Ken Paxton vs. Islam — The Public Record

Where this page stands

This is not a neutral archive and it does not pretend to be. It is an argument, made by a Muslim Texan, with the receipts attached: that Ken Paxton has spent two years treating Muslims in this state as a political resource — something to investigate, sue, campaign against and raise money off — and that he is now asking the same voters he did it in front of to send him to the United States Senate.

Every quotation below is dated and sourced, and where a claim is disputed or unverified we say so out loud in its own section rather than smuggling it in. Facts that help Paxton — the acquittal, the federal investigations that found nothing, his own religious-liberty caveat — are printed here at full size, because we would rather win this argument than dodge it.

The conclusion we draw is ours and you are free to reject it: the pattern on this page is not a man fighting terrorism. It is a man who found something that polls well and kept pulling the lever.

The short version

Ken Paxton is on your November ballot at the top of the Republican ticket. He beat John Cornyn in the May 26 runoff with 63.82% and faces Democrat James Talarico on November 3.
He called Afghans who helped American soldiers an invasion. On X, attacking Cornyn: he “helped radical Islamic Afghans invade Texas.” The program he meant was for interpreters who worked alongside U.S. forces.
His campaign ran a television ad calling a sitting Republican senator “Caliphate Cornyn” and accusing him of supporting “Muslim mass immigration.” FactCheck.org found the claim rested on a quote taken out of context, and the campaign gave them no other evidence.
A Republican consultant said the quiet part out loud. “The Muslim community is the boogeyman for this cycle,” Vinny Minchillo told POLITICO. “This has been polled up one side and down the other.” Later, to CNN: “It’s solid gold.”
Sixty Republican leaders in the Texas House voted to impeach him in 2023, on a 121–23 vote. He was acquitted by the Senate and denies wrongdoing. He now describes that impeachment as something “the left and the establishment” did to him.
A federal judge has already described how he operates. On January 29, 2026 — one week before he sued CAIR — Judge Robert Pitman found Paxton had gone after a Latino voter registration group in bad faith, that his case “supposes absolutely no wrongdoing,” and that he may have been “harassing … and fishing for reasons to investigate.”
Muslim Texans are describing something worse than 2001. A board member of the Muslim Democratic Caucus of Texas, who lived through the post-9/11 hate-crime spike, says what is happening now “is much worse.”
888,196 votes made him the nominee. That is 4.8% of Texas’s registered voters. Thirteen times as many Texans are registered as voted in that runoff at all.

Register by October 5. Early voting October 19–30. Election Day November 3, 2026.

This page exists because a question keeps coming up in Muslim households across Texas this year, usually late, usually quietly, and usually between people who normally agree about everything: are we really still voting this ticket?

It is not a rhetorical question. Plenty of Muslim Texans have voted Republican for a long time, for reasons that were never stupid — small business, taxes, school choice, a certain social conservatism that Islam and evangelical Christianity have always shared more of than either side likes to admit. Nobody here is going to pretend those reasons evaporated.

But a ticket is a package, and this year the man at the top of the Republican package spent a primary season describing people like you as an invasion. Not radicals. Not Hamas. Not a terror cell. Afghan interpreters. Housing developments. Prayer rooms. A divorce-counselling office in Dallas.

So before November 3, read what he actually said. Not what his critics say he meant — what he said, with the date and the source attached. Then decide.

Start with your own county

Before any of the quotations below, look at the arithmetic where you live. Every one of the 254 counties, from the Texas Secretary of State’s certified canvass of the May 26, 2026 Republican primary runoff — tap a county, or search for yours.

Find your county

How to read this map. A county’s figure is the share of that county’s runoff voters who chose Paxton — not the share of its Republicans, and certainly not the share of its people. Statewide turnout in this runoff was 7.46% of registered voters. The Secretary of State prints that number on the canvass itself.

What he said

Every block below is labelled by who said it: Paxton personally, his campaign organisation, or his office as attorney general. Those are three different things and this page does not blur them.

Paxton personally, on X · January 2026 Classification: Muslims / immigration

“This desperate hail mary can’t erase the fact that he helped radical Islamic Afghans invade Texas and that his family’s making a fortune securing visas for foreigners.”

— Ken Paxton, replying on X to a pro-Cornyn super PAC ad about his divorce and alleged affairs.

What the program actually was. Paxton was referring to Cornyn’s past support for Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans after the Taliban’s 2021 takeover — the visa category for interpreters and translators who worked alongside U.S. forces. A source familiar with the legislation told CNN that Cornyn’s HOPE for Afghan SIVs Act pertained only to the timing of a medical exam, and has since expired. Cornyn, like other Republicans, later reversed his position on the program.

POLITICO, Jan 26 2026 ↗ CNN, Apr 11 2026 ↗

Paxton campaign television ad · aired from May 12, 2026 Classification: Muslim immigration

“Caliphate Cornyn.”

— the Ken Paxton campaign, in a runoff ad that also said Cornyn “has a special place in his heart for radical Islam” and “believes we have a moral obligation to support Muslim mass immigration.”

What FactCheck.org found. The on-screen evidence for “Muslim mass immigration” was Cornyn saying, in 2021, “I do think we have a moral obligation to help them, protect them and their families” — said while meeting Afghan interpreters who held special immigrant visas. FactCheck.org asked the Paxton campaign for any other evidence that Cornyn had advocated Muslim mass immigration. The campaign did not respond.

FactCheck.org, May 2026 ↗

Paxton as attorney general · February 5, 2026 Classification: Sharia / organisations

“Jihadists who follow sharia law have no business being in Texas.”

— Ken Paxton, announcing a lawsuit against the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Brotherhood. The suit alleged CAIR is a “radical terrorist organization that exists to usurp governmental power and establish dominion through Sharia law.”

CAIR responded that it had “defeated Greg Abbott’s attacks on the Constitution three different times in a row” and said it was being targeted for opposing Israel’s conduct in Gaza. CAIR has sued the state, arguing the terrorist designation is unconstitutional and defamatory. The litigation is unresolved.

Texas Tribune, Feb 5 2026 ↗

Paxton as attorney general · January 2026 Classification: public funds

“Texans’ tax dollars should never fund Islamic terrorists or America’s enemies.”

— Ken Paxton, in an opinion that the state comptroller may exclude private schools from the school voucher program if they violate Texas’s new anti-terror laws.

POLITICO, Jan 26 2026 ↗

Paxton in interview · Dallas Express, “Let’s Talk Local” Classification: Islam / Europe / demographics

“Look, I get that. You look at what’s happened across Europe, they’re losing their countries.”

— Ken Paxton, answering a question about voters who are concerned about “Islamification.”

The full answer, in fairness. In the same response Paxton said he supports the First Amendment and religious liberty, that people should be free to worship and share their beliefs, and drew his line at what he described as communities announcing they will follow sharia instead of state law, federal law and the Constitution. That is his distinction, stated in his own words, and this page prints it rather than cropping it away. The section below is about whether the distinction holds.

What his office did

Words are one record. Subpoenas are another. These are actions taken by the office of the attorney general of Texas.

EPIC City · March 2025 – present

The East Plano Islamic Center proposed a 400-acre development north of Dallas — homes marketed to Muslim families, a mosque, an Islamic school, retail. Paxton opened the first of several investigations in March 2025 and sued the developers in December, alleging violations of state securities law. He called the leaders “engaged in a radical plot to destroy hundreds of acres of beautiful Texas land and line their own pockets.”

What the federal government found. The U.S. Department of Justice opened its own civil rights inquiry and closed it in June 2025 after the developers affirmed the project would comply with the Fair Housing Act. The Justice Department’s review found no evidence of wrongdoing and filed no charges. The state litigation continues.

Asma Uddin, RNS/The Conversation, Sep 1 2026 ↗

The Islamic Tribunal · April 2026

Paxton opened an investigation into a small Dallas organisation that offers religious arbitration, accusing it of falsely claiming its rulings carried “the approval of the Texas Judicial system.” Much of the tribunal’s caseload is Muslim women seeking religious divorces, including from abusive marriages.

The investigation has produced no public finding.

Liberty High School, Frisco · 2017

Muslim students had used a spare classroom to pray, without incident, from 2009. In 2017 Paxton’s office sent the district a letter questioning whether other students were being excluded from the room.

They weren’t. A district spokesman said the classroom was available to “students of all walks of life.” The accommodation had not changed in eight years. What changed was that it had been noticed.

What it costs the people on the other end

Officials issue statements. Here is what the statements land on. These are named Muslim Texans, on the record, in their own words — reported by Inkstick (Sept 1, 2026), KERA and CAIR. Nobody on this page is anonymous.

“The Republicans are trying to tell you there is a boogeyman. There is no boogeyman.”

Emad Salem — board member and former president, Muslim Democratic Caucus in Texas Salem lived through the spike in hate crimes after September 11, 2001. Asked to compare that to now, he says what he is seeing today is much worse. · Inkstick, Sept 1 2026

Hold those two words next to each other. A Republican consultant told POLITICO the Muslim community was “the boogeyman for this cycle,” as a description of campaign mechanics. A Muslim Texan uses the same word to describe what it is like to be the thing selected.

“It’s very disheartening and scary. It’s very scary to drop him off there every day when I know that there have been protestors showing up there.”

Naila Syed — Dallas, mother of two; one child at a mosque school Inkstick, Sept 1 2026

“If I’m going out alone, then there is that fear. Am I gonna hear something?”

Fawzia Bilal — congregation member, East Plano Islamic Center She also said: “We are contributing. We would like to think of ourselves as the ones who are shaping and building the community here.” · KERA News, May 28 2025

“That’s one of the reasons that makes it so hard for other Muslims to come to the forefront — is the fear of what kind of retribution they will receive.”

Shehla Faizi — candidate for Texas Comptroller On running for statewide office as a Muslim woman in 2026: “I would presumably have a target on my back.” · Inkstick, Sept 1 2026

“Instead of acting like true public servants and leaders, they have chosen to abuse their power by launching groundless investigations against EPIC.”

Mustafaa Carroll — executive director, CAIR Dallas–Fort Worth KERA News, May 28 2025

During the EPIC investigations, the mosque’s lawyer said the congregation had spent weeks receiving death threats and explicit voicemails. The home addresses of mosque leaders were leaked. The center hired counsel over safety concerns. The project has since been renamed The Meadow.

And a detail that says something about how thin the premise was: the president of the development company, Imran Chaudhary, is a lifelong Muslim — and according to the mosque’s attorney, he had to look up what sharia meant, because it had never been a category he organised his life around. He was being investigated for importing a legal system he needed to Google.

And this one is simply strange

The lawyer the mosque hired to defend it against Ken Paxton is Dan Cogdell — the attorney who defended Ken Paxton at his 2023 impeachment trial and in his securities fraud case.

John Cornyn’s campaign attacked Paxton over exactly this during the runoff, arguing it made him “soft on radical Islam.” Which tells you what the primary had become: not a disagreement about policy, but a contest over who could be counted on to go after Muslims harder.

KERA, May 28 2025 ↗ POLITICO, Jan 26 2026 ↗

“CAIR-Texas plans to continue serving and protecting the people of Texas long after Ken Paxton leaves office.”

CAIR and CAIR-Texas — joint statement, February 5, 2026, the day Paxton sued them The full statement calls the suit “another frivolous, politically motivated anti-Muslim publicity stunt that wastes more taxpayer dollars,” notes they have “defeated Mr. Abbott’s attacks on Texas Muslims and the Constitution three different times in a row,” and says: “The people of Texas elected Mr. Paxton to serve them, not to silence them.” · CAIR press release

The test he fails

Paxton’s defence is a distinction, and it is worth taking seriously, because on its face it is a reasonable one: he is not against Muslims, he is against sharia replacing American law. Nobody in this country, Muslim or otherwise, wants a parallel legal system that overrides the Constitution. If that were genuinely the line, most Muslim Texans would be on his side of it.

There is a clean way to test whether that is the actual line. Religious arbitration — two parties voluntarily agreeing to have a religious panel settle a dispute instead of going to court — is ordinary, legal, and common in America. Asma Uddin, a constitutional law professor at Michigan State who writes on religious liberty, laid the comparison out plainly in September 2026:

Not investigated

The Beth Din of America arbitrates disputes for observant Jews under Jewish law in New York. The Institute for Christian Conciliation in Montana offers biblical mediation and arbitration for church, employment and business disputes. Courts confirm and enforce awards from both, subject to the same limited grounds for setting them aside as any private arbitration.

Investigated

The Islamic Tribunal in Dallas does the same thing — voluntary religious arbitration, mostly divorces. Texas courts do not approve or supervise it, and it cannot override American law. In April 2026 it was singled out for a state investigation by the attorney general.

Same legal structure. Same authority — which is to say, none. One got a subpoena.

The historical answer to “but sharia really is creeping into the courts” is a matter of record too. Beginning around 2010, states passed measures barring courts from applying sharia or foreign law. Oklahoma’s was blocked by a federal court, for a reason worth sitting with: the state could not identify a single case in which sharia had actually been applied.

“Ordinary religious practices can become evidence of danger, in some Americans’ eyes, when Muslims engage in them.”

Asma Uddin, Assistant Professor of Law, Michigan State University — Religion News Service / The Conversation, September 1, 2026

That is the whole thing. A prayer room becomes a security question. A housing development becomes a plot. A divorce counsellor becomes a shadow court. The practice never changed. The people practising it did.

They said it out loud

The most damaging evidence on this page is not from a Democrat, a Muslim organisation or a civil liberties group. It is from a Texas Republican consultant explaining, to reporters, on the record, why his party was doing this.

Republican consultant · to POLITICO, January 2026

“The Muslim community is the boogeyman for this cycle. One hundred percent this message works — there’s no question about it. This has been polled up one side and down the other, and with Texas Republican primary voters, it works. It is a thing they are legitimately scared of.”

— Vinny Minchillo, Texas Republican consultant.

Three months later, to CNN, the same consultant on how the message was performing: “It is playing as well as anything I have ever seen with Texas Republican voters. It’s solid gold.”

POLITICO, Jan 26 2026 ↗ CNN, Apr 11 2026 ↗

Read it again. It is not a claim that Muslims are dangerous. It is a claim that saying Muslims are dangerous tests well. Polled up one side and down the other. Solid gold.

Muslim Texans quoted in the same coverage understood exactly what they were looking at. “They need some kind of demon and we’re going to be it,” said Sameena Karmally. “They are using us as a boogeyman to scare people,” said Shaimaa Zayan of CAIR Austin.

They were describing a product, and they were right.

A federal judge already put this in writing

The strongest characterisation of Ken Paxton’s methods on this page is not ours. It is a United States district judge’s, in an order, about a case Paxton actually brought.

On January 29, 2026, Judge Robert Pitman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas blocked Paxton’s attempt to dissolve the corporate charter of Jolt Initiative, a Latino civic-participation nonprofit. Paxton had accused it of submitting unlawful voter registration applications and sought to put the organisation out of existence.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman · January 29, 2026

“Given multiple opportunities to assert his good faith by pointing to any credible evidence of illegal activity or even general wrongdoing … Defendant could not.”

The order found Paxton had acted in bad faith, that his case “supposes absolutely no wrongdoing,” and that he may have been “harassing [Jolt] and fishing for reasons to investigate its organization.” The judge noted he did not reach that conclusion lightly — halting a state proceeding on grounds of bad faith is an unusual step for a federal court to take.

Jolt’s executive director, Jackie Bastard: “This was never about election integrity, it was about political retaliation.” Paxton’s office has also moved against Annunciation House, an El Paso Catholic organisation that shelters migrants.

Votebeat / Texas Tribune, Jan 29 2026 ↗

One week later, he sued the largest Muslim civil rights organisation in the country using the same instrument.

That is the sequence, and it is the reason this page treats the sharia lawsuits as politics rather than law enforcement. A judge examined the same playbook — aimed at Latinos instead of Muslims — gave the attorney general repeated chances to produce evidence, and recorded on the docket that he had none.

CAIR’s federal case is still open. Notably, Paxton has largely not defended Abbott’s terrorist designation on the merits. His filings have argued that the proclamation does not apply to CAIR’s Texas chapters, that he is immune because he has not acted yet, and that the constitutionality of the order is a “political question” a court should not answer at all. Three procedural doors, and not one of them is “here is the evidence.”

The size of the mandate

Certified — Texas Secretary of State

888,196: votes for Paxton in the May 26 runoff

63.82%: of the runoff vote — Cornyn took 36.18%

4.8%: of Texas’s 18,662,785 registered voters is all that was

17,271,151: registered Texans who did not vote in that race at all

Source and verification. Texas Secretary of State, election 58315, race 5075 (U.S. Senator). Figures taken from the signed Official Canvass Report and independently diffed against the official County-by-County Canvass Report across all 254 counties — zero mismatches. The registration count is the one printed on the canvass.

Thirteen times as many Texans are registered to vote as cast a ballot in the runoff that made Ken Paxton the Republican nominee for the United States Senate.

That is not a consolation prize. It is the entire argument of this page. A low-turnout primary electorate, which a Republican consultant had already measured and found receptive, selected a nominee. November is a completely different and far larger electorate, and it has not spoken yet.

This research is free and it stays free. If it was worth your time, chip in so it can reach more people before October 5. ⚠️ Money goes to Is IT Online, which builds and hosts this page. It does not go to any candidate or campaign.

Sixty Republican leaders

Everything above is about what Ken Paxton says. This section is about what the people who worked with him concluded — and it is the part that should matter most to a Republican voter who is uncomfortable but still leaning toward the ticket.

In October 2020, seven of Paxton’s own most senior deputies at the attorney general’s office put their names to a letter accusing him of “violating federal and/or state law, including prohibitions relating to improper influence, abuse of office, bribery, and other potential criminal offenses.” These were his appointees. Within six weeks, every one of them had been fired or had resigned.

Their wrongful-termination suit settled for $3.3 million — contingent on the Legislature appropriating the money, which is to say on Texas taxpayers paying it rather than Paxton. The House balked at writing that cheque without knowing what it was for, and opened an investigation.

On May 25, 2023, the House General Investigating Committee voted unanimously to recommend impeachment. Two days later the full House adopted all 20 articles.

Texas House, Record Vote 2191 — May 27, 2023

121–23: the House vote to impeach

60: of the yes votes were Republican leaders — named below

20: articles adopted, including bribery and obstruction

0: Republicans on the investigating committee who voted against recommending it

Source. Texas House Journal, 88th Legislature R.S., Saturday May 27, 2023, Record Vote 2191 on HR 2377, page 5958. The party split reconciles exactly: 121 yeas = 61 Democrats + 60 Republicans. Speaker Dade Phelan is recorded among the yeas.

All sixty, by name

Not anonymous sources. Not “party insiders.” Sixty named Republican leaders, each one elected by a Texas district, each one on the record in the House Journal. Every name below links to that member’s own official page. Hover a district to see who held it and how they voted — or tap a district, or any name in the list.

Voted to impeach — still in the House (43) Voted to impeach — has since left (17) Other districts

About these links. Members still serving link to their official Texas House member page; “record ↗” goes to their Texas Legislative Reference Library entry. Members who have left the House link to the Legislative Reference Library, which keeps a permanent record for former members. All 103 links were checked and returned HTTP 200 on September 4, 2026. Districts are the 88th Legislature districts each member held at the time of the vote. Not everyone in the second group was defeated — some retired, and Craig Goldman went to Congress. This page does not claim otherwise, and it does not assert how any of these sixty will vote in November.

And then he was acquitted. That belongs here in the same size type. The Senate tried 16 of the 20 articles beginning September 5, 2023. Conviction required 21 of 31 senators; the highest guilty vote on any article was 14. Paxton was acquitted on all 16 and reinstated. Senator Angela Paxton, his wife, did not participate in any vote. Paxton has consistently denied wrongdoing and calls the whole episode politically motivated.

The separate nine-year securities-fraud case ended in March 2024 without a trial: an 18-month pretrial-diversion agreement, 100 hours of community service, 15 hours of legal ethics training, and $271,000 in restitution to the investors. No admission of guilt. On completion the three felony charges were dismissed.

So he was not convicted of anything. Hold that. And hold this next to it.

Paxton on his own impeachment · 2026

“Despite the fact that the left and the establishment wanted me out, there’s a greater power.”

— Ken Paxton, at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference, June 2026. On Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s podcast he described the same events: “I truly believe that God just delivered me.”

Sixty Republican leaders voted to impeach him. The committee that recommended it was chaired by a Republican and voted unanimously. The State Republican Executive Committee did pass a resolution condemning the impeachment, 53–11, three weeks later — but the members who actually sat through the evidence and voted are on the record in the House Journal, by name.

Texas Tribune, Aug 13 2026 ↗ House Journal, RV 2191 ↗

This is the habit the record shows, and it is the reason the rhetoric about Muslims should not be read as an isolated excess: when Ken Paxton is accused of something, the accusers become the conspiracy. His own deputies became rogue employees. Sixty Republicans became the left. A prayer room became a threat. A tribunal that grants religious divorces became a shadow court.

What this page will not claim. The Republicans who voted to impeach him took a legislative vote in 2023. Several were later targeted by Paxton-endorsed primary challengers. This page does not assert how any of them will vote in November, or that any has withdrawn support from the party ticket. It reports the act, on the date it happened.

It is not only him

Paxton is at the top of the ticket. Three of the statewide Republican nominees on your November 3 ballot — Senate, attorney general, railroad commission — campaigned on this. A straight-ticket vote is a vote for all three.

Republican nominee for Texas Railroad Commissioner · June 2026

“I won’t rest until every Muslim is gone.”

— Bo French, former Tarrant County Republican Party chairman, writing on social media. He is the Republican nominee for the Texas Railroad Commission and appears on the same November 3 ballot as Paxton.

In June 2025, French posted a poll asking which was “a bigger threat to America” with exactly two options: “Jews” and “Muslims.” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick demanded his resignation as county chair. He won the May 2026 runoff for the nomination anyway, by 1.1 points.

RNS / The Conversation, Sep 1 2026 ↗ The full Bo French record ↗

The rest of the 2026 field, in their own words

Mayes Middleton, the Republican nominee for Texas attorney general, ran an ad boasting that he was running to “stop Sharia law” in Texas. He won the May 26 runoff with 55.24% — 757,625 votes — and is on the November 3 ballot with Paxton and French.

Aaron Reitz, a defeated candidate in the same attorney general primary, in a January 2026 ad: “Islam is not compatible with Western civilization,” vowing to “stop the invasion.” On mosque construction: “You look at the number of mosques that have been built in Texas in just the last 10 to 20 years, and it’s explosive. It’s alarming for good reason.”

U.S. Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas, on X, March 1, 2026, after a shooting in Austin: “No more Islamic immigration.” He has separately called Islamic migration a “huge problem in Texas, particularly in the Dallas area” that “is transforming local communities,” and introduced a bill to pause Somali immigration for 25 years.

The scale of it. A Washington Post analysis found that since the start of 2025, nearly 100 Republican members of Congress have posted about Islam or Muslims on social media — almost all of it negative, two-thirds invoking radical Islam, sharia, extremism or terrorism, and several calling outright for deporting Muslims or banning Islamic immigration. The single most prolific was Chip Roy of Texas, with more than 100 posts referencing Islam. Roy lost the Republican runoff for Texas attorney general on May 26.

And the response from the top. When Rep. Andy Ogles said “Muslims don’t belong in the United States” and “Muslims are unable to assimilate; they all have to go back,” when Rep. Randy Fine said “the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one,” and when Sen. Tommy Tuberville wrote “the enemy is inside our gates,” the Associated Press reported “the stark silence from Republican leaders, including President Donald Trump.” Critics noted a plain statement rejecting religious bigotry would have cost nothing. None was issued.

Valentina Gomez, candidate in the 31st Congressional District, launched with a video of herself burning a Quran: “your daughters will be raped and your sons beheaded, unless we stop Islam once and for all.”

State Rep. Alan Schoolcraft, helping lead a “Sharia Free Texas Caucus,” told the Houston Chronicle his concern “has nothing to do with faith, with religion,” but with “cultural differences, refusing to assimilate, and trying to establish a parallel culture.” He has said lawmakers intend to try to define what qualifies as a religion, arguing Islam is “much more than a religion.”

Gov. Greg Abbott designated CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organisations under Texas law and signed laws banning “sharia compounds.” In May 2026 he threatened to pull $530,000 in state funding from the City of Grand Prairie unless it cancelled a private Eid celebration at a water park, and threatened to withhold funding from DFW International Airport over plans for ablution stations — the washing facilities Muslims use before prayer.

John Cornyn, it should be said, ran the same play from the other direction: a seven-figure ad buy declaring “radical Islam is a bloodthirsty ideology” and “Sharia law has no place in American courts or communities.” He lost anyway. This page is not an argument that one Republican was the problem. It is an argument about what the whole field decided was worth doing, and who ended up on top of it.

Where the line is. Naming these people is not a claim that every Republican shares their views, and it is not a claim about any individual Republican voter. It is a claim about what appeared on ballots and in ad buys in Texas in 2026, with dates and sources attached.

Disputed, unverified, and false

This page argues a case, so it has to be honest about the evidence it is not standing on. Everything in this section is labelled. Nothing here is used above to support the argument. If you only trust the sourced sections, the argument still stands without any of it.

Disputed — she says one thing, police say another

A bullet through a Dallas mother’s windshield

In May 2026, Sabah Mooswi — a mother, community organiser, and a visibly Muslim woman who wears hijab — was driving on a Dallas highway when a bullet went through her windshield and lodged in the leather of the seat where her son normally sits. She believes she was targeted for her faith, her visible hijab and her activism.

Police disputed that the shooting was connected to her religion. We have no way to adjudicate that and we are not going to pretend otherwise. We include it because the fear the earlier section describes is not abstract — this is the specific thing Muslim Texans are afraid of, and it happened to a named woman five months ago, whatever the motive turns out to have been.

Inkstick, Tyler Hicks, Sept 1 2026 ↗

Unverified — widely repeated, not confirmed here

Three quotations we could not stand up

All three circulate in graphics and posts about Paxton. All three are plausible and consistent with what he has said elsewhere. None of them was confirmed against a source we could read, so none of them appears in the record sections above.

1. “We will not allow Sharia law to be imported into our great state,” with the paired claim that Texans have no “moral obligation” to support Muslim mass immigration — usually cited to the Houston Chronicle, May 2026. Not located.

2. “Even as Muslim extremists force Sharia law on Texans …” — attributed to a Paxton campaign ad and to a FactCheck.org finding. The FactCheck.org piece we did read evaluates three claims from that ad; this line is not among them.

3. A Los Angeles Times report of the “radical Islamic Afghans” remark, dated February 2026. The remark itself is confirmed — POLITICO carries it, and it is quoted above — but this particular citation was not located.

If you have any of the three, send it and it moves upstairs with a link: isitonline@gmail.com

Unverified — and the hero graphic carries it

The “Agree” reply attributed to Ken Paxton

This is the most-shared claim about Paxton and Muslims, and it is the one this page can least stand behind. It appears in the artwork at the top of this page, so we are telling you exactly what we found.

Half of it is confirmed. Rep. Brandon Gill did post “No more Islamic immigration.” on X on March 1, 2026. That post is real, it is quoted in the ticket section above, and it links to the artifact itself.

The reply attributed to Paxton is not confirmed. We could not locate the post, and no outlet we could read places him as responding to it. The Washington Post citation usually attached to the claim did not check out. More than that, the Associated Press’s reporting on that same week describes the opposite of Republicans agreeing out loud: “the stark silence from Republican leaders, including President Donald Trump,” with critics noting that a plain statement rejecting religious bigotry would have cost nothing and that none was issued.

So weigh it accordingly. Nothing in the sourced sections of this page depends on it. Every other quotation here is dated and linked, and the argument stands on those alone. If you have the screenshot, send it and this entry gets rewritten with a citation: isitonline@gmail.com

So — the question

You can hold two things at once. You can believe that a Republican should be trusted with the economy and still refuse to hand a Senate seat to a man whose campaign called Afghan interpreters an invasion. Party loyalty is not a religious obligation. It never was.

And nobody is asking anyone to become something they are not. There is a Democrat on this ballot, James Talarico, who is a seminarian training for the ministry and who has said, on national television: “We are called to love all of our neighbors, including our Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, agnostic, atheist neighbors. Forcing our religion down their throats is not love.” You do not have to agree with him about everything. Most people won’t. He also voted, as a member of the Texas House, to impeach Ken Paxton — he is one of the 121.

The question this page is actually asking is narrower and harder than “switch parties.”

If a candidate builds a campaign on the idea that your family is an invasion, and it works, what exactly do you think gets built next?

“Solid gold” means it will be run again. That is what a tested message is for. Nothing ever takes a message off the shelf except it failing.

Emad Salem said there is no boogeyman. He is right, and that is exactly the problem — because the boogeyman was never the point. The point was that enough people would vote for someone who pointed at one. On November 3 that proposition gets tested against thirteen times as many voters as approved it in May.

What to actually do

In order, by how much it matters. The first two are free and take under ten minutes.

Check your registration — today, not in October

Registrations get cancelled for moves, name changes and address mismatches, and people find out at the polling place. Verify you are on the roll and that the address is current. If you are not registered, October 5 is the deadline and there is no extension.
Check my Texas registration ↗
Register five people who are not you

17,271,151 registered Texans did not vote in the runoff that produced this nominee. The margin in a statewide general is not built by persuasion; it is built by turnout. Your parents, your siblings, the twenty-somethings at your masjid who have never voted in a midterm — that is the list.
VoteTexas.gov — register ↗
Vote early, October 19–30

Early voting removes every excuse November 3 can manufacture — work, weather, childcare, a two-hour line. Vote in the first week and then spend the last week getting other people there.
Bring the record with you

Not an opinion — the sources. Send this page, or send the primary documents directly. The Secretary of State canvass, the House Journal roll call, the FactCheck.org finding, the POLITICO and CNN reporting where a Republican consultant explains the strategy. An argument survives a family group chat when it has citations. An accusation does not.
Jump to the source list ↓
Give somewhere that converts money into turnout

Give to a candidate, to a campaign, to a mosque’s civic-engagement committee, to a nonpartisan registration drive — whatever fits your read of it. This page has no candidate to sell you.
Show up to the boring meetings

County party meetings, school board, city council, the precinct chair vacancy nobody wants. The hostility documented on this page did not start at the Senate level. It started in county parties and local ad buys and worked upward, and it will be answered the same way or not at all.

“CAIR is not going anywhere, American Muslims are not going anywhere, and our community will show its strength at the ballot box, God willing.”

Sameeha Rizvi, CAIR Action Texas Policy and Advocacy Coordinator — POLITICO, January 26, 2026

Chip in to keep this in front of people. Every dollar goes to hosting, research time and getting the link in front of Texans before the October 5 registration deadline. ⚠️ Money goes to Is IT Online, the company that builds and hosts this page. It does not go to James Talarico, to any candidate, or to any campaign. If you want to fund a campaign, give to the campaign directly.

How this page is built

A page that accuses a named living person of something has to be harder on itself than its critics will be. These are the rules this one follows.

Direct quote

Words Ken Paxton personally spoke or wrote. Labelled “Paxton personally.”

Campaign statement

Published by his authorised campaign — an ad, a campaign account. Not necessarily spoken by him. Labelled as the campaign.

Official act

Taken by the office of the attorney general. Labelled “as attorney general.”

Third-party

What journalists, opponents or advocacy groups say about him. Never presented as his words.

Quotes that did not survive verification are not on this page — and here is one, shown rather than quietly dropped. A claim circulated widely enough to reach the drafting of this page: that Ken Paxton replied “Agree” to Rep. Brandon Gill’s post calling for an end to Islamic immigration. Checked properly, it falls apart in a specific and instructive way. Gill’s post is real — “No more Islamic immigration.” on X, March 1, 2026, and it is quoted in its own right below. Paxton’s reply is not. No outlet places him as responding to it, and the Associated Press’s own reporting on that week describes the opposite: not Republicans agreeing out loud, but Republican leadership saying nothing at all. Attaching a fabricated three-word reply to a real post would have made this page easier to attack than every sourced quotation on it combined. It stays off. If a screenshot of the reply exists, send it and it goes on with a citation.

Exculpatory facts are printed at the same size as the accusations. The Senate acquitted Paxton on all sixteen articles tried. The Justice Department closed its EPIC City civil rights inquiry without charges. The Islamic Tribunal investigation has produced no public finding. Paxton’s own religious-liberty caveat in the Dallas Express interview is quoted in full. None of that is buried, because a page that buries it cannot be trusted about anything else.

Numbers are traced to the primary document, not to coverage of it. Election figures come from the Texas Secretary of State’s signed canvass for election 58315, cross-checked county by county against the official County-by-County Canvass Report — 254 counties, zero mismatches. The impeachment figures come from the House Journal roll call, not from a secondary tally.

About the artwork at the top of this page. The hero graphic is an illustrative composite, not a photograph of an event. It was made for this page and includes a digitally generated likeness of Ken Paxton. It is artwork, and it should be read as artwork — the evidence on this page is the quotations and the documents they link to, every one of which is dated and sourced below. The quotation cards inside that graphic are reproduced in text form in the sections above, where each one carries its source; the one card that is not confirmed is described in full under Disputed, unverified, and false.

Corrections are welcome and will be made in public. isitonline@gmail.com

Sources

Texas Secretary of State — Official Canvass Report, election 58315 (2026 Republican Primary Runoff), race 5075 U.S. Senator.Paxton 888,196 (63.82%); Cornyn 503,438 (36.18%); total 1,391,634; registered 18,662,785; turnout 7.46%. Verified against the official County-by-County Canvass Report for all 254 counties.
Texas House Journal, 88th Legislature R.S., May 27, 2023 — Record Vote 2191 on HR 2377, p. 5958.journals.house.texas.gov ↗ — 121–23. 60 of the yeas were Republicans.
Texas Senate — Court of Impeachment.senate.texas.gov/coi.php ↗ — 16 articles tried, acquittal on all 16, September 16, 2023.
POLITICO — “Republicans go all-in on ‘Sharia law’ attacks ahead of Texas primary,” Liz Crampton and Jessica Piper, January 26, 2026.politico.com ↗ — the “radical Islamic Afghans invade Texas” post; the Minchillo “boogeyman” quote; the Reitz, Gomez and Cornyn ads; the Rizvi statement.
CNN — “‘It’s solid gold’: Some Texas Republicans ramp up criticisms of Muslims to energize primary voters,” April 11, 2026.cnn.com ↗ — “solid gold”; the Karmally and Zayan quotes; the SIV fact-check.
FactCheck.org — “Ad in Texas GOP Runoff Attacks Cornyn on Immigration, Islam,” May 2026.factcheck.org ↗ — “Caliphate Cornyn”; “Muslim mass immigration”; Cornyn’s 2021 quote in context; the campaign’s non-response.
The Texas Tribune — “Ken Paxton sues CAIR, Muslim Brotherhood,” February 5, 2026.texastribune.org ↗
The Texas Tribune / Religion News Service — “Paxton, Talarico tap contrary versions of God and Christianity,” Ellie Ashby, August 13, 2026.texastribune.org ↗ — “the left and the establishment”; “God just delivered me”; the Talarico quotes.
Asma Uddin (Michigan State University College of Law) — “In Texas, ordinary Muslim religious practices are increasingly being treated as political threats,” The Conversation via Religion News Service, September 1, 2026.religionnews.com ↗ — the Bo French quote; the Beth Din / Institute for Christian Conciliation comparison; the Frisco prayer room; the Grand Prairie and DFW threats; the Schoolcraft quotes; the DOJ closure.
Inkstick — “Ahead of Midterms, Texas Republicans Put Muslims in Line of Fire,” Tyler Hicks, September 1, 2026.inkstickmedia.com ↗ — Emad Salem, Naila Syed, Shehla Faizi, Sarah Khalid, Anissa Chilmeran, and the Sabah Mooswi shooting.
KERA News — “Collin County Muslims at EPIC once found a welcoming community, now endure hate and suspicion,” May 28, 2025.keranews.org ↗ — Fawzia Bilal, Yasir Qadhi, Mustafaa Carroll, the Cogdell detail, the death threats and leaked addresses.
Votebeat / The Texas Tribune — “Texas official acted in bad faith against Latino group Jolt, judge rules,” Eleanor Klibanoff and Alex Nguyen, January 29, 2026.votebeat.org ↗ — Judge Pitman’s findings verbatim; the Annunciation House reference.
CAIR and CAIR-Texas — press release, February 5, 2026.cair.com ↗ — the full statement, the federal suit against the Abbott proclamation, and Paxton’s procedural defences.
Associated Press — “Anti-Muslim rhetoric rises among Republicans with little pushback from GOP leadership,” Joey Cappelletti, March 13, 2026.via KSAT ↗ — the Ogles, Fine and Tuberville quotes; “the stark silence from Republican leaders.” The Washington Post analysis of nearly 100 Republican members of Congress, and Chip Roy’s 100+ posts, are carried in the same wire coverage.
Rep. Brandon Gill, on X, March 1, 2026 — “No more Islamic immigration.”x.com/RepBrandonGill ↗ — the primary artifact. Paxton is not a party to this post; see the standards section.
Ballotpedia — 2026 Texas U.S. Senate Republican primary runoff; Impeachment of Ken Paxton, 2023.ballotpedia.org ↗
Dallas Express — “Let’s Talk Local” podcast, Paxton interview.The “Islamification” exchange and Paxton’s religious-liberty caveat, quoted here in full.

Fair questions

Isn’t opposing sharia law a legitimate position?

Yes. Nobody in America should be governed by a legal system they did not consent to, and no religious panel of any faith has that power here. The section above tests whether that is the line actually being drawn, using the closest available comparison — Jewish and Christian arbitration bodies doing structurally identical work without state investigation.

Isn’t CAIR controversial?

CAIR has critics across the political spectrum and it has been the subject of long-running disputes about its origins and affiliations. This page takes no position on CAIR as an organisation. It reports that Texas designated it a terrorist organisation, that CAIR is litigating against that designation, and that the litigation is unresolved.

Isn’t this page biased?

Yes, and it says so at the top. It is an argument by a Muslim Texan about a candidate he believes is dangerous for Muslim Texans. What it is not is inaccurate. Bias is a position; accuracy is a discipline. This page keeps the second one while being open about the first — which is why the acquittal, the closed federal investigations, Paxton’s religious-liberty caveat and an entire section of claims we could not verify are all on it. Read the sources and argue with the conclusion.

Is this page telling Muslims how to vote?

It is telling Muslims — and everyone else — what the man at the top of one ticket has said about them, with citations, and asking them to weigh it. There is no endorsement here, no candidate is being funded, and the action list works the same whichever way you end up voting. If you read all of this and vote the Republican ticket anyway, you will have done so knowing the record, which is more than most voters get.

Is the picture at the top of this page real?

It is artwork, not a photograph of an event. The hero graphic is an illustrative composite made for this page, and it contains a digitally generated likeness of Ken Paxton. Read it as a poster. The evidence on this page is the quotations and the documents they link to — each one dated and sourced below — and the one quotation card inside that graphic which is not confirmed is described in full under Disputed, unverified, and false.

Who made this?

Eddie Sajjad, a Texan. The research, sources and any errors are his. Corrections go to isitonline@gmail.com and will be made on the page.