A Republican state lawmaker called Muslims “f***ing savages” in an interview on Monday, resolutely standing by Islamophobic comments he’d made on social media this month that included calling members of the faith “terrorists.”
Since the beginning of September, Rep. John Gillette has made a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter, aimed at the Muslim faith. Many have been laced with profanity, and the Kingman Republican has insisted that Muslim immigrants are “savages” because they are pushing “Sharia law” onto Americans.
In several posts, Gillette blamed Democrats for supporting Muslims in America and said that Islamophobia isn’t real.
“Islamophobia is a construct of the Marxist left I reject,” he wrote in a Sept. 2 post. “I have years of direct experience with these savages. Thier (sic) own religion preached convert or die. F**K EM. If they want here to become the sh*t hole they left… they can go home. The democrats support them. DEMOCRATS HATE AMERICA.”
In one post responding to a video publicized by the far-right account Libs of TikTok showing a Muslim man in Texas demanding that stores stop selling alcohol and pork, Gillette deemed the man an “anti-American terrorist” who should be sent “back to (the) sh*t hole he came from.”
Gillette initially told the Mirror that he didn’t think all Muslims should be judged by extremist members of the religion, but he quickly linked Islam with the 2012 terrorist attack at the American embassy in the Libyan city of Benghazi, and doubled down on the use of the term “savages.”
“I had friends killed in Benghazi by these savages,” said Gillette, an Army veteran and former sheriff’s deputy in Illinois who resigned after amassing 42 complaints in his 13-year career. “Now, I’m getting pissed off. They’re f***ing savages.”
On Monday, Gillette also used social media to take aim at Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, for having met with Islamic leaders in the past, posting a screenshot of an Instagram post from the Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, celebrating that its executive director had met with Hobbs in January 2023.
“We absolutely do not need a Muslim advisory anything in government,” Gillette wrote before accusing CAIR of being a “known terrorists (sic) organization” that is “a front group for the Muslim brotherhood.”
CAIR Arizona described the 2023 meeting with Hobbs as an attempt to “find ways to collectively work to instill a just Arizona.” There was no formal government advisory role, as Gillette suggested.
In 2014, the United Arab Emirates designated CAIR a terrorist organization, claiming it had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The United States government itself has never designated CAIR as a terrorist organization and along with other countries, has sought additional information as to why CAIR and other organizations’ were placed on the list.
Gillette acknowledged that the United States had not designated CAIR as a terrorist organization, but insisted that CAIR worked with other known terrorist organizations; Mirror found no evidence to substantiate Gillette’s claim.
“I’m not trying to denigrate the religion but the religion has been taken over by a lot of Islamic terrorists,” Gillette said of the religion practiced by 2 billion people worldwide and by 1% of Arizona’s population.
Before abruptly ending the interview by hanging up, Gillette told the Mirror that Muslims don’t properly “assimilate” into American culture. But he said he did know an Iranian immigrant, who he described as “Muslim-lite,” that has “assimilated” and is a “registered Republican.”
“He has assimilated to our way of life,” Gillette said, “but when you come here and demand our law enforcement and our government kowtows to your demands to respect your religion…they do not need to push it onto me, I’m not pushing Christianity onto them.”
He added that Islam is being “pushed” on him whenever he visits Phoenix, although he did not offer any concrete examples.
“I stay out of Phoenix as much as possible,” he said.
‘Apallling’
J’aime Morgaine, a liberal activist who resides in the same legislative district Gillette represents and ran as a Democrat for the state Senate in 2024, called the state lawmaker’s remarks “appalling.”“Ironically, his comments clarify exactly why government needs advisors from the Muslim community,” Morgaine said. “Mr. Gillette’s reference to Muslims as ‘savages’ is a racist dog whistle. But I am not surprised that he perpetuates the lie that ‘savage’ behavior is relegated only to certain racial or ethnic groups.”
After this story was published, Martín Quezada, a staff attorney and civil rights director for CAIR Arizona, said in an email that it’s sad Gillette “has been so overrun by hatred that he spews this kind of racist rhetoric that has absolutely no basis in fact.”
Quezada, a former state legislator who served in both the state House of Representatives and Senate from 2013 through 2023, added that Gillette should see his political career ended by his comments — but the state of modern politics means he’s unlikely to face any consequences.
“(O)nly a few years ago (even back when I served) statements like this would have meant a certain end to a political career. They would have been called out by members of both parties as being radically inappropriate and unbecoming of a public figure,” he said. “Yet today there’s silence.
“As a former Senator myself I’m disgusted at his lack of professionalism, hatred, and ignorance he has put on display. But mostly I pity him. Living with that kind of hate must be exhausting and draining.”
Western States Center, a nonprofit that works to organize marginalized communities to combat bigotry and strengthen democracy, said that Gillette’s comments are dangerous.
“They echo the same false, disproven anti-Muslim conspiracy theories long promoted by racist demagogues. This kind of dehumanizing and simply inaccurate rhetoric fuels hate and has led to real-world violence, from Christchurch and El Paso to Oak Creek and Buffalo,” Lindsay Schubiner, director of programs for Western States Center, told the Mirror. “Americans today are confronting the question: who counts as part of our nation? Bigoted and authoritarian voices are answering that question with exclusion, and Rep. Gillette’s comments provide yet another opportunity to reject hate, speak out against anti-Muslim bigotry, and stand up for a nation that reflects each one of us.”
Arizona and Islamophobia
Arizona has a long history with Islamophobia.
In the aftermath of the horrific attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi was killed at the gas station he owned in Mesa by a man who was allegedly looking for revenge for the attacks and saw Sodhi’s Sikh attire as an indication of him being a member of the Muslim faith. Sikhs practice an unrelated religion.
The man also shot at a Lebanese-American gas clerk, who was unharmed, before finally driving back to a local bar to brag about the murder.
In 2014, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, which was led at the time by now Arizona Supreme Court Justice Bill Montgomery, hosted a training seminar by a man who had previously claimed that former CIA director John Brennan is secretly a Muslim.
It later came out that Montgomery spent $40,000 to bring the speaker, who had admitted to sexual encounters with a confidential informant while he was working with the FBI.
Four years later, Arizona Republicans refused to condemn hosting a similar conspiracy theorist who claimed that Muslims want to take over the country.
In 2015, Jon Ritzheimer earned notoriety for wearing a shirt that said “F**k Islam” while walking in front of a Phoenix mosque, ultimately leading a protest in front of it. The protest included a contest to see who could draw the Prophet Mohammed the best, an act that was intentionally disrespectful to the Muslim faith.
Ritzheimer went on to be involved in a litany of extremist activities, including being investigated for calling for the arrest of a Democratic senator and for his involvement in the Malheur Wildlife Refuge standoff, for which he was subsequently arrested and pleaded guilty.
The protest was also partially the brainchild of anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller, a fringe player in Arizona politics for years and a prominent Islamophobic. She was an ardent promoter of the racist conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama is a Muslim from Kenya — a theory that was boosted by former President Donald Trump before his presidency and investigated by former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
The city of Kingman in 2018 vowed to change after comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s satirical Showtime series “Who Is America?” showed members of the town reacting poorly to a fictional proposed mosque in their town, with one man saying during the segment that the mosque would foster “terrorism” and another saying Black people aren’t welcome in the town.
In 2018, two women who were members of a local extremist group made national headlines for vandalizing and stealing from a Tempe mosque.
This story was first published by Arizona Mirror, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
