Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) on Thursday attacked New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) on a post shared on X, in which Tuberville said “the enemy is inside the gates” atop two photographs — one from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York, and one of the new mayor.
Tuberville, a former football coach who is running for Alabama governor, has repeatedly made anti-Muslim attacks against Mamdani, who is Muslim. In December, Tuberville also posted “the enemy is inside the gates” alongside a news article about Mamdani using the Quran at his swearing-in.
Tuberville has also claimed on X that Islam “is not a religion. It’s a cult.” He has called for the mass expulsion of Muslims from the United States. His statements have drawn repeated criticism from Muslim activists and groups but no public rebukes from Senate Republican leadership.
The senator’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Spokespeople for Mamdani did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuberville’s post. Mamdani has repeatedly criticized Islamophobic comments from political adversaries.
Since the beginning of the year, nearly 100 GOP members of Congress have posted about Islam or Muslims, and almost all of those posts have been negative, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. Two-thirds of those posts have mentioned radical Islam, Islamic law (sharia), extremism or terrorism, while several have called for Muslims to be deported. Republican lawmakers have repeatedly called Islam, the world’s second-largest religion, incompatible with American values.
Half a dozen Republican members of Congress have posted about the need to ban sharia— more than the number of GOP lawmakers who posted positively last month about the start of Ramadan, the holiest month of the Islamic calendar. Like Tuberville, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) have repeatedly made negative posts about Muslims this year, with 51 and 47 negative posts about Muslims or Islam, respectively.
Tuberville defeated Sen. Doug Jones (D) with 60 percent of the vote in the 2020 Senate race. Currently, he faces a gubernatorial primary against two lesser-known contenders.
Amy B Wang and Clara Ence Morse contributed to this report.
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