Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Friday escalated his campaignto get rid of washing stations for Muslims at Texas’s two largest airports, asking the Justice Department to investigate the facilities as discriminatory.
“They are not interfaith chapels open to all,” Abbott said in a statement. “They exist to benefit the Muslim population alone.”
The stations have been at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport for years, providing Muslims with a place to wash their hands, feet and faces before prayers, which they perform five times a day.
Recently, Abbott, who is seeking reelection for a fourth term, asked the Department of Transportation to withhold grant money from the airports until they closed the facilities. Shortly after, officials at Dallas-Fort Worth airport decided not to proceed with additional washing stations they had planned.
Muslim leaders and experts in religious liberties rejected Abbott’s claim that the facilities discriminate against non-Muslims. Several said opposition to the washing stations is the latest example of GOP leaders, perhaps most visibly in Texas, railing against Islam.
“Although Gov. Abbott’s letter characterized what the airports were providing as discriminating in favor of Muslims,” wrote Steven T. Collis, a University of Texas at Austin law professor, in an email to The Post, “this newest saga is actually part of a much broader pattern of state officials targeting Muslims and trying to make Texas an inhospitable place for them.”
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