Keith Self, the Texas congressman who founded the House's anti-Sharia caucus, went on national TV on Wednesday and blamed an entire religion for a campaign booth.
"This is where the Muslims want to be treated differently. They have no respect for U.S. law," Self said on Newsmax's Bianca Across the Nation on September 23, 2026, according to Newsmax's own write-up. "It was on full display at this convention, this political rally."
Not "this group." Not "these organizers." The Muslims.
What he was talking about
Over Labor Day weekend, Abdul El-Sayed — the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, who is Muslim — campaigned at the Islamic Society of North America's annual convention in Detroit. The Middle East Forum, a think tank, reported that his campaign ran a booth inside the convention hall.
The group, known as ISNA, is a tax-exempt religious charity, and charities like it aren't allowed to back candidates. After El-Sayed spoke, ISNA's CEO went back on stage to say the group endorses no party or candidate — and said it had invited El-Sayed's opponent, who never replied, Newsmax reported.
That opponent is Mike Rogers (MI), the Republican nominee.
On September 16, Self wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asking the IRS to investigate. On X, he wrote that "taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize a nonprofit acting like a campaign committee for the Red-Green Alliance" — a term for a supposed partnership between leftists and Islamists.
Whether a charity broke the rules for tax-exempt groups is a fair question for the IRS. That's not where Self stopped.
From a booth to "indictment"
On Newsmax, Self went further. "I want the IRS to do the investigation, then refer it to the DOJ, the Department of Justice, for indictment of the Islamic Society of North America," he said.
A criminal indictment of a major U.S. Muslim organization — over a campaign booth at a convention.
He also tied the group to terrorism. "The government found there was ample evidence of an association with this organization and Hamas and the Holy Land Foundation," Self said.
Here's what he left out. In the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case, federal prosecutors put a long list of "unindicted co-conspirators" in a court filing — a list that included "most major U.S. Muslim organizations," ISNA among them. None of those groups was charged. According to ISNA and NAIT, the lead prosecutor told their lawyers that "ISNA and NAIT were not subjects or targets in the HLF prosecution or in any other pending investigation." And federal courts ruled that making the list public violated the groups' Fifth Amendment due-process rights, because they'd never had a day in court to answer it.
Self took the one line from that ruling that sounded bad and dropped the rest — including the part where a court said the government had wronged the people he's now accusing.
This is who Keith Self is
This is not a slip. It's the job Self has given himself.
In December 2025, he and Rep. Chip Roy founded the Sharia Free America Caucus. In February 2026, the Council on American-Islamic Relations designated it an anti-Muslim hate group — the first congressional caucus to get that label in CAIR's history.
In August, Self showed up at a city council meeting in McKinney to try to stop a mosque in his own district. The council voted 7–0 against him.
And he's not the only Republican going after El-Sayed this way. When El-Sayed criticized anti-Sharia bills, Tommy Tuberville called him a "terrorist sympathizer."
Some of the people Keith Self was elected to represent are Muslim. On national TV, he told the country that people of their faith "have no respect for U.S. law."
The bottom line
On September 23, Keith Self told Newsmax that "the Muslims want to be treated differently" and "have no respect for U.S. law," and called for the Justice Department to indict the Islamic Society of North America over a Senate campaign's booth at its convention. He cited the group's inclusion on a terrorism-case list without mentioning that it was never charged and that courts found publishing the list violated its rights.
Source
Rep. Self to Newsmax: Muslims 'Want to Be Treated Differently' — Newsmax via Yahoo News, September 23, 2026. Photo: official House portrait, via Wikimedia Commons.
