AUSTIN — The wife sipping from a “Don’t mess with Texas” mug, the husband hugging their daughter and the two younger kids watching cartoons upstairs in a house with a minivan in the driveway are represented in Washington by a man who says he wants no more of people like them.
“No more Muslims,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) wrote in a recent online post.
Roy, who is in a competitive May runoff in the Republican primary for Texas attorney general, has ramped up attacks on the Muslim community in his bid for the statewide office. A Washington Post analysis found Roy has posted from both his campaign and official accounts about Muslims, Islam or “sharia law” more than 244 times since January — the most of any member of Congress.
Stopping “the flood of Islamists” into Texas would be Roy’s “fundamental mission” as attorney general, he told The Post in an interview. He said the advance of Islam is “destroying the state,” vowed to defend what he called Judeo-Christian culture in Texas and accused Muslim organizations of plotting to turn the West into an Islamic state. He led a recent constituent newsletter with a call to “end the scourge of Islamist violence,” referencing recent violent attacks in Texas, Virginia, Michigan and New York. Roy’s comments about a group that makes up a low-single-digit percentage of his state’s population are part of a broader trend of Republicans leaning into Islamophobic rhetoric.
In more than a dozen interviews with The Post, Muslims who live in or near Roy’s congressional district — which nudges out into Austin and slices down into San Antonio before extending west into Hill Country — said Roy’s accusations are a misrepresentation of their community’s values designed to distract from real issues, and that his words contribute to a culture of rising prejudice that puts their families at risk.
Ammar Ahmed, a dermatologist, and Shameem Azizad, a radiologist, live with their three young kids in an Austin neighborhood in Roy’s district. Seated at the breakfast table on a recent Sunday morning, Ahmed wore a rumpled black T-shirt, the words “Viva Palestina” printed on the front in small, white lettering.
“It’s sad. This person is supposed to be our guy, right?” Ahmed said. “Even if Muslims are not a big part of his constituency, we are part of his constituency, so it makes it seem like he doesn’t want us in our district.”
Across from her husband in a loose button-down and light wash jeans, her nails painted Barbie pink, Azizad scooped blackberries into a bowl for her 3-year-old son.
“Substitute any other word or nationality in there, it would probably raise a lot of red flags,” she said. “But this is considered normal.”
Ahmed grew up in West Virginia, Azizad in New York. Their family goes to Buc-ee’s, the Texas-based chain of travel centers. Ahmed is recovering from a pickleball injury.
They are also a proud Muslim family. They pray five times a day, the kids attend a local private Islamic school, Azizad wears a hijab, a Quranic verse hangs on the wall of their kitchen in shiny gold.
Being a Muslim family is getting scarier, they said. Sometimes, Azizad feels nervous in her hijab. “Whenever we see more and more of this stuff, I’ll just be like, do I need to start wearing a baseball cap?”
Azizad and Ahmed have tried to meet with Roy, but the closest they got was a video call with his staff.
“It would be nice to just know if he’s ever really met Muslims,” Azizad said. “… Would it change how he sees Muslims? I don’t know.”
The full extent to which Roy would try to advance his “no more Muslims” pledge if elected attorney general is unclear. But there are several targets of opportunity.
Roy would take on legal battles involving a proposed housing development in the Dallas area, which Texas Republicans claim would impose Islamic law on residents — an allegation the project’s planners deny — and the state’s private school voucher program, which excluded about two dozen Islamic schools. Roy supports eliminating the tax-exempt status of Muslim advocacy organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations. His staff did not respond to questions about whether his anti-Muslim rhetoric could put constituents at risk.
Surviving in a culture of intensifying anti-Muslim animus is something Zo Qadri knows well. Qadri is the only Muslim elected official in the Austin area and among just a handful in the state. He was a constituent of Roy’s until the congressional maps were redrawn in 2021.
Walking into an Austin coffee shop, Qadri shook hands with the young woman at the next table over before taking a seat. A Bible lay open on the table in front of her. Wearing his council member’s jacket and a Houston Rockets cap and sporting a Batman sticker on his phone case, Qadri fiddled with his rings and reflected on the challenges of his time in office. “It’s very isolating,” he said.
Death threats, terrifying phone calls and alarming online messages have been central to Qadri’s experience in public office since he won his seat on Austin’s City Council in 2022. He is regularly accused of being a Hamas sympathizer and a terrorist. Will the person obsessively posting about him on X show up at one of his town halls or coffee meetups, he wonders? He worries about his 7-month-old son.
Qadri has installed three cameras and an alarm system at his house. He’s developed a radar for nasty messages: When they are not just insulting, but concerning, Qadri reaches out to police — something he has done more than 10 times since being elected, he said.
He learned from experience to take words seriously.
In January 2017, an anti-Muslim extremist burned down his hometown mosque in Victoria, Texas, hours after President Donald Trump signed an order banning travelers from six majority-Muslim countries. The man was found guilty of federal hate crimes and sentenced to more than 24 years in prison.
Seven months later, after a terror attack in Barcelona, Trump suggested Islamic terrorists should be executed with bullets soaked in pig’s blood. When Qadri received a message from a person who threatened to get bullets, dip them in pig’s blood and shoot him: “I was like, I’ve heard this before,” he said.
Now, Qadri hears concerns from Muslims in his community. Mosques ask for police patrols. Women who wear a hijab tell him they are scared. During Ramadan, people shared how afraid they were to go to prayers.
“Everyone’s a little bit on edge and … it’s being endorsed by our so-called leaders,” Qadri said.
Several people interviewed for this story compared the current rise in Islamophobia to the period after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Qadri, who grew up in New York after 9/11, says the explosion of anti-Muslim sentiment these days — amplified by election-year rhetoric, Israel-Gaza war, the Iran war and a recent shooting in Austin by a man who killed three people while wearing a hoodie that read “Property of Allah” — feels different.
Now, words and policies targeting Muslims and Muslim organizations are coming directly from leaders, he pointed out, especially ones in campaign mode. “It’s almost like it’s on their policy page, like who can be more Islamophobic?” Qadri said.
On the issues page of Roy’s campaign website, after promises to support law enforcement, rein in “activist judges” and defeat the “woke agenda,” the candidate pledges to “defend our Judeo-Christian culture” and “stand athwart the advance of Sharia Law.” Sharia is a body of religious guidance to guide the day-to-day lives of Muslims that is interpreted differently around the world.
When asked by The Post to explain those pledges on his website, Roy accused Muslim organizations of praising jihad on the West and working to “Islamify” Texas. “Go listen to the speeches by imams in Texas, in New York, around the world,” Roy said. His office sent links to several video clips posted on X showing imams and political organizers in the U.S. voicing extreme views, such as defending child marriage and calling for the annihilation of Israel.
“Will you find one crazy person in any community who might be saying something? Sure,” Qadri said. “That’s with every community, that’s with anyone on any political ideology, but that’s not coming from any mainstream source.”
“Quite frankly, I have no idea what that means,” said Anwer Imam, director of religious affairs at Nueces Mosque in Austin, in response to Roy’s comments about imams in Texas working to “Islamify” the state.
Imam’s mosque has already seen effects of growing anti-Islam prejudice. Last summer, the mosque was vandalized. This month, it doubled security. “My last three sermons have been about taking life seriously, having goals, being goal-oriented, living beyond yourself. And if that’s a message that you hate, then I don’t know what to say,” Imam said.
Sabeel Khurram, 28, lives in the part of Roy’s district that carves into San Antonio. He works for a credit union as a software designer and is part of a youth group at a local mosque.
“You’ll never hear [about] instituting sharia law in your community at a mosque. … But then Congressman Roy will create some sharia-free America caucus as if it’s some major problem,” Khurram said, referring to a House GOP caucus Roy helped start last year.
All the focus on Muslims by Roy and other Republicans has heightened fear and uncertainty among Muslims in the San Antonio area, too, he said. Safety concerns triggered a venue change for a recent festival marking the end of Ramadan: The celebration was moved to a location with an indoor section because some were worried about gathering outside.
Khurram says he believes his congressman is a hypocrite. First, for opposing Muslims coming into Texas while backing a president whose war in Iran has further destabilized the region. Second, for targeting Muslim organizations while supporting the encroachment of Christianity into public schools, such as Ten Commandments displays in classrooms. “One religion gets to get mixed with the state and get enshrined, and the other one gets targeted,” Khurram said.
The Muslim population in Texas has grown rapidly over the past decade, but Muslims make up only around 2 percent of the Texas population, according to Pew Research Center. “Is there really a flood, or do you just need someone to point at to distract from what he’s failed to do as a congressman?” Khurram said.
Qadri, too, views the congressman’s comments as a political maneuver to rile up the GOP base. But he fears Roy’s words could also incite violence. He thinks back to his mosque, incinerated. “You don’t have to be holding the knife. You don’t have to be pulling the trigger. You don’t have to be lighting the match,” Qadri said. “But it’s because of you.”
Clara Ence Morse contributed to this report.
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