Today in Islamophobia

In the United States, the governors of Texas and Florida have designated the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) — one of the largest Muslim civil rights groups in the country — as a “terrorist organization”, meanwhile in Israel occupied Palestine, Father Munther Isaac, a pastor in the Christian diocese of Bethlehem, says that the existence and experiences of Palestinian Christians are “almost invisible” to American evangelicals who support returning the Holy Land to the Jewish people, and lastly, according to new reporting by Reuters, approximately 50,000 people entered Ceuta from Morocco since the 30th of this July, a mass migration event which has dramatically fueled online anti-Muslim hate in Europe. Our recommended read of the day is by Dr. M. Reza Behnam for The Palestinian Chronicle on how Western media has historically treated violence committed by a Muslim not as a localized criminal act, but instead reframs it “as symptomatic of a monolithic clash of civilizations.” This and more below:

International

Framing Fear: How the Corporate Media Weaponizes Islam in ‘Terror’ Coverage | Recommended Read

When a gunman opens fire in a crowded venue or a vehicle plows into pedestrians in Berlin, New York, or London, the linguistic reflex of Western corporate media is swift and predictable. If the perpetrator bears an Arabic/Muslim name or background, the media seizes upon terms like “Islamic terrorism,” “radical extremist,” or “jihadist plot.” Faith is immediately elevated as the primary interpretation for the unlawful act. Yet, when similar acts of mass violence, domestic bloodshed or ideologically motivated murder are committed by individuals identifying as Christian, Jewish or other major Western traditions, the nomenclature shifts dramatically. They are routinely characterized as “lone wolves,” “troubled youth,” “mentally unstable” outcasts or victims of personal grievance. Their religious texts, affiliations or institutions are rarely, if ever, offered up as breeding grounds for terror. This disparity is not a product of fair journalism or academic discourse. It is an institutionalized rigid double standard shaped by global politics, systemic bias and old ideas about human worth. The root of the imbalance—the “othering” of one group over another—lies in how newsrooms, classrooms and political systems have constructed and manipulated the concept of “threat.” For decades, Western media echo chambers have operated within a worldview shaped by the post-Cold War era and accelerated exponentially by the post-9-11 “War on Terror.” Within this framework, violence committed by a Muslim is rarely viewed as a localized criminal act; instead, it is reframed as symptomatic of a monolithic clash of civilizations. read the complete article

From Ceuta to Britain: How a Border Crisis Is Fuelling Anti-Muslim Hate Online

Over several dramatic days, the Spanish territory of Ceuta—situated on the North African coast beside Morocco—became the centre of an unprecedented migration and humanitarian crisis. Images of thousands of people crossing border fences, swimming around breakwaters and moving through the city spread rapidly across X, TikTok, Facebook and Telegram. According to Reuters’ latest report, approximately 50,000 people entered Ceuta from Morocco from 30 July 2026. At least 67 people died, either by drowning or after being crushed during the chaotic crossings. Spain said that more than 48,000 people returned to Morocco within 48 hours. Within hours, social media accounts were attaching words such as “invasion”, “conquest”, “military-aged Muslims” and “Islamisation” to footage from Ceuta. One widely circulated post explicitly described the incident as an “Islamic invasion”, adding “No more Islam”. Another foregrounded the migrants’ assumed Muslim identity while presenting criminal allegations as collective behaviour. The purpose of this framing is significant. “Migrants” describes a legal or social status. “Muslim invasion” turns a border incident into an existential struggle involving every Muslim, including millions of European Muslims who had nothing whatsoever to do with events in Ceuta. read the complete article

The pro-Israel lobby has swayed US presidents since Truman. It must end with Trump

The fact is that from Truman to Trump, most American presidents have caved to the demands of Israel and its advocates. Driven by the fear of domestic political defeats, presidents have regularly rejected or abandoned foreign policies that both they and their most senior advisers believed were in the best interests of the US and at the expense of making meaningful progress in bringing a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Our new book, Israel’s Lobby, tracks the growth over decades of the most powerful foreign policy lobby in American history. Comprised of a panoply of organizations, groups and individuals who advocate American policies that explicitly favor the interests of Israel, the lobby was nurtured – and has been encouraged and guided – by Israeli governments. Exploiting the fact that most voters were ignorant or uncaring on the issue, the lobby used enormous resources and concentrated attention to punish or reward politicians at every level depending on their willingness to follow lobby instructions. The lobby’s ability to thwart presidential peace initiatives was on particularly powerful display again during the Obama administration. No president before him had entered the White House with such detailed knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, such a record of personal engagement with both Jews and Palestinians, and such a sustained commitment to closer American relations with Arabs and Muslims. The reason for Obama’s dramatic retreat is easily inferable from his memoir, A Promised Land, in which he complains about Aipac’s ability to cow American politicians into obeisance by invoking fears of being labelled antisemitic, and emphasized his own particular vulnerability to such threats as “a Black man with a Muslim name who lived in the same neighborhood as Louis Farrakhan”. read the complete article

Palestinian Christians call on American evangelicals to stop ignoring their plight

Father Munther Isaac can lean on a 2,000-year history of Christian faith and practice as he studies and promotes the teachings of Jesus Christ. But he fears the places where Christ was born and was killed could face a harder future, not only because of the ongoing strife between Israelis and Palestinians but because of actions by some of his fellow Christians. While Christians come under verbal and physical attack almost daily in Jerusalem, Isaac argues that the existence and experiences of the Palestinian faithful are almost invisible to American evangelicals who support returning the Holy Land to the Jews. Isaac and Fawadleh want to reach evangelicals following the broad movement known as Christian Zionism, which sees the modern state of Israel as the fulfilment of biblical prophecy. But they argue that ignores the communities of Palestinian Christians and goes against the Christian ethos of loving your neighbor. “Theology has been weaponized,” Isaac said. “These are Christians who are funding and supporting the major threat on our existence in the land today.” read the complete article

United States

John Esposito, Who Challenged Negative Views of Muslims, Dies at 86

John L. Esposito, a leading scholar of political Islam whose career was shaped by two blows to American security, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and who sought to counter a backlash against Muslims after each crisis, died on July 15 in Wynnewood, Pa., near Philadelphia. He was 86. A practicing Catholic born in Brooklyn, Dr. Esposito was, in the 1990s, the founding director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. “His Italian American background and his Catholicism allowed John to interpret the Islamic tradition sympathetically but not uncritically,” the center said in a statement after his death. A prolific scholar who became a public intellectual, Dr. Esposito wrote or edited more than 50 books. He addressed general readers in works like “What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam” (2002) and academic specialists as editor in chief of “The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World” (2009). read the complete article

OPINION: Anti-Muslim hate has no place in the heart of a Christian

In recent weeks, I have heard concerns from some residents regarding the proposal to build a mosque and community center in the North Valley of Albuquerque. As archbishop of Santa Fe and a resident of Albuquerque, I feel compelled to speak clearly and pastorally: Our Muslim neighbors have the same God‑given and constitutionally protected right to worship freely as every other faith community, including our own. Defending that right is not only a civic duty but a core element of Catholic teaching. The Catholic Church has long affirmed religious liberty as essential to human dignity. In Dignitatis Humanae, the Second Vatican Council taught that every person “must be free from coercion” in matters of faith. This principle applies universally. It is not limited to Catholics or Christians; it extends fully to Muslims, Jews and all people who seek to worship according to their conscience. Supporting the construction of a mosque is therefore entirely consistent with our own tradition and moral commitments. At a time when divisions can easily deepen, I urge our community to choose respect, dialogue and peaceful coexistence. We do not need to share the same beliefs to share the same neighborhood. What we do need is a willingness to listen, to learn, and to recognize the face of a neighbor rather than a stranger. Interfaith relationships enrich our civic life and strengthen the social fabric we all depend on. read the complete article

Pro-Palestine activist Mohamad Hamad, detained for over a year, details FBI harassment and profiling

Held for more than a year in a maximum-security Pennsylvania prison without trial, Lebanese-American activist Mohamad Hamad has spoken publicly for the first time about what he describes as an escalating campaign of FBI surveillance, intimidation and Islamophobic profiling. In testimony to The New Arab, the 24-year-old former Penn State student alleges that federal agents twice raided his family home, monitored it with drones and helicopters, planted a tracking device on his car and branded him a “Hamas operative” in court after he was accused of involvement in pro-Palestine graffiti and possessing materials used to make homemade fireworks. read the complete article

The U.S. Islamophobia Crisis Has Turned Mosques Into Targets

FOR MANY MUSLIM AMERICANS, the most chilling detail about the May 18 attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego was not simply that armed gunmen opened fire inside a mosque complex. It was that 140 children were reportedly inside at the time and that the community already had a security guard in place because such an attack no longer feels unimaginable in the U.S. Amin Abdullah, the security guard, died protecting worshippers and children. Mansour Kaziha, the mosque’s caretaker, and Nadir Awad, the husband of a teacher, who tried to delay and distract the gunmen were also killed. Authorities have now confirmed the shooting is being investigated as a hate crime motivated by anti-Muslim animus. That a mosque in the United States requires armed security and emergency response plans for children should itself be viewed as a national moral failure. Muslim children in America are growing up learning where to hide if someone enters their place of worship with a gun. What was once unthinkable has quietly become normalized. The temptation in moments like this is to treat the violence as the isolated act of unstable individuals disconnected from the broader political and cultural environment. Americans are repeatedly encouraged to see such attacks as aberrations rather than symptoms. Yet violence of this nature rarely emerges from nowhere. Before communities are attacked physically, they are first dehumanized socially and politically. The progression is familiar throughout history. Entire populations are portrayed as dangerous, alien, disloyal or culturally incompatible. Fear becomes normalized. Suspicion becomes respectable. Eventually someone decides that violence is justified. That process has been unfolding in the United States with respect to Muslims for more than two decades. read the complete article

CAIR, a Muslim Nonprofit, Gets a Terrorism Label in Florida and Texas

In the United States, determining whether a group should be labeled a terrorist organization has largely been the domain of the federal government, which, in making such decisions, can draw on its vast domestic antiterror infrastructure and globe-spanning intelligence services. Now some Republican governors are getting into the game. In recent months, the leaders of Texas and Florida have officially designated a handful of groups as terrorist organizations. And notably, in a time of rising Islamophobia, both states have conferred the designation on the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR — one of the largest Muslim civil rights groups in the country. This new state-level effort has triggered fresh civil liberties concerns from some legal scholars. For CAIR, a 32-year-old nonprofit with headquarters in Washington and chapters in more than 20 states, the terrorism labels open a challenging new front in its long-running feud with American conservatives, many of whom accuse the group of having ties to violent extremists, despite its many protestations to the contrary. read the complete article

US Arabs eye ‘historic’ Senate win for Abdul El-Sayed despite AIPAC attacks

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, a doctor and public health advocate, is running for the Senate on a pledge that he would seek to invest in local communities instead of foreign wars. He has also been vocal in denouncing Israel’s war on Gaza, which he recognises as a genocide. But El-Sayed, who is of Egyptian descent, has faced an avalanche of spending from pro-Israel groups — including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — that have backed his Democratic primary opponent, Congresswoman Haley Stevens, with more than $50m. “Abdul is the candidate that’s right for the state of Michigan and for this country,” she continued. “We want to show the world that not everybody is going to align with Israel’s interests, and that this is a country where candidates should be putting America first and should be putting their constituents first.” read the complete article

United Kingdom

How a 12-year-old autistic baker turned cake into a force against hate

From Monday to Thursday, Joshua Harris bakes. By Friday every week, the 12-year-old begins asking for his suitcase – pointing to the letters of the alphabet tattooed on his father’s arm. The next word he communicates is “taxi.” He knows it is time to travel. Weekends are reserved for delivering the cakes Joshua has spent the week preparing to mosques and other places of worship across the United Kingdom. After a far-right attack on a mosque in their hometown of Peterborough, cake became more than something Joshua loved making. “He had this real passion for cooking, and then it just turned out that cake was the vehicle for our message,” Dan tells TRT World. ‘Cake Not Hate’ began after a far-right activist entered a local mosque, assaulted a female police officer and verbally abused children and other worshippers, according to Dan. Disturbed by what had happened, father and son went to the mosque the following day carrying cakes. read the complete article

Germany

What unites Islamists and right-wing extremists

Guhl has also noticed that Islamist extremism has a close relationship with far-right extremist movements. Both ideologies strengthen each other and profit from one another, he argues: "Both are of the view that peaceful coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims is impossible." Young Muslims' experiences of discrimination in Germany, being marginalized, and negative reporting about Islam are cited as proof of the German state's hostility towards Islam, according to Guhl. "In the view of the Islamist extremists, right-wing extremists are representative of Germans as a whole, and on the other hand the right-wing extremists say that Islamist extremists essentially represent Muslims," Guhl says. "There is an attempt to split society into two camps." Both ideologies overlap in numerous attitudes: contempt for Western liberal society, the propensity toward conspiracy ideas, mistrust of government institutions, anti-feminist attitudes, and hate of the LGBTQ+ community. "Their reasons for disliking the LGBTQ+ community do vary. On the one hand, from the religious ideological perspective, they believe it goes against the instructions of God," Guhl explained. "On the far-right extremist side, it mostly stems from a biological-racist perspective that it lowers the birthrate and weakens the health of the nation." read the complete article

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