Sky York Journal
Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, campaigned earlier this year at a church alongside an Islamophobic pastor who has preached that Muslims are building a “caliphate” in the U.S.; that “Satan” is using Islam to launch an “apocalyptic” and “multi-front war” against America; and that the global “rebellion of Islam” is led “by the Devil himself.”
Ramaswamy, a billionaire businessman and former presidential candidate, is currently trailing in the polls to Democrat Amy Acton in the state’s closely-watched gubernatorial race. Earlier this year, on May 21, he held a campaign stop at the Liberty Valley Church — which describes itself as a “Bible-Believing Non Denominational Patriotic Church” — alongside Pastor Jeff Tauring.
Only two months before the event, according to a video reviewed by Talking Points Memo, Tauring delivered a Sunday sermon in which he told his congregation that the two main branches of Islam, Sunni and Shia, both posed existential threats to Americans.
“The Sunnis — like, Arabs — are interested in the caliphate, which we see growing in our country,” Tauring said, referring to an Islamic form of government led by a religious leader known as a “caliph.”
There is no evidence of a “growing” caliphate in the U.S. The idea that Muslims are secretly plotting to install an Islamic government under “Sharia law” is a longtime, debunked conspiracy theory propagated by various MAGA figures. (While this purported Islamic takeover is a fiction, attempts by right-wing Christian nationalists to install a theocracy in this country are not.)
“The Shia, the Iranian type, are apocalyptic,” Tauring’s March 24 sermon continued, taking place less than a month after President Donald Trump launched his war against Iran. “They’re not interested in the caliphate. They’re not interested in ruling here on earth. They want to trigger an apocalyptic moment to usher in the 12th Imam. That’s why it’s important when somebody says we can’t let Iran have the bomb.”
Tauring then asserted that “Satan is running a multi-front war right now,” a “religious war” led by “Islam” and “globalism.” Satan, he said, is “behind globalism, which explains the massive infiltration at our borders for the past four years” and “the massive infiltration of Islam.” The pastor then assured his parishioners that “this rebellion” will be “put down with a decisive blow by Jesus Christ.”
Ramaswamy’s May campaign stop at Tauring’s Liberty Valley Church was billed as a discussion about “The Future of Religious Liberty.” Tauring introduced the GOP candidate for governor as one of the “greatest countrymen” he’d ever met.
Josh Mandel, the former Ohio state treasurer who ran a losing GOP primary for U.S. Senate, also spoke at the event. Mandel, a close associate of Tauring’s, assured the crowd that Ramaswamy shared Tauring’s values. “Vivek — he’s not just going to campaign in churches once he’s governor, he’s going to keep coming back, right?” Mandel said. “And he’s going to govern based on what is worshiped right here in this church!”
Ramaswamy’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment regarding his association with Tauring, or the pastor’s views regarding Muslims.
Nor did his campaign respond to a request for comment regarding a recent report in The Forward noting that Tauring, in a different sermon earlier this year, made antisemitic remarks, calling the modern practice of Judaism “fake.” In that same sermon, Tauring asserted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a “wicked person” — not because Netanyahu is credibly accused of genocide and war crimes — but because “he doesn’t believe in Jesus Christ and he should.”
Ramaswamy has, at times, tried to distance himself from the various bigotries animating the MAGA movement to which he belongs. In a New York Times guest essay last year, he denounced factions of the Republican Party that based their “vision of American identity” on “lineage” and “blood and soil” nationalism. He called out growing antisemitism in the GOP, along with growing bigotry targeting Indian-Americans like himself. His op-ed, notably, did not call out MAGA’s enduring Islamophobia — a fundamental feature of the movement dating back to President Donald Trump 2015 call for a “total and complete ban” on Muslims entering the U.S.
Ramaswamy, who is Hindu, also has ties to an anti-Muslim Hindu nationalist group in India. In 2022 he was a keynote speaker for an online event organized by Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, the U.S. branch of an organization in India that the CIA once characterized as a “militant religious organization,” in part, for acts of violence perpetrated against the country’s Muslims.
In 2023, Ramaswamy excitedly welcomed India’s President Narendra Modi — a Hindu nationalist once barred from entering America for his role in the deadly 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat — to Washington, D.C. “I respect Modi for reviving national pride in India,” he tweeted. “It was a healthy reminder of what we are missing right here in America.”
There are over 120,000 Muslims living in Ohio, where Ramaswamy hopes to be governor. The former quintessential swing state has trended red in recent years, but seems to be in play in the 2026 midterms. A recent poll conducted by the New York Times and the Siena Research Institute shows Ramaswamy trailing Acton, his Democratic opponent, by four percentage points.
