Today in Islamophobia

Today in Islamophobia: In the United States, a new investigation by HuffPost found the the Middle East Forum, a right-wing anti-Islam think tank, has been maintaining a database filled with the data of  thousands of Muslim individuals and organizations, meanwhile in Lithuania, a pig’s head was reportedly brought to a mosque in the country’s second-largest city (Kaunas) as a group of bikers disrupted Muslim prayers by chanting, playing music and making noise, and lastly in Australia, a Muslim teenager was subjected to a stream of racist abuse on a Sydney bus after. Our recommended read of the day is by Bridge Initiative Senior Researcher Farid Hafez for Al Jazeera on how the over 20+ year War on Terror shaped conservative thought and brought far-right political actors legitimacy through weaponizing global Islamophobia. This and more below:

International

9/11 at 25: How the ‘War on Terror’ helped mainstream Europe’s far right | Recommended Read

Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, the political order built in their aftermath continues to shape Europe. The Global War on Terror (GWOT) helped far right parties in Europe gain political prominence they had long been denied. Islamophobic narratives that shaped global policy after 2001 legitimised an anti-Muslim racism that had already been building within Europe’s far right for years. Before September 11, far right parties in Europe had been largely marginalised within the continent’s multi-party systems. Even where some won significant electoral support, many remained politically stigmatised or excluded from power, and were better known for anti-Semitism and open nostalgia for their fascist origins than as credible contenders for government. But the ground was already shifting before the towers fell. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the far right’s long-standing racism began to sharpen its focus on Islam specifically. Parties such as the French Front National (now the Rassemblement National) and the Austrian Freedom Party discovered Islam as their new “enemy within”: Arabs and Black communities in France became, in far-right rhetoric, simply “Muslims.” So did Turks in Austria. The People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) was arguing as early as 1991 that Islam posed a threat to liberal democracy and stood in the way of immigrant “integration.” By the late 1990s, Pim Fortuyn had written a book titled Against the Islamisation of Our Culture, introducing a cruder, more overt strain of Islamophobia to Dutch politics. Then came September 11, which handed the far right an opening it hadn’t had to build for itself. read the complete article

United States

A Right-Wing Org Quietly Tracked Thousands Of Muslim Americans For Decades

For 20 years, a right-wing think tank has been quietly collecting information on thousands of Muslim individuals and organizations in a vast database. HuffPost reviewed the database maintained by Middle East Forum, a controversial group that civil rights organizations say has repeatedly spread misinformation about Islam and Muslims, last year. At the time, the database had thousands of entries about Muslim Americans, including such data as names they go by, social media accounts and tax information, as well as thousands of entries about Muslim organizations, including schools, mosques and businesses. The file also included people and organizations MEF has deemed allies to the Muslim community. Mainstream Republicans have increasingly accepted MEF over the years, even working closely with the organization at times. At least one person whom MEF researched has been targeted for deportation by the Trump administration, and more than a dozen Islamic schools were recently removed from a state program due in part to an MEF official sounding the alarm on them. read the complete article

The post-9/11 infrastructure of Islamophobia

For us, the legacy of Sept. 11 is not confined to a terrible morning. It includes the institutions, organizations and assumptions that took shape afterward. Six days after the attacks, President George W. Bush visited the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., and declared: “Islam is peace.” He spoke about Muslim Americans as neighbors and warned against intimidating women wearing headscarves. Sadly, that reassurance was not the whole record. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq he launched in the aftermath brought about extensive civilian suffering to Muslims and others abroad. And at home, Muslim charities, imams and community leaders were viciously targeted. Bush used 9/11 not just in every speech, but seemingly to justify every unconstitutional attack on the Muslim community. And the tenuous relationship between Muslim communities and counterterrorism policy sadly was only further incentivized in the Countering Violent Extremism programs of the Obama administration. To understand this history, we have to look beyond individual prejudice. We have to examine its organization. In its 2011 report “Fear, Inc.,” the Center for American Progress identified what it called an “Islamophobia network” connecting donors, policy organizations, media figures and activists who promote misrepresentations of Islam. Its investigation traced $42.6 million given from seven foundations and charitable groups to organizations in that network between 2001 and 2009. The report describes how misleading claims circulated among researchers, commentators and political organizers, including through model legislation concerning Islamic law. Older institutions were joined by new organizations and projects: Campus Watch in 2002, Jihad Watch in 2003 and ACT for America in 2007. The network included websites, advocacy organizations and grassroots campaigns. This is the organizational dimension of the story: It’s not simply what someone believes about Muslims, but how messages are funded, reproduced and distributed. read the complete article

Last speaker at 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero calls out people who have used the tragedy for Islamophobia

The man who concluded the reading of names at the memorial event in New York City, who said his father died in the 9/11 attacks, condemned people for using the moment to “spread hate.” read the complete article

25 Years Later, We Still Live in the World the War on Terror Made

In a 2013 Congressional hearing on drone warfare, a young Pakistani boy named Zubair Rehman, aged 13 at the time, talked about the feeling of living under the threat of constant drone strikes. In his powerful testimony, Zubair stated that “I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer gray skies…The drones do not fly when the skies are gray…When the sky brightens, drones return and we live in fear.” More than a decade after his testimony and twenty-five years into the so-called global war on terror, far from being a relic of the past, drone warfare is one of the many omnipresent threats that have been cemented by the U.S. in countries across the globe. Generations of Muslim children have grown up in the world that the war on terror has created — a world in which endless war has been normalized, torture justified, and with both the state and the media painting a target on the backs on entire Muslim populations across the globe. Within the United States, much of the media coverage of the September 11 attacks has focused on assessments of the war on terror and retrospective lessons. Of course, what goes largely undercovered are some of the injustices that followed in its wake, such as the Islamophobia directed at Muslims and bigotry against other racialized populations within the U.S. Mainstream media has also largely minimized the extent to which the war on terror has fundamentally reshaped political and social life within the United States. Islamophobia has been central to this transformation, permeating political discourse and providing the ideological justification for increasingly repressive policies. Even though much of the war on terror has been shrouded in secrecy, many forms of its violence and horrors have been transformed into spectacles of violence in order to normalize the punishment of Muslims while rendering Muslim life disposable, all in the service of preserving an enduring national security apparatus. read the complete article

Islamophobia persists even as Muslims find a place in America

Muslim Americans are still met with suspicion and distrust 25 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, even as they become more politically visible in the U.S. Forty-three percent of U.S. adults think Muslims are less patriotic than other Americans, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, while 42% said Muslims were having a negative impact on the country. Some of those surveyed attributed their opinions to the terrorist attacks. But New York City now has its first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and he represented the city at the World Trade Center ceremony marking the attacks. As the country remembers the tragedy, NBC talked to some Arab Americans about how they view their country today. read the complete article

Journalist Traces Pre-9/11 Islamophobia in New Book

Rozina Ali’s new book, which follows Islamophobia’s domestic rise, argues that the United States struggled with anti-Muslim hatred long before the 9/11 terrorist attacks inspired a new wave of hostility. Ali’s book tracks Islamophobia through the lens of four families, whose stories frame discrimination trends over the past eight decades. “Racism flattens humanity,” Ali said at the event. “It flattens a person into anonymity. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you believe or what your motivations are. One of the reasons that I wanted to make this a narrative book and wanted to explore Islamophobia through different families was to show that Muslims in the United States are quite diverse, but they also have diverse religious beliefs and diverse political beliefs.” The post-9/11 era saw a rampant increase in Islamophobia as politicians and pundits targeted Muslims at large for the terrorist attacks. Over the last decade, the Trump administration has restricted immigration from some majority-Muslim countries and spread Islamophobic rhetoric, heightening tensions. Mobashra Tazamal — associate director of Georgetown’s Bridge Initiative, which researches Islamophobia and hosted the event — said Ali’s book shows that Islamophobia is a long-term issue. read the complete article

‘It’s just straight bigotry’: wave of Islamophobic rhetoric looms over US midterm elections

Within hours of Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan’s Democratic US Senate primary, Republican senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama declared that the party had “just voted to send a TERRORIST” to Washington. El-Sayed – or “Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed”, as Tuberville called him on X – was a “RADICAL ISLAMIST” who would “do everything he can to destroy America”, he claimed. It was the opening shot in what researchers who track anti-Muslim sentiment describe as the most concentrated wave of Islamophobic rhetoric in US electoral politics since the 9/11 attacks, arriving at the exact moment Muslim candidates are winning office in unprecedented numbers. “It’s probably the worst of what we’ve seen,” said Saher Selod, director of research at the non-partisan Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), which has tracked anti-Muslim sentiment nationally for a decade. “We’re certainly seeing in 2025 and 2026, ahead of these midterms, really very Islamophobic ads – more so than what we saw after 9/11.” ISPU’s 2025 Islamophobia Index, a 100-point scale built using common anti-Muslim stereotypes, rose from 25 in 2022 to 33 among the general public in 2025, with the sharpest increases among white and Hispanic Americans. The Pew Research Center found in a survey this spring that 51% of US adults now say Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence, up from just 25% six months after the 2001 attacks. The partisan gap on that question has widened sharply. Back in 2022 32% of likely Republican voters and 23% of Democrats in 2002 said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence, according to the Pew survey. Today, 76% of Republicans say the same, and 29% of Democrats. read the complete article

The rising power of American Muslims

American Muslims are building their own cultural institutions – New York Magazine and The Guardian have reported on flourishing ecosystems of cafes, magazines, dance nights, meetups and readings for Muslims and/or people with heritage from the SWANA region. And on a political level, Muslims like Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani have become prominent faces of the left. On the one hand, this swell of Muslims coming up in politics and building cultural institutions is not surprising – there are over 4 million Muslims in America. On the other hand, this shift is pretty significant given how deeply Islamophobia and racism are rooted in our culture. So what's changed for American Muslims in recent years, and what’s stayed the same? What does it mean that Muslims are accruing a little more political and cultural capital now, and that non-Muslims are noticing? To get deeper into it, Brittany is joined by Dr. Donna Auston, cultural anthropologist, and Dr. Tazeen Ali, scholar of Islam in America and associate professor of religion and politics at Washington University in St. Louis. read the complete article

The US right still paints Muslims as the ‘enemy’. But they are fighting for a brighter future for Americans

Members of a diaspora of Muslim background are indeed breaking through and accumulating, as New York Magazine says, “clout”. They are no longer simply a fixture of bodegas and halal carts, but of Saturday Night Live, upmarket dining, entertainment and politics too. Mamdani is both the expression of that cohort and the catalyst of its recognition as an emerging force. They care deeply for their local communities but also for those in Gaza and beyond. I use the descriptor “of Muslim background” rather than “Muslim” because this diasporic identity is a diverse one that is rooted in a religion but expands to encompass everyone from the practising to those for whom Islam is a cultural totem.The capaciousness of this heritage is demonstrable in its integration – without compromise – into mainstream American society. Mamdani and the Democratic Senate nominee for Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, recuse themselves from the rote fealty to American glory and dare to point out both US support for Israel and the calamitous outcomes of the “war on terror” in the Middle East. This is the result of this new generation of Americans coming from an immigrant background that has cultivated a less parochial and supremacist view of the US. There is something historically inevitable in this. Immigration from countries and backgrounds against which the US has waged military and ideological war eventually yields not a cowed assimilation, but a sort of political cosmopolitanism – kryptonite for American exceptionalism. Growing up in the shadow of Islamophobia is another formative experience that ironically forced many to identify in terms of religious background rather than race or national origin. “In a way,” said American comedian Ramy Youssef, in a now legendary standup comedy segment, “9/11 made me more Muslim. Cos I was told it was my fault.” This is a profoundly recognisable story for many, including myself, for whom a casual religious identity became a sharp political one during the “war on terror” years. At the same time as this new generation found their political and social power, the Islamophobia that began in 2001 has only further burrowed into the fabric of American society. read the complete article

United Kingdom

Who is funding Britain's far right? Danny Tommo's US, Israel links

A new far-right group behind violent anti-migrant protests in southern England is being led by an activist who previously received tens of thousands of dollars from a US-based pro-Israel organisation with a history of supporting Britain's anti-Muslim right. Hundreds of far-right protesters descended on the UK's south coast over the weekend for two anti-immigration demonstrations. Dressed in black and wearing balaclavas, protesters blocked roads in Dover, while clashes broke out with police in Portsmouth as the group sought to prevent migrants from entering the country. The group, calling itself Patriot Platform, was set up in June by Daniel Thomas, a close confidant of far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as "Tommy Robinson". Thomas, who goes by the name "Danny Tommo", has emerged as a prominent figure in Britain's extremist anti-migrant movement. But his rise also highlights the links between sections of the British far right and wealthy conservative and pro-Israel networks in the United States. Thomas previously received $32,000 from the Middle East Forum (MEF), a US-based anti-Islam and staunchly pro-Israel think tank that has also supported Yaxley-Lennon's activism. read the complete article

Australia

Muslim schoolgirl called a 'terrorist' during racist tirade on Sydney bus

A Muslim teenager was subjected to a stream of racist abuse on a Sydney bus after, according to her mother, she confronted a man she believed was photographing another schoolgirl. NSW Police has confirmed it is investigating the incident that occurred when Janna, 13, was travelling towards Greenacre in Sydney's south-west on Thursday afternoon. The incident is a "microcosm of the state of Islamophobia nationwide", according to the Islamophobia Register, which says it has recorded a more than sixfold increase in reports of Islamophobia since the October 7 attacks.The teenager's mother, Roula, who was not on the bus at the time, said her daughter noticed an older man photographing another girl in school uniform and approached the girl to tell her. read the complete article

Lithuania

Pig's head reportedly brought during Friday prayer at Lithuania's Kaunas mosque

A pig's head was reportedly brought to a mosque in Lithuania's second-largest city, Kaunas, on Friday as a group of bikers disrupted Muslim prayers by chanting, playing music and making noise near the house of worship, local media reported. According to Lithuanian broadcaster LRT, the bikers gathered in Ramybes Park near the mosque while Muslims were attending Friday prayers. The bikers reportedly chanted "Lithuania," played music and made noise outside the mosque. The report also said that a pig’s head was brought during the incident. Video shared on social media showed a group of bikers gathering near the mosque during Muslim prayers, chanting and playing music. read the complete article

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