'Under siege': Inside the growing radical Islam threat critics say is hiding in plain sight in deep red Texas
A shooting in Austin, Texas, over the weekend that left three innocent people dead and is being probed as a terror-related incident is putting a renewed focus on the potential spread of radical Islam in the United States, particularly in deep red Texas where concerns about Islamic fanaticism are hitting a fever pitch.
The deceased shooting suspect, identified as Ndiaga Diagne, was a 53-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Senegal and lived in Pflugerville, Texas, after entering the country in 2000.
Diagne was wearing a shirt that said "Property of Allah" and another shirt underneath that depicted the Iranian flag. The FBI said the shooting, which came shortly after the U.S. and Israel's attack on Iran, was "potentially an act of terrorism."
The likelihood that Diagne was motivated by religious ideology, bolstered by a CBS News report on his social media presence, has prompted widespread alarm about the rise of radical Islam in Texas along with the heightened scrutiny of possible Iranian sleeper cells activating in the United States in response to recent U.S. military strikes on Iran.
"Texas is currently under siege by Islamists who want to reshape our state and America as a whole," Republican Congressman Chip Roy, running for attorney general in the state, told Fox News Digital.
"The tragic shooting over the weekend in my home of Austin, Texas, is another example of why we need to pause immigration until the system is fixed. We need to stop bringing people into our country who want to kill us."
Social media have been littered with examples in recent days of accounts voicing concern about possible radicalization in mosques throughout Texas.
"330 mosques in Texas… and an average of 2 new ones per month," conservative influencer account End Wokeness posted on X.
"These mosques are popping up all over the place," a former Austin police officer told Fox News Digital. "I have no doubt in my mind that there's radicalization going on in these mosques. There has to be."
While it is unclear what mosque Diagne attended in Texas, if any, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has released dozens of sermons and lectures from Texas and has published a compilation video of extremist imams in Texas from 2018-2025.
The compilation video shows imams from cities across Texas praising Khamenei, leading "down with Israel" chants, saying "Muslims will kill the Jews," promoting "jihad," and highlighting what MEMRI describes as examples of radical ideology.
"There is a great deal of troubling activity from many influence groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, pro-Hamas organizations, and Shi'ite organizations, who express open support for Iran and have pledged allegiance to Khamenei," MEMRI Executive Director Steven Stalinsky told Fox News Digital.
Last year, MEMRI highlighted the Islamic Center of Pflugerville, led by Mufti Umer Farooq Saleem, who hosted a children's story night where he told attendees that Israel "is the illegal state of the Jews."
Fox News Digital reached out to the Islamic Center of Pflugerville for comment.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the Muslim man who rammed a white truck into a crowd full of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans last year and fired shots at police officers killing 14 and injuring more than 30, was born and raised in Beaumont, Texas.
Jabbar lived in Houston before committing the crime, inside a mobile home just about a seven-minute walk from the Masjid Bilal Mosque and Darul Arqam Islamic school. Shortly after the attack, that mosque sent congregants a message to direct FBI inquiries to a special-interest group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and avoid speaking to the media.
Fox News Digital reached out to Masjid Bilal for comment.
Roughly 30 miles south of Masjid Bilal Mosque, the Islamic Education Center of Houston has drawn the attention of MEMRI, which posted a video showing children pledging allegiance to Khamenei in 2022, along with a 2019 video of young boys pledging allegiance to the now-deceased leader.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Islamic Education Center of Houston for comment.
Similar allegiance to the fundamentalist Iranian regime and hardline Shiite ideologues can be found all across the country and a Fox News Digital investigation published earlier this week analyzed hours of sermons and scores and found that precepts shaping Tehran’s worldview, from its clerics to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, are also being preached on American soil by proxies for Iran’s propaganda.
"What we're seeing is years of deliberate investment by the Islamic Republic inside the United States," Andrew Ghalili, policy director at the National Union for Democracy in Iran, told Fox News Digital.
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"This is happening on American soil, and it's just another way in which the regime poses a direct threat to the United States, this time not with missiles but through infiltration," he said.
Texas has been in the news in recent years as some residents push back on a proposed 400-acre community known as "EPIC City" that critics say is marketing itself as a Muslims-only community. Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton recently sued the developers of that project, alleging the defendants raised tens of millions of dollars while violating securities laws, misleading investors about the project’s nature and location, and misrepresenting how funds would be used.
Concerns about potential Iran-linked sleeper cells are rising as the Department of Homeland Security remains unfunded and Tehran and its proxies threaten retaliation over U.S.-Israeli strikes that American officials say killed nearly 50 top Iranian leaders.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told FOX Business that sleeper cell threats need to be taken seriously after the Austin attack.
"There are other details that will be coming out about the shooter and his connections to terrorism that will make clear [that] this was a lone wolf activity where this shooter intended to wreak havoc here in Texas, here in the United States, because of his ties and sympathies with Iran," Abbott said.
Abbott's office told Fox News Digital in a statement that "Texas will never tolerate ideologies that support terrorism or seek to impose Sharia law" and said that the state has "surged" DPS anti-terrorism task forces and is "working with federal partners to disrupt and eliminate any potential threat."
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News Digital on Monday that she is in "direct coordination with our federal intelligence and law enforcement partners as we continue to closely monitor and thwart any potential threats to the homeland," when asked about any increased threat from sleeper cells in the U.S.
More than 1,500 Iranian nationals who illegally entered the U.S. at the southern border were arrested during the Biden administration, and nearly 50% were released back into the country, Fox News Digital reported last year. The outlet previously reported that at least dozens of individuals on terror watch lists had entered the United States through the southern border.
"The Austin shooter was an Islamic terrorist who never should have been allowed into our country," GOP Rep. Brandon Gill told Fox News Digital when asked about concerns of the spread of radical Islam in Texas.
"This was an absolutely tragic and preventable act of evil, and the people who call Texas home are suffering because of it. My constituents are begging elected leaders to stop the Islamization of North Texas. How many more Americans have to get Allahu Akbar’ed before we realize Islam is a problem?"
Fox News Digital’s Asra Q. Nomani, Jasmine Baeher and Charles Creitz contributed to this report.