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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia, home to more than 1.7 million Muslims, will establish the country’s first anti-Muslim racism reporting center in spring 2025, meanwhile in the United Kingdom, some of the country’s largest police forces have reported increases in religious hate crimes in the past 18 months, and in the United States, the Council on American-Islamic Relations have issued an advisory to prospective students and their families over US universities they consider “institutions of particular concern” due to their treatment of those protesting Israel’s war on Gaza. Our recommended read of the day is by Esad Širbegović for Middle East Eye on how the Magdeburg attack is a clear example of the dangers of ideological blind spots rooted in racism within western societies. This and more below:
Germany
How the Magdeburg Christmas market attack exposed Germany's blindness to Islamophobic violence | Recommended Read
The attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market, which left five people dead and over 200 injured - 40 in a critical condition - has sent shock waves through Germany. But what this tragedy reveals is not just a moment of violence but a deep flaw in the West's understanding and response to ideologically driven violence. The attacker, identified as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, was not some unknown quantity. He was a Saudi-born doctor who had lived in Germany for nearly two decades and had a clear online presence that tied him to dangerous, Islamophobic networks. He wasn't hiding his beliefs. He praised figures such as Alice Weidel, the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, and kept ties with groups like the US-based RAIR Foundation, an organisation notorious for spreading anti-Islam hate. They gave him a platform to amplify his venomous rhetoric. But it wasn't just about his views - it was about how he framed himself. He called himself an "ex-Muslim apostate", positioning his hatred and violence as a legitimate fight against what he called the "Islamisation of the West". His dangerous ideology, framed as an "authentic" voice, found fertile ground in the West's own anti-Muslim narrative. He didn't just align himself with the AfD's anti-Islam rhetoric; he wanted to join forces with them, even to create an academy for ex-Muslims to further spread this toxic ideology. In this moment, we must ask: why did the system fail to see this man for what he truly was? Why was his extremism overlooked, even when it so clearly echoed the dangerous ideologies of the far right? The answer lies in the West's refusal to confront the normalisation of hatred, which is allowed to grow and fester until it spills over into violence. read the complete article
Germany to open its first anti-Muslim racism reporting center next spring
A populous western German state will open the country’s first anti-Muslim racism reporting center in spring 2025, local media reported. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia, home to more than 1.7 million Muslims, will establish the center, called MEDAR, to document and report attacks and crimes targeting Muslims. The center, which will be set up by the state government, will also track other racist activities directed at non-Muslim foreigners, public broadcaster WDR reported on Friday. Planned to open by March or April 2025, MEDAR is the fruit of three years of preparations. North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state with a population of over 18 million, will become its first to launch a dedicated reporting center for anti-Muslim incidents. The state has witnessed several attacks on Muslims and their places of worship. In January 2022, numerous Muslim graves in the city of Iserlohn were vandalized, with headstones broken and overturned. In April 2022, North Rhine-Westphalia also launched the Research and Information Center on Anti-Semitism aimed at documenting antisemitic incidents across the region. read the complete article
India
What 2024 Tells Us About Where Hindutva Is Going, Role Of Caste & Islamophobia
In 2024, the BJP suffered a setback in the general election widely attributed to unhappiness over joblessness and inflation, which even a blatantly Islamophobic campaign could not overcome. So what explains the BJP’s sweeping successes in states like Maharashtra and Haryana in the following months, and what does it tell us about Hindutva, the ideology at the core of the Hindu nationalist parties and its right-wing allies? In this interview, JNU professor Ajay Gudavarthy argues that it is myopic to look at Hindutva from the sole prism of Islamophobia as it evolves into the project of Hindu caste mobilisation without solidarity and the creation of a monolithic state. read the complete article
2024: The year in which New India’s new normal was cemented
“I belong to the Muslim community and believe in Allah. Those belonging to my community hate Hindus.” These were among the sentences Article 14 reporter Akansha Kumar found in 22 identical confessional statements by alleged Muslim rioters during her investigation this month of a 2023 riot in the Muslim-majority Haryana district of Nuh, the poorest in the state and eight-poorest nationally. The common threads of the police cases she examined: copy-paste confessions; copy-paste but conflicting accounts by Hindu witnesses (most from the Hindu extremist Bajrang Dal); a post-mortem report that contradicted police claims; and vague, unsubstantiated claims of links with international terror group Al Qaeda. Kumar’s findings corroborated a report by the People’s Union for Democratic Right released in July that found a “lack of any independent or corroborating evidence for arrest” in 81 of 89 bail orders studied by members of the advocacy group. “The bail was given because there was no evidence,” said former Supreme Court Justice Madan Lokur at the release of the report. “Now, if there was no evidence, why were these persons arrested?” Kumar’s reportage and the PUDR report revealed how these arrests traumatised the Muslim youth involved, deprived already poor families of their main earning members, forced them to use scarce finances to find lawyers and sureties for bail and ended many livelihoods. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Police forces report sharp rise in religious hate crimes across UK
Some of the UK’s largest police forces have reported increases in religious hate crimes in the past 18 months, figures reveal, with the number of incidents rising after the start of the Hamas-Israel conflict in autumn 2023 and again after the Southport attacks in England this summer. Forces including Greater Manchester, West Midlands and the Metropolitan police recorded sharp increases in antisemitic offences in the weeks after the outbreak of the conflict in the Middle East in October last year. The same forces then saw an increase in Islamophobic offences after the knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport in July that left three young girls dead and several more injured, and led to violent disorder in towns and cities across the country. The same force recorded an average of 39 Islamophobic offences a month from January to July 2024 before a sharp jump to 85 in August, with numbers dropping again in September. Similarly, antisemitic offences recorded by West Yorkshire police averaged six a month in earlier 2023, rising to 44 in October before falling again. Islamophobic offences averaged 39 a month in 2024 before rising to 94 in August and then dropping to 73 in September. read the complete article
United States
CAIR voices concern over bias against Palestinian solidarity at US universities
The Council on American-Islamic Relations have issued an advisory to prospective students and their families over US universities they consider "institutions of particular concern" due to their treatment of those protesting Israel's war on Gaza. This comes after repeated instances of clashes between pro-Palestinian student protesters demonstrating against Israel's war on Gaza and university administrations, which have largely cracked down on these gatherings. In August, CAIR started what it called its UnHostile Campus Campaign, which they say aims to foster free speech among Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, and other students, faculty, and staff, so that they are not punished for their views. read the complete article