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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the United States, the Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Texas) has criticised Governor Greg Abbott’s call to investigate alleged “sharia courts,” describing the move as “increasingly desperate and deranged”, meanwhile in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Keir Starmer when addressing the House of Commons said that “anti-Muslim hatred is abhorrent….and has no place in our society”, and lastly, a piece in In These Times argues that “with its hyperfocus on NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and left anti-Zionism, the right-wing Jewish establishment is revealing just how antidemocratic it is.” Our recommended read of the day is by Hamid Chriet for The New Arab on how, despite being marked as “neutral tools”, AI algorithms are trained on data shaped by racial profiling, fear, and Islamophobia. This and more below:
International
AI and Islamophobia: The algorithmic gaze on Muslim communities | Recommended Read
Artificial intelligence does not need to hate you to discriminate against you; it only needs the wrong data. Across Europe and North America, AI technologies are now shaping how people are seen, sorted, and suspected. Facial-recognition systems, however, often misread darker skin tones and hijabs. Border-control software, meanwhile, flags Muslim names as risks, and online moderation quietly removes posts about Palestine while allowing anti-Muslim hate to circulate freely. AI has been sold as neutral, objective, and efficient - the ultimate technical fix for human error. But technology learns from the world around it. If that world is unequal, prejudiced and exclusionary, then the algorithm built upon it will be too. Artificial intelligence mirrors the assumptions embedded in its training data, and those assumptions reflect the societies that produce it. This is how systems that claim to remove bias end up amplifying it instead. “These systems didn’t become biased by accident,” Mutale Nkonde, CEO of AI for the People, explained to The New Arab. They were trained on data shaped by decades of policy decisions and security doctrines that framed Muslim identity as inherently suspicious. read the complete article
Islam is part of European history
In 1993, Prince Charles, now King Charles III, gave a spectacular speech at the University of Oxford, entitled “Islam and the West”, lamenting that Europeans “have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society and system of belief”, which is why “we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history” in Europe. “The surprise, ladies and gentlemen,” he continued, “is the extent to which Islam has been a part of Europe for so long, first in Spain, then in the Balkans, and the extent to which it has contributed so much towards the civilisation which we all too often think of, wrongly, as entirely Western.” He was one of the few major Western leaders calling upon Europeans to recognise their Islamic past. His fascination with the Muslim world dated back to the early 1970s, when he developed an interest in Islamic art and architecture. The speech resonated with many Muslims. Tharik Hussain, author of Muslim Europe, admits that reading the prince’s lecture had left him “gobsmacked”. Hussain criticises the fact that most of our textbooks on European history either exclude or diminish the importance of the continent’s medieval Islamic past. If covered at all, the episode is often portrayed as one of invasion, which, even if it brought some innovations, was overall alien to the Western civilisation. Today, the popular view prevails that Muslims have never been part of European history. It is an environment in which populist right-wing polemics critical of Muslim migration can reach a receptive a mass audience. At the same time, this historical narrative signals to Europe’s Muslim minority that they are not part of Europe. Muslims themselves, Hussain bemoans, have “been oblivious to their own rich history and heritage” on the continent. He warns that the lack of a historical narrative of belonging has contributed to feelings of disconnection from their European societies, which, in turn, can lead to anti-Western radicalisation. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Islamophobia definition has taken ‘far too long’ says sacked faith minister Khan
Wajid Khan, sacked as the government’s faith minister two months ago, has been reflecting on the challenges facing British Muslim communities, including delays to finalising a definition of Islamophobia and intimidation by flag campaigns. In a fireside chat with Burhan Wazir, editor-in-chief of the Hyphen at the media platform’s first festival in Westminster, Lord Khan agreed that efforts to define Islamophobia had “taken far too long”. The government launched a working group, led by Dominic Grieve, KC, the Conservative former attorney-general, to investigate the definition of Islamophobia in February 2025, in response to record levels of hate crimes against Muslims. The group was given six months to deliver a non-statutory definition, with findings due by the end of August. Mr Grieve told parliament that the recommendation would “likely” be published in September this year. The government has said the working group’s advice was now being considered. read the complete article
UK premier says rising incidents related to 'abhorrent' anti-Muslim hate must be addressed
The British prime minister on Wednesday called anti-Muslim hatred "abhorrent" and said that increasing incidents must be addressed. "Anti-Muslim hatred is abhorrent ... and has no place in our society," Keir Starmer told the weekly Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons. His remarks came in response to a question by Labour Party lawmaker Afzal Khan, asking the prime minister to outline steps the government will take to tackle rising level of racism and Islamophobia against Muslims in the UK. In response, Starmer said: "The increasing instance must be addressed, it’s why we are increasing funding to protect mosques, Muslim faith schools across the country." read the complete article
One rule for Muslims: How Britain’s Islamophobia debate exposes a double standard
In 2018, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims, a cross-party forum of MPs and peers that advises Parliament on issues affecting Muslims in the UK, consulted widely and produced a working definition of Islamophobia. This definition recognised Islamophobia as a form of racism in how it is expressed, with Muslims treated as a homogenous group with particular negative traits and associations. Let's be clear, Islamophobia has nothing to do with theology. It is the targeting of individuals or groups based on prejudice or hate towards a perceived Muslim identity. Some ask why a definition is needed at all. Without defining something, it cannot be effectively detected, monitored, or challenged. British Muslims are no strangers to observing double standards in public life and media headlines, but the last few weeks have seen unprecedented levels of gaslighting. Islamophobia reached record levels in the past year. Muslims have been physically attacked; mosques have been targeted in terror incidents, yet these rarely make front-page news. Violence directed at Muslims has been normalised, even in mainstream media. This stark reality makes it self-evident that there is an urgent need for a clear and explicit definition to be adopted by the government and wider British society. Contrast this with the Government’s swift adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism in 2016, which has since been criticised for its conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism. read the complete article
United States
US Senate candidate tries to burn Quran copy at anti-Islam march in Michigan
Jake Lang, a Republican candidate for the US Senate, has attempted to burn a copy of the Quran during an anti-Islam march in the Muslim-American hub of Dearborn, Michigan. Lang had what appears to be a canister of lighter fluid in his hand as he threw Islam's holy book to the ground during Tuesday’s rally, prompting a counter-protester to reach down and grab it before it was set alight, according to footage of the incident posted to social media by independent journalist Brendan Gutenschwager. "Don't burn it, man. You can't burn it," the counter-protester said after he was able to take it away. Lang, who is running for the Senate in the state of Florida after receiving a pardon from President Donald Trump for his involvement in the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, then said he had another copy of the Quran. Another video posted by Gutenschwager appears to show Lang slapping a package of bacon on the holy book as the same counter-protester tells him: “This is disrespectful." read the complete article
Texas governor declares Muslim civil rights group a terrorist organization
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday declared one of the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy groups in the U.S. a “foreign terrorist organization" under a proclamation that he said allows the state to try shutting them down. He also designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations “a transnational criminal organisation" and said it would not be allowed to buy land in the state. The proclamation also included the Muslim Brotherhood. Neither the CAIR nor the Muslim Brotherhood are designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. CAIR told Abbott in a letter that his announcement had no basis “in law or fact." The group accused his office of stoking “anti-Muslim hysteria.” read the complete article
The Mamdani Freak-Out
Roughly two weeks before the New York City mayoral election, more than 1,000 rabbis signed onto an open letter against anti-Zionism in politics, and thus, against Zohran Mamdani, under the misnomer “The Jewish Majority.” Anti-Zionism has existed since the beginning of Zionism itself, and has, indeed, grown as Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank remains deeply unpopular across the United States and around the world. Democrats’ refusal to contend with this fact — to actually represent their base — has become a symbol of the party’s overall inability to listen to, and fight for, its members. The letter is a reflection of panic. It revealed the clergy’s diminishing influence and democratic illegitimacy. Even if all their congregants agree with them (unlikely), the majority of New York (and American) Jews do not belong to a synagogue. Their authority as representatives of “the Jewish community” depends, instead, on the specific artificial limits of political discourse they are trying to preserve by asserting that Zionism and Israel “are not political preferences or partisan talking points.” The nakedly racist and intensely parochial nature of the rabbis’ letter connected it to the antidemocratic politics at its core. Many liberal Jews could now see the authoritarianism in our own communities and institutions — pushing American, pro-democracy, self-described “liberal Zionists” into the left-led pro-Mamdani coalition. Among the most notable include American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten and her wife, Sharon Kleinbaum (a rabbi), who spoke at a Mamdani rally during early voting. The ADL’s tip-line move has only widened the rift, drawing widespread condemnation far beyond the Left, including from the Zionist advocacy organization J Street, which called the effort “alarming.” read the complete article
US Muslim group CAIR slams Texas governor's call to probe 'imaginary sharia courts'
The Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Texas) has criticised Governor Greg Abbott’s call to investigate alleged "sharia courts," describing the move as "increasingly desperate and deranged" and rooted in long-standing anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. In a statement, the group said that attempting to ban "sharia" would be no different from banning Jewish halacha or Catholic canon law, calling Abbott’s demand a "direct assault" on religious freedom. "Greg Abbott’s disregard for the First Amendment, his obsession with Texas Muslims and his dedication to protecting the Israeli government from criticism apparently knows no bounds," CAIR-Texas said. The group said the governor’s directive follows several failed efforts to penalise Texans who criticised the Israeli government or refused to sign pro-Israel pledges. read the complete article