Texas prosecutors are calling it a felony hate crime. The defendants’ supporters are saying that the church vandalism is protected speech. The details tell the story, but they also tell a larger story about the Left’s current use of the First Amendment to seek outright approval for their worst behaviors.

Yesterday, one of those defendants, Afsheen Khan, showed up in a Texas courtroom where she and two fellow Muslim activists face felony hate crime charges. In addition to her attorney, she was joined by several supporters from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) who argued that arresting Khan and her cohorts for their late-night actions is a violation of their First Amendment rights. 

Here’s what happened. On March 7, 2024, surveillance video at Uncommon Church in Euless, Texas, caught three perpetrators spray-painting graffiti on the outside walls of the church building. The graffiti featured anti-Israel messages and profanity on a brick wall (“F**k Israel”).

Kahn, Raunaq Alam, and Julia Venzor were then identified, arrested, and initially charged with a misdemeanor for the graffiti. Later, Tarrant County prosecutors changed the charges to felony hate crimes based on the prosecutors’ contention that the vandalism was motivated by religious bias.

If you’re checking your bingo card, we have three Muslim activists who targeted a Christian church in Texas with anti-Israel messages. They allegedly worked under the cover of darkness, because that’s what people legally expressing themselves with the full protections of the First Amendment do, right?

In their wake, they left a permanent reminder for churchgoers of their deep disdain (hate?) for Israel. 

The Texas branch of CAIR issued a statement calling for prosecutors to drop the hate-crime charges and revert to misdemeanor charges, saying that the organization “condemns vandalism of religious sites, including the repeated desecration of mosques with Islamophobic graffiti. Such acts cause real harm to communities of faith. At the same time, applying hate-crime enhancements to graffiti that criticizes a foreign government misapplies the law.”

And there it is. You can target a Christian church, but that isn’t hate. And you can spray-paint profane messages about Israel on said Christian church, but that isn’t hate.

In fact, according to Kahn supporter Nidaa Lafi, it’s free speech. She said, “It is a case that is placing our First Amendment rights and our sense of justice on trial."

We are now deep into the perpetrator-is-the-real-victim-here territory.

Kahn’s attorney Alison Grinter-Allen said, “I think that protest, graffiti, that sort of thing is the language of folks who are unheard. And so, my heart went out to them."

What Kahn’s attorney and supporters are doing is drawing the Zionist distinction between the state of Israel and the Jewish people and the Jewish religion, all while trying to distract from the fact that the vandals physically targeted and damaged an actual religious building.

Alam’s attorney, Adwoa Asante, said in a court filing on May 5, 2025, “If citizens and persons within the United States are allowed to say and express ‘F*** America,’ why would the condemnation of a foreign country garner more enhanced prosecution from the State of Texas?”

Again, the perpetrators didn’t merely say how they felt, but rather they spray-painted it onto a religious building, a fact that Asante seems to have overlooked.

The defense position, and that of the alleged vandals’ supporters here, is consistent with the larger movement to use the First Amendment as a shield for everything from censorship to non-peaceful and sometimes outright violent protests and demonstrations.

In April of this year, Harvard University sued the Trump administration after it froze federal monies that had been directed to the institution. The school said that the funding freeze was a violation of its First Amendment rights because it was coercive in suppressing the university’s speech.  What was that speech?

The Trump administration said that Harvard failed to combat antisemitic bias effectively; that the school did not do enough to address anti-Israel and anti-Jewish protests on campus; that Harvard, in effect, allowed the festering of antisemitism on campus, creating an unsafe environment for Jewish students.

In May, NPR and PBS filed suit against the Trump administration over an executive order that cut funding to both networks. The order claimed in part that NPR and PBS offered biased or partisan coverage, and that taxpayer dollars shouldn’t support media that fail to present fair and balanced reporting. 

NPR’s lawsuit in response argued that the executive order represents unconstitutional retaliation, viewpoint-based discrimination, and interference with the right of free association, all in violation of the First Amendment. In other words, censorship is protected by the First Amendment, even when government moneys are used to censor.

And who could forget the summer of 2020, where those “mostly peaceful protests” across the country led to billions of dollars in damage, gutted cities and neighborhoods, and led to the deaths of 25 people. But the Left will obtusely tell you that the First Amendment protected all of it. 

Back in Texas, in Alam’s indictment, Tarrant County prosecutors state that Alam demonstrated “bias or prejudice against a group identified by national origin and/or ancestry and/or religion, namely, the state of Israel or Jewish faith.”

Under the hate-crimes statute, the three Tarrant County defendants, each of whom will be tried separately, now face from two to 10 years behind bars.

It’s worth noting that the crime in question occurred under President Joe Biden’s watch, a time when, for most on the left, it was unfathomable that Donald Trump would return to the White House.  In such a world, it was equally unfathomable to consider prison time as a consequence for such an act. But the world has changed, and now Trump has their attention.

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