Morgan Fischer
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Senate Republicans on Monday rammed a slate of three anti-Muslim bills through the Chamber in a display that one Democratic legislator called a “stain on our state.” And a local civil rights organization may follow the lead of similar groups in Texas and Florida by suing in response.
“This paints entire communities with suspicion,” Priya Sundareshan, the Senate Minority Leader, said on the Senate floor. “It is unfair, and it is un-American.”
The controversial legislation centered on an attempt to crack down on the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, a Muslim civil rights group with an Arizona local chapter. The bills now have a straightforward shot at passing out of the legislature. They’ll head to the House before they’re sent to the federal government or put before voters.
No GOP lawmaker rose to speak on behalf of any of the three measures. The 17 Republican Senators followed their rare display of silence by voting in lockstep to pass the three bills, each time over 12 votes and the fierce opprobrium of Senate Democrats.
“Who are they going to come after next?” Sen. Analise Ortiz said. “Every single one of our civil rights is on the line when they attack an organization like CAIR.”
Included in the slate is a memorial that would urge President Donald Trump and Congress to designate CAIR as a terrorist organization. The memorial was spearheaded by Rep. John Gillette, who has made headlines for calling Muslims “fucking savages” on social media. He previously tried to link CAIR with terrorism in an attempt to attack Gov. Katie Hobbs for meeting with the group’s Arizona executive director in early 2023.
The United States has never designated CAIR — America’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group — as a terrorist organization. CAIR advocates for religious freedom and protections for workers, inmates and students. Islamophobic conspiracy theorists ambush it frequently. Its website features a page aimed at “dispelling rumors about CAIR.”
In a separate but related resolution, Gillette tried to connect CAIR to the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational Islamist organization that operated in Egypt before it was banned in 2013.
Martin Quezada — whose LinkedIn lists him as a “recovering state senator” — is the civil rights director and attorney for CAIR’s Arizona chapter. Reached after the votes Monday, he called the Senate’s decision disappointing and dishonest. “This was an act of hatred,” he said. “Pushed forward strictly based on pure Islamophobia.”
Arizona legislators aren’t the first state officials to tar CAIR. In November, Texas Gov. Gregg Abbot designated CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organizations. A month later, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued his own executive order to designate CAIR as a “foreign terrorist organization.” Both groups sued their respective governors over the designations. A federal judge temporarily blocked DeSantis’ order in March.
Quezada told Phoenix New Times he was traveling back to Arizona from a meeting with CAIR attorneys in Texas and Florida to discuss legal options. Quezada isn’t sure yet what action CAIR’s Arizona chapter will take. “We’re going to examine all of our legal options,” he said.
In Arizona, the memorials in the legislation are mostly symbolic. They assert the legislature’s beliefs and they urge President Donald Trump and Congress to make the formal designations.
Still, Democrats warned the bills could hurt Arizona’s Muslims, who already this year have experienced multiple attacks on a mosque.
Quezada said that after each one of the bill’s votes in the legislature, an act of violence was committed against the state’s Muslim community.
After the first committee vote in the House, a student in the East Valley threatened to shoot up Muslims, a mosque and Latinos. After the three-read vote in the House, a man with a paintball gun shot up a mosque in North Phoenix. After the Senate committee vote, the crescent-moon structure for Ramadan on A-Mountain was vandalized. CAIR’s Arizona chapter has also seen an uptick in threatening phone calls to its office, which it has reported to law enforcement, Quezada said.
“That’s the reality that every mosque is now dealing with,” Quezada said. “Each and every mosque has reached out to CAIR and asked, ‘How do we increase security? How do we increase protection? How do we protect our people?’”
Morgan Fischer
The slate of bills also included one introduced by Rep. David Livingston that would require members of the legislature to reject the term “West Bank” when describing the larger of the two Palestinian territories, the other being Gaza. The bill will create a ballot measure by which Arizona voters may require lawmakers to use the biblical names for the region — “Judea” and “Samaria” — when describing the West Bank in all official state communications.
Sundareshan called that measure a “political statement” that aims to erase the history of Muslim communities, specifically Palestinian history in Gaza.
“This is part of a larger, menacing agenda,” she said. “Co-opting Judaism and anti-Semitism for a Christian nationalist agenda that includes censorship, anti-abortion bills, anti-LGBTQ and a whole host of other things.”
Several Democrats spoke out against the bills. Sen. Lauren Kuby called the legislation racist, a stain on Arizona and a complete waste of time.
She upbraided her Republican colleagues: “You all should be embarrassed for voting for it.” As they had nothing to say for themselves in reply, their silence suggested that they agreed.
