Today in Islamophobia

Today in Islamophobia: In Japan, increasing anti-immigrant sentiment and anti-mosque hostility mask a forgotten history: Japan once courted Muslims worldwide via its 1930s “Kaikyō Seisaku” policy, meanwhile in the United States, new research out by the Centre for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) shows posts targeting Michigan Democratic Senatorial primary winner Abdul El-Sayed with Islamophobic abuse averaged 3,099 a day in the week after his win, and lastly in the United Kingdom, the Labour Muslim Network (LMN) launched a survey of current and former Muslim Labour members and supporters seeking to measure attitudes towards the party’s new leadership in a hope to “win them back”. Our recommended read of the day is by Jennifer Medina for The New York Times, on how growing Muslim and Arab American political power — from Mamdani’s mayoralty to Abdul El-Sayed’s Michigan Senate primary win — is being met with an escalating wave of Islamophobic attacks from Republican leaders, including President Trump. This and more below:

United States

With El-Sayed’s Victory Comes a Wave of Islamophobia | Recommended Read

Senator Tommy Tuberville called Dr. Abdul El-Sayed a “terrorist.” Representative Nancy Mace described “every single Muslim holding public office in America” as “a threat to both national security and our republic.” And on Monday, President Trump said that there were “jihadists being elected all over the place.” In the days since Dr. El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, Republican leaders have embraced Islamophobic attacks and falsehoods like those three comments to portray him as an anti-American extremist. The onslaught is being fueled in part by Republican Party officials and has quickly become a central aspect of the strategy to beat Dr. El-Sayed in the fall. Few officials in the Republican Party have publicly tried to tamp down such messaging, though Dr. El-Sayed has not hesitated to parry the attacks. “They’re going to point at me, they’re going to point at my name, like, ‘Wow, he’s different,’” he said the morning after his win. “My name is not raising your gas prices,” he added. “My name is not taking us to war. My name is not the reason you can’t afford your groceries.” Today, there are more than 230 elected Muslim officials, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, including four Muslim Americans in Congress, the highest number ever. Three more could be elected to the House this fall. And in Michigan last week, several Arab Americans won contested primaries, including for the state legislature and mayor of Ann Arbor. But the increase in power has also drawn considerable repercussions. read the complete article

CNN Panel Goes Full Thunderdome in Fiery Clash Over GOP’s ‘Anti-Muslim’ Attack on El-Sayed

CNN NewsNight's panel erupted on Monday night as MAGA pundits ganged up on one co-panelist for accusing Republicans of dredging up "anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment" by using Michigan senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed's full name to attack him in political ads. The clash came after guest host Jon Berman ran back a clip of Senator Tim Scott defending the ad campaign, and dismissing the use of El-Sayed's full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, as no different than people calling him "Timothy Scott." As the clip ended, The Hill's White House columnist Niall Stanage quipped: "I mean, look, I don't know how he says that with a straight face." "Honestly, the idea that using Tim Scott's full name unabbreviated is equivalent to using El-Sayed's full name is just ludicrous," he continued. "It is obviously, in El-Sayed's case, an appeal to anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment." read the complete article

As Trump slams Democratic ‘jihadists,’ Islamophobic candidates get bounced

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and President Donald Trump may get away with Islamophobic language, but the same language is backfiring on some Republicans in midterm primaries. Several Republicans who have drawn national attention for outrageous comments about Muslims lost their primary elections this cycle. And Abbott, who has used his position as Texas governor to become Ground Zero in the current wave of stoking fear against Muslims, now stands a real threat in the November general election from a little-known Democratic challenger. Trump, meanwhile, on Monday ramped up his attack on Democrats by calling his party’s opponents anti-American jihadists. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, immediately condemned Trump’s comment. “All Americans have the right to engage in public service, regardless of their race or faith. By describing American Muslim public servants as threats to our nation, President Trump is putting a target on the back of Muslim elected officials across our nation,” said CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell. read the complete article

Muslims 'used as scapegoats' as Islamophobic political rhetoric rises in US

The US midterm elections are months away, and Republican politicians appear to be leaning into a tried-and-true method of whipping up support in their base: Islamophobia. Experts say the US is seeing a rise of Islamophobia in general, and an increase in Islamophobic rhetoric among political figures in particular. Mobashra Tazamal is associate director of the Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University in Washington, a research programme aimed at raising awareness of Islamophobia. She says Islamophobic rhetoric – which she describes as being at an all-time high – is part of the “playbook” used to stir up fear in the Republican base. “Muslims are used as scapegoats when things aren't going well,” she tells The National, highlighting dissatisfaction over the Iran war, rising petrol prices and economic uncertainty in the US. Ms Tazamal said while congressional attempts to pass laws that would discriminate against Muslims could be described as showboating, due to Republicans' current control of Congress and the White House, there is a real possibility that some of these bills will pass. “I've never seen this kind of state-level Islamophobic rhetoric – and I've been tracking this for 10 years,” she said. read the complete article

Anti-Muslim hate against Michigan Senate candidate surged 20-fold after primary win, watchdog finds

Within hours of Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan's Democratic Senate primary, the volume of anti-Muslim posts naming El-Sayed exploded. New research from the Centre for the Study of Organised Hate (CSOH) shows posts targeting El-Sayed with Islamophobic abuse averaged 3,099 a day in the week after his win, up from a daily average of 155 in the two months before it, an increase of 1,895 percent. On August 5, the day his rival conceded, the volume of anti-Muslim posts about him peaked at nearly 7,000 in a single day. That single week produced more Islamophobic content about El-Sayed than the previous seven months combined. It accounts for 56.7 percent of all 38,280 such posts recorded about him since January. El-Sayed, a former Michigan public health official running for the US Senate seat vacated by Gary Peters, is Muslim. That has become central to the abuse directed at him. read the complete article

Islamophobic politics is up front. Pro-Israel politics, not so much.

“Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic,” U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., posted on social media site X last Friday. On Sunday, she followed up with: “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.” Soon to be out of her job in Congress after failing even to make the runoff in South Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial primary, Mace is presumably angling for a new career as a Newsmax host or a YouTube influencer. The point, though, is that anti-Muslim advocacy has again become a political war cry in the Republican Party. The Texas GOP, for example, has made “Don’t Sharia Our Texas” one of its top legislative priorities, referring to Islamic religious law. The old claim that Islam is not a religion has been revived. And President Donald Trump has begun referring to Abdul El-Sayed, the newly selected Democratic senatorial candidate from Michigan, by his full name “Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed” — reprising his habit of calling his presidential predecessor “Barack Hussein Obama.” By contrast, pro-Israel advocacy is proceeding sotto voce. The formidable lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee has led the way, investing millions in defeating Democratic primary candidates who don’t meet its criteria for supporting Israel — not by advertising their lack of support for the Jewish state, but by trumpeting other issues. read the complete article

United Kingdom

Increased Levels of Aggression Around Anti-Muslim Hate Being Reported in

We in Tell MAMA are continuing to receive cases of anti-Muslim hate which demonstrate increased levels of aggression towards British Muslims or people perceived to be Muslim. This is worrying and we recognise that within those cases, we are also seeing the increased use of racialised language that is also mixed in with anti-Muslim rhetoric and threats of physical aggression. The fact is that online discussions seem to have thrown up issues of race and identity on key platforms like ‘X’. Whether there is a link to the actual street based cases we are receiving is questionable, but the timing seems to dovetail and the increased aggression is being picked up over the last 8-10 weeks in Tell MAMA. Discussions on platforms like X around belonging, identity and citizenship have roughly been taking place around this timeline. Social media commentators making suggestions that British Muslims are not ‘English’ or in fact ‘British’ are percolating across ‘X’ and these have impacts on comments and conversations that also take place on other social media platforms. What is deeply concerning though are cases like the one listed below which we have received. read the complete article

Labour surveys UK Muslim voters as Burnham seeks to rebuild trust

Nearly a month into Andy Burnham's premiership, Labour is confronting one of the most consequential fractures left by the Keir Starmer years - the collapse in trust among many Muslim voters who once reliably supported the party. On Monday, the Labour Muslim Network (LMN) launched a survey of current and former Muslim Labour members and supporters, seeking to measure attitudes towards the party under its new leadership and what it would take to win them back. "The election of Andy Burnham MP as Labour leader and Prime Minister presents us a unique opportunity to reset the Labour Party's relationship with Muslims across Britain," an LMN spokesperson told The New Arab. "We know that many Muslims have lost trust in our Party over the last few years. New leadership gives us a new chance to win back their support and trust." The survey offers an early attempt to quantify the scale of that challenge. read the complete article

We Are Lady Parts

For every identity that is stereotyped or marginalized in mainstream pop culture, there are thousands, if not millions, of very different people whose individuality gets erased in the process. Muslim women, for example. So what better way to counter decades of representational flattening than with a show whose central characters are young Londoners who share that label but little besides it—and then throw them together in a punk band? The result is We Are Lady Parts, a raucous British comedy that premiered in 2021 and whose two seasons were co-produced by Channel 4 and Peacock. (At the moment, it’s not clear whether we can expect a third.) Among creator Nida Manzoor’s richly written characters, all vividly portrayed by a cast with real chemistry, are a chill mom and artist (Faith Omole), a frontwoman (Sarah Kameela Impey) with riot-grrrl rage and a day job as a halal butcher, and an anxious engineering grad student in search of an arranged marriage (Anjana Vasan). From their personalities and styles to their ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and relationships to Islam, these women couldn’t be more different. Yet Manzoor is never didactic about expanding viewers’ perceptions of Muslim women. She’s here to rock and to make us laugh, often at the same time, with subversive original songs (“Voldemort Under My Headscarf,” “Malala Made Me Do It”) catchy and clever enough to anchor any pop-punk playlist. read the complete article

Japan

Emerging anti‑immigration sentiment in Japan obscures a surprising history of strategic engagement with Islam

A recent increase in anti-immigrant sentiment in Japan has led people from some religious and ethnic groups who were not born in Japan to face hostility. Hate speech has spread on social media, and some mosques have been targeted with abusive messages. Over the past five years, the number of Muslims in Japan has nearly doubled, from 230,000 in 2019 to 420,000 at the end of 2024. Most Muslim immigrants are workers from Southeast Asia and South Asia. All this has been unfolding amid a larger demographic change. The population of mixed-race Japanese children, known as “hafu,” or half, has also increased in Japan over the past three decades. The number of children born in Japan who have one or two non-Japanese parents reached 4.66% in 2023, up from just 1.3% in 1987. A long-standing myth that Japan is a homogeneous society, which has often been linked to Japanese “racial purity,” has exacerbated anxieties over demographic change. This is despite the reality that Japan has its own indigenous population in the north of the archipelago, known as the Ainu, as well as generations of Japanese of ethnically Korean, Chinese and Ryukyu, or Okinawan, heritage to complicate the landscape. Along with Japan’s falling birthrate, these immigration patterns have accelerated fears among politicians and ordinary Japanese alike about racial purity and what constitutes “Japaneseness.” What many don’t know is that Japan has a largely forgotten and complex relationship with Islam and Muslims that predates contemporary immigration patterns. read the complete article

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