Silencing Dissent: The Islamophobia Industry’s Assault on Academic Freedom

In 2025, The Bridge Initiative marks ten years since its launch. Founded by world-renowned Islamic studies scholar Dr. John L. Esposito, the project, housed under the Al-Waleed Center for Muslim Christian Understanding (ACMCU) at Georgetown University, was created in response to the urgent need for a reliable source on Islamophobia. As the issue grew in the United States, Bridge was established with a clear mission: to study, analyze, and provide the public with resources on Islamophobia—how it manifests and the often-devastating consequences it brings to individuals and society.

While anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. has existed for centuries, the post-9/11 era saw a dramatic rise in discrimination, harassment, and the criminalization of Muslims. Government discourse on terrorism fueled a deeply harmful narrative, portraying Islam as inherently linked to violence. In the decade following 9/11, the U.S. launched a global “War on Terror,” leading to the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq and contributing to the destabilization of the Middle East. At home, this period witnessed growing hostility towards Muslims, as their loyalties were questioned and their communities increasingly viewed with suspicion.

In the post-9/11 climate, the spread of hysteria and fear surrounding Islam and Muslims was not accidental—it was driven by a coordinated network of voices, organizations, donor funds, media outlets, and even political parties. The Bridge Initiative’s work has exposed this cadre of voices, dubbed the “Islamophobia industry,”—a loosely connected web of individuals and groups that manufacture, amplify, and circulate anti-Muslim stereotypes and misinformation. Bridge’s research deep-dives into their efforts to demonize a community and spread disinformation about a faith, often with the support of the political and media class.  Many figures within this network have built lucrative careers by peddling falsehoods and conspiracy theories about Islam and Muslims—propaganda that has led to dangerous and even deadly consequences for Muslim communities worldwide. Given Bridge’s research, we have consistently found ourselves harassed, intimidated, and smeared by this industry.

These anti-Muslim voices gained mainstream influence with the election of Donald Trump in 2016 when Islamophobia became a central theme in American political discourse. The urgent need for a dedicated project to analyze, document, and educate the public about Islamophobia—how it operates and the harm it causes—became clearer than ever.

Fast-forward to 2025, under a second Trump administration these same anti-Muslim figures—who have spent years attacking and smearing The Bridge Initiative and ACMCU, falsely labeling us as terrorist-affiliated—have once again found themselves in positions of influence. This time, their Islamophobic, agenda-driven “investigative reporting” has led to the illegal and unjust arrest and detainment of ACMCU’s post-doctoral scholar, Dr. Badar Khan Suri. His crime? For expressing his constitutionally-protected views and being married to a Palestinian woman.

Following the announcement of Khan Suri’s illegal arrest and detention, the Middle East Forum (MEF), an anti-Muslim think tank founded by Daniel Pipes, openly boasted about its role in the McCarthyist campaign. One of its research associates, Anna Stanley, had written an “investigative piece” supposedly “uncovering” Khan Suri and his wife’s alleged dangerous activities. What the piece shows is that simply being Palestinian and Muslim is evidence enough to render someone guilty of a crime. This is Islamophobia 101.

The campaign against Khan Suri, his wife, Mapheze Saleh, ACMCU, and The Bridge Initiative highlights the growing collaboration between established Islamophobic, pro-Israel organizations and the U.S. government. It also underscores how these organizations have fueled Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism to advocate for unconditional and uncritical support of the Israeli government’s policies and actions against Palestinians.

The central tenet of these organizations and voices is the persistent effort to associate Islam and Muslims with terrorism—an approach that seems to be the foundation of Stanley’s work. Her employment history and published writings consistently reinforce the Islamophobic and racist logic of Western “counterterror” discourse, which portrays Islam and Muslims as uniquely prone to violence and extremism. Notably, Stanley appears to reside in Israel while working for the U.S.-based Middle East Forum (MEF), as indicated by a writer biography on Fathom Journal. FJ is a quarterly online scholarly journal headed by the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), which is described by a 2009 Guardian piece as “one of the most persistent and slickest media operations in the battle for influence over opinion formers.” The pro-Israeli lobbying organization “received nearly £1.4m in two years from a billionaire donor whose father made a fortune manufacturing arms in Israel.”

Stanley’s article attempts to associate Khan Suri and Saleh with terrorism by arguing that because Saleh’s father, Ahmed Yousef, once served as an advisor to Ismail Haniyeh, the former leader of the Hamas government in Gaza (2006-2017), this automatically implicates Yousef—and by extension, everyone connected to him—as part of Hamas. This kind of reasoning is deeply flawed and dangerous, as it relies on guilt by association. Stanley’s argument mirrors the Islamophobic narratives used by the U.S. government in the post-9/11 era through the “material support” clause in counterterrorism legislation, which led to the targeting and imprisonment of Muslim Americans.

It is worth noting that Yousef left the Gaza government over a decade ago and established an independent think tank, the House of Wisdom, in 2011 “to encourage peace and conflict resolution in Gaza.” He has also been critical of the October 7^th Hamas-led attacks, and in a March 2025 interview with the New York Times, he stated, “Oct. 7, in my opinion, was a terrible error.” Yousef has written for the New York Times and The Guardian. Anyone interested in his views should read his essays and judge for themselves. However, none of this matters to MEF or Stanley—because for them, the “Hamas” label is a political weapon used to silence critics, instill fear in vulnerable communities, and reinforce a pro-Israel, pro-genocide narrative in public discourse.

Pipes and his MEF are not new to advancing Islamophobia while silencing voices critical of Israeli state policies. A 2011 report by the Center for American Progress described Pipes as an “academic turned anti-Muslim propagandist.” Under MEF, he set up various projects, including Campus Watch, Islamist Watch, and the Legal Project- all of which aim to advance Islamophobia, create “watchlists” targeting academics and groups critical of Israeli state policies resulting in doxing and harassment of said targets, and also provide legal support to anti-Muslim voices (MEF has provided legal services to several anti-Muslim activists including Geert Wilders and Tommy Robinson). The 2011 Center for American Progress report listed MEF as one of “five key think tanks led by scholars who are primarily responsible for orchestrating the majority of anti-Islam messages polluting our national discourse today.”

MEF’s Campus Watch program was ahead of its time back in 2002, when it carried out a blacklisting project after it “posted ‘dossiers’ on eight scholars who … criticize US foreign policy and the Israeli occupation.” While the “dossiers” were eventually dropped from the page, the project has continued to keep a list of “Professors to Avoid” and a list of the professors who stood against the dossiers in 2002 under the title “Solidarity with Apologists. Given the Trump administration’s announcement to publicly go after the Middle East Studies departments across American universities, it is not far-fetched to believe that MEF will be providing the government with an outline of who and what department to go after. For years now, the think tank has led campaigns to restrict academic freedoms. In a September 2020 email sent to MEF’s listserv, Gregg Roman, the then-director (now executive director) of MEF, stated the organization had “spurred federal investigations of Middle East Studies programs, working with the White House, Department of Education, and Congress to hold to account: (i) the Duke/University of North Carolina consortium for Middle East Studies; (ii) Georgetown University; (iii) the University of Arizona; (iv) the University of California at Berkeley; and (v) Yale University.” Currently, MEF is hinting at an upcoming report on Georgetown, specifically ACMCU, and as Stanley professed in a podcast episode, the ultimate goal is to shut down these academic centers and deport academics who are critical of governmental policy.

The organizations behind the smear campaign against Badar Khan Suri, Mapheze Saleh, ACMCU, and The Bridge Initiative are deeply interconnected, with key individuals serving on multiple boards. Joshua Katzen, vice chairman of the MEF, is also the co-founder of the Jewish News Service (JNS), a right-wing, pro-Israel media outlet. Notably, Stanley’s original hit piece on Khan Suri was published on JNS. Katzen and his wife, Amelia, also sit on the board of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), which in February 2025 published a video on X, portraying itself as an investigative exposé on Khan Suri and Saleh. The video promoted an anti-Palestinian narrative, falsely depicting both as terrorist sympathizers—targeting Saleh for her Palestinian heritage and Khan Suri for his criticism of Israeli policies.

Another individual on MEF’s Executive Committee is David Steinmann, who has been the Advisory Executive for the William Rosenwald Family Organization. The Rosenwald Foundation has funded millions to the Islamophobia network, including millions to the Middle East Forum. Steinmann is also a member of the Board of the Center for Security Policy, an anti-Muslim think tank, and Vice Chairman of CAMERA.

The CAMERA video quickly gained traction online, amplified by a network of X accounts, including the Embassy of Israel to the US. These accounts actively promoted the video while tagging ICE, Secretary Rubio, the Attorney General, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) pressuring government officials to take action against Khan Suri and Saleh. Ultimately, this coordinated effort succeeded—reports confirm that Secretary Rubio personally approved Khan Suri’s deportation order.

The illegal and unjust arrest and detainment of Khan Suri, the vilification of Saleh, and the institutional attacks against ACMCU and The Bridge Initiative are the work of a group of interconnected organizations and individuals, bound by their pro-Israel and anti-Muslim agendas. The smear campaign was strategically coordinated by MEF, JNS, CAMERA, and others, who then used their political influence and connections to the administration to target Khan Suri and ACMCU. Their overlapping roles across multiple institutions facilitated the seamless dissemination of propaganda, ultimately leading to real-world consequences, including government action against a scholar, his wife, and an academic center with over three decades of producing rigorous scholarship and fostering interfaith dialogue.

For decades, ACMCU has been a target of the Islamophobia industry. As a program dedicated to providing factual information on Islamophobia, The Bridge Initiative is also no stranger to harassment, smears, and targeted attacks. While extreme Islamophobic accusations are not new to us, the current efforts of these voices to align with a hostile U.S. administration represent an alarming escalation. This administration has openly targeted Muslims and pro-Palestinian advocates while seeking to impose authoritarian restrictions on U.S. universities.

The Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian smear campaign against Khan Suri and his wife is part of a broader, orchestrated effort by well-connected groups to the current administration to silence, intimidate, and harass pro-Palestinian voices and anyone critical of Israeli state policies. The government’s witch hunt against academics, scholars, and students critical of U.S. policies—particularly its unconditional support for Israel and its role in the genocide against Palestinians—has ushered in a troubling new era. Our constitutionally protected rights to freedom of thought and expression, long celebrated as fundamental American values, are now under direct assault.