People attend Eid al-Fitr prayers at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on March 20, 2026, in New York City. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

By Arno Rosenfeld March 25, 2026

Imagine if a pair of House members launched a “Talmud Free America” caucus predicated on the notion that Jewish law is incompatible with American values.

Imagine that more than 50 members quickly signed up to join this caucus, while House leadership either remained silent or joined the caucus themselves.

Imagine that members of the new caucus came out with quotes complaining that “from Pico-Robertson to Lakewood, halacha is sweeping across America — and must be stopped” and insisting that their “constituents in New Jersey are constantly expressing their concern and asking what can be done about the rise of mass Jewish immigration in south Florida.”

Imagine if one of the president’s top advisers was a self-described “proud antisemite” who believed “Judaism was a cancer on the world” and that “it should be illegal in the United States for Jews to hold office.”

And imagine that the president himself moved repeatedly to limit Jewish immigration or travel to the U.S. on national security grounds.

Given that many Jews saw echoes of Nazi Germany in the campus protests against Israel following Oct. 7 — comparisons that flourished against following Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor — I’m confident that the mainstreaming of this kind of unvarnished antisemitism would send them reeling and dominate the media as a pressing societal crisis.

And yet, this is almost exactly what has happened with the Sharia Free America Caucus formed by Republican members of Congress in December, and the Trump administration’s punitive approach to Muslim immigration and foreign nations (his defense secretary has spoken about the Iran war in religious terms), while receiving very little attention.

I mention this in a newsletter about antisemitism because one of the most common refrains I hear from Jews about antisemitism is that if these things were happening to any other group, we — meaning, I guess, Americans — would never tolerate it.

But Americans certainly seem to be tolerating Islamophobia that is far more explicit in its animosity toward Muslims than comparable expressions of hostility against Jews.

Rep. Ilhan Omar said “it’s all about the Benjamins baby” in reference to congressional support for Israel — prompting fierce debate over whether she was invoking antisemitic tropes or making a crude but legitimate comment about the influence of money in politics, and drawing an eventual apology from Omar.

Contrast that with Rep. Randy Fine, a member of the Sharia Free America Caucus, who said recently that “the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one” — a remark with no apparent point beyond the suggestion that Muslims are subhuman.

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When many Jews complain about the extent to which antisemitism is tolerated, they’re thinking about progressives or liberal institutions like universities. And while some have struggled, especially in the face of post-Oct. 7 protests, this establishment has also responded to antisemitism in robust ways. President Joe Biden unveiled the first-ever national strategy to counter antisemitism in 2023 and upgraded the State Department’s antisemitism envoy, which has existed since 2005, to the level of ambassador while his administration launched dozens of federal investigations into campus antisemitism. Colleges and universities across the country also created task forces to address antisemitism, and have updated their policies at the behest of Jewish organizations.

The national media has been incredibly responsive to Jewish concerns over antisemitism in the aftermath of Oct. 7; it’s difficult to imagine a Muslim pundit who made her name campaigning against Islamophobia being installed atop a major American TV network the way Bari Weiss was at CBS News.

And of course this is all on top of establishment antisemitism watchdogs such as the Anti-Defamation League, which despite recent controversies remain influential with liberal business and political leaders.

Now contrast that with the conservative ecosystem. While many Jews may hold it to a lower standard, because minority rights have not historically been a right-wing priority, the people promoting this resurgent Islamophobia are either Jewish themselves, like Fine and Trump adviser Laura Loomer, or have positioned themselves as close friends of the Jews.

For instance, Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican who co-founded the Sharia Free America Caucus, has railed against campus antisemitism and said his new group is intended to “defend our Judeo-Christian values.”

Now, depending on how one looks at the issue, there are reasons for Muslims to feel more existentially secure than Jews. While they’re a tiny sliver of the American population, there are around 2 billion Muslims in the world and many Muslim-majority countries.

And claims of Islamophobia are sometimes used to dismiss legitimate concerns over domestic terrorism, opposition to countries with especially repressive policies toward women and minorities like Iran, or questions about Mamdani’s foreign policy positions.

There is also legitimate scholarly, political and religious debate over Sharia and Islamic law, including among Muslims with diverse views and practices, summarized well in this backgrounder from the Council on Foreign Relations.

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But perhaps the most striking aspect of the mounting rhetoric toward Muslims that I’m referring to is how closely it mirrors the mechanics of antisemitism. Antisemitism often functions differently than other forms of racism; it is less about describing Jews as inferior and oppressing them than it is about claiming that they hold outsized — and fictional — influence over world affairs, and that they use this power to hurt non-Jews and help themselves.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican and Sharia Free American Caucus member, also described Islam as not a religion but a “death cult” whose legal system “teaches that it is righteous to kill all infidels, especially Christians.” That tracks closely to how antisemitic influencers like Candace Owens talk about Judaism as “the synagogue of Satan” and claim that the Talmud teaches that non-Jews are “animals, that they have a right to own us, make us worship them, lie to us, sue us, take everything we have.”

And we all know about the tendency to scapegoat a tiny number of Jews for society’s larger problems, which has echoes in dozens of members of Congress joining a caucus focused on the supposed menace posed by Muslims, who make up around 1% of the U.S. population.

That’s a reason for Jews to worry about Islamophobia. It’s hard to imagine a very durable barrier between people who believe that a small group of Muslims are using their faith to take over the country and subvert Western civilization and those who would believe the same canards about Jews.

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