Today in Islamophobia

United Kingdom

Why has Britain’s oldest political magazine become such a rabid cheerleader for Islamophobia? | Recommended Read

Islamophobia has become so common as to be mundane in large parts of the British media. Foremost among the offenders is Britain’s oldest political magazine: the Spectator. A large and comprehensive report from the Centre for Media Monitoring reviewed 3,733 articles published in the Spectator relating to Islam or Muslims. Released last week, it criticised the publication for “a sustained and systemic pattern of biased coverage of Muslims and Islam”, according to the CMM, “with more than half of all relevant articles rated as biased over an eight-year period”. It is grim, grim reading. Among the conclusions reached by the report are that articles in the magazine regularly portrayed Muslims as a “problem population”, delegitimised the very notion of Islamophobia, and consistently presented Muslims as exceptional or threatening. The overall effect is of a minority that is not only sectarian and separate, but also, ironically, from within its ghetto, dangerous and aggressively colonizing British society. read the complete article

King hails design of Europe's first eco mosque

King Charles said he was impressed by the design of Europe's first eco mosque and has praised "all the care and attention which has been lavished on it". The King was told about the environmental credentials of Cambridge Central Mosque as he toured the place of worship on Monday. He was greeted by crowds of well-wishers in Mill Road, before speaking to dignitaries and worshippers inside the building. Some of the eco-friendly schemes at the site include efficient heat pumps, solar panels and the collection of spare water from bathroom sinks and rainfall. The building is also lit all year round by large skylights in the roof. read the complete article

'Everybody knows, but nobody does anything': New report claims there's widespread Islamophobia in Luton

A new report into the experiences of Muslims in Luton has claimed there is widespread Islamophobia across the town, with more than two-thirds of those surveyed reporting they have experienced or witnessed anti-Muslim hate in the last six months. More than half (51 per cent) of Muslim respondents reported feeling ‘less safe’ or ‘less welcome’ over the past six months than they had before. read the complete article

United States

John Esposito, 86, showed how Islamophobia warped US policy

My former Georgetown professor, John Esposito, passed away on July 15, 2026, just as the military campaign between the U.S. and Iran reignited in what is becoming America’s “Third Gulf War.” It was America’s first Gulf War in 1991 that led me to read Esposito’s 1992 book, “The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?” I read that work to understand why the Western media portrayed my ancestral Iraq as part of a greater Muslim threat to the United States, as if America needed to create a civilizational enemy to replace the Soviet Union and Red Scare. Indeed, in that influential book, Esposito argued that Western representations of the Islamic world — and the tragic foreign policy decisions that resulted — were in part the distorted products of Islamophobia. Esposito was one of the foremost scholars of a pre-9/11 Islamophobia that I personally experienced, emerging as a result of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the 1991 Gulf War, the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, as well as the 1996 Oklahoma City bombings, for which Muslim Americans were initially blamed even though it was the work of Timothy McVeigh, a member of a right-wing militia. His 1992 work proved prescient. He rejected the term “Islamic fundamentalism,” for him a construct that emerged as part of the post-Cold War anxiety seeking a replacement for Communism. Reading the book now, one can draw enduring lessons about the path to America’s two-decade-long “War on Terror,” and its current conflict with Iran. read the complete article

North Texas mosques open doors to challenge misconceptions about Islam and Shariah

The “Open Mosque Day” event had been months in the making, following other open house events that took place in Plano Saturday morning and Austin last week. It aimed to dispel stereotypes and misconceptions, especially regarding Shariah, that some Muslims say have plagued communities across Texas. “There are many anti-Islam, anti-Shariah, anti-Muslim incidents that happen in Texas, and we want to make sure that our fellow Americans, our brothers and sisters in humanity, know what is Shariah and what it is not,” Dr. Sabeel Ahmed, director of Islamic outreach organization GainPeace, said in an interview. Ahmed was the keynote speaker of the event. Ahmed described Shariah as “God’s guidance” for daily life that encapsulates gratuitous actions. He noted that “preserving the environment” is a part of Shariah, just as caring for neighbors and the elderly and fighting racism are. read the complete article

Australia

The government’s response to Islamophobia report is big on lofty ideals, short on details

The Albanese government has handed down its response to its special envoy’s report on Islamophobia in Australia, ten months after it was tabled. Despite some positive steps forward, the response doesn’t go nearly far enough to address the scope of the problem. Special envoy Aftab Malik’s report had 54 recommendations for how to tackle Islamophobia. The government has agreed to adopt slightly more than half (35) of them. Islamophobia takes many forms in Australia. Recent scholarship defines it as anti-Muslim prejudice and racism that affects people’s rights and freedoms across several key domains. These include physical violence, interpersonal prejudice, structural discrimination and social exclusion. This definition emphasises the link between institutional forms of Islamophobia and the anti-Muslim attitudes held by individuals. It also interprets Islamophobia as a distinct form of racism, which has become more prevalent in recent years as Islamic religion, traditions and culture have become seen as a “threat” to Western values. The way the government links Islamophobia to threats to social cohesion and national unity also exposes its flaws and limited ambition. This risks framing anti-Muslim racism as primarily a social harmony problem, rather than a matter of citizenship equality and institutional discrimination. It also ignores racialised forms of governance across the board, in particular in law enforcement and the judiciary. read the complete article

International

The imperial boomerang: colonial genealogies and the global securitisation of Muslims

This essay examines the imperial boomerang as a continuous global system of racialised governance that positions Muslims as central subjects. Drawing on postcolonial theory, critical race studies, and critical Muslim studies, it argues that techniques of control developed in colonial rule across Muslim-majority regions have returned to Western metropoles, where they are refined through the regulation of domestic Muslim minorities before being reapplied to global peripheries. Muslim societies became experimental sites for surveillance, collective punishment, and hierarchical control that now shape modern security regimes. The essay traces how former imperial powers such as Britain, France, and the Netherlands, alongside settler-colonial states including the United States and Australia, constructed ‘the Muslim’ as a perpetual threat beyond normal legal protection. It reads this circuit through four lenses: Islamophobia as structural racism; the Muslim international as global threat-figure; necropolitics and slow death; and gendered and sexual politics. read the complete article

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