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When three Muslim worshippers were murdered at the Islamic Center of San Diego this spring, many Americans reacted with shock. But for those who have been tracking the escalation of anti-Muslim rhetoric in our politics, the tragedy was not shocking at all. It was the predictable outcome of a deliberate, coordinated campaign to portray Muslims as an existential danger to the United States.
According to the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), Republican elected officials increased their anti-Muslim posts by 1,450% between February 2025 and March 2026. That is not a random spike. It is a political strategy: one that has created a climate in which violence becomes thinkable, even inevitable.
The San Diego attack, carried out by two teenagers who were radicalized online, is the human cost of that strategy. But to understand how we arrived at this moment, we must look beyond the shooters and examine the political ecosystem that taught them whom to hate.
The "Sharia" conspiracy appeared in 48 percent of posts, serving as the campaign's master frame. This conspiracy theory can be traced to a clear ignition point. On February 24, 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott reposted an X message from anti-Muslim provocateur Amy Mek, who had previously attacked a proposed Muslim-led housing development near Dallas known as EPIC City.
Mek labeled the project a "Sharia city" and blasted out alarmist warnings like "Alert Texas," "Warning Texas," and "Sharia City is Being Built in Texas - And YOU Are Helping Fund It!" Her posts reached millions. When Abbott amplified her message, declaring that "Sharia law" would never be allowed in Texas, his repost alone drew 3.6 million views and more than 57,000 likes, instantly mainstreaming a fringe conspiracy theory.
On November 18, 2025, Abbott went even further, designating the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations. This move - directed at an American civil-rights group whose core mission is to defend the constitutional rights of Muslim communities - laid bare the depth of his Islamophobia
Nearly a third of all posts (322 posts) frame Muslims through the lens of terrorism, jihad, and national security. These posts weaponize real incidents of violence, for example, the Boulder, Colorado attack and the Austin, Texas shooting, exploiting them to characterize Muslims and Islam more broadly as violent threats.
More problematically, 231 posts embedded anti-Muslim rhetoric within legislative action, which demonstrates that the hate campaign is not confined to inflammatory social media rhetoric, but is being systematically woven into the institutional machinery of governance. Posts in this category serve as a bridge between online rhetoric and real-world policy, giving conspiracy theories a veneer of legitimacy that social media posts alone cannot provide.
One hundred and sixteen posts link anti-Muslim rhetoric to immigration policy, framing Muslim immigration as an invasion or infiltration that poses a direct threat to the American way of life. The language includes terms such as "illegal aliens," "mass migration," "conquer," and "invaders."
Lastly, 64 posts contain explicit demands for the denaturalization, deportation, or expulsion of Muslims.
The CSOH Report identifies 46 Republican officials who published 1,111 posts between February 2025 and March 2026, repeatedly pushing bigotry and anti-Muslim narratives across social media, legislative proposals, and public appearances.
Texas and Florida-based Republican officials produced 71 percent of all such posts. Five members of Congress produced 73 percent of all posts. Rep. Randy Fine alone accounted for 325 posts (29 percent).
But the ecosystem extends far beyond the House. It includes senators, media personalities, and Trump-era officials whose rhetoric reaches millions.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is an ardent Christian Zionist who continues to play a significant role in legitimizing anti-Muslim suspicion at the national level. During his 2016 presidential campaign, he called for patrolling Muslim neighborhoods, reminiscent of surveillance tactics used against Japanese Americans during World War II. He has also amplified conspiracy theories about "Islamist infiltration" of the U.S. government and aligned himself with anti-Muslim activists whose organizations have been designated hate groups.
When a senator with his national platform suggests that Muslim communities require special policing, it sends a powerful signal: that Muslims are a suspect class. When a senator like Tommy Tuberville repeatedly warns of imagined "Islamic threats," he reinforces the same message - turning baseless fear into a political weapon.
And the same message is echoed even more forcefully by those in higher positions of authority.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has repeatedly used religiously charged language to frame geopolitical conflicts as battles against "Islamic evil." As reported by The New York Times (Oct. 26, 2023), Johnson described the conflict with Hamas as a struggle against "Islamic evil," casting political violence in explicitly theological terms.
During the Iran conflict, he went further, saying that Iran views the United States as the "Great Satan" because of its "misguided religion," a formulation documented by The Washington Post (Feb. 1, 2024) that blurs the line between criticizing a regime and demonizing a faith.
As Speaker, Johnson gives institutional weight to anti-Muslim narratives. His rhetoric signals to millions of Americans that Islam itself - not extremist groups, but the religion - is a threat.
And the pattern becomes even more troubling inside the executive branch.
Pete Hegseth's rise from Fox News firebrand to Secretary of War has only magnified the reach of his long-standing anti-Muslim rhetoric. On Fox & Friends, he repeatedly claimed that "Islam hates us" and warned that "Sharia values" were infiltrating America - language he used in multiple segments between 2015 and 2019 (Fox News, Jan. 2015; Fox & Friends, June 2017).
He also argued that Muslim immigration posed a national security threat, insisting that "we have a Muslim problem in this world" (Fox News, Nov. 2015). Those talking points once served as red meat for a cable audience; now they carry the weight of federal authority.
Hegseth's appointment has effectively moved a set of fringe ideological claims into the center of U.S. military messaging. His public statements continue to blur the line between combating extremist groups and casting suspicion on Muslim communities as a whole - a framing that echoes the same "civilizational conflict" narrative he championed on air. And because he was already a close Trump ally and informal advisor, his transition into a Cabinet-level role has institutionalized a worldview that treats Islam itself as a strategic danger.
The result is a dangerous feedback loop: rhetoric that once inflamed viewers now shapes policy discussions, military posture, and the national security narrative. In Hegseth's hands, anti-Muslim bigotry is no longer just a media product - it is a governing philosophy.
Several Trump administration officials continue to help transform anti-Muslim suspicion into policy. Their rhetoric became law.
Trump's rhetoric has not softened with time. In recent months, he has suggested that "something is wrong" with the "DNA" of people from Muslim-majority countries - remarks reported by The Guardian and The Washington Post in late 2025 and condemned by civil-rights groups as echoing the discredited pseudoscience of eugenics. Statements like these do not merely stigmatize a community; they legitimize the idea that Muslims are biologically suspect or inherently dangerous, pushing bigotry into the realm of racial determinism.
What makes this pattern even more striking is its selective nature. While Trump continues to cast Muslims as a threat in his political messaging, he has shown no hesitation in cultivating lucrative relationships with wealthy Gulf monarchies and business elites. His political hostility toward Muslims has never interfered with his willingness to accept investments, licensing deals, or lavish patronage from Arab sheikhs and authoritarian kingdoms. The contradiction is glaring: Muslims are framed as a danger when it serves his political narrative, yet welcomed as partners when they can enrich his personal brand.
Trump's words carry weight: not only because he is president again, but because his rhetoric has long served as a cue for others. When the nation's most powerful political figure repeatedly paints Muslims as outsiders, threats, or biologically flawed, it does not remain abstract. It shapes public perception. It emboldens extremists. And it contributes to the climate in which violence, like the San Diego mosque attack, becomes thinkable.
Where do young Americans learn to think this way?
They learn it from online spaces where political rhetoric is amplified and distorted. They learn it from public officials who portray Muslims as invaders, terrorists, or enemies of the state. They learn it from a political culture that treats Islam as a civilizational threat.
When Cruz, Tuberville, Fine, Ogles, Abbott, Johnson, Hegseth, and Trump portray Muslims as a threat, they are not merely expressing opinions. They are providing ideological fuel.
And some people - especially young, angry, isolated people - act on that fuel.
Abdullah died while delaying the attackers long enough to save the lives of 140 children studying inside the mosque. But heroism should never be required to protect children at prayer.
First is the speaker: when the rhetoric comes from presidents, governors, cabinet secretaries, or nationally known media figures, its impact is exponentially greater.
Second is the audience: Republican officials have been directing their messages toward followers already primed by years of fearmongering about Muslims, making them more susceptible to mobilization.
Third is the message itself: portraying Muslims as invaders, demons, biologically suspect, or part of a "Sharia takeover" is precisely the kind of dehumanizing, threat-inflating language that historically precedes violence.
Fourth is the social and historical context: the United States is in a period of intense polarization, demographic anxiety, and geopolitical tension-conditions that make audiences more receptive to calls for hostility.
Finally, there is the means of dissemination: these messages are blasted across X, Fox News, congressional press conferences, and now even Cabinet-level platforms, reaching millions instantly. When all five criteria converge - as they do in today's anti-Muslim campaign - the risk of real-world violence is not hypothetical. It is predictable.
And the numbers show exactly what this kind of rhetoric produces.
CAIR documented 8,683 anti-Muslim civil rights complaints in 2025, the highest number in its 30-year history. In 2025 alone, there were 33 attacks on mosques.
This is not a coincidence. It is a climate.
And that climate is being shaped by political leaders who have discovered that fear of Muslims is a powerful mobilizing tool.
The CSOH report makes one thing clear: anti-Muslim hatred in America today is not organic. It is manufactured. It is coordinated. And it is politically useful.
But it is also deadly.
The San Diego massacre is not an isolated incident. It is a warning.
We have seen where this road leads. In India, the BJP's dangerous-speech ecosystem has already fueled lynchings of Muslims - a chilling example of what happens when political rhetoric turns entire communities into targets.
The question now is whether our leaders will rise to the moment or whether they will continue to fan the flames.
For the sake of every community that gathers in prayer, for every child who deserves to grow up without fear, and for the future of a democracy that claims to value pluralism, the answer must be loud and clear.
Dr. Siddiqui is a peace and human rights activist. His forthcoming book, Modi-fied India: The Transformation of a Nation, is scheduled for publication in June 2026.
