Texas politicians are going hysterical warning about a Muslim takeover. The numbers suggest they may need several more centuries — and considerably more patience.

By Omar Afra

Listening to Texas politicians as of late, you’d think the Islamic Hordes have arrived in the millions on Interstate-10 to invade The Lone Star State. See, every election cycle somebody discovers an emergency mosque crisis. Somebody warns that Sharia law is advancing through suburban cul-de-sacs and taking over little leagues. Politicians start losing their minds over Muslim Day at the waterpark. Unfortunately, this discussion is no longer constrained to your uncles Facebook group or rumblings in the Buc-ee’s parking lot. Some people actually think the moozlims have come to take Texas over. Then you look at the numbers and the whole thing collapses like electric grid.

Texas remains overwhelmingly Christian. Roughly 67% of Texans still identify as Christian, though that figure has fallen from roughly 73–75% over the last decade depending on the survey. Muslims account for roughly 1–2% of the state population, while the fastest-growing category is not Islam at all but people selecting ‘none of the above’. The religiously unaffiliated population has steadily increased, particularly among younger Texans.

Which creates an unfortunate problem for the Muslim takeover narrative. If Islam is taking over Texas, it appears to be conducting the operation with all the urgency and tactical aggression of a xan’ed out armadillo.

Yet Texas politics has increasingly treated Sharia law as though ISIS recently acquired a mixed-use development in Plano. Over the last decade, warnings about Islam and Sharia have evolved from fringe email-forward material into recurring political content. Politicians and candidates have repeatedly framed Texas as a frontline in a civilizational struggle. Chip Roy co-founded a Sharia Free America Caucus and has spoken about preventing “Islamification” in America. Greg Abbott and other Texas officials have repeatedly elevated concerns surrounding Sharia law and Muslim organizations despite legal scholars pointing out that there is no evidence of Islamic law replacing the American legal system anywhere in Texas.

The odd thing is that population growth among Muslims in Texas is not fake. It is real. Texas has one of the largest Muslim populations in the United States and that population has grown significantly over several decades through immigration, births, and conversion. Estimates vary widely depending on methodology, but the population likely moved from roughly 140,000 several decades ago into the several-hundred-thousand range today.

The problem for the panic merchants is scale. Christianity in Texas still numbers in the tens of millions. Muslims number in the hundreds of thousands. Even if the Muslim population doubled tomorrow morning, Christianity would continue to dwarf it. The larger demographic movement occurring underneath the state has very little to do with Islam and much more to do with Christianity itself gradually losing institutional ground.

Church attendance has softened. Religious affiliation among younger Texans has weakened. Houston-area surveys and national research have shown increasing numbers of people retaining some spiritual identity while disconnecting from organized institutions entirely. Texas still has giant churches, giant crosses, giant politicians invoking God every five minutes, and giant pickup trucks carrying all of it around, but visibility and growth are not the same thing.

Which is where somebody like Jake Lang becomes interesting, not because he is uniquely responsible for anything, but because he may simply be a useful artifact of a larger shift. Publicly, the language is deeply Christian: Christ is King, spiritual warfare, Christian civilization, God and nation. But much of the rhetoric increasingly sounds less like the Sermon on the Mount and more like shitty, fear-driven rants about enemies, invasion, takeover, and more cultural war quagmire.

Jake Lang recently showed up at a Texas city council meeting to warn about an Islamic takeover before being escorted out by police. The caliphate remains delayed pending further review by arithmetic.

Some of y’all need to be reminded that Jesus spent most of his days discussing humility, forgiveness, charity, mercy, peacemaking, care for the poor, and love for enemies. “Blessed are the peacemakers” and “love your enemies” are not exactly secret verses hidden in footnotes somewhere near the maps section of the Bible. Yet a strange thing has happened in parts of American political Christianity where the pesky language of Christ is swept under the rug and out of the way of very un-Christ-like Christian Nationalism.

The irony here is almost comical. Texas is in a huff over an Islamic takeover while the more significant religious shift is happening inside Christianity itself. The moozlims were never coming for Texas. The church pews just quietly started emptying out.

Omar Afra is a writer, cultural producer, and founder of Testset. His work focuses on culture, technology, power, war, and the infrastructure beneath public life. He also builds cedar pergolas. More at  testset.media/authors/omar-afra.