Islamophobia in Texas Politics: A Short Recent History

Anti-Muslim politics in Texas rarely announces itself as such. In recent years it has more often arrived through regulatory channels, in investigations of a housing development, warnings about Sharia, and official designations, alongside a separate stream of vandalism and harassment. Looking at these episodes together, with care about what has and has not been proven, shows a pattern worth understanding.

The EPIC investigations

The most sustained episode concerned the North Texas development first called EPIC City. By early April 2025, Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton had launched at least five investigations into the project, which had not broken ground, KERA reported ^[1]; Chron described the two officials joining forces against it ^[2]. Sen. John Cornyn asked the Justice Department to investigate whether the development would discriminate against Christians and Jews, and the department opened a civil rights investigation in May 2025 ^[3]. It closed that investigation in June without charges or a lawsuit ^[4]. By December the Houston Chronicle reported the probes had not turned up significant wrongdoing, while civil rights groups called them rooted in unfounded rhetoric about Sharia ^[5]. In April 2026 a Travis County judge ordered a state agency to comply with a fair-housing settlement it had made with the developer ^[6].

Investigations are not findings, and officials are entitled to enforce fair-housing law. The significance lies in the scale of state attention to an unbuilt Muslim project and in how it landed. The president of the North Texas Islamic Council told Chron that Muslims with no connection to the project reported threats and children being bullied at school ^[7].

A state terrorist designation

In November 2025 Abbott issued a proclamation designating the Council on American-Islamic Relations, one of the country's largest Muslim civil rights groups, a "foreign terrorist organization" and "transnational criminal organization" under state authority and barring it from buying land in Texas ^[8]. The AP noted that the group is not designated a terrorist organization by the federal government ^[8]. Two Texas chapters sued two days later, arguing the proclamation violates the Constitution and state law ^[9]. A state designation is not a federal designation, and our claim check tracks the difference.

Vandalism and harassment

A separate strand is private hostility. In May 2025 three Austin mosques, including Nueces Mosque near the University of Texas, were vandalized on the same night, and a board member told the AP that Islamophobia had risen since October 2023 ^[10]. Chron reported that Muslim groups across Texas described increased harassment amid the Israel-Hamas war ^[10]. Nothing in the record ties these acts to any official; they are part of the climate, not proof of its cause.

Reading the pattern

What connects these episodes is not a single actor but a style of politics in which Muslim institutions are treated first as suspect and only later as neighbors. NPR's 2026 reporting found young Texas Muslims describing that tension directly ^[11]. For the laws and cases behind the rhetoric, see Sharia panic in Texas and What Sharia Panic Gets Wrong.