(The Hill) — Republicans in Texas and Florida are leading efforts to target Muslim advocacy organizations in what civil rights advocates say is a coordinated effort to present Islam as a “national security threat.”
According to advocates, these politicians — including state and federal lawmakers as well as Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott — have sought to restrict funding to Muslim organizations, particularly in the wake of the Israel-Gaza conflict, by tying them to terrorist groups.
Legal efforts have also sought to designate one of these organizations — the Council of American-Islamic Relations, the self-described largest Muslim advocacy group in the U.S. — as a foreign terrorist organization.
“The way that we see this is as a coordinated, multipronged attack on Muslims in the United States through legal, executive and legislative measures aimed at silencing dissent, aimed at weakening and putting on the defensive Muslim-led organizations,” said Tuqa Nusairat, executive director for the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding.
CAIR has often been the stated target of proposed legal measures against nonprofits, with politicians consistently linking the organization with Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood.
“CAIR, as a Muslim terror organization, has been allowed to act with impunity, using taxpayer dollars effectively because of its tax-exempt status,” Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., told NewsNation partner The Hill in an interview.
Fine introduced and passed a non-binding resolution as a Florida state senator encouraging state agencies to cut ties with CAIR. After his special election to Congress this year, he introduced a federal bill to designate CAIR as a terrorist organization this summer.
“I’m glad my leading on this resolution last year has led to DeSantis to take that to the next level, Abbott to take it to the next level,” Fine told The Hill. “And I’m glad to see in the United States, we’re taking the mainstream Muslim terror threat seriously, because it’s a clear and present danger to the country.”
‘Dangerous noise’
Advocates have said bills on Capitol Hill paired with unprecedented state measures and executive action from President Trump have sparked a rise in Islamophobic rhetoric and threats toward Muslim individuals and organizations, particularly online.
“It is all noise, but very dangerous noise, when the noise comes from government agencies institutionalizing or trying to make the appearance that this is official and this is true,” Wilfredo Ruiz, the communications director for CAIR’s Florida chapter, said in an interview with The Hill before DeSantis designated their organization as a terrorist group.
Since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and its subsequent military campaign in Gaza, politicians on both sides of the aisle have increasingly scrutinized organizations in support of the Palestinian cause.
Nationally, lawmakers have introduced legislation to terminate the tax-exempt statuses of “terrorist supporting organizations.” This fall, Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, echoed this call and requested that nonprofit organizations “linked to violence and unrest within the United States” to have their tax-exempt status revoked.
A version of the legislation targeting “terrorist supporting” nonprofits passed the House this June, but the Senate did not approve it. Though this push targeting nonprofits has a broad scope, Smith named organizations that he said have helped spread anti-Semitism on college campuses, including CAIR and other Muslim-led organizations.
In the past month, Abbott and DeSantis have taken the unprecedented steps of designating CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations through signed orders — a designation usually left to the State Department.
“The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” Abbott said in a November news release. He wrote that both organizations have taken action “to support terrorism across the globe and subvert our laws through violence, intimidation, and harassment are unacceptable.”
Though DeSantis did not directly state CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood were spreading Sharia law when announcing his executive order, he later did so on social media.
“Members of the [Florida] Legislature are crafting legislation to stop the creep of sharia law, and I hope that they codify these protections for Floridians against CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood in their legislation,” DeSantis wrote on the social platform X.
Both Abbott and DeSantis’s orders have also tied CAIR to Hamas, which the State Department classifies as an FTO. The Department does not consider the Muslim Brotherhood — a broad organization with many chapters, including Hamas — to be an FTO.
CAIR has repeatedly denied allegations about its alleged link to terrorist groups and has sued both states to reverse the orders. Neither governor’s office responded to requests for comment.
“They want to demonize, try to associate words [like] terrorism to our civil rights organization,” Ruiz said.
Ruiz said past attacks against CAIR’s Florida chapter, including Fine’s legislative push, have been materially inconsequential. But Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR’s national deputy director, said measures like Abbott’s executive order could have legal consequences.
“His is a publicity stunt that actually could lead to some real-world consequences if it’s not overturned,” Mitchell said.
Abbott’s designation of CAIR as a terrorist organization would prevent the organization from owning land in Texas, while DeSantis’s order would prohibit Floridians providing the advocacy group “material support” from receiving funds from state agencies.
Threats from the top
The governors’ orders regarding CAIR have also coincided with unprecedented action from the White House seeking to regulate nonprofits by threatening to remove their financial incentives over political stances.
Nusairat, the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding’s executive director, said increased scrutiny of Muslim advocacy groups over the past two-and-a-half years has helped pave the way for the Trump administration’s broader threats.
“In terms of the ‘non-profit killer’ bill, which was initially introduced under the Biden administration, many organizations in the civic space, in the non-profit space, didn’t necessarily see it as a threat even though Muslim organizations were the target and were ringing alarm bells,” Nusairat said, referencing the various legislative efforts targeting “terrorist supporting” nonprofits since 2023.
Trump issued a memorandum in February directing government agencies to review and pull funding from non-governmental organizations acting against the “national interest.” In September, he directed agencies to investigate NGOs for ties to foreign terrorist organizations in an executive order to combat “domestic terrorism and organized political violence.”
Nusairat also pointed to Trump’s recent executive order that sought for chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood to be labeled as terrorist organizations — which he signed after Abbott’s order regarding CAIR and the group — as a point of concern.
The White House has said that the order brings the U.S. in line with its Muslim and Arab allies, including Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, which designate the Brotherhood in its entirety as a terrorist organization.
“President Trump is right to prioritize robust counterterrorism measures to protect our homeland against national security threats, just as he was elected to do,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told The Hill in a statement.
But Nusairat said the executive order ignored past precedent set by the State Department, which she said did not designate the group as an FTO due to how broad the group is and possible limitations on diplomacy.
“We see this [executive order] as dangerous because there is this continuous rhetoric about this idea, this conspiracy, that Muslim organizations in the United States have roots with the Muslim Brotherhood and this can be used to silence or target them without much evidence,” she added. She noted that this could pull them “into legal battles for years that could mean the death knell of many of these organizations that don’t have the resources to fight back.”
Spike in online hate, violent threats
Several experts have maintained that recent rhetoric and legal actions have fueled a rise in online hate against Muslim individuals and organizations.
“Part of the problem here is that the tolerance for this kind of rhetoric has become normalized,” said Raqib Hameed Naik, the executive director of the Center for the Study of Organized Hate.
Mitchell, CAIR’s national deputy director, said that the organization received an increased number of online threats in the wake of Abbott’s designation. Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.) also told The Hill that Muslim officials— himself included — have received more violent threats in the past year.
“Elected officials have a responsibility to respect the constitutional and religious rights of all Americans, and the responsibility [to] avoid irresponsible rhetoric that incites political violence,” he said in a statement.
This fits into a broader trend described by Naik, whose organization has tracked a rise in Islamophobic comments and threats online in 2025. He specifically pointed to conservative and left-wing attacks toward New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
Mamdani, who is Muslim, has drawn several Islamophobic attacks over the course of his campaign, including from opponent and former New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani’s June primary win resulted in a spike in anti-Muslim hate online, the Center found.
“The online front, I can tell you, it’s literally an epidemic,” Naik said. “It’s just going up, and up, and up.” He added that the spike seemed like it would go on “indefinitely.”
A burgeoning number of bills targeting Sharia law — a term that broadly refers to Islamic religious law, which is interpreted and practiced differently across Muslim communities — has also emerged in Congress as well as Florida and Texas after a drop from previous years.
“This anti-Muslim hate and bigotry is going to stay [up] there for quite some time,” Naik said.