Rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric by GOP sparks uproar on Capitol Hill

House lawmakers returned to Washington this week after a long break to face a war of theologies in the Middle East — and another brewing in the Capitol.

President Trump’s war against Iran’s Islamic regime has heightened national religious tensions, which are spilling out onto Capitol Hill in a partisan holy war over national identity and First Amendment rights. 

In recent weeks, a number of Republicans have taken to social media to attack Muslims, portraying them as un-American and an intrinsic threat to national security. That’s prompted a fiery response from Democrats that the GOP is embracing Islamophobia and trampling on religious freedoms ensured by the Constitution.

Those tensions could surface this week on the House floor, where at least one Democrat is pushing to censure a GOP lawmaker who is advocating for a moratorium on Muslims living in the country. 

The latest back-and-forth carries echoes of the rhetoric that followed the terrorist strikes of 9/11, when a stunned country braced for more violence from fundamentalist enemies, and Muslim communities inside the U.S. became targets.

This time, without a direct attack on the homeland, the administration has had a tougher case to make in explaining the urgency of the threat posed by Tehran’s Islamic regime. But several eruptions of violence since the foray into Iran — including a homemade bomb thrown near the mayor’s mansion in New York City and a fatal shooting at Old Dominion University in Virginia — have been motivated by radical Islamic teachings, according to law enforcement authorities. Several Republicans have pointed to the incidents as they seek to conflate the perpetrators, who were apparently radicalized, with the entire religion.

And it all comes at a time when conservatives have already been shifting toward a posture of Christian nationalism, as a matter of political and cultural identity, under a president with a long history of using anti-Muslim rhetoric to galvanize nationalist voters.

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