Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville assumed office in 2021. Prior to his election, Tuberville was best known as a football coach. Since entering politics, he has made a series of racist and bigoted remarks aimed at various communities, including Black Americans and the American Muslim community.
Tuberville has said he calls white nationalists “Americans” and made comments about Black people and crime that the president of the NAACP labeled “racist, ignorant and utterly sickening.”
The first reported episodes of Tuberville making explicitly anti-Muslim statements date to June 2025 and afterward. At the time of writing this analysis, CAIR researchers could locate no public statements critical of Islam or Muslims prior to June 2025.
Like many anti-Muslim public figures, Tuberville places his concerns in a counter-terrorism frame—declaring “we are at war” with people “coming here from Muslim countries” to justify blanket measures against Muslims. Tuberville repeatedly uses Sharia as a term to frighten voters and vilify all Muslims and believes Muslims “are getting ready to take over New York.” He has repeated conspiracy theories about Muslim only neighborhoods in Europe and that Islam enjoins perpetual war on its followers.
Asked repeatedly to meet with his Alabama Muslim constituents, Tuberville has not done so.
Speaking about white nationalists in the U.S. military in May 2023, Tuberville said, “I call them Americans.” In July ABC News reported, “the senator told ABC News that white nationalists shouldn’t all be labeled as ‘racist’ while also insisting he opposes racism.” Following weeks of criticism, he clarified the remark. In 2022, Tuberville alleged that Democrats support reparations for descendants of slaves because, “they think the people that do the crime are owed that.” The Associated Press concluded that, “Tuberville is falsely suggesting that Democrats promote crime and that only Blacks are the perpetrators.” NAACP President Derrik Johnson called the comment, “flat out racist, ignorant and utterly sickening.”
During an interview that aired in June, Tuberville was asked what his message as governor would be to Democrats seeking to flee blue states like California and New York to make Alabama home. He said they would not be welcomed in Alabama if they intend to “bring that Communist, Islamic atmosphere” with them. The Alabama Muslim community have repeatedly invited Tuberville to visit a mosque in Alabama, an invitation he has repeatedly ignored.
In a press release announcing one of his anti-Islam bills, Tuberville says, “Sharia Law is fundamentally anti-American and has no place in our country.”
While naming Tuberville its “Theocrat of the Week” on November 14, 2025, The Freedom from Religion Foundation reports, “The senator is deeply concerned with the so-called threat of Sharia law in the United States and has even introduced two pieces of legislation to ban its existence across the country, the ‘No Sharia Act’ and the ‘Preserving a Sharia Free America Act.’ Neither of Tuberville’s bills specifies exactly where in the United States Sharia law poses a real, current threat.”
Later that month, Tuberville released a statement in which he is quoted as saying, “We must IMMEDIATELY BAN all ISLAM immigrants and DEPORT every single Islamist who is living among us just waiting to attack.” Tuberville also, “called for an immediate ban on all Islamic immigrants.”
On November 9, 2025, Tuberville posted to his X (formerly Twitter account, “The Quran calls on Muslims to wage ‘jihad’ or holy war against nonbelievers. This is INCOMPATIBLE with American values and laws. We must BAN SHARIA LAW before Radical Islam destroys our country.”
Also in November Tuberville had this reaction to New Yorker voters selecting a Muslim as mayor of their city, “Muslims are getting ready to take over New York. They’re going to run everybody out of New York, unless you’re a Muslim and Sharia law and study the Quran, all those crazy things that are trying to take over this country.”
In December 2025, Tuberville wrote, “Europe has shown what happens when mass migration from majority Islamic countries goes unchecked. Entire neighborhoods are now ruled by Sharia law. If you don’t think this can happen in America next, you’re not paying attention.” He also wrote, We need to deport every Islamist who was allowed to come here under the Biden administration. If we don’t act now, the United States will end up the “United Caliphate of America.”
Later in December, the Alabama Political Reporter said that Tuberville alleged, that “Islam ‘preaches hate’ and instructs to ‘kill all infidels’ and ‘kill all Christians’” while he was speaking about an Islamic school. In that article the Alabama Political Reporter also adds, “Tuberville—the frontrunner to be the next governor of Alabama—said he would not allow Islamic schools in the state if elected.”
His increasingly hostile rhetoric towards American Muslims has culminated in him publicly celebrating the cancellation of a Muslim K-12 school building project amid anti-Muslim threats and harassment.
AL.com reports the following from Tuberville in response to the Islamic school in Alabama:
“This goes back to a very deep subject – because we’re at war,” Tuberville continued Monday.
“We’re at war in this country with all the people that have come here from all over the world. And listen, we love immigration. We’re…all a part of an immigrant family one time and the other. But a lot of people come here and they want to assimilate.”
“Not the group coming here from the Muslim countries,” he said.
“They’re coming here with an agenda.”