After a fiercely contested Republican primary runoff in the US state of Texas, Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment have come into the open, and Muslims there say they are increasingly the targets of public anger and hatred.
Texas residents say hateful remarks by elected officials are now being reflected in ordinary people’s everyday conversations. The hostility is surfacing in ordinary settings — discussions about education, shopping, parks, universities and even primary schools. Recently, at the University of Houston, a man approached praying students and burned a Quran. Others have been verbally abused for wearing traditional dress.
“This hate is also spreading downward,” said Nayla Syed, a Dallas resident and a member of the Islamic Center of North America’s Council for Social Justice. Her two daughters have faced Islamophobic questions at school, with classmates asking whether they were aware that Islam mistreats women. As a parent, she said, she is quite worried.
Online harassment and threats have led many to ask that pseudonyms be used. At the official Texas GOP convention recently, several Muslim delegates were told to either convert to Christianity or leave the country. Around the same time, a video surfaced of two Muslim women being abused at a grocery store, in which one woman said: “Islam is not a religion, it’s a terrorist organisation. This is not Muslims’ country, this is Christians’ country.”
About $145,000 has been raised online for that woman, with the support of Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace. Mace and Brandon Gill have both opposed immigration from Muslim-majority countries.
Brandon Gill, who represents Texas’s 26th congressional district, wrote in an email to his voters: “Stop Islamic immigration now, or our children will pay the price.” In an interview with Fox News, he said that if it were not stopped, his daughter and other girls would have to attend public schools in burqas.
In its list of legislative priorities at the Texas Republican Party convention held in June, the party included “Don’t Shariah Our Texas,” which essentially calls for treating Shariah law as a crime. Experts have repeatedly said no one in Texas is trying to implement Shariah law, and that Shariah is not merely a legal code but a moral code of conduct drawn from the Quran.
Omar (a pseudonym), who attended the convention, said Muslims there were repeatedly called terrorists and told to leave the country. “We think about things just like ordinary Americans. We are family people,” Omar said. “This is not the America I believed in, but I’m not going anywhere.”
Shehla Faizi, the Green Party candidate for state comptroller, expressed anger over the incidents, saying it was only a matter of time before this happened to Muslims who supported the Republicans. She is running on an independent ticket, she said, because the main parties had not taken a firm stand against the hatred. Texas has only two Muslim lawmakers. Faizi believes such racism shrinks Muslims mentally.
At a hearing of the State Board of Education in Austin, Nayla Syed saw at least six speakers raise objections to the role of Muslim civilisation and Islam in world history during a discussion on revising the social-studies syllabus. People there were misinterpreting Quranic verses while others applauded. After the meeting, the Republican-controlled education board approved a new social-studies draft that narrowed lessons on slavery and civil rights. Syed believes it begins by demonising one minority group and later turns toward others.
Syed tried, without success, to meet Keith Self, founder of the “Shariah-free America” caucus in Congress. Dr Suleman Lalani, one of Texas’s Muslim lawmakers, has formed an “interfaith caucus” to stop the use of religion in politics and organised a panel discussion in Houston on the “politicisation of religion.” “Fear is born of ignorance, and hatred comes from fear,” Dr Suleman said. “If we connect with one another, awareness will grow.”
Christian Manuel, a Democratic state representative from southeast Texas, put it bluntly: “All of us are being used as tools. They are weaponising people’s ignorance.”
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report