Rep. Trevor Lee Defends Post Featuring Muslims, Thinks It’s Unnecessarily Riling Up People

A social media post by Utah Rep. Trevor Lee featuring a group of Muslims walking the streets of Taylorsville has prompted backlash from some and a call from a national Muslim civil rights group for the lawmaker to meet with community members.

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At the same time, he expressed a measure of exasperation over the attention and responses generated by the post on the social platform X on Monday, many responders defending the Muslim contingent’s right to religious expression, others expressing discomfort and alarm with the group’s presence in Utah. It had been seen by 6.6 million people as of Wednesday afternoon and generated around 2,300 responses.

In the small town of Taylorsville Utah. pic.twitter.com/dIKA4sv2Uh

— Trevor Lee (@VoteTrevorLee) August 26, 2024

“All I do is post a video, and because of how each side is assuming what it means, they’re all just going out there crying foul on each side,” Lee told KSL.com.

Some 60,000 Muslims with roots in a broad range of countries live in Utah, according to members of the religious group, and the state is home to 14 mosques.

The video, which Lee said was sent to him by an acquaintance, shows a contingent of Shia Muslims, the women among them wearing head coverings and long black garments, walking on a sidewalk in Taylorsville, some holding flags. “In the small town of Taylorsville, Utah,” Lee wrote in the post, to which he added a comment in the post’s reply section, “Not a single American flag in sight.”

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Group members, it turns out, were walking as part of an annual religious pilgrimage called Arbaeen, which follows a 40-day mourning period to mark the death of the prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein ibn Ali, a seventh-century revolutionary leader who stood up against a corrupt leader of the time. The pilgrimage has also come to represent a protest against oppression.

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Lee wonders why posting of the video has prompted such a response and suspects it may be a backlash to his conservative politics. “It’s because I’m a conservative lawmaker and I’m outspoken on what I believe and so they’re trying to rile something up and they call me islamophobe because I post a flippin’ video,” he said.

Indeed, he thinks people are getting riled up over nothing.

“Why does posting a video of a bunch of Muslim people in Taylorsville, Utah, rile so many people up on the left and the right? Why is that the case?” he asked. “Is it because everywhere the Muslim community has infiltrated in Europe it has been destructive? Is that why? Is it because of 9/11? I don’t know. Is it because of, you know, the Middle East not allowing us to have missionaries there? I don’t know. Is it a refugee problem? I don’t know. Is it because we have a housing crisis in Utah, yet we’re importing over 100,000 refugees in our state in the last decade? I don’t know. But I can see why … people would have their own assumptions on each side of the aisle. But that’s not what I say.”

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