It was one week before the midterm elections, and her phone kept pinging: another Islamophobic post falsely claiming she was a terrorist, an enemy to America and a communist. As the first Muslim woman and first Somali American to serve in Ohio’s state legislature, Abdullahi is no stranger to anti-Muslim hate, particularly online. This week has been extra intense because Laura Loomer has been tweeting me nonstop,” Abdullahi said, referring to the far-right activist and President Donald Trump’s self-described chief loyalty enforcer.
Historically, when a political party is losing power, they scapegoat a minority group to unite their base — and American Muslims are currently the target, she said. In previous years, Abdullahi said, her colleagues would defend her and denounce Islamophobia. But now, they’re quieter.
Abdullahi said some campaigns are avoiding taking photos with her at official events and aren’t asking her to make social media content for them as they had in the past. Abdullahi spent an hour responding to some of the hateful posts, then she closed her phone and went back to serving the more than 123,000 Ohioans in her district. More than 250 Muslims, 43 percent of them women, the vast majority Democrats, hold elected positions across 26 states and at nearly every level of government, according to the 2026 directory published by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.
CAIR has also found a notable surge in Islamophobia. It’s been particularly visible in the waning days of the 2026 midterms, as the right has embraced language that characterizes Muslims as violent, dangerous and inherently un-American. In Michigan, Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has faced months of attack ads targeting his religion.
Trump has repeatedly referred to El-Sayed — who was born and raised in Michigan, played high school football and has worked in public health — as “a violent vicious jihadist.” In Alabama, a GOP candidate for attorney general said that anybody who supports radical Islam can “Allahu Akbar your butt all the way back to the Middle East.” In Texas, the state Republican platform calls for passing “Don’t Sharia My Texas” legislation, referring to the teachings of Islam. Islamophobia commonly shows up as conspiracy theories about Sharia, political violence, presumptions of antisemitism and misogynistic smear campaigns targeting Muslim women for wearing hijabs or other common religious attire, according to a new report from the Center for Security, Race and Rights at Rutgers University School of Law. Lateefah Simon, a Black woman and the first Muslim member of Congress from California, grew up in a multi-faith family.
She regularly went to the mosque with her parents and a Christian church with her grandmother. When she ran for office in 2024, Simon said she started seeing the attacks on social media — people threatening to violently “get rid of Muslims.” Then came the threatening phone calls and the hate-filled emails. She decided not to publicly publish her office address and requires extra security measures at public events.
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