Today in Islamophobia

In Ireland, a new report finds that social media platforms are playing a significant role in amplifying anti-Muslim hatred in the country, meanwhile in the US, Congressman Andy Ogles, who has a history of anti-Muslim rhetoric, has lost his bit for re-election in Tennessee, and lastly, an AI-generated viral video has been spreading like wildfire in India showing Spanish army officials “throwing pork” at migrants in an attempt to deter Muslims. Our recommended read of the day is by Aaron Blake for CNN on how GOP representatives, including President Trump, have responded to Abdul El-Sayed’s primary win in Michigan, with unhinged Islamophobic attacks. This and more below:

United States

The GOP’s ugly response to Abdul El-Sayed | Recommended Read

On Tuesday, Republican primary voters in Michigan gave a double-digit victory to a congressional candidate who had dropped out of the race, choosing him over Amir Hassan, a President Donald Trump-backed former Muslim with an identifiably Arabic name. On Wednesday, some people attending a Trump speech in Las Vegas booed the mention of another Arabic-sounding name before GOP Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo urged them to stop. Austin Abdelnabi was a police officer recently killed in the line of duty, and his brother once worked at the White House. Either of these episodes could be dismissed as coincidences — as one-offs that say little about much of anything. But it would seem little coincidence that they happened as Republicans this week launched an overtly Islamophobic campaign against the new Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed. Trump has toyed with and even employed Islamophobia for political purposes over the past 20 years. His “birther” campaign against Barack Obama, which implied that Obama might be a secret Muslim, helped launch Trump’s political career. But in his second term, he’s increasingly flaunted — and encouraged his party to flaunt — prejudices and xenophobia out in the open. And the GOP’s response to El-Sayed’s nomination shows how it has embraced these ugly politics. Some of it’s thinly veiled, but much of it doesn’t even bother with subtleties. read the complete article

Shifting US politics offers opportunity for Palestinian self-determination

On August 5, progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic primary for the US Senate in Michigan, beating Haley Stevens, who was backed by the Democratic establishment. The race reflected the escalating rift within the Democratic Party over support for Israel. El-Sayed, like other progressives, is an outspoken critic of Israel and has openly expressed solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Stevens, on the other hand, was supported by pro-Israel Political Action Committees (PACs). For years, many Israelis assumed that unquestioned bipartisan support in Washington would continue to underpin its political strategy, regardless of which administration sat in the Oval Office. Halfway through the decade, however, bipartisan support for Israel in the US is eroding. In this environment, Palestinians have a rare opportunity to translate shifting public sentiment into sustained political pressure capable of advancing policies that end the Israeli occupation and support Palestinian self-determination. According to a Pew Research Center survey released in April, 60 percent of US adults now hold an unfavourable view of Israel, with negative perceptions especially pronounced among younger Americans. These trends should not be mistaken for a wholesale shift towards support for Palestinian rights. They do, however, suggest that longstanding political assumptions about unwavering support for Israel are becoming increasingly fragile. read the complete article

Anti-Muslim US Congressman Andy Ogles loses Republican primary

United States Congressman Andy Ogles, who has a history of anti-Muslim statements, has lost his Republican primary in the state of Tennessee despite the endorsement of President Donald Trump. Ogles’s loss on Thursday to Charlie Hatcher, the state’s former agricultural commissioner, represents a rare incident in which Trump’s endorsement failed to deliver in a Republican race. Ogles – a staunch Israel supporter – has faced outrage and condemnation from across the political spectrum for his comments against the Muslim community. “Muslims don’t belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie,” he wrote on X in March. In 2024, when an activist asked Ogles on Capitol Hill if he had seen footage of Palestinian children killed by US-funded bombs, he said: “You know what? I think we should kill them all, if that makes you feel better.” In 2024, when an activist asked Ogles on Capitol Hill if he had seen footage of Palestinian children killed by US-funded bombs, he said: “You know what? I think we should kill them all, if that makes you feel better.” read the complete article

United Kingdom

How anti-Palestinian racism drives Britain’s two-tier policing

Over the past three years, the British public has made it abundantly clear that it stands firmly and unapologetically with the Palestinian people. Yet this overwhelming public support has found little expression in the institutions that claim to represent its people. In fact, there is a structural asymmetry whereby the Palestine movement is continuously attacked and repressed by the state while Israeli war crimes are swept under the rug. This asymmetry is not a question of inconsistent policing or legal double standards; it reflects a broader political order in which settler colonial violence is enabled and normalised while resistance to that violence is criminalised. The normalisation of settler colonial violence relies on an ideological framework that has, for decades, reproduced anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia whereby Palestinians are routinely denied political agency and those who stand alongside them are cast as uniquely suspect, irrational, or threatening. This has created a public narrative that enables the criminalisation of solidarity, the justification of exceptional measures, the legitimisation of baseless accusations, and the manufacturing of public consent for repression while sanitising imperialist wars abroad. read the complete article

UK reports record numbers referred to anti-radicalization scheme

A record number of people were reported last year to the UK’s anti-radicalization Prevent program, the interior ministry said Thursday, with “extreme right-wing” concerns accounting for the most referrals related to an ideology. The Prevent program is part of the country’s counter-terrorism strategy and aims to identify and stop people in the early stages on the path toward becoming radicalized as extremists. In the year ending September 2025, people made 10,293 referrals, the highest number for a single year since reporting began in 2015, the Home Office said, calling it a “significant increase.” The UK in April raised its terror threat level to “severe” — the second-highest, meaning an attack is “highly likely” — with security officials citing the “broader Islamist and extreme right-wing terrorist threat.” The largest number of referrals due to concerns about a specific ideology related to “extreme right wing” views, accounting for 20 percent of all referrals. read the complete article

What the rise in Islamophobia tells us about modern Britain What the rise in Islamophobia tells us about modern Britain

Few communities in Britain are so frequently required to explain who they are as Muslims. Whether the conversation is on immigration, integration, public prayer or national identity, we are repeatedly drawn into debates that ask us to justify our values, explain our faith or prove that we belong. That expectation has become so familiar that we rarely stop to question it. But we should. Recent figures published by the British Muslim Trust should give everyone pause. More than 70 attacks on mosques were recorded across the UK over the past year – roughly one every five days. The incidents included vandalism, arson and other acts of anti-Muslim hatred. Each attack is disturbing but taken together they point to something larger than individual acts of criminality. Acts of hatred rarely appear without warning. Rather, they grow within a culture where one community is increasingly treated as different, controversial or somehow separate from the national story. Long before a mosque is attacked, assumptions have already begun to take root about who belongs, whose loyalty is questioned and whose identity is open for public debate. Over the past year alone, Muslims have become the focus of a series of political and media controversies that bear little resemblance to the realities of everyday life. read the complete article

International

U.N. commission report accuses Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian children

Palestinian health authorities say the Israeli military has killed at least 260 Palestinian children since the ceasefire in Gaza last October. An independent U.N. commission concluded that Israel has been deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, killing at least 20,000 children in the last 2 1/2 years. Israel denies it's targeting children. SRINIVASAN MURALIDHAR: We've interviewed witnesses, victims and sometimes children in person. And we've got a wide array of sources, and we subject all of them to rigorous scientific analysis. FADEL: That's Srinivasan Muralidhar, the chair of the commission and one of India's most respected jurists. We reached him in Chennai, India. And as you continue listening, I do want to tell you that he and others describe in graphic detail the killing of children. MURALIDHAR: Israeli soldiers have themselves admitted on camera how, for them, it was like a game. And they were also vying with each other for more and more targets of children. One of them says how his commander complimented him when he killed a child, which is why we know that children were deliberately targeted. read the complete article

AI-generated video of Spanish military confronting migrants spreads in Islamophobic posts

A mass influx of migrants from Morocco into Spain's North African territory of Ceuta in late July triggered a wave of misinformation on social media, including fabricated footage of the military purportedly using pork to deter Muslims. The video, which spread widely in Hindu-majority India, contains visual inconsistencies indicative of AI-generated content -- and AFP traced it to a creator who confirmed the clip was fabricated. "The Spanish army showered pork at illegal intruders entering Spain, causing a stampede among them," says a Hindi-language Facebook post shared August 2, 2026. The 15-second clip attached to the post appears to show uniformed personnel throwing pieces of flesh at a crowd while standing near an armed military vehicle whose side reads: "Bacon squad". read the complete article

Elon Musk is a race-war entrepreneur

When asked whether he was anti-Muslim, Musk did not deny it. Instead, he carefully parroted a tired set of tropes – about “rape and murder”, “antithetical views”, and the “imposition of rules and laws” – tropes that have long been in frantic circulation in far-right and mainstream discourse about Islam and Muslims. What he meant to tell us, of course, was that he could not possibly be anti-Muslim, because what he reasonably opposes are violence, a lack of integration, and the erosion of democracy. But lest we fall into the trap, we should recognise that whether Musk privately harbours anti-Muslim views is actually beside the point. The focus should be on what kind of political actor he has become. Musk is not just another billionaire with racist views. He does not merely comment on racial conflict or predict its arrival. He is a race-war entrepreneur. Through one of the largest communications platforms in the world, Musk rehabilitates race thinking, reasserts racial antagonisms, amplifies myths of white dispossession, and recasts culture as a struggle for racial power. read the complete article

Ireland

New report warns social media is amplifying Islamophobia and encouraging violence against the Muslim community in Ireland

A new report released today by Hope and Courage Collective has found that social media platforms are playing a significant role in amplifying anti-Muslim hatred in Ireland. This raises urgent questions about how recommender systems are spreading harmful content during incidents targeting minority communities, including celebrating violence, calling for murder and damage to property. This content remains online. The report, The Islamophobia Playbook: A Project of Hate, examines anti-Muslim incidents in 2026 and presents an in-depth case study of role of social media in the alleged arson attack on the Al Madinah Prayer Hall (Talbot Street Mosque) in Dublin. Researchers found that a Facebook video showing the aftermath of the attack was viewed more than 1.9 million times – approximately 352 times greater than the account’s normal audience. Analysis of more than 10,600 comments and emojis found that one in five contained anti-Muslim hate, support for the alledged attack, calls for further mosque burnings, violence against Muslims, or other forms of incitement. read the complete article

Canada

We need solidarity in the face of Islamophobia

Last Friday, a Montreal mosque suffered fire damage from a burning vehicle adjacent to the building, and it remains closed to worshippers while authorities investigate possible arson. This occurred after a violent attack on a Winnipeg mosque last Wednesday; shots were fired and windows broken, while patrons (including children) were inside. Politicians, including Prime Minister Mark Carney, condemned the incident, saying “this violent act of Islamophobia is appalling and has no place in Canada.” Twenty-one violent incidents in four months – this is a crisis requiring a strong response from government, law enforcement, the courts and civil society. read the complete article

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