only incredibly racist, but absolutely false. In fact, Egyptian scientist Ahmed Zewail won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman won the Nobel Peace Prize. Palestinian-American chemist Omar Yaghi won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and mathematician Michael Atiyah, whose father was Lebanese, won the Fields Medal.
There is a fundamental difference between Islamophobia and antisemitism in America today: Islamophobia is being promoted by the state.
And let's not forget the extraordinary contributions of Arab scholars to mathematics, medicine, astronomy, and philosophy over the centuries.
Then there's Donald Trump, who has been on the campaign trail spewing racist diatribes against Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan. Trump has been deliberately calling him Mohammad. When told that his name is Abdul, Trump responded, "I'm the president. I can call him whatever the hell I want."
He has accused El-Sayed of being a “Muslim Brotherhood Jihadist, who hates Jews and Blacks and AMERICANS.” He's even said El-Sayed “would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he's allowed to go into the Senate.”
Republican Senator Ted Cruz has joined in the hatefest. At a campaign event in Michigan, Cruz announced that his nickname for Abdul El-Sayed is "the jihadist leprechaun." Cruz then claimed that if El-Sayed were elected to the Senate, he could gain access to classified intelligence and pass it to terrorists. He warned that if El-Sayed is a "passionate supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood," there is "a very real risk that Americans will die as a result." El-Sayed has repeatedly denied any connection to the Muslim Brotherhood.
And then there's Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who declared that "Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan Horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic." Imagine if someone said this about Jewish officials!
On March 9, 2026, Tennessee Republican Congressman Andy Ogles declared that "Muslims don't belong in American society" and that "Pluralism is a lie." He has also advocated stripping naturalized Muslim Americans of their citizenship and deporting them.
The attacks on New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the city's first Muslim mayor, have been relentless. Ogles called him "little Muhammad" and demanded that he be stripped of his citizenship and deported. Senator Tommy Tuberville posted a photo of Mamdani celebrating Ramadan alongside a photo of the September 11 attacks, with the chilling caption, "The enemy is inside the gates." Mace also associated Mamdani with 9/11, while Congresswoman Elise Stefanik called him a "jihadist." How can we tolerate politicians treating an entire religious community as terrorists and enemies of our country?
Let's not forget the Trump administration's chilling raid on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's home, even though no criminal charges had been filed against her. Over and over again, Trump has attacked Omar, telling her to go back to Somalia, calling her homeland a "shithouse," accusing her of hating America, and even suggesting she could be deported or jailed.
Antisemitism is certainly unacceptable, but so are Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism.
We constantly hear warnings about the rising tide of antisemitism in this country. But what about the tsunami of anti-Arab racism and anti-Muslim hatred that is not just coming from ordinary citizens, but from the highest levels of our government?
Where is the outrage? Where are the political leaders demanding accountability? Where are the congressional hearings? In the past two years, I have seen 14 hearings about antisemitism, compared with just two that discussed anti-Arab hate and Islamophobia.
CAIR's 2026 Civil Rights Report recorded 8,683 complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination in 2025, the highest annual number since it began collecting these figures in 1996.
As Jewish writer and political commentator Peter Beinart has argued, there is a fundamental difference between Islamophobia and antisemitism in America today: Islamophobia is being promoted by the state. Beinart points to the attacks on Muslim elected officials, the congressional campaign against Sharia law, and Trump's Muslim immigration bans as evidence that anti-Muslim prejudice is being promoted by the very people entrusted with protecting Americans' constitutional rights.
Antisemitism is certainly unacceptable, but so are Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism. And it's time we confronted all three with the same outrage, the same urgency, the same call for accountability, and the same commitment to justice.
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Jews Cannot Stay Silent in the Face of Islamophobia
Antisemitism and Islamophobia are intertwined in the white Christian nationalist ideology, and Jews and Muslims must be intertwined in our collective fight for our safety.
Oct 29, 2026
“Will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood?” A young white man, "Tommy," asked Dr. Abdul El-Sayed this at a campaign event in Michigan. El-Sayed’s answer was a question of his own: “Why are you asking that question? Do you assume that I wouldn’t?”
Though Tommy asserts he’s asking because he hasn’t heard Dr. El-Sayed disavow this terrorist group, Dr. El-Sayed knew—as did a whole lot of folks in that room with them—that the real reason Tommy was asking is because Dr. El-Sayed is Muslim.
It has since been revealed that “Tommy” is Thomas Teepell, and not only is he a former employee of a far-right Republican senator who openly identifies as a Christian nationalist, and is himself directly connected to a white Christian nationalist group, but both he and his father are Republican strategists. And that actually matters, because this wasn’t just some misguided citizen asking his possible future senator a question; this was a political operative deploying anti-Muslim bigotry as a strategy to win an election.
Jews should be on the front lines of pushing back on Islamophobia when we encounter it, and feel both an empathy and a personal stake in the safety of our neighbors.
As a Jewish leader, that chills me to my bones, because it is the other side of the coin of the intentional strategy to appropriate and twist Jewish fear of antisemitism in order to win elections and divide communities. President Donald Trump’s administration is going on tour in battleground states talking about fighting antisemitism, while on that same tour they are using supposed concerns about antisemitism as a smokescreen to justify their dangerous immigration policies in ways that meaningfully threaten Jewish safety.
The right’s antisemitism and Islamophobia come from the same ideology: white Christian nationalism. In this ideology, both Jews and Muslims are the “other,” the threats to society and a way of life. This ideology holds Jews responsible for the “great replacement” of white people with immigrants, Muslims, and other people of color and uses antisemitism to deflect blame for the failures of those in power, to remove fundamental freedoms, and to weaken democracy. It is a certain brand of Christianity that seeks to supersede the Constitution, while wrongly accusing religious minorities of holding dual loyalty to their texts and teachings.
Antisemitism and Islamophobia are intertwined in the white Christian nationalist ideology, and Jews and Muslims must be intertwined in our collective fight for our safety. That means Jews should be on the front lines of pushing back on Islamophobia when we encounter it, and feel both an empathy and a personal stake in the safety of our neighbors.
Tommy is unfortunately the avatar for far too many people. It is incumbent upon each of us to fight the dangerous conflation of the beliefs and actions of everyday American Muslims with those of terrorist organizations. As Jews, we can certainly understand that danger when far too many people regularly conflate us with the beliefs and actions of the Israeli government.
The Islamophobic rhetoric being levied against Dr. El-Sayed—or New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani or Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for that matter—threatens Jewish safety, and threatens our neighbors with a precarity we know far too well. Our community must reject it.
Even more importantly, we must see Tommy for what he truly is—a cog in a political machine that weaponizes our fear and thrives on our division. We must dismantle that machine by fighting antisemitism and Islamophobia together and making bigotry a losing strategy. This November, let’s elect leaders who will work for our collective safety, rather than for our division.
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Latest Ted Cruz Attack on Abdul El-Sayed Denounced as 'Straight-Up Incitement'
"This is the most nakedly bigoted American political campaign of this century," said one observer.
Oct 28, 2026
Sen. Ted Cruz claimed Wednesday that Americans could die if Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Democratic nominee for US Senate in Michigan, wins next week's midterm election, prompting a fresh round of denunciation of Republicans' Islamophobic bigotry.
“If Abdul El-Sayed becomes the senator for Michigan, there is absolutely nothing to stop Chuck Schumer from placing Abdul El-Sayed on the Senate Intelligence Committee,” Cruz (R-Texas) said, envisioning a scenario in which Republicans lose control of the upper chamber of Congress and Schumer (D-NY), currently the top Democrat, becomes majority leader.
“And if I am correct that he is a passionate supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, there is a very real risk that Americans will die as a result," Cruz added.
Cruz wasn't done—he also called El-Sayed a "jihadist leprechaun," an apparent swipe at the doctor's physical stature.
The Texas senator, whose comments came while campaigning for Republican Michigan US Senate candidate Mike Rogers, was excoriated for his remarks, and not just by Democrats.
"There really is nothing Ted Cruz won't say if he thinks there is political benefit to be had," American Conservative senior editor Luke Nicastro said on social media.
Matt Duss, a former top aide to US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the current executive vice president at the Center for International Policy think tank, took aim at not only Cruz but also C-SPAN, which aired a clip of the comments.
"This is straight-up incitement, and it’s fucking disgusting that C-SPAN is clipping and promoting it," Duss wrote on X.
The increasingly ugly Michigan Senate campaign has seen President Donald Trump repeatedly target El-Sayed’s name, religion, and alleged political affiliations, as well as his wife. The president has called El-Sayed a “jihadist” and claimed without providing evidence that he belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, while mocking his Arabic name.
Rogers has also questioned El-Sayed’s loyalties, asking whether he is “for America, or... for these terrorist groups overseas?”
US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also drew condemnation after making sweeping, demonstrably false claims about Arabs and Muslims during a Monday campaign event for Rogers in Grand Rapids.
"This," opined More Perfect Union's Paul Blest following Kennedy's remarks, "is the most nakedly bigoted American political campaign of this century."
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Muslim Candidates Are Still Treated as Suspects. Voters Are Starting to See Through It.
From Mamdani to Hamawy to El-Sayed, Muslim progressives keep getting smeared as terrorists by Republicans and self-styled centrists alike, and they keep winning anyway.
Oct 28, 2026
When I first ran for the Princeton school board, I did something I doubt my opponents ever considered. Before knocking on a single door, I asked respected leaders in my community to vouch publicly for my character. I wanted voters to hear from people they trusted that I was a mother, a neighbor, and a public servant, not a threat.
I lost anyway. In a down-ballot race, where many voters know little about the candidates beyond their names, I believe mine worked against me the moment voters read it.
My experience is not unusual. Since 9/11, Muslim American candidates have been held to an impossible standard: we must be flawless, and even then, we are viewed through the lens of terrorism. A new report from the Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights, Punished for Participating, documents this pattern across more than 31 case studies from 2001 to 2026. Despite historic gains (more than 255 Muslim Americans held elected office by this summer), Muslim candidates face a mainstreamed backlash built on conspiracy theories of a "Sharia" takeover, gendered stereotypes, political violence, and presumptions of antisemitism. The report's core finding is painfully simple: Muslims are punished for doing one of the most American things there is, running for office.
Islamophobia is not a Republican monopoly. Some self-styled centrists in the Democratic Party reach for the same smears, and for the same reason: they feel threatened by the rise of progressive Muslims who are winning.
Recent election cycles proved the point three times over.
In New York, Zohran Mamdani was branded "a jihadist candidate" by Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, while former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, mused on the radio about Mamdani in City Hall during "another 9/11." The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding's new toolkit on countering Islamophobia cites an analysis of more than 35,000 posts on X targeting Mamdani, with an estimated reach of 1.5 billion people. Seventy-two percent framed him as an extremist or terrorist.
In New Jersey's 12th Congressional District, which includes Princeton, Democratic candidate Dr. Adam Hamawy is a retired Army combat surgeon who once saved Senator Tammy Duckworth's life after she was wounded when her helicopter was shot down in Iraq. Dr. Hamawy was called a "radical extremist" by a Democratic primary rival over testimony he was subpoenaed to give as a witness in a trial three decades ago.
In Michigan, Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has been called a "jihadist" by President Trump himself, who has taken to calling him "Muhammad," and Republicans are making false allegations about his associations with terrorist groups.
Here is the reason for hope: All three won their primaries, and Mamdani went on to become New York's first Muslim mayor. American voters are growing more sophisticated at spotting Islamophobia and are more willing to reject it.
But winning does not erase the toll. ISPU's research finds that 63% of American Muslims reported religious discrimination in the past year. Its Islamophobia Index, which measures how strongly the public endorses anti-Muslim stereotypes, jumped from 25 in 2022 to 33 in 2025. After the 2024 election, Muslims were the faith group most likely to fear for their personal safety.
Every Muslim candidate carries that weight onto the campaign trail, and the CSRR report warns that this hostility discourages other Muslims from running at all. Living under constant accusation is grueling.
What stuns me most is who is doing the accusing. Islamophobia is not a Republican monopoly. Some self-styled centrists in the Democratic Party reach for the same smears, and for the same reason: they feel threatened by the rise of progressive Muslims who are winning. There is nothing moderate about recycling the far right’s oldest slander. When a so-called centrist calls a Muslim candidate an extremist, they are borrowing a right-wing script and selling it as common sense.
Voters are tired of elected officials who answer to wealthy donors, corporate special interests, and foreign governments instead of ordinary people and our most vulnerable communities. Progressive Muslim candidates are winning because they speak to that frustration: Hamawy on Medicare for All and medical debt, El-Sayed on rejecting corporate influence, and Mamdani on affordability. Rather than shift their allegiance back to everyday voters, some entrenched politicians would rather cast suspicion on the people beating them. It is a game of thrones, played with our names.
Voters are tired of elected officials who answer to wealthy donors, corporate special interests, and foreign governments instead of ordinary people and our most vulnerable communities.
This is not a new American fight. In 1869, Frederick Douglass argued that the nation’s strength lay in being a “composite nation,” open to people of every race and creed. In 1915, Louis Brandeis, who would soon become the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court, told an audience at Boston’s Faneuil Hall:
Let us not forget that many a poor immigrant comes to us from distant lands, ignorant of our language, strange in tattered clothes and with jarring manners, who is already truly American in this most important sense; who has long shared our ideals and who, oppressed and persecuted abroad, has yearned for our land of liberty and for the opportunity of aiding in the realization of its aims.
Douglass and Brandeis believed American ideals should reach beyond ethnicity, skin color, or religion. The question before us is whether America will fulfill the aspiration they championed, or fall back on the creed of the Confederacy and the defenders of Jim Crow. The nativists and bigots never went away. They simply found new targets until the country was roused to fight for its ideals. Now is the time to recognize that this collective courage is needed again.
There are concrete ways to end this bigotry. CSRR calls for state and federal task forces on Islamophobia, modeled on those confronting antisemitism, and for law enforcement training to protect Muslim candidates and officials, who are frequent targets of threats. ISPU urges civic groups to train, equip, support, and protect Muslims who run for office. It also poses a question every leader should answer honestly: Do you use the words "radical" and "extremist" only when you talk about Muslims?
But the most immediate solution doesn't require a task force. We need our friends, neighbors, and allies to call out Islamophobia whenever they see it. We especially need elected officials at every level, from school boards to Congress, to speak up when a Muslim candidate or colleague is targeted, no matter which party the attack comes from. When allies stay silent, these smears look acceptable. When a colleague pushes back publicly, voters learn that these attacks are out of bounds.
Voters can keep doing what they did last year and this year: judge candidates and elected officials by our records. But let us be honest about what is under attack. It is not only our names. It is our faith. The smears insist that a devout Muslim cannot also be a faithful public servant. The opposite is true. My faith teaches that every person carries dignity, that justice must be upheld even when it costs us, and that a society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable. Those values are why so many of us run: to fight for health care, fair wages, good schools, and equal protection for every neighbor. Our faith is not a threat to American democracy. It is the reason we show up to serve.
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RFK Jr. Condemned Over Baseless and 'Nakedly Racist' Anti-Arab Rant at Rogers Event in Michigan
"Every day, a prominent Republican... says something insanely racist about Muslims or Arabs," said one journalist, while many Democrats are silent about "out-of-control Islamophobia from the GOP."
Oct 27, 2026
Visiting the state with the highest percentage of Arab Americans to campaign for the Republican US Senate candidate, a week before the midterm elections during a campaign in which people from across the political spectrum have recoiled at the GOP's racist, misogynist rhetoric, the Trump administration's top health official opted to share a fact-free non sequitur about hundreds of millions of Arabs across the globe.
Apparently trying to sell voters in Michigan on Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers, who was behind Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed by two points in a recent Marist poll—and by six points among independents—Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. opined on "500 million Arabs in the world," a vast population that he suggested contributes little to the global community.
"They don’t produce science, they don’t win the Nobel Prize, they don’t win the Fields prize, they don’t win the Wolf Prize, they don’t produce literature," declared Kennedy at a campaign event in Grand Rapids.
RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Novel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature." https://t.co/ikZHqklQjE
— Bulwark Clips (@BulwarkClips) October 26, 2026
The comments provoked horror among numerous Democratic lawmakers, advocacy groups, scientists, and journalists, many of whom were quick to point out that Kennedy's racist rant had no basis in reality.
"Besides being nakedly racist and bigoted, this is just hilariously wrong on all levels," said Justin Baragona of Zeteo News.
Baragona was among the observers who did not have reach far back in history to prove Kennedy, who has been widely condemned for his rejection of scientific evidence as he has questioned the safety of vaccines, entirely wrong about Arab people's contributions to the field.
Just last year, Omar Yaghi won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the development of metal-organic frameworks. Yaghi was born in Jordan to Palestinian refugee parents. He also won the Wolf Prize, an international award for achievements in sciences and the arts, in 2018, for his contributions to the field of reticular chemistry.
Vaccine scientist Peter Hotez expressed relief that his late colleague and "brilliant co-US Science Envoy," the Egyptian-American chemist Ahmed Zewail, "didn’t have to endure" listening to Kennedy's comments. Zewail won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1999.
Entrepreneur Saad Mohseni listed a number of other "Arab science giants" who came to mind.
Baragona also pointed to two winners of the National Book Award just last year—the Lebanese writer and painter Rabih Alameddine and Egyptian-American journalist Omar El Akkad.
But US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) suggested that beyond debunking Kennedy's wholly inaccurate claim, "everyone needs to pay attention" to what his comments were part of: a "coordinated campaign to delegitimize Muslim Americans—not just as citizens but as humans."
"These increasingly hysterical attacks are a prelude to Republicans bringing us to a very, very dark place after the election," said Murphy.
The Council on American Islamic Relations demanded that Kennedy be removed from his Cabinet position in light of the remarks, which they called "a textbook display of unvarnished racism and bigotry."
"To stand on a public stage as a sitting US Cabinet official and dehumanize half a billion people—and millions of Muslim and Christian Arab Americans—with fabricated, white supremacist talking points is utterly disqualifying for public office," said the group. "His sweeping erasure of Arab contributions to humanity is not only maliciously false, but it also fans the flames of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate at a time when communities are already vulnerable to bigoted attacks from other public officials nationwide. Anyone who holds such blatant contempt for an entire ethnicity has no business leading a federal agency meant to serve all Americans."
Journalist Mehdi Hasan, the founder of Zeteo News, suggested that the Democratic Party and liberal commentators deserve a large share of the blame for a political environment in which a top US official felt comfortable openly degrading hundreds of millions of people of Arab descent, including an estimated 3.7 million Arab Americans, as non-contributing members of society.
"Every day, a prominent Republican—the president, a Cabinet official, a primetime Fox host, the Michigan Senate candidate—says something insanely racist about Muslims or Arabs. Meanwhile, my timeline is full of prominent Democrats and liberals getting mad about a random ad attacking Israel and screaming about antisemitism," he said, referring to an ad recently released by Rebellion political action committee, which criticized US aid to Israel and tied it to Americans' struggles with the rising cost of living.
From many liberal commentators, said Hasan, he has heard "crickets... on the out-of-control Islamophobia from the GOP."
Kennedy's anti-Arab comments were hardly an outlier in the Michigan Senate campaign. Rogers and President Donald Trump have both accused El-Sayed of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, despite the fact that in 2012, as a congressman, Rogers himself said he was willing to work with the movement. The president has openly called the Michigan-born El-Sayed a "jihadist," and a speaker at one Rogers rally over the weekend said the candidate's birth certificate did not make him an American.
But prominent Democrats have also had a hand in pushing the narrative that El-Sayed is a risky choice for Michiganders. Former state Democratic Party chair Lon Johnson accused El-Sayed of “extremism” last week and said his criticism of Israel threatens Jewish communities, calling on Democrats in the state to “leave the Senate race blank." During the primary, the centrist think tank Third Way spent months attacking El-Sayed for campaigning with popular streamer Hasan Piker, who once said that the US "deserved" the September 11 attacks—a comment he later clarified and apologized for.
At Protect Our Care, an advocacy group that typically focuses on Kennedy's attacks on public health, president Brad Woodhouse said Tuesday that with his remarks in Grand Rapids, the health secretary had "laid bare how small and ignorant he really is."
“Fear and racism are the crutch of pathetic political hacks with absolutely nothing to offer or progress to point to," said Woodhouse. "This is his closing argument for why Republicans need more power, smearing an entire people with gross and instantly disprovable lies? Really?"
"Secretary Kennedy thinks spewing hate will distract people from his multiple corruption scandals and starring role in the historic measles and food-borne illness crises Americans have suffered through this year," he added. "This wasn’t the first time RFK Jr has trafficked in racism, but it may be his ugliest episode yet. It’s an indictment of both Mike Rogers and [Republican US Rep.] John James that they haven’t condemned the remarks. They’d rather clap like seals and hope RFK’s racist ‘hail mary’ pays off for them politically. That makes them just as weak, pathetic, and un-American.”
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'I'll Be Senator Mohamed to You, Bro': El-Sayed Hits Back at Trump's Islamophobic Attacks
“I don’t care how he pronounces my name,” the Michigan Democrat said. “Because he can just go on and call me senator after November.”
Oct 26, 2026
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Michigan, remained undeterred on Sunday night after President Donald Trump and his supporters ramped up their overt attacks on his Muslim faith at a rally earlier that day.
Continuing to refer to the former public health official by his middle name “Mohamed,” Trump told a frothing crowd in Port Huron on Sunday afternoon that El-Sayed—who would be the first Muslim elected to the Senate—was a “jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member,” escalating the false attacks made by his Republican opponent, former US Rep. Mike Rogers.
"I get that the president takes personal offense to my first name," El-Sayed said at his own rally in Grand Rapids later that evening. "He doesn't mind as much when it's the Saudis who are funding his son-in-law's private equity. Doesn't seem to mind as much when it's the Qataris who are giving them a $400 million private jet. He just seems to have trouble pronouncing it when it's my name."
"I don't care how he pronounces my name. I don't even care that he remembers my whole name. Because he can just go on and call me senator after November," he continued. "I'll be Senator Mohamed to you, bro."
The continued attacks on El-Sayed’s name and Muslim faith were part of a barrage of racist and Islamophobic remarks from Trump and his allies at the rally, which several observers on social media, including the prominent left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, compared to a “Klan rally.”
Portraying El-Sayed as a terrorist, Trump said the Democrat should not be allowed to fly on airplanes and, if elected, should be required to pass through a metal detector when entering the Senate.
Contrasting El-Sayed with Rogers, whom he described as American as “apple pie,” Trump said that El-Sayed, who has frequently emphasized his commitment to religious pluralism on the campaign trail, wanted to impose Sharia on the United States.
He also directed his ire at Jewish voters who may vote for El-Sayed, a frequent critic of US support for Israel.
“Any Jewish person that supports this guy should be ashamed of themselves,” Trump said, again invoking the antisemitic trope that Jewish Americans hold dual loyalty to both the US and Israel. “I’m polling 99% in Israel, and I cannot understand how anybody who’s Jewish can even think about voting for this guy.”
Trump compared stopping El-Sayed to stopping the 9/11 hijackers. Underscoring the point, he brought out David Beamer, whose son Todd died fighting the hijackers aboard Flight 93, to deliver more blood-and-soil invective.
"Mike Rogers is an American. Abdul has a birth certificate. The birth certificate says he's a citizen of America," Beamer said. "A birth certificate doesn't make you an American."
"He has a birth certificate, but he's not an American," he said of El-Sayed, who was born and raised in Michigan. "He had the choice. He had the choice to be an American or not. He has chosen otherwise. He has blood that's red. However, he has chosen to remove any strain of the white and blue part in his blood."
"We cannot, cannot allow this man to invade and occupy our country," Beamer said.
Though Rogers has attacked El-Sayed’s religious background relentlessly in the final months of the campaign, an average of polls from FiftyPlusOne shows El-Sayed with roughly a three-point lead just over a week before Election Day.
Rogers has struggled to defend Trump’s unpopular record as El-Sayed has hammered him over inflation, corruption, and the Iran war. El-Sayed, meanwhile, has stayed focused on a three-part pitch to Michiganders: “Money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for All.”
Joining El-Sayed in Grand Rapids, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) suggested Republicans were resorting to Islamophobia because they had nothing of substance to offer voters on the economy.
“Mr. President, instead of slandering Abdul and his family, what are you going to do about the healthcare crisis in America? What are you going to do about the housing crisis? What are you going to do about income and wealth inequality?” Sanders asked. “These guys have nothing to say about the real issues impacting working families, and all they can do is foment hatred and divisiveness.”
"The reason that in many respects this race here in Michigan is... the race that people all over the world are looking at, is whether or not the people of Michigan are going to stand up to that vile racism," Sanders continued. "And I have every confidence in the world that's exactly what you're going to do."
Republican attacks seem to have alienated some of the Arab American voters who unexpectedly broke for Trump in 2024 over the Biden administration's support for Israel's genocide in Gaza.
"The remarks are out of line and crazy," said Bishara Bahbah, a founder of Arab Americans for Trump. "I mean, no sane individual would say these things."
"They are crossing a red line. They are racist," Bahbah told The Associated Press. "The president of the United States saying that about a person because of his religion, that is just not acceptable. And people are going to remember that on November 3."
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What Do You Tell a Child When a Teacher Disparages Her Religion?
The Texas State Board of Education has approved new social studies standards taking effect in 2030 that require teachers to denigrate the religion of Islam with biased, ahistorical, and offensive characterizations.
Oct 21, 2026
What do you tell a child attending public school when her teacher singles out and disparages her religion?
That is the question parents of Muslim children in Texas schools might soon confront. The Texas State Board of Education has approved new social studies standards taking effect in 2030 that require teachers to denigrate the religion of Islam with biased, ahistorical, and offensive characterizations.
One of the most controversial edits would require students to study "the Prophet Mohammed’s brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves.”
All students have a right to attend public school without being singled out, stereotyped, or silenced because of their faith.
None of these claims stand up to a neutral reading of history.
Even prominent secular historians recognize that the Prophet and many of the Muslim leaders who followed him protected Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities under their governance; that Islamic law outright banned most forms of slavery and never permitted the type of race-based enslavement practiced in the West; and the Prophet was a married man who never had a so-called "harem."
The new curriculum’s characterization of warfare in Muslim history as "brutal" is also deeply dishonest.
All wars are inherently brutal, yet the new Texas curriculum does not require teachers to describe wars undertaken by the United States, European powers, Israel, Protestant and Catholic empires, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, ancient Israelites, and other historical actors as “brutal.”
“Brutal” is not a historical fact; it is a judgment. Presenting that judgment as objective history crosses a line that public schools should never cross.
For a Muslim child attending public school, the new curriculum's misleading claims about Muslim history and its negative characterization of the Prophet strike directly at her faith, her identity, and the values she holds dear. It tells her that the historic figure her family reveres as a model of mercy, compassion, justice, and dignity is someone her own government has chosen to portray as “brutal."
That is not neutral instruction, and the harm caused by this biased curriculum can extend far beyond the classroom.
The anti-Muslim sentiment expressed by a teacher can follow a student from the classroom, to the cafeteria table, and into conversations with her classmates in the locker room. Imagine being a Muslim teenager when your teacher introduces a lesson that denigrates Islam. Imagine your classmates looking at you and asking, “But you're Muslim. What do you think about that?”
No child should have to sit at a desk while the adult entrusted with teaching her is required to pass judgment on the religious figure she loves or her faith. Muslim students should not be asked to absorb that message in silence, to manage the discomfort of their classmates, or to wonder whether their teacher sees their faith as something dangerous or inferior.
They should not have to listen politely while their most sacred figure is reduced to a state-mandated mischaracterization, then be expected to return to homework, group projects, and hallway conversations as if nothing happened.
A classroom lesson should not become a moment where a Muslim child feels targeted, isolated, or forced to choose between respecting the classroom environment and honoring her own religious identity.
These new standards do more than shape what students learn. They risk increasing anti-Muslim sentiment among non-Muslim students, silencing Muslim students, placing teachers in an extraordinarily difficult position, and creating classrooms where children may feel that their faith and the people they love are subjects of suspicion or contempt.
Texas teachers should teach historical facts about Islam and all religions accurately, fairly, and in their proper context.
Students can learn about the development of Islam; the civilizations it shaped; its contributions to math, science, art, and culture; and the positive and negative events in Muslim history, without reducing an entire faith to biased, dishonest characterizations.
Texas public school teachers have a responsibility to teach about the religion followed by one-fourth of the world’s population with the same fairness, accuracy, and respect it owes to every other faith discussed in their classrooms. No teachers should institutionalize hate or force students to defend, much less denigrate, their own faith
A Muslim student should be able to sit in a Texas history classroom and learn about the past without being forced to agree with the denigration of Islam, her Prophet, or her family’s beliefs. She should not have to listen to the person standing at the front of the room pass judgment on her faith and then be expected to carry that wound quietly through the rest of the school day. She should not have to prove that her faith is worthy of respect, that her family is good, or that she is American enough to belong.
All students have a right to attend public school without being singled out, stereotyped, or silenced because of their faith. Their faith belongs here. Their dignity belongs here. And their classrooms belong to them, too.
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