Today in Islamophobia

Today in Islamophobia: In the United Kingdom, six months after the government announced the creation of Britain’s first “anti-Muslim hostility” tsar, the position remains unfilled, meanwhile in the United States, a generation of Muslim New Yorkers responded to the Islamophobia following 9/11 by organizing their communities, and lastly, in Texas, high-profile Republicans in the state targeted Islam and Muslims in their speeches on the final night of the Republican midterm convention. Our recommended read of the day is by Todd Green for Interfaith America on how, 25 years after 9/11, Islamophobia hasn’t disappeared but has evolved, as Muslims have gained visibility and representation, yet remain targeted by hate crimes and increasingly hostile political rhetoric.

United States

25 Years After 9/11, Islamophobia Hasn’t Ended. It’s Adapted. | Recommended Read

Twenty-five years ago, Muslims in America woke up to find that they had become Public Enemy No. 1. In the days and weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, mosques were vandalized, Muslim men were rounded up for questioning without charges, and a Sikh gas station owner in Mesa, Ariz. — mistaken for a Muslim — became one of the first deadly casualties of a backlash aimed at an entire faith community. Muslims in America have witnessed some improvement in the last 25 years – reduced surveillance, electoral success, greater representation in public life and pop culture. But the threat of Islamophobia has not vanished. It has simply adapted into new forms and metastasized into a cancerous presence that has taken root in our mainstream political culture. Twenty-five years later, Muslims in America are more visible than ever. But progress is not the same as safety, and visibility is not the same as belonging. Anti-Muslim hate crimes spiked significantly in 2001, then again in the lead-up to the 2016 and 2024 elections. For the years in between, they consistently remained well above pre-9/11 levels. The execution-style murders in 2015 of three young Muslim adults in Chapel Hill, N.C., and the more recent attack killing three people in the Islamic Center of San Diego, have contributed to constant feelings of vulnerability in Muslim communities. Anti-Muslim political discourse has become more brazen. In the days after 9/11, President Bush stood in a mosque and proclaimed that “Islam is peace.” This vocabulary is practically unthinkable in today’s Republican leadership, as seen in Donald Trump’s call for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslim immigration, his claim “Islam hates us,” and his insistence that Muslim members of Congress “go back” to the countries they came from. read the complete article

Muslims in Texas facing ‘unprecedented levels of hostility’

What is it like to be a Muslim citizen of America right now? The US President, along with many of his Republican allies, repeatedly condemns high-profile Muslim politicians, such as congresswoman Ilhan Omar. And the worry is that the rhetoric fuels not just hostility, but physical attacks. read the complete article

After 9/11, Islamophobia Shaped a Generation of Muslim New Yorkers

Many American Muslims have faced a quarter-century of suspicion and hostility since the Sept. 11 attacks, which reshaped life for all Americans. In New York, a generation of Muslim New Yorkers responded to the Islamophobia by organizing their communities: Mosques hosted makeshift legal clinics. Small businesses became hubs in a citywide civil rights network. Muslims of different racial, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds formed alliances the city had not seen before. Their political organizing helped, years later, to elect the city’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani. But anti-Muslim prejudice still endures, echoing the Islamophobia that arose in the earliest days after Sept. 11. “I think that day belongs to everyone who lived it and what came after belongs to a smaller group of us,” said Mr. Awawdeh, 39, who is now the president and chief executive of the New York Immigration Coalition and a confidant of Mr. Mamdani. “That part of the story this country still has not told itself honestly.” The Sept. 11 attacks left many Muslim American communities scarred by heavy-handed law enforcement tactics and the suspicion, if not outright hostility, of classmates, co-workers, elected officials and cable news commentators who blamed all Muslims for the terrorism they, too, had experienced that day. That experience spurred many to take political action. read the complete article

Is the US more anti-Muslim now than after 9/11?

Twenty-five years after 9/11, negative perceptions of Islam persist even as Muslim political representation grows. Al Jazeera’s Noor Wazwaz looks at what has and hasn’t changed for Muslims in the US. read the complete article

On eve of 9/11 anniversary, US grapples with Islamophobia and mass surveillance, as American Muslims step up their civic struggle

Americans are getting ready to mark 25 years since 9/11 as Islamophobia remains rampant and mass surveillance has become ingrained in daily life within the United States. The attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September, 2021 led to a new era that weakened democratic norms and institutions, demonising Muslims and other marginalised communities. Less than a week after the attacks, then-US President George W. Bush visited a mosque in Washington and said that the Muslim community played an important part in American society. “Like the good folks standing with me, the American people were appalled and outraged at last Tuesday’s attacks. And so were Muslims all across the world,” Bush said. “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace,” he continued, emphasising that they should be treated with respect. read the complete article

Brother of Muslim policeman killed in 9/11 'disappointed' by calls for Mamdani to sit out memorial

This year’s 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks has become embroiled in divisive politics. There are controversial calls for the city’s first Muslim Mayor to sit out the commemorative event, including from Rudy Giuliani who was New York’s mayor on the morning of 9/11. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he will attend and his focus will be on the families who lost loved ones. Zeshan Hamdani lost his older brother Salman, a Muslim American New York police cadet, in the North Tower. He spoke to the BBC's Nada Tawfik over his thoughts on this anniversary. read the complete article

For many Muslim women, the racism and suspicion after 9/11 still hasn’t lifted

“It’s very clear from the data and interviews with Muslims that the terrorist attacks fundamentally changed the trajectory of the Muslim American community in some pretty big ways,” said Besheer Mohamed, a senior researcher at Pew Research Center with extensive experience studying Muslim American communities. But in data collected in the spring of 2026, Pew found that women were more likely than men to say they had experienced discrimination in the past year. Respondents said they had been treated with suspicion, been singled out at airport security or by other law enforcement, called offensive names or physically attacked, Mohamed said. Views on Islam are more negative now than they were in 2002, according to Pew data. The 19th spoke to experts about the long impact of 9/11 and the growth of the Muslim American community as Islamophobic rhetoric intensifies in politics. In 2026, Pew surveyed Americans on their views of Muslim Americans, and 42 percent said Muslim Americans have a negative impact on the country. When asked to explain their reasoning, answers included: “Remember the twin towers?” and “Fear of another 9/11 terrorist attack.” “It appears that 25 years of multiple generations being told repeatedly, either through visuals or through explicit rhetoric, that some Muslims are terrorists, are anti-American, are misogynistic — that triggered a hysteria rather than an embrace,” Aziz said. read the complete article

9/11 entrenched Islamophobia in US politics. But it doesn’t work the way you think

Immediately following 9/11, Muslim Americans faced what Human Rights Watch called “a severe wave of backlash violence”. A tide of hate rose up against ordinary Muslims and those who appeared to be Muslim, including at least three murders in the immediate backlash after the attacks. The federal government, for its part, began targeting Muslim immigrants in a massive surge of repression that legal experts soon compared with the Palmer Raids of the 1920s. Researchers who study Islamophobia discovered several years ago that anti-Muslim outbreaks in the United States don’t follow highly publicized acts of terrorism. Rather, Islamophobic incidents tend to cluster more routinely around our election cycles. That’s what the New American Foundation found in 2018. That’s what the researcher Dalia Mogahed discovered earlier. And that’s partly what the Brookings Institute’s Shibley Telhami was referencing when he wrote, in 2024, that there was “strong suggestive evidence” that presidential messaging and crisis rhetoric can considerably sway American public attitudes toward Muslims. Islamophobia, in other words, is better understood not as an irrational fear of a religious other but rather as an increasingly instrumentalized part of our politics, one that is most often activated around our elections. (Needless to say, when Islamophobia is deployed, it’s at the expense of the American Muslim community’s wellbeing.) And since we’re also closing in on a fiercely contested midterm election season, we should take note of the sky-high levels of Islamophobic rhetoric we’re witnessing today from the (mostly Republican) politician class. read the complete article

Top Texas Republicans target Islam in GOP midterm convention speeches

High-profile Texas Republicans targeted Islam in their speeches on the final night of the Republican midterm convention, a move that follows months of rising anti-Muslim sentiment in the state. "Sharia law has no place in America," said U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, referring to the Muslim religious code and customs. "Sharia law is fundamentally inconsistent with the Constitution, and we need to stand together and stop it now." Cruz and Gov. Greg Abbott denounced the religion, with Cruz claiming Islam "produces murder and oppression." Abbott also promised to "fully ban Sharia law" in Texas, despite it being unenforceable in the United States. The message even made it up to Vice President J.D. Vance, who said the Democratic Party would criticize him if he questioned Sharia law. The speeches resonated with the crowd, garnering loud applause at each mention. "It's like a virus that's working its way from below the surface," Carmen Horton, 73, said. "And it's going to come get us if we don't fight back now." read the complete article

US mosques have more than doubled since 9/11. But Muslims say opposition is fierce

“We are faithful people. We are very good Americans,” Khan, a Muslim nonprofit leader, told Fox News in late 2009, when plans for the center first started to become public, according to the New York Times. “And we need to project a different message of Islam, one of tolerance, love.” Instead, the community center, which would have been built about a five-minute walk from the former site of the World Trade Center, became a national flashpoint after critics labeled it the “Ground Zero Mosque” and launched a national movement to stop the project. That led to marches in the streets, with protesters holding up “No Sharia” signs; claims that Muslims did not deserve the same religious freedoms as other people in the US; and organized efforts to stop not just the Cordoba House but any proposed mosque around the country. “We tell Muslims that they have to integrate, and then when their institutions begin to grow, and they want to be part of the American fabric, we tell them you’re growing too much,” Khan said in a recent interview. At least eight mosque expansion projects have faced anti-Muslim opposition over the past year, including large-scale resistance at public hearings and litigation. Those projects include three mosques in Texas, and one each in New Mexico, North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Oklahoma. “We still get linked to 9/11. We still get linked to terrorism, and it continues on,” Khan said. “That’s my regret: Twenty-five years after 9/11, we still haven’t learned anything.” read the complete article

United Kingdom

Senior MP tells Burnham: ‘get on with’ appointing anti-Muslim hostility tsar

A senior Labour MP has urged the government to “get on with” appointing Britain’s first “anti-Muslim hostility” tsar — six months after the position was announced. According to government insiders, the hiring process for the role was delayed by concerns that more mechanisms and structure needed to be put in place to facilitate their work. It was then pushed further down the agenda by the successful leadership challenge to Keir Starmer by Andy Burnham. The announcement of the post — officially a “special representative” — in March formed part of the Protecting What Matters strategy. It came alongside the publication of the long-awaited government definition of Islamophobia, which had been watered down to a non-statutory “anti-Muslim hostility” definition following a backlash from rightwing organisations. The job was intended to “oversee implementation” of the definition and “advise schools, universities and public services”. It has remained unfilled in the intervening period, despite Islamophobic attacks in the UK reaching “emergency levels” during this time, according to the human rights charity Amnesty. read the complete article

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