Today in Islamophobia

Today in Islamophobia: In Canada, a new report suggests hate incidents reported in Waterloo region more than doubled over the past year, with racism, Islamophobia and online abuse among the most common issues, meanwhile in Germany, a leading group of German peace researchers has warned that racism and a climate of suspicion toward Muslims are putting the country’s “domestic peace” under growing strain, and in the United Kingdom, a new study looking at social media found that “immigration and Islamophobia” proved the most “common” forms of misinformation on X and Facebook (32 per cent). Our recommended read of the day is by Andrea Mazzarino for The Fair Observer on the many parallels that can be drawn between the US War on Terror and the DHS’s current immigration crackdown in the US. This and more below:

United States

The Global War on Terror’s Journey Home: The Collective Trauma of America’s 21st-Century Wars | Recommended Read

In a matter of months, ICE has leapt far from its mandate as the DHS’s civilian investigative arm — not its muscle. Instead of a workaday force that makes sure the rules are followed, it’s become an internal police force that bears increasing resemblance to what the US military has been doing in dozens of other countries around the world as part of the never-ending Global War on Terror (GWOT) that this country has been waging for almost a quarter-century now in response to the September 11 attacks. America’s wars are indeed coming home. The War on Terror has been notable for its heavy reliance on special forces operations like nighttime raids on civilian homes and incursions into mosques, schools and marketplaces to search for enemy combatants or information. Since those special forces operate outside of conventional battlefield settings, often with little planning and without embedded journalists, the public has had few chances to scrutinize their activities. Not surprisingly, then, we haven’t paid much attention to the civilian deaths that resulted. Roughly 40% — or close to half a million — of those killed directly in our wars have been civilians, an unnerving number of them children. Our military’s reliance on special operations, urban warfare and proximity-based ways of identifying suspected terrorists (more on that later) means that many people with no connection whatsoever to the warring parties have been shot down or bombed out in their homes, markets or schools, among other places. There are many parallels that can be drawn between the US War on Terror and the DHS’s current immigration crackdown here in the US, and you’ve probably noticed some of them. read the complete article

More Than 120 Democrats Condemn Anti-Muslim 'Sharia-Free America' Caucus

About 126 lawmakers signed on to a letter Monday condemning the recently established, bicameral so-called "Sharia-Free America Caucus" – saying the xenophobic group and its proposed legislation "reflects longstanding Islamophobic narratives and anti-Muslim sentiment rather than any demonstrated policy need." The lawmakers and civil rights activists said the "hateful caucus" – in which some members have described Muslims in dehumanizing terms – promotes measures thatdiscriminate againstthe Muslim community and would violate their free speech and religious rights. "To be clear, American Muslims serve this nation in every capacity and are entitled to the same constitutional protections as all other Americans," the letter to congressional leaders stated. "They are guided by both faith and civil responsibility to respect the U.S. Constitution, follow the law and contribute positively to their communities and to the nation they call home." read the complete article

In Texas, Muslim voters mobilize against anti-Muslim rhetoric

Mohammed Ayachi was 3 when the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred. In fifth grade, he was asked by a teacher how many mothers he had. Now an entrepreneur, he says he gets strange looks when he tells his customers his name. Fatima Khan, who wears a hijab, was eating at a pizza restaurant with her family when they were approached by a man cursing and screaming at them. Aftab Siddiqui was called a terrorist and told to “go back home.” He has lived in Texas for 30 years. Muslim Texans say they have felt anti-Muslim hate since 9/11, but that it has risen significantly from politicians running their campaigns from an anti-Muslim viewpoint. “They just want everybody to get gung ho and go after a witch hunt. This is basically just the Salem witch trials all over again,” Ayachi said. read the complete article

The San Diego Mosque Attack and the Dehumanization Behind Violence

On Monday, 18 May, Caleb Vazquez, 18, and Cain Clark, 17, killed three men outside the Islamic Center of San Diego on Monday, May 18. The attack is being investigated as a hate crime. It follows a now-familiar pattern: two teenagers, radicalized online through anonymous messaging networks, leaving behind a 75-page manifesto titled The New Crusade: Sons of Tarrant, livestreaming the attack, wearing neo-Nazi insignia, including the Sonnenrad and the Atomwaffen Division logo. Reports suggest that the manifesto is centered on white-supremacist accelerationism: the ideology calling for mass-casualty racist violence to hasten the collapse of liberal democracy and clear ground for a white ethno-state. The manifesto praised a lineage of mass killers such as Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch mosque shooter, the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue killer, the 2019 Poway Chabad shooter, and the 2022 Buffalo supermarket attacker, as “heroes and inspirations.” In accelerationist circles, Tarrant has been canonized in quasi-religious iconography as “Saint Tarrant”, the figure understood to have kick-started the current wave. This is what researchers call a curriculum of violence. Each attack is engineered to inspire the next. Manifestos lift passages from earlier manifestos. Weapons are inscribed with references to prior killers and to centuries-old battles between Christianity and Islam. The killers livestream so the footage can be clipped, memed, and folded into the “saint culture” that recruits the next teenager. Ideology in this ecosystem is not a worldview that occasionally erupts into action. It is a transmission system whose purpose is to produce violent action. read the complete article

Canada

Reported hate incidents more than doubled last year in Waterloo region, community report finds

A new report suggests hate incidents reported in Waterloo region more than doubled over the past year, with racism, Islamophobia and online abuse among the most common issues. Released by the Centre for Mutual Wellbeing (CMW), the annual Snapshot of Hate Report documented 172 reports connected to Waterloo region in 2025, up from 79 the previous year. The total number of documented incidents is 289. "The hardest truth is that hate is still shaping everyday life for so many people, families and communities," said Fauzia Mazhar, executive director of the Centre for Mutual Wellbeing. The report found racism was identified in 67 per cent of incidents, while Islamophobia was identified in 36 per cent. Muslims accounted for 40 per cent of reports, the largest religious group identified in the data. read the complete article

Swiss man who assaulted protester at 2024 Ottawa defence conference blames low-blood sugar, PTSD

David Henschel, 58, appeared at the Ontario Court of Justice in Ottawa on Friday, having returned from his home in Switzerland for sentencing submissions after pleading guilty in July 2025 to assaulting the anti-war protester. Henschel was an employee of Swiss munitions firm Rheinmetall Waffe Munition Schweiz AG when he attended the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CANSEC) conference in May 2024. As part of his guilty plea, Henschel outlined how he was walking in the street towards Ottawa’s EY Centre when he encountered a 21-year old Canadian Palestinian woman in a hijab, who told he he was “actively supporting genocide” by attending the conference. Henschel swung his arm, intentionally striking the protester in the face with a closed fist. The woman dropped to the ground and Henschel continued walking towards the conference, pushing another protester. He was then arrested. read the complete article

Germany

Anti-Muslim racism threatens Germany's social fabric: experts

A leading group of German peace researchers has warned that racism and a climate of suspicion toward Muslims are putting Germany’s “domestic peace” under growing strain. “Anti-Muslim racism is structurally entrenched and reinforced by security policy discourses,” the 2026 Peace Report released on Monday said, noting that debates on terrorism and migration often fail to distinguish between law-abiding Muslim residents and the small number of extremists. “As a result, the entire Muslim community fell under blanket suspicion of posing a collective security threat,” the report said. “In the meantime, anti-Muslim racism has come to serve as a vehicle for embedding right-wing agendas and rhetoric across the entire political spectrum. This trend is reinforced by a discourse on migration that is increasingly linked to the construction of anti-Muslim 'enemy images' and demands for ever-harsher measures.” The researchers warned mainstream parties, including Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservatives, against adopting the rhetoric of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in an effort to attract voters, stressing that doing so risks advancing the far right’s agenda. read the complete article

United Kingdom

New report highlights growing problem of misinformation on social media

Researchers from the think tank, the Social Media Foundation (SMF), found that misinformation flourished (nearly three times as likely) in geographic areas with no recognised local media, in contrast to areas with strong local media, which had fewer cases of misinformation in the study. Across the study, involving over 125,000 social media posts across the platforms X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Nextdoor, “immigration and Islamophobia” proved the most “common” forms of misinformation on X and Facebook (32 per cent), respectively. The researchers noted that, beyond misinformation about immigration or Islamophobic sentiments, the next biggest topic on X for misinformation related to health (13 per cent), with totalising, criminalising narratives that grouped migrants and asylum seekers as threats to women and children. read the complete article

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