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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the EU, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance has called on Sweden, Portugal, Croatia and Latvia to take stronger action against hate speech as levels of online toxicity has risen to “average medium” levels across the EU according to a European think tank, meanwhile, the Executive Chairman of the Wamda Investment Company has said that racists are “no welcome to do business in the Middle East”, in response to Sequoia Capital executive Shaun Mahuire’s hate filled tirade against Zohran Mamdani, and in the United States, Professors Tazen Ali and Nathan Lean tackle the question “What does Islamophobia look like in 2025” on NPR’s most recent episode of It’s Been a Minute. Our recommended read of the day is by Mukta Joshi for Jewish Currents on how the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) and other like-similar groups have systemically used the classification “Hinduphobia” to squelch or silence criticism of Hindu Nationalism and misclassify anti-Muslim and anti-Asian racism. This and more below:
United States
Auditing the Hindu American Foundation’s Claims of “Hinduphobia” | Recommended Read
HAF’s 2022 tweet was just one among scores of claims of “Hinduphobia” that right-wing Hindu American groups have made in recent years. According to a Jewish Currents review of HAF’s public communications, the group labelled more than 200 separate incidents as “Hinduphobic” or anti-Hindu in press releases, website text, and social media posts between 2019 to 2024. Of the flagged incidents, 152 took place in the United States, and 51 were in other countries, mostly Muslim-majority areas of South Asia. “Stop the bigotry. End #Hinduphobia,” HAF posted in December 2021, in response to widespread criticism of American Chargé d’Affaires Atul Keshap’s visit to the headquarters of a Hindu nationalist organization in India. In 2019, when New York Magazine published an article exploring the influence of a fringe, Hinduism-inspired new-age group on Tulsi Gabbard’s life, HAF tweeted a response post by a right-wing Hindu academic called “Today in Hinduphobia . . . New York Magazine’s Sly Attack on Hindus.” Dozens of other HAF communications followed this pattern, and other groups have joined in: The Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA), for example, began collating incidents of “hate and violence against Hindus” on their website in 2020, and a student-led group called Hindu on Campus set up a “Hinduphobia tracker” focused on campus incidents starting in 2021. Over time, these groups’ attempts to raise the alarm about alleged Hinduphobia have translated into policy. In the past few years, HAF has promoted multiple successful resolutions recognizing Hinduphobia at city and state levels. Recently, Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) introduced House Resolution 1131, a first of its kind attempt to get the US Congress to recognize Hinduphobia. However, even as HAF’s narrative around rising Hinduphobia has reached lawmakers, independent verification by Jewish Currents found that a full 77% of the 152 incidents that HAF has condemned as Hinduphobia in the United States did not meet the group’s own definition of the term. Twenty of the incidents involved criticisms of Hindu nationalism or Hindutva—the virulently anti-Muslim ideology that dominates Indian politics both in the subcontinent and diaspora—many of them by academics and journalists. An additional 12 allegations of Hinduphobia were leveled at activists aiming to ban caste discrimination in the US, a move that some diaspora Hindus, adherents of the caste supremacist ideology of Hindutva, brand as biased against Hinduism. Furthermore, while 93 incidents highlighted by HAF did appear to be unambiguously fueled by hateful and discriminatory attitudes, 36 of those featured hate directed not at a person’s religious identity but rather their race, immigrant status, or national origin. An additional 29 of the hateful incidents HAF presented as evidence of systemic Hinduphobia consisted of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab language, many occuring in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. read the complete article
Zohran Mamdani & the politics of "good" vs. "bad" Muslims
Before, during, and after Zohran Mamdani became the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, Republicans and Democrats were both leaning into decades old Islamophobic tropes to delegitimize his candidacy. Why is Islamophobia politically salient today, and why are both sides of the aisle using it to achieve their own political goals? To answer this, Brittany is joined by Tazeen Ali, a professor of religion and politics at Washington University, and Nathan Lean, professor of religion at North Carolina State University. read the complete article
The Mamdani Debate Moves to Silicon Valley
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, has drawn heated opposition from many business elites for his policy positions, including higher taxes on businesses and the wealthy. But comments by a leading figure at Sequoia, the venture capital giant, calling Mamdani an “Islamist” have drawn backlash — and put the institution at odds with some of the founders it has backed. TL;DR: Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia and a prominent Silicon Valley conservative, referred on social media last week to the news that Mamdani had checked boxes in his application to Columbia in 2009 indicating his ethnicity as “Asian” and “Black or African American.” (His parents are of Indian origin and he was born in Uganda, and he told The Times that he had sought to represent his complex background, and had noted his Ugandan origins in the application.) Maguire wrote on X that the news showed that Mamdani “comes from a culture that lies about everything” and added, “It’s literally a virtue to lie if it advances his Islamist agenda.” Entrepreneurs and others have censured Maguire’s comments. An online petition went up over this weekend calling the investor’s posts “a deliberate, inflammatory attack that promotes dangerous anti-Muslim stereotypes and stokes division.” It had more than 700 signatories as of Tuesday. Among them was a founder of a company that have been backed by Sequoia; others received investment from entities that have since been spun off from the firm. One, Hisham Al-Falih of Lean Technologies, told Bloomberg that Maguire’s post was “not only a sweeping and harmful generalization of Muslims, but part of a broader pattern of Islamophobic rhetoric that has no place in our industry.” read the complete article
Trump administration using Guantanamo to detain foreigners from 26 countries, including criminal detainees
The Trump administration is using the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to detain dozens of foreigners from 26 countries and six different continents, including detainees with serious criminal convictions, the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday. CBS News reported last week that, as part of an expansion of the Trump administration's effort to turn Guantanamo Bay into an immigration detention center, officials had transferred detainees from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Europe to the naval base. Initially, the base housed mainly Spanish-speaking Latin American migrants awaiting deportation. DHS officials on Tuesday confirmed CBS News' reporting, sharing the full list of the nationalities of those detained at Guantanamo Bay, as well as the names and criminal histories of more than two dozen detainees. They are being held separately from the remaining prisoners held there as a result of the U.S. war on terror. The list shows Guantanamo Bay is housing detainees from all continents other than Antarctica. read the complete article
International
What's happening online as the European Commission tries to crack down on hate speech?
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance has called on Sweden, Portugal, Croatia and Latvia to take stronger action against hate speech, predominantly targeting migrants, Roma, LGBTQ+ and Black people. This call comes as an average medium level of online toxicity has been recorded since the beginning of 2025, according to the European Observatory of Online Hate (EOOH). Online toxicity encompasses rude, aggressive, and degrading attitudes and behaviour exhibited on online platforms. It can range from an excessive use of profanity to outright hate speech. read the complete article
Wamda chairman hits back after Shaun Maguire's Mamdani 'Islamist' post
Racists are not welcome to do business in the Middle East, Fadi Ghandour, executive chairman of investment company Wamda, has said. He spoke after Islamophobic comments by a Sequoia Capital partner that have led to a wave of public criticism from the Middle East and North Africa's tech sector. Speaking to The National, Mr Ghandour said the region remains open and diverse, but that tolerance must be mutual. “If these people want to be racist, then they’re not welcome in the region,” he said. “If they want to engage us, we are so open for engagement.” His comments follow a July 4 post by Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, who referred to New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani as an “Islamist” and claimed he “comes from a culture that lies about everything”. Mr Maguire later published a 30-minute apology video on X, stating that his remarks were directed at political Islam, not religion or ethnicity. read the complete article