‘Those of you who think Sharia is a “curse,” The Nation of Islam has written a book called “The Restrictive Law of Islam is Our Success”:  Go take it and read it!  And call me back, and tell me that this is not a law that if we lived it, America, and the American people, would be safe!’

—The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, “The Time and What Must Be Done,” part 41

This year marks 25 years since the events of 9/11. In the aftermath of 9/11, Muslims in America became targets of discrimination and hate crimes. Now, a new report documents a resurgence of anti-Muslim sentiment tied to legislative policies targeting Muslims in America.

The report, titled “Manufacturing the Muslim Threat,” explores what it describes as a 13-month coordinated anti-Muslim campaign, from February 2025 to March 2026, involving 1,111 social media posts by 46 elected officials—including members of Congress.

State governors, and an attorney general—eight bills, and a 62-member congressional caucus. It was published by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, on April 21.

“The report that we recently published shows a highly coordinated anti-Muslim campaign that began with a single post by Greg Abbott in February 2025,” Niala Mohammad, program lead on Islamophobia and anti-migrant hate for the center, said to The Final Call.

On Feb. 24, 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott posted on X, “To be clear, Sharia law is not allowed in Texas. Nor are Sharia cities. Nor are ‘no go zones’ which this project seems to imply. Bottom line. The project as proposed in the video is not allowed in Texas.”

The project in question was a proposed Muslim-led housing development in Dallas, Texas, called East Plano Islamic Center, according to the CSOH report. Claims that it was a “Sharia city” circulated online, making their way to the state’s governor. Governor Abbott’s post had been viewed more than 3.6 million times.

There has been a deliberate misinterpretation and mischaracterization of Sharia Law, which is derived from The Holy Qur’an, which is the book of Islamic scripture, and the sunnah (way) and hadith (sayings) of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Eijah Muhammad, Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, explained this in a message he delivered on October 14, 2012, titled “Guidance for Our President and Our Nation,”  which also served as Part 41 of his 2013, 58-week lecture series, “The Time and What Must Be Done.” 

“Master Fard Muhammad came, and He taught us Sharia Law,” Minister Farrakhan said, referring to The Great Mahdi and Teacher of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad.  

“He taught us—and His Servant, Elijah Muhammad, taught us, and I am teaching you—how to respect The Law, so that you can go anywhere in the dominant Muslim world and be at ease in a society that imposes Sharia!  We do not smoke.  They do. 

We do not drink.  Some of them do.  But the good ones?  They won’t.  We do not use drugs, fornicate, commit adultery, kill our babies through abortion.  We followed ‘The Law’—The Law of God!  We know that imposing the strictness of Sharia, after coming out of a loose, corrupt government, is wrong! 

When a people have been under those who are the enemies of Allah (God), and have lived loosely, you have to gradually bring them back to the strictness of God’s Law!  But if you just ‘put it on them,’ then answer this question: 

Which one of you are ‘holy’ enough to kill people who offend God’s Law, when you, the leaders, are the biggest offenders of The Laws of God?” Minister Farrakhan said. 

“We have a Modern Meaning, given by Master Fard Muhammad, to ‘Sharia.’  Those of you who think Sharia is a ‘curse,’ The Nation of Islam has written a book called ‘The Restrictive Law of Islam is Our Success’:  Go take it and read it!  And call me back, and tell me that this is not a law that if we lived it, America, and the American people, would be safe!”

False conspiracy theories and the war against Islam

The CSOH report documents how “bigoted posts targeting Muslims or Islam or promoting anti-Muslim conspiracy narratives in a domestic American context” rose from an average of about 11 posts a month in the first half of 2025 to an average of nearly 177 posts a month by late 2025 and early 2026.

It describes the jump as a 1,450% increase. In March 2026 alone, there were more than 260 posts, the highest number in the dataset.

The report accused the elected officials of promoting conspiracy theories about Muslim Americans, calling for the deportation and denaturalization of Muslims, promoting negative portrayals of Islam, describing U.S. cities with significant Muslim populations as “conquered”

Or “invaded,” weaponizing domestic terror attacks to vilify Islam and Muslims even when Muslims did not have anything to do with the attack, using dehumanizing language, causing anti-Muslim hysteria and fear-mongering.

Officials based in Texas and Florida produced most of the posts. The posts fueled the introduction of eight bills in both chambers of Congress between June 2025 and March 2026, as well as the formation of the “Sharia-Free America Caucus,” which launched in December 2025 and has grown to more than 60 members.

“This is a coordinated effort. This isn’t organic. The agenda behind it, we believe, is that this campaign constructs Muslims as a civilizational and national security threat to justify exclusionary policies,” Ms. Mohammad said.

“By framing Muslim communities as engaged in invasion or Islamification, it manufactures a public fear. It’s fearmongering to legitimize any sort of legislation pushed forward to marginalize the Muslim community, to expand surveillance and to normalize discrimination towards them.”

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has boldly called the U.S. government’s attitude and actions toward Muslims a “war against Islam.”

“America, now, is at war with Islam, make no mistake about it,” he said in Part 14 of “The Time and What Must be Done,” delivered in 2013. “What is it about Islam that you fear? And what is Islam?” he questioned. “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us, and all Islamic scholars bear witness, that ‘Islam’ is entire submission to do the Will of God.

“The Muslims in America are most peaceful and productive; they have contributed much to the development of this society in medicine, in science, in engineering, in research and development,” he added.

“But the FBI has been infiltrating mosques and creating conditions to entrap Muslims; and then you say, through your media, that you have ‘stopped terrorists.’ This is all a part of your aim of ‘invoking a terrifying internal and external enemy,’” Minister Farrakhan said.

Targeting of Muslims in America

Muslims in America have faced ongoing prejudice and discrimination since 9/11, including violence, harassment and vandalism of mosques. President Donald Trump’s various travel bans and restrictions, including the 2017 Muslim travel ban and recent restrictions that went into effect in 2025 and early this year, 2026, have separated families.

The surge of activity by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis in January and February caused many of the city’s Somali population, who are predominantly Muslim, to live in fear.

In recent news, Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and a prominent pro-Palestinian activist, was detained by ICE agents on March 30 and is being held at a detention center in Indiana.

These incidents persist amidst the wave of anti-Muslim legislation. Ms. Mohammad explained how speech on social media transforms into real-world violence.

“These recent actions, including the Sharia-focused legislation, immigration enforcement narratives, the targeting of Muslim communities, the surveillance of Muslim communities, reflect the campaign’s core framing,” she said.

“Muslims are consistently cast as security threats or demographic dangers, which is then used to justify policies like deportation proposals or expanded enforcement actions.”

Corey Saylor, research and advocacy director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), pointed to previous times when elected officials used their positions to demonize Muslims.

“This exact effort to ban Islamic religious practices really started in 2010. 2011, according to the Othering and Belonging [Institute] at [the University of California, Berkeley], was the year that the introduction of anti-Islam bills peaked,” he said to The Final Call.

“The last couple of years, until 2025, it essentially disappeared. There was anti-Muslim bigotry, but this effort to turn it into policy, the law of the land, the use of public office to demonize Muslims, really had disappeared in this way.”

One example from 2010 is Oklahoma’s introduction of a “Save Our State Amendment,” which sought to restrict the state’s courts from considering Sharia law or international law in decision-making. Federal courts deemed the law unconstitutional.

“It was ruled unconstitutional, and yet this same thing that’s already been ruled unconstitutional is what these elected officials are pursuing,” Mr. Saylor said. “In Oklahoma, a legislator this year introduced a ‘Save Our State Amendment’ that uses the exact same language as the 2010 Oklahoma bill, which means he’s introducing something that’s already been ruled unconstitutional.”

U.S. foreign and domestic policy

Anti-Muslim sentiments by American politicians affect both Muslims in America and abroad. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Mar 3, 2004, where he addressed the war in Iraq and then President George W. Bush’s so-called “War on Terror.”

During the press conference, he quoted terms used by journalists and government officials, including “religion building,” the need for an “Islamic reformation,” and the goal of the “war on terrorism” being “Islam’s modernization.”

“What America is seeking is actually to change Islam, to make Islam suitable and non-threatening to Western hegemony over the entire world. So, the war is not just against brutal dictators; the war, at the root, is against Islam.

The government will not admit to that, but I see signs,” Minister Farrakhan said. “In the neo-conservative idea, America must reshape the world in America’s image or be shaped in the image of the world.”

Now, that same mindset has seeped into domestic politics.

“Domestic anti-Muslim narratives draw heavily from foreign policy frameworks that portrayed Muslim majority regions as threats. These narratives are imported into domestic politics,” Ms. Mohammad said.

Mr. Saylor illustrated how anti-Muslim sentiments are often tied to U.S. politics and have become campaign issues in the past. He said CAIR (The Council on American-Islamic Relations) saw a spike in Islamophobia cases in late 2023, following Israel’s renewed hostilities toward Palestinians.

“42% of our incoming cases that we got in 2023 came in the last three months of the year, 2024 stayed significantly elevated the entire year and 2025 is the highest year on record since we’ve been tracking it since 1996,” he said.

“There’s no doubt that events overseas, in terms of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, definitely played a role in the spike in Islamophobia, and this movement we’re seeing today is essentially just politicians building on that.”

Student Minister Ilia Rashad Muhammad, a member of the Nation of Islam Research Group, authored the book, “Exposing The War Against Islam: An Analysis that Uncovers the Causes, Culprits, and Conspiracies Behind the Orchestrated Rise in Islamophobia,” in 2017.

He learned from his teacher, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, so in the book, Student Min. Ilia Rashad highlighted how, throughout history, White Europeans and Americans have seen Islam as a threat.

“The Islamophobic sentiments that we see and hear being expressed by powerful government officials are nothing new, because the White Western world was established hoping that Islam would never get a stronghold in the West because of the effect that Islam has historically had on the darker nations,” he said to The Final Call.

“Islam militarized and disciplined the Black African, making it difficult for Europeans to subvert those Africans where Islam was present, because Islam requires that anybody fight back to protect the life that has been given to us. So, in a nutshell, Islam, its principles, its values, are a direct threat to White supremacy.”

He classified the rise in “Islamophobic propaganda” as part of the campaign for the U.S. government to forward war efforts. But, he said, “Those lies aren’t working like they used to, because people can now see that America and Israel have been the real culprits all along.”

The beauty of Islam

Islam has been the fastest-growing religion in the world since 2010. Pew Research documented that the Muslim population in North America grew more rapidly from 2010 to 2020 than the non-Muslim population.

Islam promotes a healthier lifestyle among its followers, with dietary restrictions and guidance against activities that contribute to negative health outcomes, such as smoking and drinking.

In particular, the Teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, and the continued guidance from His National Representative, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, have cleaned up and resurrected Black people in America from self-destructive lifestyles.

Student Min. Ilia Rashad Muhammad argued that the resurrection power contained in Islam poses yet another type of threat to the U.S. government.

“Our resurrection is deemed by them as insurrection, because they lose money; they lose power when we get off of their drugs, their tobacco, their prostitution, their pornography, their pedophilia, which is what their world is based on,” he said.

“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Farrakhan and their Teaching of resurrecting and cleaning up our people and all those who listen is a direct threat to U.S. government objectives.”

In Part 14 of “The Time and What Must be Done,” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan warned those who seek to destroy Islam.

“You can’t kill or destroy Islam, because Islam is the Nature of God, and it is the nature in which He has created this universe,” he said.