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(RNS) — There is a particular exhaustion, election after election, in seeing the Muslim community dunked on for cheap political points. The anti-Sharia ads and billboards have gotten old, and we’re tired of hearing lies regurgitated constantly about our faith and community.
But after this week’s elections, I wonder whether some politicians will finally recognize another kind of exhaustion: Americans are tired of being told whom to fear instead of what a candidate plans to do to improve their lives.
The assumption behind so much anti-Muslim campaigning is that invoking Islam will end the conversation. Make a candidate sound foreign, turn a mosque into a threat and say “Sharia” often enough, and voters will stop asking about their medical bills and gas prices. They’ll also just turn off their moral conscience in the face of the obvious atrocities our country has helped commit with the genocide in Gaza.
This election offered a warning to politicians still relying on that formula. The people you are teaching others to fear vote, too. And their neighbors may be considerably less interested in your prejudices than you imagined.
In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate despite a campaign that repeatedly cast his faith as a national security threat. President Donald Trump straight-up branded him a jihadist and used the name “Muhammad” to mock him at his ever-more-racist rallies. Mike Rogers questioned his loyalty to the country, Haley Stevens never stopped undermining him and the “Muslim brotherhood” card was overplayed. Like El-Sayed or not, he campaigned on health care and the cost of living and won. He actually seemed to not want to talk about foreign policy much at all, except as it related to how it influences our crumbling domestic affairs. Clearly, the voters didn’t fall for the nonsense.
The warning was already there a year earlier. Zohran Mamdani faced a wave of anti-Muslim attacks during his campaign before becoming New York City’s first Muslim mayor. The city so closely associated with the trauma of Sept. 11 elected a Muslim to lead it. So what?
And by the way, Gaza has been on the ballot ever since the genocide began, and Democrats would be wise to heed that lesson, as I wrote here.
These victories don’t prove that prejudice never wins or that every voter rejected it. Elections turn on many issues. But they should challenge the lazy assumption that Islamophobia is an electoral asset with no downside.
Sometimes the people you intend to intimidate become more determined to participate. Sometimes the people you intend to frighten recognize that you are insulting their intelligence.
And this year, a great deal of money was invested in trying.
By mid-March, Republicans had already spent more than $10 million on television advertisements mentioning Islam or Sharia negatively, according to AdImpact data reported by NPR. Most of that spending was in Texas ahead of its primaries. It was roughly 10 times the spending in each of the previous four election cycles. That was just a March snapshot, not a final accounting of the election season.
Consider what that money was purchasing: not a plan to lower housing costs or improve schools, but an invitation to regard millions of fellow Americans as a threat.
In my home state, Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton helped turn that invitation into government action. They pursued multiple investigations into a Muslim-led housing development, while Abbott threatened airport funding over wudu washing stations used by Muslims before prayer. Paxton’s Senate campaign even attacked his Republican primary opponent for supporting “Muslim mass immigration,” distorting comments about obligations to Afghans who had helped American forces.
Neither man was rescued by that tired form of politics. Abbott lost to Gina Hinojosa, and Paxton lost to James Talarico. Their lopsided defeats cannot be attributed to one issue, but they demonstrate that making Muslims a target was no substitute for earning voters’ confidence.
The consequences extended beyond those races. Texas’ Republican-dominated State Board of Education approved a curriculum presenting early Islam through the Prophet Muhammad’s supposed “brutal military campaigns” and “slavery,” despite objections from Muslims and concerns raised by its own appointed experts. As of this writing, Democrats had secured at least seven seats on the 15-member board, sharply reducing what had been an 11-4 Republican majority.
There is a lesson there for anyone who imagines that turning a child’s religion into a classroom indictment is a way to earn his or her parents’ trust.
But the national significance goes beyond Texas, and beyond any single candidate.
For those of us who came of age after Sept. 11, this moment challenges a familiar demand: that we spend our lives proving we belong before we are permitted to discuss anything else.
I am tired of that bargain. I do not want another generation of Muslim children to inherit it.
And be careful, bigots: You may just be organizing the very people you hoped to silence.
The most hopeful part of this moment is not simply that Muslims are exercising political power. It is the possibility of a broader rejection of the idea that our belonging is something politicians get to revoke.
The lesson of this election is not that America has overcome Islamophobia. It is that politicians should no longer assume Americans will reward them for it.
Hating your Muslim neighbor will not lower your rent, improve your child’s school or make your health care affordable. It will, however, give a politician something to talk about instead of explaining why those problems remain.
Muslims belong in this country whether we win elections or lose them.
Politicians who campaign as though we do not are discovering that their own place in office is far less secure.