Gule Jannat and Ifte Islam are originally from Bangladesh. They've called Frisco home for almost a decade. They live in a two-story house on a cul-de-sac with their two children and the family cat, a fluffy tabby named Tuna. Their son plays on the high school football team and their daughter, a fifth grader, likes to read and crochet.
"We moved to Frisco because of the good school, the growth, the economic opportunity, the warm welcome that we got from our neighbors, from our community,” Islam said.
But things are changing in Frisco.
Tensions over Frisco’s ethnic and religious diversity have thrust the Texas suburb into the national spotlight and put immigrant families who’ve lived there for years under intense scrutiny. And Frisco residents from three very different religions are worried about pushback to their plans to build places of worship where they can practice their faith.
Islam and Jannat are facing hostility from people in their community like never before —fueled at least in part by the rhetoric of elected officials and political candidates at the local, state and national level who are using extremist language that can turn neighbor against neighbor.
Community shift
Jannat, a nurse, often makes a large batch of chicken curry for her family to eat while she’s on shift at the hospital.
The fragrant smell of spices she sprinkles on the meat sizzling in the pan — garlic, ginger, turmeric and garam masala — wafts through the air.
Jannat and her family are Muslim, so the chicken is halal, which means it was slaughtered in accordance with Islamic law. It’s easy to buy halal meat in Frisco at local grocery stores like Costco and Kroger, Jannat said.
Frisco has a large immigrant population. More than a third of residents speak a language other than English at home according to U.S. Census data. About 28% of the population is Asian according to the U.S. Census. There are several Indian grocery stores, a large mosque and multiple Hindu temples in Frisco.
The city is adding another mosque, Hindu temple and its first Jain temple, which supporters say will help accommodate the three religions’ growing populations. But that was met with hostility at a city council meeting in May.
Council members heard hours of public testimony against the three religious institutions, including several comments about Sharia, a Muslim religious code that’s not enforceable in the United States.
The mosque and two temples are still on track to be be built. The city council opted to not move forward with an appeal that would’ve put things on pause. The city’s attorney warned that doing so could leave the city vulnerable to a lawsuit.
Racial and ethnic tensions were already brewing in Frisco before that May meeting. Residents spent hours repeating baseless claims of H-1B visa fraud in Frisco’s Indian community at a meeting in February. That was after a YouTuber's video, claiming he had "exposed Texas' Indian invasion," went viral.
There’s a new level of animosity toward immigrants in Frisco, Islam said.
"We are just like U.S. citizens, like Frisco residents, no issue,” he said. “We go to Costco, we go to Home Depot, we talk to our neighbors. We play soccer or pickleball with them.... Suddenly, from this January or February, we started being profiled."
Rajendra Rani Chirumamilla hasn't seen anything like that before either. Chirumamilla grew up in South India but has lived in Frisco for 15 years with her husband and their twin sons, who both play in their high school band.
“Never, never before,” she said. “That was shocking, like why all of a sudden, why am I seeing this, which has never been an issue.”
Chirumamilla used to travel two hours to get to an Indian grocery store when she was studying for her Ph.D. in biotechnology in the United Kingdom. She remembers craving food from home during that time. Now, she has Indian grocery stores and restaurants two minutes from her house in Frisco.
Her sons, Chirumamilla said, who were raised in North Texas, see themselves as Americans.
“All they have seen is here,” she said. “And if they are having to face so much of questions about their race or existence, it does hurt as a parent.”
The United States has a long history of discriminating against Asian immigrants, said Pawan Dhingra, a professor of American studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts whose forthcoming book “Success Won’t Save Us: How Asian Americans Can Fight White Supremacy” explores anti-Asian racism.
Asians, Dhingra said, are often seen as outsiders, no matter how well they speak the language or adapt to cultural norms.
"Some groups are just seen by their presence, by their bodies, as being foreign,” he said. “And especially when they are in a certain kind of density or a certain level of numbers in a particular space or in density of numbers in a particular space, the fear by others becomes that they're quote, unquote, 'taking over.' Even if they're just participating in the normal day-to-day shopping, work, home, school that everyone else does."
Rising extremism
Much of Sharia addressed how Muslim live and act — when to pray, what to eat and clothes to wear.
The exact meaning of the term — and what enforcing it would look like — isn’t clear, Islam said, even among Muslims.
"It's the vast concept,” he said. “...There is no consensus overall, like this is part of Sharia."
Its most vocal critics ascribe a more sinister intent to Sharia, claiming it seeks to undermine American democracy and social norms. Muslim scholars and activists emphatically deny that.
Rod Vilhauer, who lost the Frisco mayoral race in a recent runoff election, ran on an anti-Sharia campaign, saying it had no place in the city. Vilhauer lost to Mark Hill in the runoff. Hill’s campaign slogan was “Unite Frisco.”
Concerns about Sharia dominated the Frisco mayor race — and it’s also front and center in state and national politics. Republicans in the Texas legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives have both formed caucuses targeting Sharia.
A proposed Muslim-oriented housing community formerly known as EPIC City has faced intense scrutiny from Texas officials. Top Republicans in the state, including Gov. Greg Abbott, have accused the development of implementing Sharia and creating a no-go zone for non-Muslims, something the developer has repeatedly denied.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s currently running for U.S. Senate as a Republican, has filed multiple lawsuits targeting the project and other Muslim organizations, including the Council on American Islamic Relations. Abbott designated the Muslim advocacy group as a foreign terrorist last year, which CAIR has denied.
Paxton and Abbott’s Democratic opponents, former state legislators James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa, have criticized the state’s scrutiny of EPIC.
Texas’ diversity, Talarico said, should be celebrated.
“Ken Paxton has weaponized that diversity to score political points,” he said. “He persecuted our neighbors who are different. That’s not the kind of senator I would be.”
State officials are using EPIC City as a distraction from other issues impacting Texans, like school funding and healthcare, Hinojosa said.
“Greg Abbott is masterful at the sleight of hand,” she said.
Abbott and Paxton launched their probes of EPIC City after the founder and CEO of an organization called RAIR Foundation USA posted on social media that the project was a “Sharia City” that would reject American laws. RAIR Foundation USA's social media posts received thousands of likes and shares.
RAIR Foundation USA, which stands for Rise Align Ignite Reclaim, focuses on “reclaiming our Republic from the network of individuals and organizations waging war” on Judeo-Christian values and the constitution, according to the organization’s website. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists RAIR Foundation USA as an anti-Muslim hate group.
Politicians who amplify anti-immigrant views gives license to people who share those views and legitimizes fringe beliefs, said Jason Blazakis, the director of the Middlebury Institute’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism.
"It gives safe harbor to individuals at that local level, the regular people who are looking at this context in this content and gives them a feeling of, it's okay for me to do this too,” Blazakis said. “And to me, that’s what makes it really insidious. It gives them this veneer of endorsement.”
Krista Schild, the Texas director at RAIR Foundation USA, testified against the new mosque at the Frisco city council meeting. Schild pointed to Abbott and Paxton’s investigations as an example of RAIR’s impact.
“The evidence that RAIR brought forth is so compelling that our governor and attorney general open criminal investigations and even lawsuits against them,” she said.
Muslims, Schild said, are moving to Texas’ large cities “to establish Islamic strongholds in the state’s most economically and politically significant areas.”
Another commenter, Jake Lang, who traveled to Frisco from Florida to speak at the meeting, accused Hindus and Muslims of attempting to eradicate Christians. Lang is one of the founders of a group called “Protect White Americans.”
“Your replacement is here Americans, and it is coming faster and faster,” Lang said. “The Hindus and the Muslims are teaming up to take over Texas.”
Lang was later arrested for disturbing the peace at the meeting. It wasn’t his first arrest. Lang was among the people pardoned by President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
And he was arrested in Frisco last year when he broke into the David Kuykendall Stadium where Austin Metcalf, a 17-year-old white high school student, was killed at a track meet by a Black teenager from another school. The case became a lightning rod for racially charged social media posts that went viral nationwide.
People who want to push out immigrants, Dhingra said, look for situations where they can stir up anti-immigrant sentiments for political or personal gain. But outside agitators, he said, aren’t the main perpetrators.
"Let's not lose sight of the fact that it took a lot of people running for office in Texas and a lot of locals to fan the flames,” Dhingra said.
Faithful living
Hinduism, Jainism and Islam are separate religions. Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, is a monotheistic religion based on the teachings of the Prophet Muhammed and is practiced all over the world, including the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Hinduism and Jainism both originated in India. Hinduism is a multi-theistic religion, involving the worship of many gods, whereas Jainism is non-theistic, focusing instead on individual enlightenment.
Namitha Pais, who has lived in Frisco for almost a decade, is an Indian Catholic. She said India is very diverse, "a blend of Hindus, Christians, Muslims and all the other religions.”
In Frisco, the diversity of Indian immigrants — and their religious beliefs — is often not understood.
“Islam has much more in common with Christianity than Hinduism,” Dhingra said. “But because the same kinds of people practice both Hinduism and Islam, they get lumped together in a racial way.”
Dhingra, who grew up in North Texas, said being religious is very common in Texas.
“But it's a certain kind of religion that gets allowed and gets seen as being part of our culture,” he said.
Not unlike Frisco’s churches on a Sunday, the Islamic Center of Frisco mosque is packed on Friday, the weekly day of worship for Muslims. Hundreds of people navigate the crowded parking lot searching for a spot. Mothers in hijabs hold their children’s hands as they walk in to hear the Imam speak.
The mosque is running out of space to accommodate Frisco’s growing Muslim population, Islam said.
"You'll see probably ten churches in one mile, and Frisco it is getting a second mosque,” he said.
The Jain Society of North Texas is also low on space. The temple, a two-story brick building in North Dallas, is the only place of worship for the 700 Jain families in North Texas.
There’s a smaller, separate building for prayer. People take off their shoes before entering and leave them outside by the door. They ring a bell in the temple when they enter.
"It's sound is supposed to calm you down and break the barrier between outside and inside," said Ami Dalal, who has volunteered at the temple since 1997.
Then, they pray silently, reciting chants in their head.
The temple is 50 years old. There are no desks in the classrooms for the Pathshala, the Sunday school for the children. The kids sit close together on the speckled gray carpet, Dalal said. The school has about 350 registered students.
"One of the things in Jainism is respect the source of your knowledge,” she said. “So the books and stuff right now kids have no other way but putting it on the floor where people have been and all that, and that's just a no-no in Jainism.”
Nonviolence is a central teaching in Jainism, said Sonia Ghelani, a Pathshala teacher.
"It's not just, 'I'm not killing this or that,'" Ghelani said. "It is 'I'm not hurting by my speech, or thoughts or body, anybody.'"
The Jain Society of North Texas, she said, wants to connect with and serve the community in Frisco and address their new neighbors' concerns, including concerns about parking facilities impacting the neighborhood where the new temple will be located.
"One of the strong points that the Jain community brings out is our ability to coexist peacefully in different neighborhoods and different religious circles and always coming back to our kind of core tenants, which is really to be good neighbors," Ghelani said.
Many Jains eat a vegetarian or vegan diet. Volunteers at the temple serve a fresh homecooked meal at the temple once a month. Usually, about 400 people show up.
The temple surveyed its members to find out where to look for its next location. A lot of them live in Frisco or nearby Collin County cities like Plano or Allen, Dalal said.
Gita Mandir, the Hindu temple that’s being built, isn’t Frisco’s first place of worship for Hindus. But Chirunmamilla, who mostly prays at home, said the new temple is closer to her house.
“If I had to go to two miles to worship, maybe I'll have an excuse, versus if I have to just drive two minutes,” she said. “So that will motivate me to go and have some calming time, self-reflection time."
Unite Frisco
The animosity towards immigrants in Frisco has become more prevalent, but others in the community have made an effort to stand with their Muslim, Hindu and Jain neighbors.
Supporters stood outside the Islamic Center of Frisco in the heat before prayers on several Fridays after the divisive city council meeting in May. They carried handmade posters and wave to families as they walk in, some of whom stop to take photos with them.
Kathi Atha, who has lived in Frisco for six years, said the hateful rhetoric doesn’t represent her values.
"Well, I think we're all told to respect each other, love each other,” Atha said. “And that seems to be a problem for some people. There's a lot of hate being spewed around, and I just want to stand up for my neighbors."
Nadeem Zaman has been a member at the Islamic Center of Frisco since the days it had only 50 to 60 worshippers and no dedicated building. The support from the neighbors standing outside the mosque, Zaman said, has an impact.
“It's very much appreciated,” he said. “It reminds us that we are part of the larger community in Frisco.”
Mark Hill, who ran on a “Unite Frisco” platform for mayor, was elected with about 58% of the vote in the runoff. About a quarter of the city’s registered voters participated in the election according to city data — more than four times the number of ballots cast in the city’s runoff election for the city council place 1 seat in January.
The new mayor praised the city’s diversity when he was sworn into office at a recent council meeting.
“This place will always be a welcoming place for everyone in this room,” Hill said. “That was what motivated me to run.”
The racial and ethnic tension in Frisco is still there — Vilhauer had enough support to advance to the runoff election out of four mayoral candidates. But the mosque, Hindu temple and Jain temple are still on track for construction, giving worshippers a place to practice their faiths. And the city’s new mayor and his supporters say they’ll unite with their neighbors to keep Frisco a welcoming place.
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