![[Farid Hafez]](https://bridge.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-04-at-10.45.01-AM.jpeg "Farid Hafez")
The Bridge Initiative is a multi-year research project on Islamophobia housed in Georgetown University.
The Bridge Initiative aims to disseminate original and accessible research, offers engaging analysis and commentary on contemporary issues, and hosts a wide repository of educational resources to inform the general public about Islamophobia.
Research & Resources
Criminalizing Ramadan: Illiberal tendencies in Western democracies
Ramadan has long turned into a political object in Western politics. When Madeleine Albright first started to organize iftar (fast-breaking) dinners at the White House during the Clinton era, many Western governments in Europe started to follow her newly introduced tradition. Congratulating Muslims on the advent of Ramadan has become a political ritual for leaders of Western governments to show respect not only to the followers of the second largest religion in the world, but also to a growing and contested religious minority in their own lands.
The Identitarian Austrian Freedom Party
The Identitarian movement has attracted a lot of attention since the white-supremacist terrorist at the Christchurch mosques made headlines, naming his manifesto – “The Great Replacement” – after a famous slogan of this movement. As the world would later get to know, the relationship was even financial.
Austria’s Islamophobia and the construction of the authoritarian state
The Austrian government has just implemented a Hijab-ban in primary school, pretending to save Muslim women from ‘political Islam’. This measure reveals the structural alteration of the state in the hands of a right-wing government into an ideological state.