Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is under scrutiny after a Southern Baptist pastor says he was denied access to the airport chapel by Muslims during a prayer service. The incident has reignited concerns about the growing trend of Islamic dominance over shared public and religious spaces in Texas.
Pastor Turned Away
Tom Ascol, a prominent Southern Baptist pastor, had traveled to Dallas to visit the grieving family of his close friend, Dr. Voddie Baucham, a widely respected pastor and scholar who died last week following a sudden medical emergency. Baucham was just 56 years old.
Ascol wrote on social media that while awaiting his flight home, he heard an airport announcement inviting passengers to a “prayer service” at the Meadows Chapel with the inclusive phrase: “all are welcome.”
“With broken heart I went hoping maybe Scripture would at least be read,” Ascol posted on X. “Instead I found this & was denied access. Imam-led Salah.”
Photographs he shared show the chapel floor lined with prayer rugs and a Muslim cleric leading worshippers in prayer.
Blocked at the Door
Speaking afterward, Ascol said he was physically blocked from entering.
“They blocked my way in the inner room,” Ascol told me. “A man who had offered a loud prayer, not the Imam, said I could come in if I took my shoes off. I refused. He would not let me walk in. I did not want to create a scene, so I left. Muslim prayer rugs lined the floors.”
The irony wasn’t lost on the pastor. The chapel in question was originally dedicated to honor the service of America’s military men and women.
What happened to Ascol is part of a disturbing trend — airport chapels nationwide are being transformed into Muslim-only spaces.
A Growing Pattern
Ascol’s post quickly spread, garnering nearly half a million views in under 24 hours. Dozens of people responded with outrage, others shared similar stories of being sidelined or turned away from airport chapels during Islamic services.
“Denied access to a chapel built in honor of our American military men and women!? This needs to be looked into,” one user commented.
Another wrote: “Welcome to America, where we promote the Islamic faith over all else in the name of inclusion.”
As RAIR Foundation USA has recently reported, this incident mirrors what has already taken place at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport and in Florida at Orlando International Airport, where chapels frequently host Muslim-only services, functionally excluding Christians and others who expect equal access.
The Orlando case was particularly significant because it marked one of the earliest red-state experiments in embedding Sharia infrastructure into American public spaces. In 2016, Orlando International Airport quietly spent more than $250,000 in taxpayer funds to build gender-segregated Islamic prayer rooms in Terminal B. These facilities included mosque-style features, such as separate spaces for men and women, ritual washing stations for ablution, shoe racks, and directional markers to assist Muslim travelers in facing Mecca.
Officials at the time justified the construction as a matter of “traveler comfort.” Yet the contrast is stark. In countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran, non-Muslim worship in airports is criminalized. Christians have been arrested simply for reading the Bible in public; Jewish or Hindu prayer rooms are unimaginable. But in the United States, Christian and Jewish taxpayers are forced to fund Islamic-only prayer facilities that exclude their own faith traditions.
The hypocrisy is glaring: Islamic nations enforce religious supremacy with an iron fist, while the West bankrolls Islamization in the name of tolerance.
By 2024, Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport followed suit, unveiling its own Sharia-compliant prayer complex — again with gender-segregated rooms and ritual washing areas, and again with support from the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Seen together, the Orlando, Houston, and now Dallas-Fort Worth examples illustrate a nationwide pattern: America’s “interfaith” chapels are being transformed into Islamic-only spaces, erasing the very neutrality they were designed to preserve.
Questions for DFW Officials
The key question remains: if the airport announcement stated “all are welcome,” why was a Christian pastor denied entry? Why does a public facility, funded by taxpayer dollars and dedicated to honoring U.S. servicemen and women, appear to operate as a de facto mosque?
RAIR Foundation USA has reached out to DFW Airport officials for clarification on their chapel access policies and will update this report when a response is provided.
In today’s Islamized Texas, Christians are discovering that the spaces once built to honor their faith and freedoms are being handed over to those who openly reject both.
