Uninhibited Islamophobia: US senator calls for expulsion of Muslims and causes outcry

Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville is under fire after a series of messages published on the X network in which he asserts that “Islam is not a religion” and calls for the expulsion of Muslims from the United States. The elected official from Alabama, also a candidate for governor, made these remarks after a deadly attack targeting a Hanukkah celebration in Australia, establishing an conflation denounced as crude and dangerous.

Many political leaders and associations have criticized this speech, accusing Tuberville of exploiting an anti-Semitic act to stir up hatred against another religious community. Several recalled that a Muslim citizen, a Syrian refugee naturalized in Australia, helped prevent a heavier death toll by disarming one of the attackers, an element passed over in silence by the senator.

The reactions were severe. Chuck Schumer denounced a “disgusting display of Islamophobia”, while Senator Chris Murphy described these remarks as “un-American”, in direct contradiction with the Constitution and the principle of religious freedom. On the side of civil rights organizations, some compare this rhetoric to the darkest hours of American history, marked by segregation and legalized exclusion. These outings are part of a broader context of hardening political discourse in the United States, where Muslims are increasingly presented as a collective threat, including by officials holding elected office.

This type of statement is no longer a simple verbal slip-up. This is an assumed political strategy, which relies on fear and stigma to mobilize an electoral base. By directly attacking a religion and millions of citizens, these speeches weaken the rule of law and trivialize the idea that a part of the population is, by nature, incompatible with the nation. Ultimately, this climate fuels social divisions and legitimizes policies of exclusion whose consequences go far beyond the framework of partisan debate.