Today in Islamophobia
A daily list of headlines about Islamophobia
compiled by the Bridge Initiative
Each day, the Bridge Initiative aims to bring you the news you need to know about Islamophobia. This resource will be updated every weekday at approximately 11:00 AM EST.
Today in Islamophobia: In the United States, a group of parents filed a lawsuit against Palo Alto Unified School District in California and Palo Alto High School principal Brent Kline over a field trip to a mosque in 2025, meanwhile in New York, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that he does not support an upcoming event featuring Mohan Bhagwat, chief of the Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and lastly, the United States Department of the Treasury has decided to impose sanctions on the UK-based nonprofit group Palestine Action, designating it as a “Terrorist Group”. Our recommended read of the day is by Andreas Krieg for Middle East Eye, who writes on how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has been working behind the scenes to encourage the weaponization of Islamophobia in Europe in an effort to leverage fear as a tool for political gain. This and more below:
International
Islamophobia has become Israel's Trojan Horse to win over westerners | Recommended Read
Israel's Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli has explained his own strategy more candidly than any critic could. Antisemitism, he told an interviewer, does not much interest the average European or American, whereas fear of "radical Islam" interests them "very, very much", and Israel therefore needs "to take advantage of that". Here is a senior cabinet minister admitting that Islamophobia has become a Trojan Horse for Israel to win over European and American hearts and minds. And it is the clearest account yet of what his ministry has become under Benjamin Netanyahu; an office that once existed to protect Jewish communities abroad now works to turn European fear of Muslims into political capital for the Israeli government. His ministry was built for the opposite work. Diaspora affairs meant supporting Jewish communities, taking their guidance, defending them against the forces that genuinely threaten them. But while his predecessors asked what would keep Jews safe, Chikli asks what narrative can be weaponised to make an easier sell. The most effective selling point, he has concluded, is not Israel at all but fear of somebody else. read the complete article
US designates Palestine Action a terrorist group
The US has imposed sanctions on Palestine Action, designating it as a terrorist group. The US Department of the Treasury said it had "taken action" against the UK-based group, which it accused of supporting "numerous acts of terrorism since July 2020". Supporting Palestine Action became illegal in the UK in 2025 after the government banned it under anti-terror legislation. The group's co-founder Huda Ammori responded in a social media post, saying: "As a Palestinian and Iraqi, the fact the country which destroyed both my homelands is calling me a terrorist, is beyond hypocritical." In a statement to the BBC, Ammori said the group's actions had "always been about saving lives", adding the ban should be a "wake-up call to anyone who cares about free speech and democracy". read the complete article
United States
Parents sue California school district over field trip to mosque
A group of parents from different religions filed a lawsuit against Palo Alto Unified School District in California and Palo Alto High School principal Brent Kline over a field trip to a mosque last year. The lawsuit, filed earlier this month in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, says that students took a tour of the Muslim Community Association's mosque in Santa Clara as part of the high school's Social Justice Pathway curriculum last fall, according to the Palo Alto Daily Post. The parents in the lawsuit are Jewish, Hindu, and Zoroastrian. The MCA told Fox News that it stood by its statement from Thursday, saying that the organization was "deeply concerned" over the lawsuit. "Treating students' exposure to ordinary Muslim faith and practice as inherently coercive or threatening risks reinforcing the very Islamophobia and misunderstanding that that educational engagement should help overcome," the MCA told Fox News. Student newspaper The Paly Voice editor-in-chief Juni Thurston disputed claims that female students were required to wear hijabs and that students were indoctrinated with Islamic beliefs on the trip. read the complete article
New Berlin mayor apologizes, does not resign at packed meeting over Facebook posts
In front of a standing-room-only crowd of people overwhelmingly advocating for the New Berlin mayor to resign, Dave Ament did not resign and instead said he was sorry for harm caused by his anti-Muslim Facebook posts. The New Berlin Common Council Aug. 25 approved a resolution saying the mayor's posts don't represent the official city position. The council members provided no public comments and did not discuss Ament's Facebook posts. The regularly scheduled meeting came days after news outlets reported on a slew of posts Ament had been sharing to his public page, many of which expressed anti-Muslim sentiments and featured videos of attractive women wearing revealing tank tops. Several faith groups called for him to resign after the posts came to light. Fauzia Qureshi, the president of the Wisconsin Muslim Civic Alliance, pointed out that the objectionable posts were not a one-off, but a consistent pattern over weeks or months. She urged the council to do more than pass a resolution. "Can someone who has repeatedly shared this kind of content continue to lead a city that claims to represent everyone?" Qureshi said. read the complete article
Why Mamdani opposes RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's NYC event
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Tuesday he does not support an upcoming event featuring Mohan Bhagwat, chief of the Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), though he acknowledged the city likely has no power to stop it. Bhagwat is scheduled to speak Saturday at Madison Square Garden as part of what organizers are calling the "Universal Oneness Celebration," an event expected to draw around 5,000 attendees, local media reported. It is part of a broader global outreach tour tied to the RSS's centenary year, wherein Bhagwat is visiting the United States, Canada and the UK. His mother is acclaimed Indian filmmaker Mira Nair. He added that he grew up with an understanding of India as "a pluralistic society of a secular Republic that believed in the belonging of each and every person who was from India." "It has been incredibly troubling to see the rise of a movement that is predicated on an exclusionary vision." read the complete article
Ben Shapiro’s anti-Muslim film is nothing new
Ben Shapiro, prominent pro-Israel blogger and co-founder of the far-right news site The Daily Wire, claims Hollywood has spent the last three decades refusing to tell the story of “the threat of radical Islam”. As an American Muslim woman, an avid movie-goer, and a human with eyes, I must say that statement’s pretty delusional – even for a known bigot like Shapiro, who once declared, “Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage.” While announcing the trailer for his Islamophobic new film, Run Hide Fight: Infidels, Shapiro posted on X that “the threat of radical Islam is real” and that Hollywood has “refused to tell that story for three decades”. He described his film as the “biggest, most audacious, funniest and most kickass film” The Daily Wire has ever released. I’m not sure what’s supposed to be audacious about making Muslims the bad guys; Hollywood has been doing that since before I was born. The film’s promotion comes at a time when anti-Muslim hate, spurred in part by the Israeli government’s attempt to distract people from the bad PR of committing genocide, is already at an all-time high; as we head into another election season, with voters increasingly turning against AIPAC-funded candidates who refuse to condemn or take action against Israel’s genocide in Gaza; and as The Daily Wire and Shapiro himself no longer hold the same level of influence they once had. And what better way to stay relevant than to take a popular, if not played-out, subject, update it, and tell everyone you’re brave enough to tell a new story that Hollywood was too afraid to tell? read the complete article
Flailing GOP needs a boogeyman for midterms. Enter Islamophobia.
November's midterm elections, which will determine which political party controls Congress, are less than 10 weeks away. And Republicans, already likely to lose control of the U.S. House, are now in danger of losing the U.S. Senate too. Time for a Republican boogeyman to frighten voters – a revival of Islamophobic rhetoric. A standing election time tradition in the Republican Party is to pick some group – Chinese Americans during COVID-19, LGBTQ+ Americans in 2024 – to present as an un-American threat to the rest of us. But this Republican Party has run short of ideas on everything from how to fix our economy to which scary people we should be scared of. So we're getting a retread. President Donald Trump made anti-Muslim prejudice a major part of his first campaign for president in 2016, and then applied it to how he ran his first term. Two weeks ago, Trump sullied his second term some more by claiming at the White House, "We have jihadists being elected all over the place." read the complete article
France
Why French officials placed a Muslim war memorial in the intellectual heart of Paris in the 20th century
The Paris Grand Mosque, an iconic cultural landmark located in the heart of the city, is celebrating its centenary. Built as a war memorial to honor Muslim soldiers killed during World War I, it was the first permanent mosque in the French capital and remains its only mosque built with a minaret and a dome. The story behind its construction reflects the politics of colonialism in interwar Paris. While estimates vary, scholars generally agree that more than 500,000 men from the French empire, including North African, West African and Southeast Asian countries, fought for France between 1914 and 1918. These troops were deployed in critical areas and suffered high casualty rates. Muslims represented approximately 70% of the 100,000 colonial soldiers killed in battle. During and after the war, France sought ways to recognize the sacrifices of its Muslim subjects. As a professor of French history, I regularly offer classes on war and society in 20th-century Europe. I teach my students how to “read” the war memorials that appeared across the world in the 1920s and ’30s to mourn the dead. Their symbolic messages often tell us more about politics and society than they reveal about the soldiers killed in battle. The Paris Grand Mosque is no exception. read the complete article
China
China: Decade of Impunity for Crimes Against Uyghurs
The Chinese government’s decade-long severe repression against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, amounting to crimes against humanity, deserves a stronger response from the international community, Human Rights Watch said today. Ten years after the Chinese Communist Party sharply escalated abuses against Uyghurs in the far western Xinjiang region, the crackdown on rights remains severe. Current evidence shows continued mass arbitrary detention, unjust imprisonment, mass surveillance, cultural and religious erasure, restrictions on travel and communication, and pressure on Uyghurs abroad, even as Chinese authorities promote a public image of normalcy in Xinjiang. State-imposed forced labor in Xinjiang affects the global supply chains, in sectors including automotive, solar panels, apparel, seafood, agricultural products, and critical minerals. read the complete article