Today in Islamophobia

Today in Islamophobia: In Ireland, a suspected arson attack set a mosque in Dublin city centre ablaze in broad daylight, with the perpetrator shouting, “Go back to your country. We don’t want Islam in this country,” meanwhile in the United Kingdom, mosques across the country are spending huge chunks of their budgets on security while the government’s £40m annual “protective security for mosques” scheme fails to meet their needs, and in India, an analysis on the controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bengal found that Muslims were disproportionately affected, especially in districts where they constituted a high percentage of the population and could sway the vote. Our recommended read of the day is by Iqbal Akhtar for The Conversation on how Muslims who were present at the founding of the United States helped shape its music, laws, and civil society. This and more below:

United States

Muslims were part of America’s story long before the republic began | Recommended Read

As a scholar of religion, I focus my research on identity and belonging, in places ranging from East Africa and the Western Indian Ocean to Islamic communities in the U.S. South. In my 2026 book on the history and future of American Islam, and a companion volume on the future of religious pluralism in the U.S., I argue that Muslims who were present at the nation’s founding helped shape its music, its laws and its civil society. The largest number of Muslims came in as enslaved labor. Among them were Muslims from the Senegambian and Sahelian belt of West Africa, a region shaped by centuries of Islamic learning. By some estimates they numbered in the tens of thousands, and many were literate in Arabic and schooled in the Quran and in Islamic law before they were ever captured. As the nation marks its 250th anniversary, the full story of Muslim Americans is one in which they appear not as guests but as participants. In a polarized republic, it can help deepen the understanding of the country and the people who helped shape it. read the complete article

Texas Muslims Confront Rising Hate Across State, Claim 'Normalised Islamophobia'

Islamophobia in Texas is drawing renewed attention as Muslim communities report rising discrimination, anti-Muslim hate speech and growing hostility in everyday life. From schools and universities to political events and public spaces, many Texas Muslims say inflammatory political rhetoric is fuelling prejudice and fear. The controversy has intensified following remarks by Republican lawmakers, debates over immigration from Muslim-majority countries, and renewed discussions around Sharia law in Texas. Critics warn that the mainstreaming of anti-Muslim sentiment could deepen social divisions and impact religious freedom, diversity and inclusion. read the complete article

India

‘Humanity is a privilege’: Umar Khalid on his six years in an Indian jail without trial

Outside the walls of Tihar prison, there are few in India who do not know Umar Khalid’s name. He rose to prominence over the past decade, first as a fiery student activist and then the face of anti-government protests that swept the country in 2019, the first major challenge to the government of Narendra Modi. By September 2020, he had been arrested and jailed as a terrorist, accused of being a “key conspirator” in deadly religious riots in Delhi and of conspiring to bring about “violent regime change”. TV anchors still spit his name on nightly news shows, calling him a Muslim terrorist and an anti-national. Leftwing activists shout his name at protests and wear T-shirts bearing his face. For rights groups and activists, Khalid has come to epitomise the crackdown on dissent under Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) has ruled for 12 years and stands accused of weaponising the judicial system to go after opponents. Khalid, a Muslim and leftwing rights activist, is a particularly fierce critic of the BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda, which seeks to turn India from a secular country into a Hindu nation. He has accused the Modi government of fuelling the harassment and persecution of the country’s 200 million Muslims as well as other minorities. The BJP has repeatedly denied all allegations of religious discrimination. International human rights groups have widely condemned Khalid’s nearly six years in jail without trial as unjust. read the complete article

Millions in India’s Bengal risk losing welfare benefits over voter deletion

Sheikh is among 9 million West Bengal residents removed from the electoral rolls days before the state elections were held in April and May. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power for the first time in the politically critical state that is home to more than 100 million people, 27 percent of them Muslim. The controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR), an exercise being conducted by India’s election commission across the country, was launched to identify deceased, duplicate or dubious voters. In West Bengal, a state that borders Muslim-majority Bangladesh, the SIR was defended by Modi’s government as a means to remove “infiltrators” or “illegal” Bangladeshi migrants. But an analysis of the deletions by experts showed that Muslims were disproportionately affected by the SIR, especially in districts where they constituted a high percentage of the population and could sway the vote, including Murshidabad, where Sheikh lives. read the complete article

Nationality dispute: What does an Indian passport prove?

Last week, a senior official of India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said the Indian passport is primarily a travel document and should not be treated as a conclusive proof of citizenship, according to Indian media reports. Legally, that distinction is not new. Former diplomat Veena Sikri notes that the Ministry of Home Affairs — not the MEA — has the sole authority to grant and determine citizenship. The MEA official's reported statement comes at a time when citizenship itself has become one of India's most politically contested subjects. It also coincides with the election commission's ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in several states and territories, including Bihar — one of India's largest states by population — and West Bengal, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party recently won state elections. The Election Commission of India (ECI) said the "intensive revision" was needed to remove ineligible voters, but critics say it is skewed against marginalized and minority communities. Members of Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have long claimed that large numbers of undocumented Muslim migrants from neighboring Bangladesh have fraudulently entered India's electoral rolls. read the complete article

How Modi has remade India

The foundational philosophy of the Modi government, Hindutva, seeks to anchor India’s cultural identity in the Hindu heritage of 80% of the population. For India’s Muslim and Christian minorities, this effort—and the ideological intolerance of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party—has directly contributed to a growing sense of social and political marginalisation. Critics warning that India’s pluralistic guardrails are being eroded point to the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act, which introduced religion as a criterion for refugees to receive citizenship, explicitly excluding Muslims. The rising influence of hardline Hindu-nationalist forces, together with aggressive ruling-party messaging that demonises minorities (especially Muslims), have compounded these concerns. More broadly, the Modi government is criticised for disarming or co-opting vital democratic institutions, ranging from the mainstream media to independent national supervisory bodies like the Election Commission and the Information Commission and even elements of the judiciary. Independent journalists, civil-society organisations, and political opponents regularly face intense legal and financial scrutiny through state investigative agencies. Global democracy watchdogs have sounded the alarm about the narrowing of India’s civic spaces, describing the country as an “electoral autocracy” or an “illiberal democracy.” read the complete article

United Kingdom

Mosques spend thousands on security as government scheme fails to cough up

Mosques across the UK have told Hyphen that they are spending huge chunks of their budgets on security while the government’s £40m annual “protective security for mosques” scheme fails to meet their needs. Hyphen revealed earlier in June that control of the protective security scheme, to which mosques can apply for funding for practical measures, could be handed to devolved local authorities after an intervention from Andy Burnham’s Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Shaukat Warraich, chief executive of the security consultancy Faith Associates, said he had recently met the prime minister’s team in Downing Street to raise concerns about the pitfalls of the scheme. Mosques told Hyphen they have been waiting up to two years for applications to be processed, have not received any updates and that there is no point of contact at the Home Office. Dr Naomi Green, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, called for an overhaul of the government scheme, describing it as “shrouded in secrecy and not fit for purpose”. read the complete article

Australia

Visibly Muslim women among most impacted by ‘rampant’ anti-Muslim hatred: envoy

The rhetoric around the return of ISIS-linked Australians, many of whom are “visibly” Muslim women with children, is contributing to a “palpable” sense of hatred towards Australian Muslims, the nation’s Islamophobia envoy says. In May, two cohorts of Australian families linked to ISIS fighters returned home from Syria after spending years languishing in de facto detention. These women and children had been living in internment camps in Syria’s northeast after US-backed Syrian forces defeated the militant group in 2019. Despite this, Australian Muslims, particularly women, have reported being accosted and accused of hiding bombs underneath their clothing, Islamophobia envoy Aftab Malik told the ABC. This included remarks asking Muslim women if they were “ISIS brides”. “Most of these stories revolve around women who are visibly seen to be Muslims because of their head scarfs, but they tend to be associated with children as well. so children end up seeing their mother or their sister being accosted and verbally abused,” Mr Malik said. He said hatred against the community had become “unrestricted” and could be found anywhere from public transport to schools and shopping centres. “The scale of Islamophobia is something that is palpable and experienced by Muslims across Australia, but it remains increasingly invisible in the public space,” he said. read the complete article

Ireland

Mosque targeted in a suspected arson attack in Dublin city centre as anti-Muslim hate rises

A suspected arson attack set a mosque in Dublin city centre ablaze in broad daylight on Monday 29 June at 3:35pm. Police subsequently arrested a man in his 40s in connection with the fire. In video footage, the man shouted: "Go back to your country. We don’t want Islam in this country." People have repeatedly targeted the mosque by walking in during prayers, confronting worshippers, and filming videos to post on social media in an attempt to demonise Muslims in Ireland. Now, this suspected arson attack marks a dangerous escalation. It shows just how far anti-Muslim hate has spread and how the normalisation of Islamophobia in public debate is leaving Muslim communities across the UK and Ireland facing an ever more serious threat. read the complete article

International

Xenophobia without Migrants in Hungary: The Imported Enemy, Platonic Xenophobia, and Moral Polarization after 2015

In 2015, Europe turned migration into its central narrative of urgency. Yet Central and Eastern Europe produced an outcome that challenges common sense: hostility toward immigration, particularly toward Muslims, reached high levels precisely in countries with lower "real exposure" to migratory flows and terrorism (Kende & Krekó, 2020). From a comparative perspective, more favorable attitudes toward immigration tend to cluster where Muslim populations are larger, integration policies are more liberal, and state support for religious pluralism is stronger and clearer (Schlueter et al., 2019). This paradox suggests that the decisive factor was not a demographic "fact," but a political and cultural framing capable of turning fear into a governable resource.This article develops a conceptual argument, supported by illustrative evidence and secondary literature, rather than a causal empirical test. Its central claim is that the so-called "migration crisis" operated less as a cause than as a catalyst. The populist right turned migration into a machine of national cohesion by drawing on fragile national identities, normalized intergroup hostilities, and a discursive supply capable of translating insecurity into existential threat (Minkenberg, 2017;Wohl et al., 2012). read the complete article

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