SUGAR LAND, Texas — Whether speaking at local government meetings or protesting over the war in Gaza and Islamophobia in public schools, Amina Ishaq counts on the Council on American-Islamic Relations to defend her rights and those of the growing Muslim community in this politically dividedHouston suburb.
“They used to come out to our protests to make sure we were okay,” said Ishaq, a social worker who is active at her local mosque.
Earlier this month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated CAIR — one of America’s largest Muslim advocacy and civil rights groups — a “foreign terrorist organization,” along with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization. He accused the groups of attempting to “subvert our laws through violence, intimidation, and harassment.”
Abbott said the designation would bar CAIR from acquiring Texas land under a law passed by the state legislature earlier this year and clear the way for the state attorney general “to sue to shut them down.”
“These radical extremists are not welcome in our state,” Abbott said in a statement.
To Ishaq, it is as if Abbott and other Republican officials are attacking the Anti-Defamation League, a historic anti-hate group founded to combat antisemitism, or the NAACP. “They’re protecting our civil liberties,” she said of CAIR.
Abbott’s declaration accused the D.C.-based nonprofit of having ties to Hamas, which the federal government has labeled a terrorist group (CAIR officials deny any ties to Hamas). The governor also suggested, citing court cases, reports by the FBI, and the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, that CAIR leaders sought to impose Islamic law, or sharia, on Americans.
CAIR officials, who along with the Muslim Legal Fund of America have sued Abbott and state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) over the declaration, deny that allegation as well. CAIR’s Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin chapters asked a federal judge to strike down the proclamation, which also labeled the group “a transnational criminal organization.”
“This attempt to punish the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization simply because Governor Abbott disagrees with its views is not only contrary to the United States Constitution, but finds no support in any Texas law,” the lawsuit says, noting that CAIR, founded in 1994, has 25 chapters nationwide.
CAIR officials accused the governor of threatening all civil rights groups, not just Muslim ones.
“No civil rights organizations are safe if a governor can baselessly and unilaterally declare any of them terrorist groups, ban them from buying land, and threaten them with closure,” CAIR Litigation Director and General Counsel Lena Masri said in a statement.
A spokesman for Abbot declined to answer questions about the governor’s allegations against CAIR, referring a reporter back to his proclamation and recent press releases. The governor doubled down on his criticism of CAIR on Monday, after President Donald Trump issued his own executive order labeling chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group.
In a radio interview, Abbott said his declaration was a response to concern from members of the Texas GOP about the state’s growing Muslim population and the ascent of Muslim officials such as New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
“The concern is high, especially when you see someone like Mamdani get elected and the cataclysmic problems that’s going to cause,” Abbott said. “… We have freedom of religion, however, your religion cannot become a threat to our freedom.”
He did not offer examples of how Muslim Americans were threatening the freedom of others.
About 420,000 Muslims live in Texas, mostly concentrated in urban centers like Houston, Dallas and surrounding suburbs, which have numerous mosques and Muslim-owned businesses. Sugar Land’s Fort Bend County is among the most diverse in the country, its population equally divided among Asian, Black, Latino and White residents. The number of foreign-born residents increased 71 percent between the last two censuses.
The Texas GOP has been grappling for years with how to maintain dominance in such rapidly growing and diversifying suburbs, where Muslim voters share many of the party’s values — freedom of religion, economic markets and development — but not its predominant Christian faith.
Earlier this year, Abbott and Paxton objected to a 400-acre residential project called EPIC City being developed by members of a mosque northeast of Dallas.
Abbott called the development illegal and directed state agencies to investigate. The U.S. Justice Department in the summer found developers had pledged to abide by federal fair-housing laws. Abbott and Paxton have said state officials are still investigating; the project has been renamed The Meadow and has yet to break ground.
“Within the Texas Republican Party there is a sector that views Islam as an existential threat to Christianity,” said Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University. “Those Republicans see the spread of Islam in Europe as foreshadowing what could happen in the United States if Republicans are not careful. They would even point to cities like Minneapolis, where the call to prayer is broadcast on loudspeakers.”
He noted that Abbott is running for reelection and Paxton is locked in a competitive U.S. Senate primary with incumbent John Cornyn (R). While Muslims are still a minority of voters in Texas, Jones said, evangelical Christians are a powerful block of GOP primary voters, “and a significant share of them do view Islam as a threat to Christianity and the state and Texas.”
“They view the United States as a Judeo-Christian country,” Jones said, noting public opinion polls and a state law — mostly halted by courts so far — that requires the Ten Commandments to be posted in public school classrooms.
Some Muslim Republicans in Texas have condemned Abbott’s attack on CAIR.
Mo Nehad — a police officer who ran unsuccessfully for Fort Bend sheriff last year after joining the GOP at the urging of his Republican activist daughter — called Abbott’s proclamation “ridiculous.”
“There is no basis for it,” Nehad said late last week, dismissing the fear of Muslims trying to impose sharia law in Texas as “biased and unproven.”
“We need to worry about our veterans, single parents, kids who cannot buy lunch, and illegal immigration,” Nehad said, adding, “Abbott needs to align himself with Trump.”
Democratic state Rep. Suleman Lalani, a Sugar Land-based doctor who two years ago became one of the first two Muslim state lawmakers elected in Texas, said the governor’s attack on CAIR has alarmed his constituents.
“There’s a lot of anxiety, fear, sadness from this proclamation, which is baseless and unconstitutional,” Lalani said. “People have been bullied. People are scared to go out in public places, avoiding things deliberately because of the fear. They are feeling they have been alienated in their own home even though they are taxpaying citizens.”
He noted that a group of Muslim high school students praying outside a Yemeni cafe north of Dallas earlier this month were harassed by a man who said, “I’m mocking your religion” (CAIR has asked authorities to investigate).
Lalani called on Abbott to “avoid the politics of division, avoid the politics of fear and put people first.”
Outside the Maryam Islamic Center mosque in Sugar Land last week, girls in abaya dresses played basketball as families arrived for evening prayers.
“We’re law-abiding citizens. We pay taxes. We’re teachers, attorneys, nurses,” said one congregant, Zain, as he stood outside the mosque with his wife and two young sons. He spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his first name out of concerns for his family’s safety.
Zain, who works in real estate, said Abbott and the Texas GOP’s concern about Muslims imposing religious sharia law was “baseless.”
“I’ve never heard anybody say we need sharia law here,” he said. “We don’t get taught that.”
He also condemned the governor’s attacks on CAIR.
“These type of claims just cause division instead of unity. We don’t need that in this day and age,” he said.
“They’re fighting for civil rights for all,” his wife, Sarah, said of CAIR.
Ishaq, the Sugar Land social worker and activist who attends the same mosque, said she’s been upset to see the Ten Commandments posted at her daughter’s high school this year, the attacks on CAIR, and anti-Muslim sentiment by lawmakers. And she plans to continue protesting.
“We’re just going to keep speaking up,” she said.
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