Another Tool of Islamophobia in the MAGA Stronghold of Texas
By Luke Peterson
Nov/Dec 25
As of September, Texas Senate Bill 11 has gone into full, legal effect. It mandates, in part, that all public schools across the state designate time during every school day for “a period of prayer or a reading of the Bible.” In the hyper-Christian, rabidly evangelical Lone Star State, the bill has over 50 official sponsors in the legislature.
Texas Attorney General and United States Senate candidate Ken Paxton (R.), was at the forefront of getting this bill passed. “In Texas classrooms, we want the Word of God opened, the Ten Commandments displayed, and prayers lifted up,” he said in a statement.
In that same rambling defense of his anti-Constitutional rebranding of classrooms, Paxton named the enemies of Christianity, and therefore in his messianic worldview, of America. “Twisted, radical liberals want to erase Truth, dismantle the solid foundation that America’s success and strength were built upon, and erode the moral fabric of our society,” he said.
Paxton seemingly envisions his calling as a legislator to be a divine mandate returning all the wayward students and teachers in Texas schools to the single “Biblical Truth” he and his supporters uncritically endorse despite the obvious violations of established civil liberties in the United States that this maneuver entails.
And despite language in Senate Bill 11 that allows for time for students to read “other religious text in public schools,” Paxton and dozens of supporters of the bill fully intend this elimination of the established separation of Church and State in the U.S. to be specifically Christian in nature. Jewish students will not be allowed to read the Torah nor will Hindu students be encouraged to read the Vedas during their time for religious study. And, as if it even bears asking, Muslims students, who today number between 5 and 6 million in Texas alone, will certainly not be allowed to pray together, read Qur’an, or study the Hadith during this prescribed time for religious instruction.
Condemning Islam in Texas Schools
In 2017, Paxton’s office published an open letter to the superintendent of Schools in Frisco, a suburb of Dallas. In it, he pushed the superintendent to clarify access to and use of a prayer room opened by students at Liberty High School (LHS) in the Frisco Independent School District (FISD) for use by any student or group of students who wanted to reflect, pray, or collect their thoughts during the school day. Paxton’s letter accused the school of creating an exclusive zone within the school which barred entry to non-Muslim pupils. Specifically, he charged the Superintendent with turning over school facilities “dedicated to the religious needs of some students… namely, those who practice Islam.” He therefore accused the district of “excluding students of other faiths.”
Paxton referenced “recent news reports” concerning the prayer room at LHS as the basis for his accusation. However, no such reports had been published. The only media attention the new prayer room received appeared in the LHS student paper in which the student reporter praised the ethnic and religious diversity at LHS This lone article on the matter of the Liberty High prayer room would indicate that Paxton’s office was trolling through school newspapers across Texas looking for any opportunity to slam Islam or Muslim students as separationist or discriminatory
LHS Principal Stacey Whaling assured that the available space had been organized by students on campus and was not off limits to any individual or group at any time during the school day. The school district also noted that Paxton’s office never reached out to them privately. Instead, he made a public call questioning discriminatory practices that did not exist. In his insistence on the exclusively Christian identity of Texas and of the broader United States, Paxton and others like him leave no room for safety and security of other faith-based communities, least of all for practitioners of Islam.
A Track Record of Islamophobia: The Tale of EPIC City
In coordination with the Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Paxton launched an investigation into an expansion project of the existing East Plano Islamic Center known as EPIC City. Plan designs call for the construction of a new mosque given the limited space of the existing mosque, as well as for a housing development consisting of 1,000 single-family homes along with a grocery store and K-12 school.
According to Abbott and Paxton though, the EPIC City project would be in violation of the Texas Fair Housing Act in addition to violations of other Texas consumer laws given that housing built within EPIC City would be allocated for Muslim Texans only. The only problem with that assertion is that that restriction is to be found nowhere in the planning for the EPIC City project.
“It’s an open community,” Yasir Qadhi, a scholar of Islamic Law and a Muslim resident of Plano, told NPR. “Anybody can come in. We’re welcoming people of all backgrounds and diversity and we’re offering them facilities that we think would be very, very useful.
The absence of evidence of any illegality in the proposed construction of EPIC City did not stop U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) from adding his ill-informed opinion that the investigation into the project is a form of state monitoring in order to prevent religious discrimination. “Religious discrimination, whether explicit or implicit, is unconstitutional under the First and 14th Amendments,” Cornyn wrote an open letter to Paxton. “Religious freedom is a cornerstone of our nation’s values, and I am concerned this community potentially undermines this vital protection.”
Official investigations and the imposition of the breadth of state regulations on construction and urban development in Texas have slowed the progress of the EPIC City project. In the meantime, EPIC City attorney and spokesperson Dan Cogdell has revealed that the assault from state regulators has been entirely premature since no ground has yet been broken on this project. “We haven’t started construction,” he told NPR. “We haven’t even filed for an application.”
Faith Instead of Fear
With Texas Senate Bill 11, it seems Abbott and Paxton are more interested in scoring political points by pandering to a xenophobic and Islamophobic base rather than actually confronting racism or religious discrimination in their state. If they were to take the time to do that, they might actually discover that Muslims in Texas are far more likely than Christians to be on the receiving end of discriminatory practices in their community or in the workplace.
Luke Peterson is a professor, author, editor, and researcher living and working in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His latest book, The U.S. Military in the Print News Media: Service and Sacrifice in Contemporary Discourse, is available from Anthem Press or via most online booksellers.
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