Two Republicans in Congress are calling for the mass expulsion of Muslims from the United States following the mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia over the weekend, amplifying an increasingly brazen Islamophobic sentiment within the party.
“It is time for a Muslim travel ban, radical deportations of all mainstream Muslim legal and illegal immigrants, and citizenship revocations wherever possible,” Rep. Randy Fine (R-Florida) posted on social media Monday. “Mainstream Muslims have declared war on us. The least we can do is kick them the hell out of America.”
Fine’s comments echoed those of Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) in an X post on Sunday.
“Islam is not a religion. It’s a cult,” Tuberville wrote on X. “Islamists aren’t here to assimilate. They’re here to conquer. … We’ve got to SEND THEM HOME NOW or we’ll become the United Caliphate of America.”
Fine directly tied the sentiment to a mass shooting during the Hanukkah celebration in Australia that left 15 dead. A Muslim father and son are accused of carrying out the shooting.
Muslim groups and Arab governments widely condemned the violence and expressed solidarity with Australia’s Jewish community. One of the shooters was tackled and neutralized by a Muslim bystander.
“Muslim terrorists killed twelve innocent lives in Australia on the first day of Hanukkah,” Fine wrote. “How many more times is this going to happen until we wake up? Islam is not compatible with the West.”
The comments garnered swift backlash for their blatant Islamophobia. But some other Republican lawmakers have made similar comments about Islam for months, calling the world’s second largest religion incompatible with American values and for Muslims to be removed from the country.
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) said on X in November that Islam is “incompatible with our culture and our governing system” and that “not all cultures are morally equal.” Gill said the nation’s immigration system was “suicidal” by allowing Muslims to immigrate to the county.
The ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus endorsed Gill’s remarks, posting on social media, “True.”
Fine has shared anti-Muslim sentiments on social media on numerous other occasions.
After Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), a Somali American Muslim, criticized the Trump administration’s welcome of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington in July, Fine responded: “I’m sure it is difficult to see us welcome the killer of so many of your fellow Muslim terrorists.”
President Donald Trump campaigned in 2015 on barring Muslims from entering the country and shortly after taking office in 2017 implemented a travel ban from seven Muslim-majority countries: Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. He implemented a similar travel ban after taking office in January, though it included several non-Muslim majority countries, such as Laos and Cuba.
Trump also took aim this year at Somali immigrants, most of whom are Muslim. He called Omar “garbage” and said Somali Americans “contribute nothing.” Trump expressed his ire at the community after a fraud scandal involving dozens of Somali Americans in Minneapolis.
Tuberville and Fine introduced legislation this year to ban sharia law from the U.S.
Sharia law is the Islamic code of conduct observed by practicing Muslims. No federal court recognizes sharia law as a legal alternative to federal law. A federal court struck down a 2010 Oklahoma state constitutional amendment to ban sharia law, asserting it violated the right to free practice of religion.
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said his group has seen a marked increase in anti-Muslim rhetoric in the past year pushed by conspiracy theorists, politicians and social media influencers. Mitchell said the anti-Muslim rhetoric harks back to the rise in Islamophobia in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he warned it could lead to hate crimes.
Mitchell cited the murder of Wadea Alfayoumi, a 6-year-old Palestinian American who was stabbed to death in Illinois in 2023 shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Joseph Czuba was sentenced to 53 years in prison for the murder this year. He died three months later in prison.
Mitchell attributes much of the resurgence in anti-Muslim rhetoric to mobilization by American Muslims in protest of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.
“Some of the anti-Muslim conspiracy theories that died out years ago, like Muslims plotting take over America and impose sharia law, or the Muslim Brotherhood secretly controlling all American Muslims … about nine months ago, they all came back in a flood,” Mitchell said. “We certainly do not want to see the progress that American Muslims have made in media, politics and activism and in the courts of law eroded by this wave of hate that we’re seeing.”
Democrats in Congress have condemned Tuberville and Fine’s rhetoric.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said on X that Tuberville’s comments were “outrageous, disgusting display of islamophobia” that is “beneath a United States Senator.”
In response to Fine’s comments in the summer about Omar, House Democratic leadership said in a joint statement that his “unhinged, racist and Islamophobic comments” are “bigoted and disgusting” and called on Fine to apologize immediately. He declined, calling Democrats the “Hamas Caucus” on social media.
Republican leadership has been more hesitant to call out its members. When asked about Fine’s remarks, a spokesperson for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) on Monday deferred to comments the speaker made condemning the antisemitic violence in Australia.
“We see evil all around us. And during the holiday season, as we enter the holy season, we’ve begun Hanukkah. We’re coming up upon Christmas,” Johnson said Monday as he entered the House chamber. “We have to appeal to our better angels, and we have to, I think, we’ve got to amplify those voices and those sentiments.”
Johnson’s office didn’t respond to follow-up questions specifically about Fine and Gill’s rhetoric. A spokesperson for Thune did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has called on members of Congress to censure their colleagues for their attacks on Muslims, but no censure motion or other disciplinary measure has moved forward recently in response to an Islamophobic remark.
Mitchell expressed frustration with both parties for not doing more to formally sanction members for Islamophobic rhetoric. He said a double standard exists, pointing to a House censure on a bipartisan basis of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), a Muslim Palestinian American, for comments following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
“If anyone had called for the destruction of all mainstream Jews or mainstream Christians, they would rightfully be not only condemned but probably expelled from Congress,” Mitchell said.
Fine and Tuberville have doubled down.
When asked by The Washington Post about criticisms over Tuberville’s social media post, his office responded by repeating: “Islam is not a religion, it is a cult.”
After Schumer criticized Tuberville’s comments as Islamophobic, Fine responded on X to Schumer by calling him a “disgrace to the Jewish people.” Both Fine and Schumer are Jewish.
“Islamophobia isn’t real,” Fine said. “Fear of Islam is rational.”
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