Today in Islamophobia

Today in Islamophobia: In the United States, responding to Abdul El-Sayed winning his Democratic primary last week, South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace posted that “every single Muslim holding public office in America is a trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic”, meanwhile in Australia, Senator Mehreen Faruqi said her ‘Australianness’ was conditional on “keeping my head down and my mouth shut” and that “as soon as you raise your head — disagree, express your opinions loudly and proudly as you should be able to do in a liberal democracy — that’s when all hell breaks loose,” and lastly in Germany, authorities recorded 231 anti-Muslim criminal offenses in the first half of 2026. Our recommended read of the day is by Zolan Kanno-Youngs for The New York Times, on how President Trump on Monday described Democratic candidates in the midterm elections as “jihadists,” adding to Islamophobic statements recently made by other GOP elected officials. This and more below:

United States

Trump Stokes Islamophobia by Calling Democratic Candidates ‘Jihadists’ | Recommended Read

President Trump on Monday described Democratic candidates in the midterm elections as “jihadists,” adding to Islamophobic statements recently made by Republican elected officials. Mr. Trump also delivered another tirade against people of Somali descent, saying: “They’re not smart, they have no aptitude, they have nothing going, and they’re telling us how to run our country.” Asked about the candidates representing the Democratic Party in the midterm elections, Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that “we have jihadists being elected all over the place. We have this — whether it’s communism, jihadism.” White House officials did not respond to requests for comment about Mr. Trump’s statements on Monday, and about how the comments could alienate Muslims in the United States. Throughout his rise in politics, Mr. Trump has vilified Muslims and people of Arab descent, stoking anger among his backers and building support for immigration restrictions, including banning Muslims from the United States. But in the past few months, anti-Muslim rhetoric has become increasingly normalized in the ranks of the G.O.P., particularly after the election victories of prominent Muslim politicians, including Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral race and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate primary last week. read the complete article

Nancy Mace clashes with CNN host over her anti-Muslim ‘Trojan horse’ posts

South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace was taken to task by CNN host Oscar Jimenez Sunday after she issued a series of posts calling all Muslim-American elected officials “Trojan horses.” Responding to Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed winning his Democratic primary last week, Mace, 48, posted: “Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic.” Mace, who lost her own gubernatorial primary in June, followed it up by retweeting criticism of her post from a British commentator with the reply: “If not wanting to be blown up, stabbed, or rammed by a car by a radical Islamist in the United States of America makes us Islamophobes, then so be it.” “I grew up in a Christian household. I grew up in the South. Islam is not my religion. But I have Muslim friends, who, if that is how they worship, even if I don’t want to hear it, that is their right to hear.” Mace retorted: “In the privacy of their own mosque or their own home, not on the streets of America”. “That’s not being forced on you, congresswoman,” Jimenez continued, stressing it was not happening at either a congressional or legal level. read the complete article

Why Are Canceled Movie Stars Appearing in Anti-Muslim Films?

Majors faced multiple allegations of domestic violence, which resulted in a criminal conviction in 2023, after which Marvel fired him. (Kang was defeated by Ant-Man in 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and the franchise pivoted to another villain.) Majors hasn’t been seen on-screen since. Next month, though, he’s getting his first shot to uncancel himself. Majors is the star of Run Hide Fight: Infidels, a thriller produced by the right-wing media company the Daily Wire, out on its streaming platform September 16. The film’s stunningly Islamophobic plot involves an ongoing pro-Palestinian protest at a university campus (presumably similar to the ones we saw in Texas in 2024) that gets taken over by Muslim terrorists who “enforce barbaric Sharia law on students and execute infidels in a makeshift caliphate.” When the terrorists attack, it’s up to Majors—playing a Delta Force veteran who’s visiting the campus for a speaking gig about the threat presented by Islam—a “ragtag band of red-blooded students,” and “a security guard tired of ‘Uncle Tom’ smears” to “save their clueless peers and keep America from surrendering to the enemy on its own soil.” The film allows the Wire to take potshots at multiple targets its audience hates: Liberal college students get their comeuppance at the hands of “radical Islamic terrorists,” for one, and Majors and Kill Tony regular David Lucas inflict violence on Muslim characters, for another. It’s rare that an actor of Majors’s caliber would appear in a movie that’s both this nakedly Islamophobic and that will premiere on DailyWire+: a streaming service that claims to have one million subscribers, or one-fifteenth the number paying for Lionsgate+. Here in our corner of the multiverse, though, in which Majors hasn’t appeared in a film in nearly four years, this sort of opportunity is all that’s available to the canceled former leading man. We know this to be true because Majors isn’t even the only Texas movie star who was canceled over allegations about how he treated women and who then, this year, appears in a film in which he spends a whole lot of screen time attacking Muslims. Remember Armie Hammer? read the complete article

Here Comes the Islamophobia, Racism, and Claims of Socialism

The campaign for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat is entering a new phase, and with it comes a familiar playbook. It is one that has become all too common in American politics when substantive debate proves inconvenient. Now that we’re down to two candidates – one of whom has an “ethnic” name – we know it’s time for the Republicans to manufacture fear. We know that when policy arguments fail to persuade, they will begin to redefine the opponent. And when all else fails, they will invite voters to judge a candidate not by the quality of his ideas or his character, but by his identity. Abdul El-Sayed should be judged on his vision for Michigan, his record, and the policies he advocates. Instead, there is every reason to expect that many of the loudest voices opposing his candidacy will devote far more energy to caricature than conversation. Michigan voters should recognize that strategy for what it is and reject it before it has the chance to take hold. Perhaps the most troubling possibility, however, is that attacks will move beyond policy altogether. Abdul El-Sayed is a Muslim American of Egyptian descent. Those facts should be no more politically significant than another candidate’s church affiliation or family heritage. Yet recent political history offers ample examples of identity becoming a target for suspicion, innuendo, and coded messaging. President Donald Trump has already entered the chat with slander about his name in several rants at rallies across the country, and also on social media. read the complete article

How the US far-right weaponised ‘inshallah’ against Abdul El-Sayed

An Al Jazeera investigation has tracked the rapid spread of an anti-Muslim campaign on X after Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan in the Democratic primary for a United States Senate seat. It found that the apparently orchestrated campaign against El-Sayed, whose election win is seen as a setback for pro-Israel lobbying groups such as AIPAC, has sought to reframe his electoral win as a religious and ideological threat to the US. The attacks began with accounts clipping the phrase “inshallah”, which means “God willing”, from El-Sayed’s election night speech. This word was used in the context that he hoped his election win would prove that money alone does not decide elections in the US. The phrase was stripped of its ordinary context – as a common expression of hope by Arabic speakers – and was instead presented as evidence of a sinister political and religious takeover of the country. Right-wing influencer Benny Johnson led the trend, posting a clip that gathered more than 193,000 views with the caption: “Muslim Socialist Candidate for Senate in Michigan Abdul El-Sayed says ‘inshallah’ during his speech on election night.” Similarly, the account ALX framed the speech as a suspicious act in a post that drew more than 80,000 views. Accounts also used terms such as “socialist Muslim candidate” while far-right figure Laura Loomer described the clip as “disgusting”. Before the final results of Tuesday’s primary were even in, one account claimed an “Islamic communist takeover of the left is coming”. read the complete article

Why Ben Shapiro Is Wrong About Me, Islamophobia, and His Dumb New Movie

A triggered Ben Shapiro, one of Israel’s biggest cheerleaders and one of the biggest purveyors of Islamophobia in the U.S., recently devoted an entire 13-minute video responding to a tweet from me calling a trailer for a new film from his media company, the Daily Wire, “bigoted, Islamophobic & clichéd.” So, I didn’t hold back in this 7-minute rebuttal video, above, in which I lay out why Shapiro’s movie is actually very Islamophobic and why the Daily Wire co-founder is totally wrong about the number of Muslim bad guys in Hollywood. I also break down the real reason why Shapiro and the Daily Wire are making films about ISIS right now: to distract from Israel’s genocide in Gaza. read the complete article

Muslim Woman Becomes Municipal Judge in Small Delta Town, a First for Mississippi Amid a Flurry of Bigotry

Assma Ali has made history. The daughter of Yemeni immigrants to the United States, Ali is now municipal judge for the City of Benoit, a small town in southwest Bolivar County in the Mississippi Delta. Ali was sworn in as municipal judge on Aug. 5. She has spent nearly a decade serving as an attorney in Mississippi after graduating with her law degree from Mississippi Christian University (formerly Mississippi College) in 2017 and interned in both Rankin and Madison counties while attending law school. Ali is Muslim and chooses to wear a hijab. Much of the online criticism against her centers on her religion. “I was born in the U.S.,” Ali told the Mississippi Free Press. “I went to school in the U.S. I have all the accreditations to be a judge. I’m not anti-Christ. I went to a Christian Law School—as a matter of fact, I have a study room at a Christian law school that I pay for.” Mississippi Sen. Michael McLendon, R-Hernando, called for her removal from office. read the complete article

Less than four percent of US safety funding went to Muslim institutions: Report

Over the past decade in the US, since Donald Trump first ascended to the White House in 2017, less than four percent of US government grant funding to keep religious institutions safe has gone to Muslim nonprofits, a new report by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has found. The funds are awarded annually through the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP), which is operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). An institution can typically receive a maximum of some $200,000 for each site it operates, and the money must be put toward physical safeguards: security cameras, bulletproof glass, guardrails around properties, and the training of security guards, among other tools. Nearly 60 percent of the pot has gone to Jewish groups, followed by Christian groups at a little over 25 percent, the figures in the report showed. A year ago, the conservative think tank, Middle East Forum, published a report claiming that DHS was using US tax dollars to fund "terror-linked and extremist groups" between 2013 and 2023. That report listed 49 Muslim-American organisations, and said the NSGP "remains the greatest source of DHS funding to extremist groups". " read the complete article

India

Inside the machinery of anti-Muslim hate in Narendra Modi’s India

Mob attacks. Demolitions. Hate speech. Through the stories of victims, witnesses, lawyers, and journalists, this documentary examines the rise of anti-Muslim hate in India. read the complete article

Australia

Mehreen Faruqi feels her Australianness is conditional on 'keeping my head down and my mouth shut'

She described herself as having a "passion for equity" and "standing up for marginalised communities". After unsuccessful runs in 2011 and 2012, she joined NSW's state parliament in 2013, becoming the first Muslim woman to sit in an Australian parliament. In 2018, she made the jump to federal parliament and became Australia's first Muslim senator. But according to Senator Faruqi, becoming the first Muslim woman inside the New South Wales parliament was not a consideration. "You don't think about those things. I was running to use my experience and my skills to make this country a better place for everyone," she said. The senator believes politics should be secular and is "annoyed" that some people have a stereotypical view of Muslims, particularly when it comes to a Muslim woman's agency. "There are people, your colleagues in your workplace, saying 'Ban Muslims from coming into this country' or denigrating your religion or telling you to pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan," she said. Senator Faruqi said her Australianness was conditional on "keeping my head down and my mouth shut". "My experience has been, as soon as you raise your head — disagree, express your opinions loudly and proudly as you should be able to do in a liberal democracy — that's when all hell breaks loose. read the complete article

Germany

Germany records 231 anti-Muslim offences amid rising Islamophobia concerns

German authorities recorded 231 anti-Muslim criminal offences in the first half of 2026, according to government data released in response to a parliamentary inquiry by Green Party lawmakers. The figures, which include cases classified under the “Islamophobia” category of politically motivated offences, are provisional and subject to revision, the government said. Police identified 127 suspects in the incidents but made no arrests, according to the data. Of the 231 anti-Muslim criminal offences, 33 were committed online. read the complete article

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