The obscure documentary fueling Islamophobia in Texas

Bo French, a candidate for Texas railroad commissioner, speaks at a CPAC panel to discuss the threat of Islam in Texas. | Eleanor Dearman/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service via Getty Images The Great American Conflict , a 75-minute documentary produced by a Texas-based organization dedicated to converting Iran to Christianity, declares its goal right at the beginning: “to reveal the true Islam to all people, especially in the West,” Iran Alive Ministries’s founder Hormoz Shariat says.

“This film is also meant to be a warning to America.

There is a serious threat of Islam in our nation.” Released at the start of summer and having premiered at a gathering of the Dallas County Republican Party, it’s an obscure film — you’ve probably never heard of it — but it has so far had a surprising political influence.

It’s been shown at gatherings of local Republicans and conservative activists in Texas, where Islamophobic rhetoric and policy proposals have played a key role in activating the Republican base, candidates, and party leaders over the course of this year’s elections .

The documentary is both a symptom and a cause of a larger trend unfolding in American politics in 2026 that is picking up steam now: the rise of a new iteration of blatant Islamophobia paired with Christian nationalist sentiment on the American right.

Iran Alive Ministries did not respond to requests for comment.

It’s no surprise who some of the backers and voices of this documentary are: Some members of this collection of right-wing, conservative, and evangelical activists are a throwback to early-2000s and 2010s Islamophobia, when some of the same figures spoke out against “radical Islamism” and “radical Islamic terror.” One of them, for instance, is the activist Brigitte Gabriel, the controversial founder of ACT for America, an early-2000s anti-Islamic extremism group.

As the film makes clear, this latest version of Islamophobia in America has its roots in this post-9/11 era and borrows heavily from it, while making some modern-day tweaks.

What’s different now is how mainstream this stance is becoming in politics and how it appears to be getting only more mainstream.

“Islamophobia has passed the dinner table test.

You can say things about Muslims with basic impunity today,” Nathan Lean, a researcher, assistant professor at North Carolina State University and author of the book The Islamophobia Industry , told me.

“And it’s institutionalized in the way that prejudice that targets other marginalized communities is not.” He pointed to the Sharia-Free America Caucus in Congress, which is composed of 68 elected members of Congress representing 25 states.