Anti-Muslim Rhetoric from Republican Lawmakers Draws Rare Rebuke From Colleagues

Many Senate Republicans are rejecting anti-Muslim rhetoric coming from a few of their colleagues.

Anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim rhetoric has ramped up among conservatives since the Trump administration launched strikes on Iran at the end of February. Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee has been posting anti-Muslim messages on X all week, as well as sharing his opinion that American society shouldn’t consist of more than one culture.

“Muslims don’t belong in American society,” Ogles posted Monday. “Pluralism is a lie.”

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican running for Alabama governor, chimed in with anti-Islamic messages on Wednesday. Tuberville reposted side-by-side images of the 9/11 attacks and a meal and prayer circle for Ramadan in New York City’s city hall, hosted by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

“The enemy is inside the gates,” Tuberville wrote.

Mamdani responded directly to Tuberville’s post, saying Thursday: “Let there be as much outrage from politicians in Washington when kids go hungry as there is when I break bread with New Yorkers.”

After Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized Tuberville’s statement, Tuberville responded with a post about the threat of Sharia law.

“Calling Radical Islam out for being a CULT doesn’t make you an ‘Islamophobe,’” he posted. “Radical Islamists chant ‘death to America’ and would love to see every Christian and Jew murdered.”

Ogles doubled down in another post on Thursday: “Immigration is a national security threat.”

Republicans in the upper chamber broadly disagreed with this rhetoric on Thursday.

“Our country is made up of all different nationalities and religions,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito told NOTUS.

Several senators brought up the First Amendment and the freedom of religion, including Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, who is also a Christian pastor. Lankford said that trying to impose Sharia law, being a Jihadist or planning to violently overthrow the American government is “not welcome here” and should “face the full effect of the law.”

“But for a person to have a faith and be able to practice their faith, that’s absolutely protected in our nation,” Lankford said.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis said insinuations that Muslims do not belong in the country and should not practice their religion are not in line with the Constitution.

“This country was built on the First Amendment and the freedom of religion,” Lummis told NOTUS. “I think that speaks for itself where it should.”

But Ogles hasn’t been alone in his anti-Muslim remarks. Florida Rep. Randy Fine, who is Jewish, has been striking a similar tune.

“Islamophobia is a lie,” Fine posted Tuesday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Tuesday at the Republican retreat at Trump’s golf resort in Doral, Florida, that he had “spoken to those members and all members, as I always do, about our tone and our message and what we say,” but that the threat of Sharia law is “what animates this” rhetoric coming from Ogles and other Republicans.

“It’s different language than I would use,” Johnson said of Ogles’ comments, adding: “We respect everyone’s beliefs … but when you seek to come to a country and not assimilate, but to impose Sharia law — Sharia law is in conflict with the U.S. Constitution — that is the conflict that people are talking about.”

“It is not about people as Muslims.
It’s about those who seek to impose a different belief system that is in direct conflict with the Constitution,” Johnson said.

Sen. Steve Daines, a retiring Montana Republican, told NOTUS that anti-Muslim hate should be treated the same as any other kind of dangerous rhetoric.

“We always want to be very careful with broad generalizations, no matter who you are,” Daines said. “I think we all agree, radicalized individuals, no matter what faith they come from or what ethnicity, are the problem. It’s not just one particular faith or particular people.”

Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas called the Ramadan event in the city hall “stomach churning” and “truly repulsive.”

The conservative activist and Trump ally Laura Loomer posted about Muslims several times this week on X, saying in one post that Muslims working in the Transportation Security Administration are a “national security threat.”

“Why do I have to go through the humiliation ritual of showing my passport to some Muslima bitch in a hijab with a heavy accent? I’m done,” she posted.

When NOTUS asked Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson about the anti-Muslim rhetoric, he said he “wouldn’t target any particular group.”

“I think people that want to live in America ought to embrace our Constitution, our basic values, so if you’re somebody that doesn’t embrace our Constitution wants a different type of law, then you should probably go to someplace in the world where they have the type of law you want,” Johnson said.