(RNS) — Haris Tarin, the vice president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, had come to Capitol Hill with a group of interfaith leaders on Thursday (March 19) to confront House Speaker Mike Johnson and Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles about anti-Muslim statements Republican lawmakers have made in recent weeks. As Tarin left the Cannon House Office Building, he encountered Republican Florida Rep. Randy Fine, who a few weeks before had posted on X, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
“You’ve disparaged the community,” Tarin told Fine, who is also the co-sponsor of the “No Shari’ah” Act, a bill aimed at preventing Muslim law from being applied in the United States.
As the 2026 midterm elections loom and the U.S. and Israel wage war with Iran, Republican leaders’ increasingly incendiary rhetoric against Muslims has focused on two assertions: that Islam is incompatible with U.S. political culture, and that the country’s approximately 4 million Muslims, about 1% of the country, are attempting to impose Islamic religious law on American communities.
On March 9, Ogles tweeted, “Muslims don’t belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie.” Asked about Ogles’ comment, Speaker Johnson claimed it resonated with many Americans. “The demand to impose Shariah law in America is a serious problem,” he told reporters.
Exchanges like these prompted MPAC and the Interfaith Alliance, a First Amendment watchdog group, to go to Capitol Hill to create moral pressure on members of Congress to reject anti-Muslim sentiment. Tarin and the Rev. Paul Raushenbush, CEO of the Interfaith …