Anti-Muslim politicians should crawl back in the sewer

While anti-Muslim rhetoric is not new in the United States, the recent slew of bigoted comments by foulmouthed, racist politicians claiming that Muslims “don’t belong” in the U.S., along with calls for their “mass expulsion,” must be soundly denounced.

Various statements coming from Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and others are all the more dangerous, because they align with pro-war, anti-Islamic rhetoric from Donald Trump who unleashed bombing attacks on Iran on Feb. 28.

Ogles, an ultraconservative member of the so-called “Freedom Caucus” in the U.S. House of Representatives, first made his comments on March 7 at the House Republicans annual weeklong policy retreat in Doral, Florida, while Muslims around the world were observing their annual holy month of Ramadan and as the U.S. war against Iran was intensifying. He posted the comments on X on March 9 after a “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City” rally organized by conservative influencer Jake Lang outside New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home, which had just been the target of an attempted bombing.

Ogles had previously called for Mamdani, New York’s first Muslim mayor, to be stripped of his citizenship and deported. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in condemning Ogles’ remarks, noted that had “any member of Congress declared that ‘Jews do not belong in America,’ that politician would rightfully face condemnation, censure and even possibly expulsion” in a statement to USA Today. (March 9)

But Ogles, who openly calls for the U.S. to become a “Christian Nation,” is not the only Islamophobic GOP politician in Congress. Tuberville claimed, “Muslim immigrants are bringing WWIII to American soil.” Tuberville said this despite the fact that it is Trump who launched this potential war, not Muslim immigrants. Tuberville has also repeatedly attacked Mamdani on X.

Also calling for the mass expulsion of Muslims, Fine posted on social media in December 2025: “It is time for a Muslim travel ban, radical deportations of all mainstream Muslim legal and illegal immigrants, and citizenship revocations wherever possible.”

While Muslim members of Congress, including Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) have faced censorship motions and other threats for daring to criticize Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Fine and Ogles have faced no such consequences for their openly anti-Muslim bigotry.

And then there was Gill, who posted on X in November that Islam is “incompatible with our culture and our governing system” and that “not all cultures are morally equal.” The “Freedom Caucus” endorsed Gill’s remarks. 

Gill and others might want to bother to read the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion. While denying full access to the document’s protections to Native Americans, to enslaved people of African descent, to women and to propertyless men, the U.S. claimed to be founded on secular ideals, including separation of church and state.

These politicians might also bother to study the history of Muslims who have been in the Americas for over 400 years, some arriving in 1527 with Spanish colonists. However, barring Muslims from entering the U.S. was a major platform of Trump’s 2015 presidential campaign, and in 2017  he put a travel ban in place against seven Muslim-majority countries. In 2025, he implemented a similar travel ban that included several non-Muslim majority countries, including Laos and Cuba. Trump has repeatedly made racist comments against Somali immigrants, most of whom are Muslim.

Over the past 250 years of the history of the United States, it has been propertied white men of European heritage who have been responsible for launching the hundreds of military conflicts, interventions, invasions and wars the U.S. has been involved in. But increasingly over the last two decades, it has been majority Muslim countries that have valiantly resisted U.S. military aggression.