Islamophobic politics is up front. Pro-Israel politics, not so much.
(RNS) — “Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic,” U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., posted on social media site X last Friday. On Sunday, she followed up with: “I f not wanting to be blown up, stabbed, or rammed by a car by a radical Islamist in the United States of America makes us Islamophobes, then so be it.”
Soon to be out of her job in Congress after failing even to make the runoff in South Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial primary, Mace is presumably angling for a new career as a Newsmax host or a YouTube influencer. The point, though, is that anti-Muslim advocacy has again become a political war cry in the Republican Party.
The Texas GOP, for example, has made “Don’t Sharia Our Texas” one of its top legislative priorities, referring to Islamic religious law. The old claim that Islam is not a religion has been revived . And President Donald Trump has begun referring to Abdul El-Sayed, the newly selected Democratic senatorial candidate from Michigan, by his full name “Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed” — reprising his habit of calling his presidential predecessor “Barack Hussein Obama.”…
