In a landmark 3–2 vote on July 14, 2025, the City Council of Josephine, Texas, passed a powerful resolution instructing staff to draft a legally binding ordinance to regulate the naming of streets, a direct response to growing ideological encroachments shaping public space across Texas and the United States.
This decisive action marks the first known municipal effort in the country to prevent the manipulation of civic infrastructure through symbolic street naming. The measure is designed to ensure that all street names within the city and its extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) reflect American heritage, constitutional values, and local unity — rather than foreign ideologies or divisive historical figures.
Local Concerns to Legislative Action
The resolution came to a vote after city officials identified the threat, conducted the necessary research, and brought the legislation forward. Examples were drawn from controversial street names already in use in cities like Dallas and Irving — names that honored historical figures tied to violence, conquest, or anti-Western ideologies.
During deliberations, one such figure was noted for having expressed gratitude that he was not killed by a monotheist, according to historical accounts. Another example involved a leader remembered for his “insatiable thirst for dominance.” These were not hypotheticals; they were real, existing street names in nearby suburban developments.
The council’s action stands out in an era when many local governments shy away from controversy or fear media blowback. In this case, officials took the opposite approach, conducting in-depth research, consulting legal language, and turning what began as a quiet zoning concern into a clear statement on the city’s future. This preemptive move may well have prevented ideological naming from ever taking root in Josephine.
RAIR’s Investigative Reporting: From Exposure to Enforcement
While Josephine City Council led the charge at the municipal level, the RAIR Foundation USA played a key role in shining a national spotlight on the threat months earlier. In March 2025, RAIR published a comprehensive video exposé and investigative report that documented the coordinated rise of Islamic enclave developments across Texas — especially in Plano and Irving.
These neighborhoods, often built around mosques like the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) and the Islamic Center of Irving, were not simply expressions of faith. They were ideological ecosystems deliberately designed to reflect a Sharia-adherent lifestyle and separate themselves from American civic norms.
RAIR’s investigation revealed subdivisions with names like:
- Villas of Andalus
- Valencia Estates
- Alhamra Valley
- Lake View Villas
- Medina Villas (directly adjacent to EPIC in Plano)
These communities feature:
- Mosques embedded directly into the neighborhood layout
- Quran memorization schools that reject Western curricula
- Behavioral enforcement based on Islamic law — such as bans on alcohol, marijuana, loud music, and even the presence of dogs
- Islamic-only parks and signage, visibly halal businesses, and homes adorned with Quranic phrases like “Masha Allah” and “Bismillah”
The street names in these neighborhoods serve as a quiet but forceful assertion of ideological presence. Examples include:
- Ali Akbar Court – Refers to the son of Husayn ibn Ali, martyred at the Battle of Karbala and revered in Iran’s theocratic culture as a symbol of jihadist martyrdom. His image is routinely invoked by the Basij, Iran’s paramilitary youth wing.
- Amal Saleh Drive – A Quranic phrase meaning “righteous deeds,” often associated with divine judgment under Islamic law. A woman bearing this name has publicly endorsed Hamas’s resistance operations against civilians — rhetoric widely interpreted as a justification for terror.
- Almanzor Drive (Irving, TX) – Named after Al-Mansur of Córdoba, a 10th-century Islamic warlord known for devastating Christian Spain. His campaigns included the destruction of churches, enslavement of captives, and systematic pillaging of cities across the Iberian Peninsula.
- Zulaya Drive, Salma Jameel Court, Hafeela Drive, Shemsa Way – While appearing culturally neutral, the cumulative effect of these names is the saturation of public infrastructure with symbolic identity markers foreign to American civic norms. These names often appear in neighborhoods that signal religious exclusivity or ideological separation.
These enclaves appear to operate as parallel societies — functioning under de facto Sharia-style governance. In several documented cases, Muslim residents have openly described the area as:
“100% Muslim… like my country.”
“This is the American dream — for Muslims.”
“Not a single dog seen or heard.”
“No alcohol. No marijuana. This is definitely Muslim.”
“They make a community full of Muslim names.”
“Where else can you practice Islam like this in America?”
Some residents celebrate the influx of Muslims from other states as part of a deliberate migration movement — a pattern that aligns with the Islamic doctrine of Hijrah, or migration to advance Islamic systems of life rather than assimilate into the host culture.
These aren’t just cultural expressions — they raise serious legal red flags. The integration of mosques into residential planning, coupled with enforced religious norms, may violate both Texas law and the U.S. Constitution. If housing is being marketed exclusively to Muslims, or if 501(c)(3) religious institutions are acting as quasi-HOAs, these practices could violate the Fair Housing Act, municipal zoning codes, and federal tax regulations.
And here’s the chilling reality: they’re not hiding it. They’re filming it. Celebrating it. Bragging about it.
RAIR’s reporting made clear: what was once dismissed as a theoretical concern is now an entrenched reality. These are not peaceful multicultural zones — they are strategically designed beachheads, aimed at advancing Islamic supremacy, linguistic dominance, and ideological separation from American civil life.
In Josephine, the citizens took note, and the City Council acted before it reached their doorstep.
Inside the Resolution: Legal Authority Meets Cultural Defense
The official resolution, titled “Resolution to Create an Ordinance for Street Naming in the City of Josephine”, directs staff to amend subdivision regulations and outlines detailed criteria for future street naming.
Permitted Naming Categories:
- Native plants and animals of the United States
- U.S. states, cities, towns, and landmarks
- Words derived from U.S.-based languages, including English and Native American languages
- Historical or current American figures approved by the City Council
Prohibited Names:
- Individuals or entities “known to have engaged in violence against innocent people with traditional longstanding Western civilization values”
- Names promoting “division, hatred, isolation, or ideologies contrary to the principles of the U.S. Constitution”
- Any designation “inconsistent with the values of the community,” as determined by the Council
The measure applies not only within city limits but also to the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) — effectively closing the door to ideological manipulation in areas just outside official boundaries.
It also cites the March 1, 2025, Executive Order declaring English as the official language of the United States, lending additional constitutional grounding to the ordinance.
The resolution further requires:
- A public review process
- Community engagement in the naming of future streets
- Collaboration with developers to ensure compliance
- Legal mechanisms for renaming existing streets after public hearings, if necessary
Street Names as Tools of Ideological Warfare
Historians and political analysts have long emphasized that street naming is not decoration; it’s a declaration. In revolutionary regimes, it becomes a primary tool for controlling cultural memory, establishing ideological dominance, and reshaping national identity from the ground up.
This strategy was executed with brutal precision after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.
As one scholar of Iranian politics put it, street names are “a contrived yet powerful means of forging a particular version of the past — one designed to legitimize the regime’s identity project and silence competing histories.”
Following the revolution, Iran’s new theocratic regime systematically renamed thousands of streets, parks, public squares, and buildings. The targets of replacement were clear: anything referencing Persian secular heritage, Western influence, or pre-Islamic identity was stripped away.
In their place, the regime imposed a new geography, one built around:
- Shia martyrs
- Islamic conquerors and imams
- Foreign jihadists
- Terrorists like Imad Mughniyeh and Fathi Shaqaqi
Entire neighborhoods became ideological maps. Children were raised on streets named after martyrs. Directions were given using the names of jihadist ideologues. Street signs became instruments of indoctrination — normalizing revolution, martyrdom, and jihad as the new civic mythology.
This transformation wasn’t symbolic. It was strategic — creating a visual and geographic scaffold for Islamic supremacy. The names didn’t just reflect ideology; they enforced it.
The result was a rewritten national memory, embedded not in textbooks, but in asphalt and concrete.
Today, the same pattern is beginning to appear — not in Tehran, but in Texas. Not imposed by a centralized theocracy, but seeded quietly by developers, activist pressure groups, and ideological networks. Street by street, symbolic terrain is being claimed.
What Josephine, Texas, has done is refuse to surrender that ground.
From Tehran to Beijing: Erasing the Past to Control the Future
The Islamic Republic of Iran is not the only regime to weaponize geography as a tool of ideological domination. The Chinese Communist Party did it with ruthless efficiency during Mao Zedong’s so-called “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” (1966–1976).
At the start of the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s Red Guards, militant high school and university students, were unleashed to destroy what they called the Four Olds: old ideas, old customs, old culture, and old habits. This campaign began with mass book burnings and quickly escalated to tearing down statues and changing the names of streets, towns, and landmarks across China.
Street names were among the first targets. Any reference to pre-communist history, religion, or “bourgeois” culture was erased and replaced with revolutionary slogans, Marxist icons, and communist martyrs. Christian and Buddhist references were destroyed. Classical Chinese figures were scrubbed. Even neutral geographic names were overwritten with ideological messaging designed to glorify Mao’s vision and cement the revolution in the daily language of life.
As with Iran after 1979, this was not cosmetic. It was cultural purging, the physical erasure of historical memory, replaced by a permanent map of communist mythology. The names on the street signs told you which ideas were acceptable and which had been condemned to oblivion.
The Red Guards’ street-level revolution was part of a much larger reign of terror: public “struggle sessions” where alleged enemies of communism were humiliated, beaten, and sometimes killed; confiscation of property; and purges of anyone deemed “insufficiently revolutionary.” By the time Mao died in 1976, an estimated 7.7 million people had perished during the Cultural Revolution.
The lesson is clear: whether under Islamic supremacists in Tehran or communists in Beijing, control of place names is not about nostalgia, it is about power. Change the names, and you change the culture.
Josephine: A Local Victory With National Implications
What happened in Josephine is not just a local zoning decision — it is a blueprint for defending American cultural sovereignty at the local level.
Rather than waiting for ideological street names to appear, the city acted preemptively. Rather than engaging in reactive outrage, it enacted law. Rather than surrendering to fear of public criticism, it embraced constitutional clarity.
This wasn’t censorship. It was civic definition. “What Josephine did was not symbolic,” said a resident activist. “It was strategic. It wasn’t reactive. It was preventative. And now it’s a model.”
CALL TO ACTION
A National Blueprint: How You Can Replicate Josephine’s Success
Josephine has done more than pass a resolution — it has created a fully replicable municipal model.
Here’s what every city, town, and county in America can do next:
- Download the Josephine resolution (see below)
- Present it to your city council or zoning board
- Organize residents to attend hearings, speak publicly, and demand action
- Review current and proposed street names for ideological or foreign political significance
- Engage your local media and planning commission
- Share RAIR’s exposé with elected officials and fellow citizens
- Please Sign Up for RAIR’s Intel Team
We are seeking dedicated volunteers to help identify and report threats in their communities. Your local knowledge and vigilance can make the difference in protecting our towns, states, and country. Join us in keeping America safe.
Final Thoughts
Street names may seem mundane, but they serve as moral endorsements of the people, ideas, and values a society chooses to elevate. In totalitarian regimes, they become tools of control. In free nations, they must remain expressions of shared heritage.
What Josephine has done is simple and profound. It has reclaimed that power. Civic identity begins at the street level. If we cannot control even that, we will control nothing else.
Jospehine City Council led the way. RAIR Foundation USA helped shine the light. Now it’s your turn.
If we lose control of the names, we lose control of the narrative, and the next chapter won’t be written in English.
