![[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
In Austria, the problem is not the far-right party
This op-ed by Bridge Initiative Senior Research Fellow Farid Hafez originally appeared in Al Jazeera. Last year, many observers who were worried about the rise of the far-right in Europe and the United States felt relieved after the former leader of the small Green Party, Alexander Van der Bellen, won Austria’s presidential elections by a small margin. He managed…
The ‘Allahu Akbar’ Double Standard of Terrorism
One of the worst mass shootings in modern American history recently took place in October 2017 when a white man named Stephen Paddock shot over 500 people (killing 58 of them) during an outdoor concert in Las Vegas. A few weeks after the Las Vegas massacre, a 29-year-old Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan named Saifullo Saipov…
Post-election Austria: A New Era for the Institutionalization of Islamophobia?
This op-ed by Bridge Initiative Senior Research Fellow Farid Hafez originally appeared in The New Turkey. Unsurprisingly, Austria’s national parliamentary elections ended up in a strong vote for the right. With a fulminant participation of 80 percent of the electorate, nearly 58 percent of Austrian voters gave their vote to the center-right People’s Party (31…