Bill Privileging Muslims in Massachusetts Is Clearly Unconstitutional

In Massachusetts, a bill has been proposed in the state Senate that would create a commission to give Muslims a privileged position in hiring, and protections against an entirely mythical “Islamophobia.” More on the state’s unconstitutional favoring of one religion, Islam, over all others, can be found here: “Massachusetts Lawmakers Push Special Privileges for Muslims,” by Dexter Van Zile, Middle East Forum, August 4, 2026:

Talk about regression. Nearly two centuries after Massachusetts brought an end to Protestant privilege and elitism in the commonwealth by ending a state-imposed tax on communities used to pay the pastors of Congregational churches in 1833, Beacon Hill lawmakers seek to establish Muslims as a privileged class in the state.

Senate bill S.2134 would create a permanent, taxpayer-supported commission exclusively for “people who practice Islam,” grant it the power to recommend American Muslims for appointive government positions at every level, and charge it with studying and combating “Islamophobia”—a term that functions as a shield against legitimate criticism of Islamic doctrine and practice. In short, lawmakers in a state that once rejected special religious status for Protestants are now preparing to accord Muslims privileged status.

Advocates for the bill argue that passage of the bill—which is likely to die in committee—is “much-needed” and “fills a gap” without providing any proof of discrimination against Muslims in the public square in Massachusetts. In September 2024, one of the bill’s sponsors, Jamie Eldridge (D-Middlesex and Worcester), hosted a forum on Islamophobia awareness at the Islamic Society of Boston in Wayland that failed to deliver the goods.

As previously reported in Focus on Western Islamism (FWI), the event offered a revealing glimpse into just how thin the evidence for systemic anti-Muslim animus in the commonwealth actually is.

Speakers, far from documenting exclusion or hostility in the public square, repeatedly described a Massachusetts that has gone out of its way to integrate Muslim citizens into civic and professional life. Subheen Razzaqi, a social studies teacher at Newton North High School with a graduate degree from Harvard, recounted how Newton administrators accelerated their hiring process by three months and extended a job offer within 24 hours once she mentioned she had accepted a position in nearby Lexington.

Razzaqi’s primary example of “Islamophobia”? Non-Muslim teenage boys eating large sandwiches in front of their fasting Muslim classmates during Ramadan. The Muslim students themselves, she acknowledged, responded with humor—“That really sucks, but oh my God! Isn’t that funny?”—yet Razzaqi framed the episode as a microaggression….

Enough with the infantile treatment of Muslims in Massachusetts—and in the rest of the country. If they want to serve and lead their fellow citizens in the U.S., let them do what everyone else does in America—run for office, apply for posts, and let the chips fall where they may, just as they have in Cambridge, Dearborn, Hamtramck, and New York City. Let Muslims prove their worth to the U.S. republic not as a protected class, but as qualified, talented—and accountable—public officials.

Let the coddling come to an end.

Fortunately, the state senate is unlikely to approve the Massachusetts bill in question — S. 2134. It is unconstitutional to favor one religion over all others, as this bill does. Such favoritism would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which requires all religions to receive equal treatment from the government. In addition, setting up a commission to evaluate and recommend the hiring of Muslims exclusively violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which forbids treating job applicants differently on the basis of religion.

And the reason given by the original sponsor of the bill, Massachusetts State Senator Jamie Eldridge, is that such special treatment is necessary to counteract the terrible handicap Muslims face from “Islamophobia.” This is a scare word, invented to sully critics of Islam as bigots, though their criticisms do not display an “irrational hate” or “phobia,” but rather, offer pointed, detailed, and rational criticism of Islam that Muslims chose not to answer, but instead to simply cry “Islamophobia” to shut down such criticism. The worst example of “Islamophobia” that the proponents of S.2134 can find is that of the boys in one school lunchroom who ate their sandwiches in front of Muslim classmate fasting during Ramadan. The Muslim boys didn’t mind; after all, if they had done so, they could always have moved to another table.

Meanwhile, Muslims all over the country are now being elected to high office, from a half-dozen seats in the House of Representatives and a likely senatorial seat in 2025, to mayors, including the mayor of the largest city in the United States, Zohran Mamdani, who has filled city hall with fellow Muslims, as well as, among many others, the thrice-elected Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui of Cambridge, Massachusetts, whom eight former employees have accused of creating “a toxic work environment.”As a white male, she would have been pilloried: as a Muslim female, she was able to brush off the accusations.

S. 2134, unconstitutional in its violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, that applies to the states through the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, will never become law. I doubt if it will even come out of committee. But that such a law was even being considered, that Muslims were deemed deserving of special treatment because of non-existent “Islamophobia,” is alarming.