Today in Islamophobia

In Australia, a court has unanimously rejected an appeal by right-wing leader Pauline Hanson to overturn a ruling that she racially discriminated ⁠against a Muslim senator, meanwhile in Israeli-occupied Palestine, at least 30 separate attacks at the hands of Israeli settlers have been recorded across the West Bank over the weekend, and lastly in the United States, the Michigan chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is condemning a Farmington Hills school board trustee’s comments that many claim were aimed at U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El Sayed as anti-Arab racism. Our recommended read of the day is by Maira Lavelle for Ink Stick on Rozina Ali’s new book, which probes decades of anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States, tracing an expansive history of how a very specific Islamophobia was “fomented and inflamed in the US”. This and more below:

United States

In the United States, Islamophobia Has an Alarmingly Long History | Recommended Read

This conflating of Islam with terrorism, and situating it as an existential and oppositional threat to the United States, is common rhetoric in today’s America. It is the same logic that underpinned law enforcement’s focus on surveilling mosques under the Patriot Act, and the theory scaffolding Donald Trump’s 2015 call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Journalist Rozina Ali’s new book, Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America, performs a biopsy on these conflations, tracing an expansive history of how a very specific Islamophobia was fomented and inflamed in the US, and its impact on everyday people. Ali follows her subjects over decades, detailing the lives of Muslims surveilled by the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA), Muslims elected to local government but still looked at askance, and Muslims trying to deal with neighbors who harass them. She demonstrates the personal vagaries of state surveillance, how immigration status was constantly imperiled and used as a bargaining chip, and the many ways immigrant and Muslim groups fought against violations of their promised civil rights. The book’s scope is vast, and Ali argues that American Islamophobia — the cries of “terrorist,” the state surveillance — began long before Al Qaeda’s attack on the Twin Towers, but rather in concordance with US support of Israel and suspicion of Palestinians. read the complete article

Farmington Hills school board trustee under fire over controversial comments

The Michigan chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is condemning a Farmington Hills school board trustee's comments that many claim were aimed at U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El Sayed as anti-Arab racism. Board Secretary Angie Smith made remarks last Friday at a campaign event for Congresswoman Haley Stevens during an interview with Michigan Chronicle journalist Sam Robinson. Smith said, "We need someone that can represent all of us. Not just one race but all races." When Robinson asked what Smith meant by her remarks, she seemingly doubled down, saying, "You have to know how to work the room. Don't just come in here speaking Arabic. Don't come out with your Arabic music on. Represent everyone." The comments have since gone viral online, with many, including Michigan CAIR executive director Dawud Walid, denouncing them. read the complete article

The Enduring Legacy of John Esposito

For decades now, through the classes he taught, the books he wrote, the lectures he gave, and the institutions he created, John educated millions of Americans about the realities and complexities of the Middle East and the broader Muslim World. Although the US had long been invested in that region, we knew so little about the more than one billion souls who populated the expanse from North Africa to Southeast Asia and the millions of immigrants from these regions and their descendants who had become Americans. John entered into this harrowing divide as an educator, a calming voice, and a healer. A tireless lecturer, an institution builder, and a prolific writer, he built a body of literature and founded centers of learning that helped replace ignorance, prejudice, and hate with understanding.   read the complete article

Can a Progressive Win in a Purple State? Abdul El-Sayed Wants to Find Out.

Dr. El-Sayed, a former professor and public health official, is a uniquely important contender in a uniquely important race — generating equal parts enthusiasm and anxiety among Democrats with his populist message. He is running for a must-win seat in the battle for control of the Senate, and Michigan’s Aug. 4 primary has become a critical front in the fight between Democrats’ progressive and moderate flanks and a pungent preview of the presidential primary to come. He is campaigning on a sharply anti-Israel platform that also calls for abolishing ICE, raising taxes on the rich and making Medicare available to all Americans. He is an establishment-accredited epidemiologist turned anti-establishment avatar. And at a time when a growing number of Muslims are running for and winning political office, he would be the country’s first Muslim senator. Dr. El-Sayed is more than a political lightning rod. He has lived his life, by chance and by choice, on the fault lines of the country’s complicated and contradictory record on matters of race, religion and immigration. He is an Egyptian American who was born and bred in Michigan, a onetime Kroger bag boy and high school football team captain who after Sept. 11, 2001, was called anti-Arab slurs like “raghead,” “towelhead” and worse. read the complete article

International

Palestinians warn of 'systematic pogroms' in West Bank as settler violence surges

Israeli forces have detained dozens of Palestinians in the West Bank as the Palestinian Authority warned of "systematic pogroms" amid a wave of settler violence across the territory. The Israeli military is mounting a large-scale operation in the north of the territory after a settler attack near Nablus on Friday left four Palestinians and two Israelis dead. Twenty-four Palestinians were arrested during raids in Nablus governorate on Sunday while another 16 were detained in Tulkarm and Jenin, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa. Twelve of those arrested were from the village of Tell, the site of Friday's deadly settler attack. The raids are coinciding with a surge in retaliatory settler violence. Israel Army Radio said at least 30 separate attacks had been recorded across the West Bank over the weekend. Palestinian officials said settlers set fire to two mosques in villages near Nablus and Tulkarm overnight and wrote anti-Arab graffiti on their walls. read the complete article

Berlin Pride: ISIS still inspires terrorism in Europe – but who carries out these attacks?

Right-wing parties and public figures across Europe will undoubtedly use the attack on the Pride parade as another reason to restrict immigration, even as they themselves work to actively dismantle and undermine LGBTQIA+ rights. But the US and EU members can confront extremist terror attacks. Instead of being pulled into Islamophobic finger-pointing, they can instead take steps to address the socio-economic conditions that lead people towards terrorism. Despair, hopelessness and anger are why the allure of ISISism still persists a decade after the declaration of the Islamic State. Marginalised, desperate communities provide fertile ground for ISIS’ doctrine – and other forms of violent extremism across the political spectrum – to spread. read the complete article

Australia

Australian court rejects racial discrimination appeal by Pauline Hanson

An Australian court has unanimously rejected an appeal by right-wing leader Pauline Hanson to overturn a ruling that she racially discriminated ⁠against a Muslim senator. In 2024, Hanson was found to have violated racial discrimination laws after she told Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi to “pack your bags and p*** off back to Pakistan”. The leader of the anti-migrant One Nation party had made the comment in a social media post two years earlier, on the day Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II died, while responding to Faruqi’s remarks that she could not “mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples”. In their ruling on Monday, the three-judge panel of the Full Federal Court of Australia said that “none of the grounds” of appeal had been established, adding that Hanson’s comment was unlawful and unprotected ⁠by free speech defences. read the complete article

France

The Dark Side of France

France is hardly unique among developed European nations in accommodating the far-right within mainstream political thinking, but the persistence of racism and xenophobia is a strikingly persistent feature of its public life, dating back to the Dreyfus Affair in the late 19th Century. Irish journalist Enda O’ Doherty traces this troubled history in his new book, The Dark Side Of France, which arrives at a timely moment, given the recent legal appeal which cleared Marine Le Pen to stand in next year’s Presidential elections, despite being found guilty of misusing EU funds. In an interview with the Byline Times Podcast, O’Doherty identifies a shape-shifting quality to the French far-right, saying “I wouldn’t argue that it has been the same since the 1890s. There are many strands to it. For a long time, its chief hope was to restore the monarchy, which had been toppled by the French Revolution.” “The thing which I think unites the far right from at least the 1890s onwards is this slogan, ‘La France aux Français’ – France for the French – and that is very much what [Le Pen’s] Rassemblement Nationale stands for now.” This definition of ‘Frenchness’, he says, is based on being white and Christian, with a Roman cultural heritage: “Anyone who didn’t fit with that – the Jews in the 19th century and throughout the 20th century until 1940; and since the 1970s and 80s, the immigrant community from North Africa who are chiefly Muslim in religion – these are both seen as extraneous elements who don’t really belong.” read the complete article

Think we missed something, or have suggestions for what you’d like to see here?
Contact us at: bridge@georgetown.edu