MAGA vs. Muslims: Steve Bannon rallies Texas voters with ‘invasion’ cry | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Fringe MAGA leaders mobilize anti-Islam rhetoric to energize Texas primary voters.
- Speakers promote mosque bans, sharia prohibition and immigration curbs as policy.
- Party analysts warn rhetoric shifts from fringe to mainstream and alters primaries.
Muslim-bashing has returned to Texas Republican politics, and it’s not clear why.
Most Texas Muslims are religious conservatives who oppose abortion, gay rights and, in some places, liquor stores. They’re like Baptists with dancing.
New York’s new mayor notwithstanding, Muslim men trended toward President Trump in 2024. That was mainly because they viewed Democrats as backing Israel.
Yet some Republicans want the state to ban mosques, shut down schools and discourage anyone from the Middle East or South Asia from moving to Texas.
This conservative-on-conservative bashing was on full display Saturday night at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, where former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon led a fervent Christian revival warning of an “invasion” by “jihadists” to overthrow Texas and thus America — “Why in the hell do you think they’re in Houston and north of Dallas?”
Bannon led a rally titled “Save Texas from Radical Islam.” But he allowed speakers like fervent Muslim-basher John Guandolo to broadly complain about all worshipers of Islam and, in Guandolo’s case, also those of the Hindu faith.
In other words, this was a Christian revival to stir up Christian voters against anyone who isn’t a Christian, not just to oppose supporters of Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood.
Bannon accused unnamed people of “making big money on the invasion of this state by Islamists.”
That was between his commercials for gold bullion, spyware blockers and Patriot Mobile, a Church of Christ-founded telephone reseller in Grapevine that donates to conservative political campaigns.
On a star-studded political night that included Irving-based showman Glenn Beck and Dutch politician Geert Wilders — he has called for ending immigration from Muslim countries and banning mosques — almost every speaker strayed far from Gov. Greg Abbott’s policy-based position opposing sharia in Texas government.
Matthew Wilson, director of the Center for Faith and Learning at SMU, said the Muslim-bashing is “pure red meat for the MAGA base” to turn out conservatives for the March 3 party primary.
“The focus on Islam in Texas — where Muslims are less than 1% of the population — is rather bizarre,” Wilson wrote by email.
Yes, Muslim immigrant communities have brought change to Europe, and local extremists have been connected to international political attacks.
For example, the 1993 truck bomber at the World Trade Center worked at a Sonic Drive-In in Dallas. The 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies were directed by an Arlington man who worked at a tire shop on East Lancaster Avenue.
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But the opposition to a Collin County residential development by a Plano mosque (EPIC CIty) and the manufactured rage over sharia are largely for “hard-right culture warrior candidates,” Wilson wrote.
Darrell Castillo of Weatherford College, a former Republican White House official under President Ronald Reagan, called sharia a “boogeyman” and wrote that Bannon is capitalizing on the conflict over Islam in Minnesota.
The “tribalism of us/them” is common in both parties, he wrote.
In this case, the March 3 election involves MAGA candidates such as McKinney Republican Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate, Austin Republican Aaron Reitz for attorney general and converted Rand Paul backer Don Huffines for comptroller.
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Republicans also will vote in a non-binding poll on whether to “prohibit” sharia, the guidance for living based on the Quran that cn be interpreted in both traditional and modernist ways.
Glenn Story, the chief executive of Patriot Mobile, bluntly spelled out the ploy.
“It all funnels down to the third of March,” he told Bannon’s audience.
“We have a primary ballot ... We have so many great candidates on there.”
Political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus at the University of Houston did not laugh off the message.
Bannon appeals to a “fringe” of Republicans at odds with the rest of the party, he wrote, but “these are the voices that direct much of the politics of the party.”
Establishment Republicans and Democrats can’t underestimate that faction. For one thing, Texas is somewhere MAGA conservatives can’t afford to lose.
Axios already reported that Bannon is considering a 2026 presidential campaign, maybe to influence party policy.
“Fringe anti-Islam politics from the early 2010s have become mainstream,” Rottinghaus wrote.
“Republicans are using Islam as a threat.”
It’s working.
This story was originally published January 15, 2026 at 9:52 AM.
