Today, Explained - The anti-Muslim midterms

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Republicans are stoking anti-Muslim sentiment in new ways ahead of the midterms. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy and Danielle Hewitt, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Peter Balonon-Rosen and Ariana Aspuru, engineered by Bridger Dunnagan and David Tatasciore, and hosted by Noel King. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaks on stage at the 2026 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast⁠.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a recent story for Mother Jones about Islamophobia in the GOP, the reporter Tim Murphy started with a list of things that lawmakers have said about Muslims recently. Muslims don't belong in American society. That was Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee. We need more Islamophobia, not less. Representative Randy Fine of Florida. No more Muslims, says Rep Chip Roy of Texas. I hate Islam.

It's a demonic death cult. That's Lieutenant Governor Mike Beckwith of Indian. Indiana. There was a lot more. We don't have time for all of it. But statements like that have become a kind of currency among some Republicans in the run-up to the midterms. Essentially what we're seeing now is this rhetoric that is describing every Muslim and the religion itself as potentially dangerous. Coming up on today, explained from Vox, Islamophobia goes mainstream again. Megan Rapino here. This week on Why Are You Like This? I'm talking with Vice President Kamala Harris. We talk about about her thoughts on public service, how D.C. has shaped her, and we find out if she's planning to run for president in 2028. Check out the latest episode of Why Are You Like This,

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Christian Paws covers politics and religion for Vox. All right, Christian. So we saw this GOP midterm convention last week in Texas. And Islam, of all things, came up quite a lot. What were the speakers saying? You heard a very interesting, I think, summation of what the GOP's message this year is, which is communism and socialism on the Democratic side. The Democrats are obsessed with trans kids and them playing in sports.

And the third being Islamism is rising and a huge threat in America being facilitated by the Democrats. I think one thing in particular that jumped out to me was the way that Ted Cruz summed it up as, We are witnessing a new and dangerous red-green alliance, communists and Islamists coming together and sweeping over the Democrat Party. They are united because they share the same enemies. They hate Christians. They hate Jews. They hate capitalism. They hate the Constitution.

And they hate America. It was also Mike Rogers, who was, like, citing 9-11 and then saying, like, it's a shame that I have to run against Abdul Sayyad and his running mate, Hassan Piker. Together, they attack America. They excused extremism. They treat our country like it's the villain. I was shocked how many times I heard Abdul Zaid's name at this two-day convention because it was happening in Texas, right?

The other person who was mentioned was Talariko, but it was... Abdul al-Said. Abdul-Ram. Mohammed al-Sayyad. Abdual-A-Syad. Abdual-Syad. So over the past couple months, we have seen what some people call a rise in Islamophobic speech against high-profile American political figures who are Muslim. What have you been seeing? I've been seeing this specifically around the time of the Michigan Democratic Senate primary. It was a clash of both anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia in the state, particularly in, like, areas of Michigan in particular that

have large Arab American and Muslim American populations, where you have a Muslim American mayor, for example, in Dearborn, who's had to field a bunch of this Islamophobic rhetoric. You come here and you marry four or five women and you outbreath us. You change the laws. You make all of our country look like the places that you fled from. We don't want you here. respectfully, get the fuck out of my country. And also deal with white supremacist or Christian nationalist marches in his town, for example. There are people outside tonight whose idea of America is much smaller than ours. An America where belonging comes with conditions, where your name matters, where your ancestry matters,

where the direction in which you pray somehow determines whether you are sufficiently American. I reject that vision for our country. Abdul Salad received a lot of this too, obviously. And then obviously, Zahamam Danias, the other new example being mayor of New York, you are a high-profile figure that has also made it easy to grab him, right, and use him as the scary avatar of a changing America. The sort of nod to Islamic terrorism, obviously in this country, is something that we have been hearing a lot of for 25 years, right?

We're about 25 years out from 9-11. This is where, for many of us, it's the first time we hear this. kind of rhetoric. It was rampant 25 years ago. I think it's fair to say I was around at the time. Young, but paying attention. How is it different in 2026, if it is different? It is different. And I actually talked to some researchers about this to get a sense for what's changed. There were concerns about, you know, civil liberties and racial profiling and, you know, that happening in the post-9-11 era. What's happened now is the willingness of politicians make it an official part of the party platform that, you know, in Texas, for example,

banning and investigating cases of Sharia law was endorsed as an official policy platform of the Texas Republican Party. And we are not waiting on Washington, D.C. We will fully ban Sharia law in Texas. And it made it onto the ballot to recommend strongly that Governor Abbott make that a law to pass a law that essentially is like, don't Sharia my Texas. That plus, like, the combination of there is now like a Sharia-free caucus in Congress that didn't exist back in the day. It has dozens of members in the House, which didn't

exist in the post-9-11 era. And then obviously we have the convention. Also recently, Trump was asked if he would push for a national ban on Sharia, whatever that means. And he endorsed it. The big thing is

the power of social media and the power of very closed-off but big, echo chambers and media silos to recreate and propagate various kinds of fear-mongering and in some cases very well-produced kind of videos, clips, documentaries, investigations, you know, undercover kind of sting-style investigative videos across the internet. The Rides of Islam is real here in the United States. It's the fastest-growing religion across America, and it's nearly double in size of the past

decades. Every single church in America will be burnt down by these Muslim invaders and they're going to place these monstrosities. This is the largest mosque in the entire Western Hemisphere. We cannot lose our country to these invaders. And it's a bit of a cottage industry in and of itself of, you know, just maga sphere influencers moving on to the next thing that they want to amplify. And it's the ability for them to do it really quickly, to do it at scale and to make sure that it goes viral and gets picked up and amplified by other mega influencers across platforms. That's like the massive difference. What is the point of all of this, right?

So in a political sense, obviously, if you are a Republican, you want Dr. Abdul-Aid to lose in Michigan. Simple enough. But this is a lot, right? So what's the objective here? Is there an objective here? There are some voices, some party strategists and political. strategists in Texas who point out that right now the border isn't really the major issue

that is galvanizing Republican voters, that the economy isn't really that either, that Trump is kind of unpopular, and that you kind of need a scapegoat to rile people up and to get people to the polls. And if you warn them that if they don't come out to vote their way of life and the America that they know will be transformed by these monstrous boogeyman, you know, That's a pretty effective political organizing tool. And it's been effective in some state local races already. And there's a sense that it can still be kind of, there's still more political gain to be squeezed out of this move. But then there is like a religious element to it. There is a deeper sense of identity tied to this. We know from history that this kind of fear mongering, right, against a particular religion or community. or minority group sometimes works on Americans, unfortunately. And sometimes, fortunately, it doesn't.

Americans say, no, we're just, we're not buying it. In 2026, as we head into the midterms with this kind of rhetoric everywhere, do you see any hopeful pushback to this kind of messaging? Do you see anyone saying, you know, don't buy it and end it working? So this is a bit of a depressing answer. Because I do wonder if, you know, it will fall on people like Abdul Sayyad and on Zoraaamadhani, for example, just like it used to fall on Rashida Talib and Al-Nomar to defend themselves to have to take on that mantle themselves again and not just run for office, but also defend religious pluralism, defend multicultural democracy again. We are heading into a midterm cycle that seems to be likely to benefit Democrats if we're looking at just kind of baseline conditions right now. whether the fact that it might be a bad year for Republicans electorally will just lead them to naturally move on to the next thing.

Right. They maybe have picked on, pick the path of Islamophobia right now. If it doesn't end up delivering politically, they might just return to, you know, gender ideology and trans issues or return to the border, return to something else. but I think it does fall on whatever leading Democratic or liberal voices are out there to speak up now and to actually call this up for what it is. That was Vox's Christian Paz. All right, so Zoramamdani and Dr. Abdal-Said have captivated voters. They are also at times very critical of America.

To what degree has that opened them up to attack? Support for the show today comes from Built. And if you're thinking that's spelled like she built a house, then you're wrong, because there's no you. If the roof over your head, speaking of houses, is costing you a pretty penny, then you're just like most people who rent or have a mortgage. But there's a way you can get a bit of that value back. You can check out Built. They made a name through their popular renter rewards program, but Built has a lot more going on for members now. Members can earn points on mortgage payments as well.

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or endorsed by Beatrice. When you hear an old Motown song, do you ever think about just how good it makes you feel? Well, that was not an accident. I'm Will Anderson, and this week on my music history podcast, The Monday Music Club, we're diving into the early years of Motown Records and how they crafted hits with factory-level precision.

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check out this week's episode. Just search for Monday Music Club right now wherever you get your podcast. Here's a little preview of the episode. H.D.H. had written the song and it was ready to be recorded, but as Otis tells us, it was originally intended for someone else.

When Holland did your Holland brought up, where did I love go? They brought it to the marvelous first. Bam, man, bam, bam. about where that? No, we ain't singing that. So HD, he said, okay, fine. Trick it to the Supremes. The Supremes wasn't knocked out about it, but I guess they said, well, we've recorded enough stuff. Let's try this. They recorded that. That was it. Ran up the charts, and they had seven number ones in a row.

This is Today Explained. Rosina Ali is a journalist and author of the new book, Seasons of Fury, which is about the rise of Islamophobia in the United States. I asked her if the anti-Muslim sentiment that we're seeing this year is in part a response to the fact that some of our highest profile politicians of the moment, Abdullah Syed Zoranamadani, are Muslims. So we have had really prominent Muslim politicians in the last several years. So the same year that President Trump was elected, we also elected Ilhan Omer for the first time. And we will never stop fighting for a democracy that works for all of us, for a prosperous and equitable Minnesota that we can all be proud of. And then we had the election of Rashid al-Dadele. These are remarkable, right? Because not only were they Muslim politicians, but they were also critical of U.S. foreign policy and the government.

I think what's actually been a turning point has been the post-October 7th period. Because one, we had a lot of politicians, especially from the Republican Party, starting to label this entire war as a religious war. For example, Lindsey Graham immediately said, we're in a religious war here. I am with Israel. Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself, level the place. Which is astonishing, quite frankly, because that's not even the right. we used, even the Bush administration used after 9-11. Islam is peace.

These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil in war. But also what happened is that a lot of Muslims, you know, Muslim experts, Muslim scholars, Muslim journalists, and Muslim politicians started being very vocal about U.S. foreign policy. And that wasn't necessarily the case after 9-11. You know, a lot of Muslims who did criticize U.S. foreign policy back then were sidelined or monitored or seen as suspicious. But they are so vocal now. The younger generation that has come up, Abdul al-Said, Sauron Mamdani, and others, they're so vocal. And it's not just foreign policy.

What they say is that the way we conduct U.S. foreign policy actually has direct ties to what's happening at home. Like all of you, I woke up this morning to the terrible news that Donald Trump had taken us yet again to war with Iran. Ask yourself who this benefits. It doesn't benefit you or I. It doesn't make our grocery prices any cheaper. It doesn't address the fact that our health care is more expensive. It doesn't make home ownership more attainable. Americans do not want this.

Americans do not want another war in pursuit of regime change. We want an answer to the affordability crisis. We want peace. And I think this is one of the reasons we see so much backlash against them because they're unapologetic and they're. criticism. The U.S. has always had these fights over who gets to criticize the United States of America, right? And I wonder why you think at this moment they feel safer? Mm. Launching those criticisms, do they feel more free because the wars were such disasters? Like, what opened the door to allow younger Muslims running for office to run in part on the United States as a really imperfect? country and we're not going to stop talking about what we've done overseas and at home.

I think they're able to do that because so many Americans do that. You know, a lot of politicians, a lot of policymakers are openly critiquing what has happened abroad and what is happening here. I will say one of the market difference between the post-9-11 period and now is that there was widespread support for the Bush administration's war on. terror, you know, from policymakers on both sides of the aisle, from media, from the public at large, remarkable levels of support. The few scholars and, you know, Muslim community members who did critique what the Bush administration was doing were often shunned. Now, in the later years, it became very clear that we were not winning the wars in Iraq, in Afghanistan, even

the war on terror. There was a lot to be critical of, not just with Abu Ghraib scandal and Guantanamo, but also what was happening at home, right? There was mass surveillance, but then we had the rise of the NSA. And I think ultimately, we have reached a point in this country that we actually have a society that has deep, profound distrust of its institutions. And it becomes then that larger landscape allows politicians like Soran Mandani, like Dr. Abdullah al-Said, but also any other politician to critique the government and feel comfortable doing so. I would say this is the Democrat side. I think what's so interesting about the Republican Party now is that there, so much of their rhetoric and their vision is about who loves America.

right? And I was listening to clips of J.D. Vans at the convention. And he kept talking about... This November, let's give it to him. Let's fight for our people. Let's send the Democrats pack in. And let's never forget that America belongs to those who love it, not those who hate it. And I think this is just a... It's kind of a fascinating declaration to make when there is such a... disconnect between what the public is feeling right now and what the Republican Party is saying. I'm glad you brought up J.D. Vance, because one thing that is true of the vice president is that he, too, is a critic of America. It doesn't always come out, but it has come out in the past. J.D. Vance, there are parts of America, including the wars overseas that J.D. Vance has been fiercely critical of. Mamdani El-Sayed are also Americans. It seems to me like some of the pushback they're getting is

rooted in the idea that you don't have the right to do this. You're lucky to be in America. Do you think there is something going on here where you can criticize America if you look like J.D. Vance, but you cannot if you look like Zora and Mamdani. Unfortunately, yes. You know, and I will say, it's unfortunate, but it's also not just the Republican Party who perpetuated that narrative. You know, some of the Democrats in earlier years did the same thing. I very, very, clearly remember Bill Clinton on the DNC stage in 2016 saying, If you're a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together.

We watch you. And that placed a conditionality on the way Muslims would be accepted in the United States. But that was kind of an absurd statement to make because there was a lot to be critical of with the way that the U.S. was fighting its war on terror. And that conditionality, we have continued to see it over and over again, except it has morphed and mutated to the extent that someone like J.D. Vance can say... And we were tired of being called racist for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier and poor and less safe and less prosperous. But he blames that squarely on immigrants.

or foreigners or what he considers un-American values, right? He can say that, but not anyone else who is perhaps brown or Muslim. And I don't think it's just targeted towards Muslims. I actually think the problem and fascinating thing about what the Republican Party is doing is combining all of these labels into one. And there's this narrative that they're creating that anyone who is against us will be Muslims, will be leftists, will be immigrants, will be... people who don't look like us. And it's really creating this cultural, religious, racial divide,

which is quite frightening. I wonder if you think this kind of fearmongering is about winning the midterms and then it'll die down in the same way that a lot of political rhetoric gets very heated in the run-up to contested elections and then dies down, or whether you worry that this kind of talk keeps escalating. Yeah, I have been wondering about that because I think there are two things happening. So one is what we have come to know is that anti-Muslim sentiment has become a feature of American politics and seems to come out during election season. And I think what the GOP is doing is actually seeing if this anti-Muslim rhetoric is going to be effective and helping them win, right? I mean, this is what they were trying during the Mundani campaign. And it didn't work. And I think they're

trying this in Michigan and let's see if it works. And they're trying this elsewhere too. But the other thing that's happening, and I think we should be worried about, which is a bit more lasting, is the ways in which there are efforts to change the very structures and laws regarding Muslim expression and the freedom to practice Islam in the United States. So, for example, in Texas, we are seeing efforts to frame the entire religion of Islam as a political ideology rather than a religion. itself. So there are efforts to, for example, ban Sharia, which still makes very little sense, because I don't know if anyone can quite explain that. And I do think that there is a very concerted effort to try to block signs of visible Islam at a local level. And if they're successful, we're going to see that at a national level, because that's what we saw 10 years ago during this wave of anti-Masque legislation and activity. I was in Michigan last month, and I interviewed

Dr. Abdullah-Sahed. And there are a lot of things that make him interesting, but one of them is how easy it is to speak to and look at a politician like that and to call him all-American, right? He's high-achieving, he's married, he's handsome, he's a jock, he's got two kids, he is all-American. Can you conceive of a world

where Abdul al-Said being Muslim is not the first line of attack when he makes a point about what the U.S. done wrong. In short, can you see him occupying at some point in the future a place like J.D. Vance occupies? You get to criticize the country because you are American enough. You know, there was a time when being Catholic was considered a really big deal, right? JFK was the first Catholic president and it just kept coming up over and over again. For contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president,

who happens also to be a Catholic. Now no one even remembers. I bet you like half the country doesn't realize he was Catholic. I think that could happen to Dr. Abdullah Sayyad, but I don't think it's going to be in the near future. I think it's going to take kind of a generational change for that. And it's not going to come organically. I really think that there needs to be a concerted effort

to challenge anti-Muslim rhetoric coming from policymakers and from the top that we're not really seeing. yet. But you think we might? I think we might in decades' time. Rosina Ali, her new book is called Seasons of Fury. Avishai Artsy and Danielle Hewitt produced today's show, and Domina El-Sadi edited. David Tadishore and Bridger Dunigan engineered and Peter Ballin-on-Rosin and Ariana Ospuduch, the facts.

I'm Noelle King. It's today explained. I don't know.