South Asian Coalition

Community Explainer: How Political Discourse Targets South Asian, Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh Candidates

Developed: September 2025

Updated: October 2025

Twenty-four years after the September 11th attacks and the War on Terror, South Asian, Arab, Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh communities continue to face backlash and scapegoating. This Community Explainer from the South Asian Coalition highlights one critical area of impact: political discourse and civic engagement. For decades, rhetoric steeped in racism, Islamophobia, sexism, and xenophobia has fueled hostility towards candidates from South Asian, Arab, Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh backgrounds. This climate reinforces harmful narratives and negative perceptions, creates a chilling effect on political engagement, and dehumanizes immigrant communities through discriminatory policies and targeted violence. Addressing and changing these dynamics requires sustained action: documenting harm, publicly challenging discriminatory rhetoric, drawing connections between negative discourse and unjust public policies, and investing in structural changes that will ensure equitable participation in civic and political life.  

This Community Explainer explores the following questions:

  • How do harmful narratives show up in political discourse? 
  • What are the effects of negative political discourse on community members and public policy? 
  • How can individuals, stakeholders, and groups respond? 
  • What resources exist?

The Community Explainer draws upon reports from community-based organizations, including Council on American-Islamic Relations, Hindus for Human Rights, Muslims for Just Futures, Sikh Coalition, South Asian Americans Leading Together, and Stop AAPI Hate, and was developed in consultation with Hindus for Human Rights, Sakhi for South Asian Survivors, Savera: United against Supremacy, South Asian Legal Defense Fund, and The Sikh Coalition. 

How do harmful narratives show up in political discourse? 

South Asian, Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu political figures in the United States have long been targeted by xenophobic and racist rhetoric. Reports from community-based organizations indicate that the climate has worsened since 9/11. Over the past two decades, both elected officials and candidates running for office have been forced to overcome the “perpetual foreigner” narrative. For example, political candidates and elected officials from immigrant backgrounds have often been asked to pass loyalty tests to demonstrate their commitment to the U.S. or have been otherwise challenged to prove their citizenship. Others have been demeaned for “foreign” sounding names and accents, and some have even been attacked for their faith. 

Women and LGBTQIA+ political candidates from South Asian, Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh communities face layered hostility due to sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and racialized religious discrimination, and are frequently held to higher standards than their peers.  For example, Muslims for Just Futures describes gendered Islamophobia, which portrays Muslim women and girls as either terrorists or terrorist sympathizers on one hand, and as oppressed and powerless on the other. Female candidates are also subjected to gendered disinformation and harmful rhetoric about their appearance, competency, and value.

Such challenges were especially acute during the elections in 2024 and 2025. Some examples include:

  • The 2024 Election Cycle
    • 2024 presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. VP Harris, of Jamaican and South Asian descent, faced accusations rooted in anti-Blackness, anti-Asian hate, and sexism, including rhetoric that Harris was a “DEI hire” and that she was lying about her race. One far-right activist commented that, if Harris were to win, “the White House will smell like curry…[and]…White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center.” Then-candidate for Vice President J.D. Vance called Democratic women “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” Additionally, Harris was often the target of gendered disinformation and held to a higher standard than her white opponents, an all too common experience for BIPOC women in political office.   
    • 2024 Vice Presidential Candidate J.D. Vance and his spouse, Usha Vance. After Usha Vance spoke at the Republican National Convention, hateful comments emerged, including attacks on Mrs. Vance’s identity as an Indian Hindu and on VP Vance for his interracial marriage, including remarks from one political commentator: “Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?”
    • 2024 presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and his spouse, Apoorva Ramaswamy. Vivek Ramaswamy, an Indian American who ran in the presidential primary in 2024 and is currently campaigning for the Ohio governor’s seat in 2026, and his spouse faced a deluge of questions from voters about their Hindu faith, nationality, and race, including whether the Ramaswamys believed in Jesus Christ and why the couple did not have accents. 
    • 2024 presidential primary candidate Nikki Haley. During the 2024 primary season, then-candidate Trump took aim at Ms. Haley’s given name “Nimrata Nikki Randhawa” by repeatedly referring to her as “Nimbra” on social media and went further to suggest that Haley was ineligible for office because her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born. When Haley campaigned to be the GOP candidate in the 2024 election, Trump made sexist comments in one interview: “She just couldn’t stay in her seat…Nikki suffers from something that’s a very tough thing to suffer from. She’s overly ambitious.” 
  • July 2024: After Harmeet Dhillon, now an assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice, offered a Sikh prayer at the Republican National Convention, white nationalist activists lashed out, referring to the prayer as “blasphemy,” “Sikh idolatry,” and as a “satanic chant,” and making accusations that Ms. Dhillon practiced “witchcraft.”
  • December 2024: In December 2024, two incidents led to widespread racist backlash on social media against immigrants, Indians, and Indian Americans: 1) the appointment of Sriram Krishnan as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) advisor for the incoming Trump administration and 2) comments made by Vivek Ramaswamy, then appointed as co-lead of what would be the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), calling for fewer hurdles in the H-1B visa process for skilled foreign workers. One report noted that, in the weeks following both events, an outpouring of anti-immigrant and anti-Indian posts focused on portraying Indians as “dirty invaders” and as a demographic threat, furthering the white nationalist conspiracy theory known as the “Great Replacement Theory,” which, in essence, claims that non-white people and immigrants have a secret plan to displace white people from society. Others pushed claims that Indians threaten white nationhood, are inherently inferior, and are, broadly, prone to cheating. 
  • January 2025: Representative Ami Bera (D-CA) was attacked with racist backlash after he posted a photo of being sworn in with his fellow South Asian colleagues in Congress, including calls for deportation. 
  • April 2025: During her primary campaign for re-election to the New York City Council, Bangladeshi American Shahana Hanif, the first Muslim woman to serve on the Council, was repeatedly labeled as an antisemite because of her opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. 
  • June 2025: During the New York City primary for mayor in June 2025, Zohran Mamdani was subjected to attacks based on his national origin, faith, and immigration status. After Mr. Mamdani won the democratic primary in New York City, a flurry of hateful and bigoted attacks soon followed from all sides of the political spectrum, including self-described “commonsense Democrats.” President Trump has questioned Mamdani’s citizenship, and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand made troubling remarks about his “references to global jihad” (for which she has since apologized). One congressmember called for Mamdani to be denaturalized and deported, leading to sales of xenophobic t-shirts printed with the words “Deport Zohran.” Another member of the House posted an edited image of the Statue of Liberty in a burqa. At the same time, another member of Congress wrote “Muslim terrorists” under an online photo of Mamdani with Rep. Rashida Tlaib. After a campaign video showed Mamdani eating a rice dish with his hands, one member of Congress expressed their disgust, telling Mamdani to “go back to the third world,” with support from other congressmembers. 
  • June 2025: After the United States launched strikes on Iran, Representative Yassamin Ansari, the first Iranian American member of Congress, was referred to as a “sleeper cell” by a political commentator.
  • June 2025: Following a series of targeted violence against Minnesota state lawmakers, including the fatal shooting of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman, MN State Senator Omar Fateh, currently vying to be mayor of Minneapolis, has been the target of Islamophobic rhetoric attacking him for his Somali and Muslim American identities, including false claims questioning his citizenship, as documented by CAIR-Minnesota. Stop AAPI Hate reports that online users are frequently linking Mamdani’s candidacy in NYC to Fateh’s campaign in “conspiracy theories about a global ‘Muslim takeover’ of politics.” 
  • June 2025: U.S. Representative Mary Miller (R-IL) posted, edited, and then deleted a tweet opposing a Sikh granthi (religious leader) delivering a prayer in the House of Representatives; Congresswoman Miller initially incorrectly called the man a Muslim before identifying him as Sikh. The incident recalled a similar situation in 2007 when an interfaith leader offering a Hindu prayer on the floor of the Senate was interrupted by visitors in the gallery who shouted, “This is an abomination.” After the incident, then-Congressman Bill Sali wrote: “We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota,” musing that such changes “are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers.” From Sali’s comments in 2007 to Miller’s comments now in 2025, an overarching sentiment continues unabated: only certain faith groups are welcome in the Capitol. 
  • July 2025: When Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) condemned the White House’s third reception of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in early July 2025, House Rep. Randy Fine commented on social media: “I’m sure it is difficult to see us welcome the killer of so many of your fellow Muslim terrorists.” Following a statement condemning Rep. Fine’s remarks from House minority leadership, Fine responded by referring to the statement signatories as “the Hamas Caucus” and later referring to the House Minority Leader as “Jihadi Jeffries.” 
  • August 2025: After the Ohio Attorney General appointed South Asian American lawyer Mathura Sridharan as Ohio’s 12th Solicitor General, a wave of xenophobic attacks followed online, insulting her name, asking why a “non-U.S. Citizen” was appointed, and criticizing Sridharan for wearing a bindi. Ohio Attorney General Yost and CAIR-Ohio issued statements condemning the attacks on Sridharan. 
  • August 2025: During a legislative fight over redistricting in Texas, state lawmaker Representative Bo French targeted his fellow TX House Rep. Salman Bhojani, a Pakistani Muslim American, with anti-Muslim remarks on social media, calling on the leader of immigration enforcement to “denaturalize and deport” Bhojani, labeling him a ”Pakistan born, anti-American democrat.” Earlier in August, after Bhojani’s office announced that he would be traveling to Pakistan for a family emergency, French wrote that Bhojani was going to “the same place that Osama Bin Laden hid” and accused him of lying about the trip to “further jihad.” In July 2025, French posted, “Who is a bigger threat to America?” and gave respondents a choice between Muslims and Jews. 
  • September 2025: An opposition campaign used xenophobic language to describe Rohit Malhotra, a South Asian candidate for president of the Atlanta City Council, such as references to Malhotra as an “extreme candidate” and as a “threat to public safety”on the campaign website and in emails.
  • September 2025: A man from Plano, Texas is charged with making terroristic threats and charges relating to aggravated harassment against Zohran Mamdani after sending Mamdani a series of racist and anti-Muslim voicemails and written messages from June through July, including language threatening Mamdani with bodily injury or death for refusing to “get the **** out of America,” calling Mamdani a terrorist, and telling Mamdani to “keep an eye on your house and family.”  
  • September 2025: In response to a video of Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) speaking about nonviolent protest strategies posted on social media, Arizona state lawmaker John Gillette lashed out: “Until people like this, that advocate for the overthrow of the American government are tried, convicted and hanged … it will continue.” Rep. Jayapal’s statement in reaction to Gillette’s comments reflected on how calls to violence are “designed to suppress nonviolent democratic organizing” and that we “simply cannot normalize this violent political speech.” 

The examples above are current, but racist and xenophobic discourse has a long arc. Below are a few examples that occurred between 2006 and 2023:  

  • August 2006: Saqib Ali, a candidate running for the Maryland House of Delegates, was harassed by a man outside his home. The man sat outside Ali’s home in Gaithersburg, Maryland, with a sign reading, “Islam Sucks,” and a shirt with the slogan, “This mind is an Allah-free zone.”
  • 2010: When Nikki Haley was running in the North Carolina gubernatorial race, a state senator, Jake Knotts, described her as “a raghead.” He said, “We’ve already got one raghead in the White House.” We don’t need another in the governor’s mansion.” 
  • 2016: A report by South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) found that 64 of 67 instances of xenophobic political rhetoric (96%) were animated by anti-Muslim sentiment. Then-presidential nominee Trump made over 20% of the comments documented.
  • 2017: Three Asian American candidates running for local office in New Jersey were the target of xenophobic mailers. One flier included a picture of Ravi Bhalla, a Sikh American who was running to become the mayor of Hoboken, with the caption: “Don’t let TERRORISM take over our Town!” Another mailer called for Jerry Shi and Falguni Patel, who were school board candidates, to be deported. 
  • 2018: The midterm elections resulted in the election of three new Muslim members, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN), to Congress. The backlash quickly began with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene commenting that the midterms were part of “an Islamic invasion of our government” and that “anyone that is a Muslim that believes in Sharia law does not belong in our government.” Other members of Congress referred to the new Muslim congressmembers as the “jihad squad.”
  • 2022: Rep. Omar (D-MN) faced a primary challenge for her seat in the House from a Minneapolis politician, Don Samuels, who made sexist comments that Omar was not “cute enough” and did not “dress well enough” to allegedly ignore her constituents, judging Omar through the lens of Western norms around beauty. 
  • October 2023: Ohio State Representative Munira Abdullahi was called a “liar” by fellow lawmakers after Rep. Abdullahi voted against a resolution that affirmed support for Israel without any reference to Palestinian human rights. Despite the Representative’s request, she was not permitted to explain her vote on the House floor. Vicious anti-Muslim backlash against Rep. Abdullahi followed online, including comments such as “Muslims always support terrorism we know that, and you follow on that side.”

ON HINDU SUPREMACY IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE 

At times, racist, anti-Sikh, and Islamophobic attacks arise from within the South Asian community, particularly through the use of tropes and narratives that reinforce Hindu supremacy. Sometimes, such attacks have been rooted in Hindu supremacy, defined by Savera: United Against Supremacy (“Savera”) as a “far-right, ethnonationalist political ideology distinguished from Hinduism by its emphasis on the absolute cultural or political hegemony of Hindus in India.” Hindu supremacy is present in the U.S. as well, often tied to far-right movements with its proponents using anti-caste, anti-Muslim, and anti-Sikh rhetoric. The caste system is a structure of oppression that affects over 1 billion people across the world and is a social reality experienced by South Asians and the South Asian diaspora. In the U.S., caste discrimination shows up in employment, higher education, and politics, including fundraising.

Hindu supremacist rhetoric often characterizes those supporting efforts to end caste discrimination as being bigoted towards Indians and Hindus. For example, in 2023, Kshama Sawant, an Indian American economist and former member of the Seattle City Council, was labeled as “anti-Indian,” “divisive,” and was accused of espousing a “hate for Hindus” because of her efforts to bring awareness and action in Seattle around issues of caste and religious discrimination in the U.S. and India. And, in 2023, a Hindu supremacist group accused the first Afghan American state lawmaker in California, Representative Aisha Wahab, of espousing a “bias against Hindus” because she sponsored California’s caste bill, SB 403. Similar attacks of “anti-Indian” or “Hinduphobia” are often leveled at those critiquing the Indian government’s human rights record. Notably, independent journalists have cataloged a measurable overuse of the term “Hinduphobia” by some advocacy groups. 

Islamophobia also plays a significant role in Hindu supremacist rhetoric. During a speaking tour in the U.S., Kajal Hindusthani, a popular Hindu supremacist from India, called Zohran Mamdani a “jihadi zombie” after he won the Democratic primary in New York City in June 2025. A coalition of South Asian groups, including SAC members Indian American Muslim Council, Hindus for Human Rights, DRUM, and Dalit Solidarity Forum, successfully campaigned NYC Mayor Eric Adams to cancel a planned appearance with Hindusthani and pushed the Lieutenant Governor of Maryland to walk back a ceremonial citation for one of Hindusthani’s events. 

What are the effects of negative political discourse on community members and public policy? 

When discriminatory language becomes normalized in political discourse, it emboldens others – from media commentators to members of the general public – to espouse similar views, creating a climate of fear, intimidation, and even direct violence. In fact, Stop AAPI Hate reported a sharp rise in online hate targeting South Asians in May and June 2025. In June alone, 44,535 slurs against South Asians were recorded, with the steepest increases in anti-Muslim and anti-Sikh language compared to the previous 12-month baseline. Stop AAPI Hate’s research indicates that the most recent surge of online hate targeting South Asians stems partly from Zohran Mamdani’s successful primary win in the New York City mayoral race, as well as from xenophobic rhetoric around the treatment of South Asian immigrants.

The short and long-term impacts of discriminatory rhetoric in political discourse include:

  • The spread of stereotypes about communities and community members, as well as their cultural and religious practices;
  • Increased suspicion that community members are disloyal, un-American, and inherently opposed to American interests;
  • An environment that dehumanizes immigrant communities of color while systematically  condoning, and even encouraging, discrimination, harassment, and targeted violence;  
  • Support for policies and practices that lead to profiling, surveillance, and immigration consequences on the basis of national origin, faith, race, and/or gender identity or expression; 
  • A chilling effect on civic engagement and participation.

This chilling effect is already present in some ways, best observed in the gaps in South Asian political representation. Although more South Asian, Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh leaders are seeking and holding elected office, key perspectives remain missing from the political landscape. These include members of the South Asian LGBTQIA+ community; people from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka; the Indo-Caribbean diaspora; and, Christian and Buddhist South Asians.

Without more diverse perspectives, new generations of leaders – especially those living at the intersection of many identities – might not imagine themselves seeking office or getting involved in civic and political efforts. 

How can individuals, stakeholders, and groups respond? 

For Policymakers:

  • Policymakers and elected officials can take no-tolerance pledges and refrain from engaging in, enabling, or reinforcing sexism, xenophobia, and racism in political discourse. They can also publicly speak out when their colleagues engage in such rhetoric. Speaking out is especially valuable when the critique comes from within the same political party as the offender.
  • Lawmakers can also consider affirmative resolutions. For example, women of color lawmakers, led by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, introduced a resolution in 2023 condemning violence against women in politics. Additionally, in 2021, Reps. Jayapal, Tlaib, Chu, and Omar introduced a resolution that documents the ways in which communities have been targeted by Islamophobia and the War on Terror after 9/11. The resolution has been introduced each year on the anniversary of 9/11.

For Community Members and Organizations:

  • Document: It is vital to archive and document examples of sexist, racist, and xenophobic discourse. The reports below are excellent examples of documenting instances of hate.  
  • Raise awareness: Community members can play a role in supporting and spreading awareness about the impact of xenophobia and racism in political discourse on their own lives.
  • Speak out: It is important for groups to make statements quickly and publicly to frame the narrative. For example, following Rep. Fine’s attacks on Rep. Omar, the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA) released a statement stating that “Islamophobic rhetoric is not ‘politics’; it is violence.”  

For Media:

  • Members of the media, including commentators, play a critical role in informing and generating awareness within the broader community about the impact of racism in political discourse. It is important for the media to refrain from perpetuating tropes that paint whole communities as monolithic and to provide space for members of our communities to share their experiences.

What resources exist? 

Resources and Reports: 

Council on American-Islamic Relations 

CUNY CLEAR

Hindus for Human Rights

Indian American Muslim Council

Muslims for Just Futures

Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund

South Asian Americans Leading Together 

Stop AAPI Hate 

The Sikh Coalition 

Resources for Reporting Discrimination, Profiling, Surveillance, and Bias

Legal Support: Contact one of the following organizations for legal support after discrimination or bias – Your ACLU Chapter; Asian Law Caucus; Your CAIR Chapter;  SALDEF; The Sikh Coalition.

Know Your Rights

Navigating Mis/Disinformation and Digital Safety