In Texas, Republicans make syariah a focal point of election campaigns

HOUSTON – Like Americans elsewhere, Texans are unhappy with the high cost of living.

Affordability will be the clincher in the Nov 3 midterm elections, which will decide whether President Donald Trump’s Republican Party will continue to dominate Congress for the remainder of his term, analysts say.

But bread and butter issues are not the talking points in the campaign ads being aired on local television channels ahead of the state’s Republican nomination contest, known as party primaries, on March 3.

Instead, the hot-button issue in this contest is syariah, or Islamic religious law.

That would seem incongruous in America’s largest red state, where less than 2 per cent of the population – around 300,000 individuals – are Muslim. Yet this is the message that is resounding in a political arena that is putting ideology before all else.

Besides, harping on affordability is like scoring an own goal at a time when a Republican president is in charge of the economy.

A safer option, it would seem, is to promise to fight an “Islamification” of Texas and mobilise voters in the defence of American values, culture and public safety.

Thus, syariah has become a convenient catch-all for mobilising rugged Americanness.

One of the most contentious races this year is for a US Senate seat, where two Republicans are offering a primary challenge to four-term senator John Cornyn, whom Mr Trump has not yet endorsed. The President has effectively stayed on the sidelines by declaring that all contestants are friends of his.

Polls suggest parity between Mr Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney-General, and Mr Wesley Hunt, who is one of the first black Republicans to represent Texas in the House of Representatives.

The tight race has led to predictions that no one will win the March primary, triggering a likely run-off election in May. This usually means that the candidate closest to the party base – and perceived as being most right-wing – will prevail.

This could explain the recent fervour to be seen as more hardline on syariah.

Mr Hunt, who has called syariah “fundamentally incompatible” with American values, has derided Senator Cornyn as “Syriah John” in one of his ads, which featured Mr Cornyn at a Ramadan fast-breaking event.

Mr Cornyn, under attack for helping Afghans get immigrant visas following the Taliban takeover after US withdrawal in 2021, recently released a TV ad calling radical Islam a “bloodthirsty ideology” tied to the attacks at Bondi Beach on Dec 14, 2025, and the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023.

“Syriah has no place in American courts or communities,” the senator says in the ad.

Syariah politics are also colouring the governor’s race. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who is running for his fourth term, ordered an investigation in November 2025 into “possible criminal violations by syariah tribunals masquerading as legal courts… and purporting to enforce syariah law”.

Texas media, however, reported that the target was a decade-old, Dallas-based arbitration firm called “Islamic Tribunal”, which offers non-binding mediation based on Islamic principles in disputes arising from matters like divorce. The firm hands over the cases to Texas courts for final enforcement and ruling, it says.

Mr Abbott also designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy groups in the US, as foreign terrorist organisations in 2025.

CAIR, which has sued Mr Abbott, describes his actions as frivolous, politically motivated, and anti-Muslim.

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, also up for re-election, has listed “preventing syariah law in Texas” as a priority for the next legislative session set to begin in January 2027, and directed Senate committees to study it.

In another contest, Congressman Chip Roy, who represents a district that includes parts of the capital Austin in the US House of Representatives, has vowed to stop the “Islamification of Texas” if elected the state’s next attorney-general.

He is the co-sponsor of a Bill that proposes to deny visas to syariah adherents and mandates the removal of non-citizen supporters of Islamic law.

Not to be outdone, his opponent Aaron Reitz has vowed mass deportations to reverse what he calls syariah “encroachment”.

“Politicians have imported millions of Muslims into our country,” Mr Reitz says in his TV ad, claiming it has led to “more terrorism, more crime”, as well as efforts to impose syariah in Texas.

Both Republican politicians are also targeting a planned residential development in North Texas, which they say is attempting to create an exclusive syariah community. This development had prompted Governor Abott to sign a law in September 2025 banning residential developments from creating “syariah compounds”.

The syariah theme has also taken national overtones. In December 2025, two Texas Republicans, Mr Roy and Mr Keith Self, launched a congressional “Syariah-Free America Caucus”, describing their aim as countering “the alarming rise of syariah law in the US”.

Since then, 33 members of Congress from 18 states – including US House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, elected from Minnesota – have joined the caucus.

“Texas is ground zero in this fight,” said Mr Self, who represents areas around Dallas and has complained about alleged “Islamic-only” housing developments being built in his district.

He has also alleged that Islamic groups were promoting syariah law at state public schools. “The spread (of syariah) has become so serious that on March 3, a proposition to ban syariah will appear on the Texas primary ballot, and I encourage all Texans to go and vote for that proposition,” he said.

Members of the caucus have filed seven Bills to ban syariah law in the US, Mr Self said, including ones to “safeguard our immigration and legal systems from syariah infiltration... and deport foreign nationals who adhere to syariah”.

On Feb 10, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government will hold a hearing titled “Syariah-Free America: Why political Islam & syariah law are incompatible with the US Constitution”.

In Texas, the anti-syariah campaign has created heightened anxiety among Muslims, who say the politicians are stirring up groundless fears.

“We take guidance from the syariah in personal matters like divorce or child custody, just as Jewish Americans take cues from the Torah or follow kosher diets,” said Ms Razia Shah, a schoolteacher in Houston’s Sugar Land suburb, where there is a large Asian Muslim community.

“That does not mean our traditions defy the Constitution – we are law-abiding citizens,” she said, adding that many Muslims had voted for Mr Trump in the 2024 presidential election and shared his conservative social values.

“The Republican rhetoric now will not help the party in November,” she said.

The ideological nature of the campaigns is not lost on ordinary voters.

“Can we work on addressing things that actually affect a large majority of the people who live in this country?” asked one commentator who posted on Mr Emmer’s Facebook page. “Maybe cheaper healthcare and making sure you don’t run social security into the ground. How about lowering the cost of college? The cost of housing, maybe?”

The anti-syariah fervour is perhaps designed to lure voters who generally do not turn out in large numbers during midterms. Besides, with Mr Trump not on the ballot, there is a danger that his MAGA base may not even turn up to vote in the 2026 midterm elections.

That would make it easier for the Democrats, who command the more motivated voters, to win the 2026 elections.

The midterms will decide the fate of all 435 seats in the US House of Representatives, about one third of the 100 US Senate seats, 36 state governorships and many state and local offices.

About half the world’s 50 Muslim-majority countries have syariah-based laws, typically governing areas such as marriage and divorce, inheritance and child custody. Only about a dozen Muslim countries apply syariah to criminal law, which prescribes corporal punishment for certain crimes, in part or in full.