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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In France, a far-right extremist’s murder of two immigrants in cold blood in May is a part of a trend of anti-religious hate crimes in the country with analysis saying such crimes are up by %11 in the country, meanwhile in Israel, Palestinian citizens of the country, like those in Tamra, face systemic discrimination—denied access to public bomb shelters, neglected in emergency response, and offered far less protection than Jewish citizens, and in Canada, the Montreal police hate crimes unit is investigating after a mosque in the city’s downtown was defaced with anti-Palestinian graffiti earlier this week. Our recommended read of the day is by Baroness Shaista Gohir OBE for The Independent, who states that when politicians stir up fear around the burqa or the veil, they are not defending public safety – they are inflaming prejudice for political gain. This and more below:
United Kingdom
A burqa ban won’t protect or unite Britain – it will divide us | Recommended Read
It wasn’t surprising to hear newly elected Reform MP Sarah Pochin call for a ban on the burqa – such calls resurface from time to time. What was surprising, however, was her decision to use her very first parliamentary question to raise this issue, rather than ask about pressing concerns such as the cost of living, NHS pressures or the rise in crime levels. Instead, she chose to single out and stigmatise Muslim women, making unfounded claims about public safety. On reflection, though, Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) provided a high-profile national platform, making it an ideal stage to stir further negativity towards Muslims. Targeting Muslims has become a convenient marketing tool for some right-wing politicians – a tactic used to gain support, attract media attention and generate publicity, regardless of the real-life consequences. The most common arguments used to justify prohibiting the veil in public are actually irrational. Tired and prejudiced tropes are used, such as suggesting women are being forced to wear the veil and need to be “liberated”, that it is a threat to public safety, that it is an obstacle to integration, or that it is simply visually offensive. Debates around women who wear the face veil are often driven by assumptions rather than grounded in evidence. In reality, the vast majority of Muslim women who choose to wear it do so voluntarily and for a variety of reasons – religious, cultural or personal. For many, it’s an expression of faith, identity, modesty or spiritual commitment. Some even find it empowering, as it shifts the focus from appearance to character. It is clearly a frightening time for Muslim women, especially those who are visibly identifiable by their clothing. Coded language by politicians that normalises hostility towards Muslims fuels fear and hatred, and deepens societal intolerance, making them feel unsafe. read the complete article
Reform Is Reheating the Burqa Ban. It’s Obvious Why
Thanks to an unexpected question from Reform MP Sarah Pochin at Prime Minister’s Questions last week, her subsequent doubling down and Zia Yusuf’s quit-rejoin furore, ‘ban the burqa!’ is once again echoing across the land. Talk shows, newspapers and politicians alike pontificate about what Muslim women like me should and shouldn’t be allowed to do with our bodies – as if that’s the most important issue facing our country. This is hardly a surprise, though. Lately it feels like we can barely go a few weeks without a new wave of Islamophobia bubbling to the surface of our national political discourse. Cast a glance back to the last year or so and we’ve seen Palestine protesters labelled terrorists and extremists, Muslim men of Pakistani origin profiled as child groomers, a member of the House of Lords claiming Muslim radicals are seeking to take over Britain through the “power of the womb” and moral panic over a questionable study suggesting that white people would soon become a minority, with Muslims accounting for 1 in 5 Britons by the end of the century. As I write this, rightwing media outlets are descending into a frenzy about blasphemy laws, triggered by the prosecution of Hamit Coskun who burned a Qur’an earlier this year outside the Turkish embassy in London. And of course that’s before you get to the far-right riots that erupted across the country last summer which saw mosques damaged, Muslim-owned businesses vandalised and attacks on hotels housing asylum seekers. As anyone visibly Muslim navigating life in Britain knows all too well, it is currently the most dangerous time to be a Muslim in British history with Islamophobic assaults rising by 73% in 2024. As a 30-year-old, the direct aftermath of 9/11 isn’t quite in my conscious memory but I do distinctly remember periods when Islamophobia has felt more palpable and intense – after major terror attacks, post-Brexit and the repercussions of Boris Johnson’s “letterbox” comment, during the height of Isis and the heyday of the EDL and UKIP. But what we are seeing now feels different: a more relentless and systemic dehumanisation than I have witnessed before. read the complete article
'We're not going anywhere' Scot who led UK's Muslims on Islamophobia
As Zara Mohammed steps down as head of the Muslim Council of Britain, she talks to our Writer at Large about racism, Reform and rioting Zara Mohammed has a nervous habit of laughing as she describes distinctly unfunny events. Memories of being physically confronted by a screaming racist on the London underground. Laughter. Recalling the Tory Party’s attempt to label her an extremist. Laughter. Describing the violence her dad faced from the National Front. Laughter. It’s an understandable defence mechanism. At just 29, Mohammed scored an astonishing hat-trick, becoming the first woman, youngest person, and first Scot to lead the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). The experience, however, was deeply bruising. She took the organisation, which represents Britain’s Muslims, through its most stormy period since September 11, navigating events like Gaza and the far-right riots. Mohammed doesn’t hide the toll it took on her mental health. So using laughter as a barrier between her and the past seems psychologically sound. She’s now stepped down, and giving her first major interview since the job ended to the Herald on Sunday. read the complete article
International
‘They just see you as an Arab’: Israel’s Palestinian citizens given cursory protection from attack
The war between Israel and Iran involves powerful modern weapons that can turn a human body into vapour and scraps in an instant. Israel also has modern air defences which have managed thus far to intercept most of the incoming Iranian missiles. And for three-quarters of the country there are underground bunkers, a virtual guarantee of survival. But the Khatib family did not have a bunker. They were Palestinian citizens of Israel, like the rest of the 37,000 population of this old hillside town in the Lower Galilee. And in common with most Palestinian-majority towns, Tamra does not have a single underground shelter. Like much else in Israel, there is nothing equal about the way death comes from the sky. “The Israeli government, since the creation of the state, didn’t invest in one public shelter for the Arab part of society,” Tamra’s mayor, Mussa Abu Rumi, said. The reinforced “safe rooms” in new-build houses are an inferior alternative, as the fate of the Khatibs showed, and Abu Rumi said only 40% of Tamra residents even have those. “I would like to think that the government, since missiles have become part of warfare, will start a multi-dimensional programme to invest in the Arab community, and building shelters would be part of that,” the mayor said. Asked if he thought the current hard-right coalition would pursue such a programme, he shook his head and admitted there was “no hope”. While missile strike sites in Tel Aviv, Rishon ReZion and Bat Yam have been flooded with rescue workers, home front troops, police and volunteers, most of the clear-up in Tamra was done by neighbours and a handful of municipal workers. “We are trying to engage with Israeli society all the time,” the mayor said. “What we find is hatred, and people who don’t see you as a legitimate human being in this place.” He said the centre in Israeli politics had collapsed, and with it the few protections Palestinian citizens of Israel could count on. read the complete article
Far-right parties surge across Europe
Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has classified the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as "confirmed right-wing extremist." Germany's other political parties want mostly nothing to do with it. Some politicians have even called for it to be banned. What does the situation look like in the rest of Europe? Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) recently caused the four-party coalition that it led to collapse because it had not cracked down hard enough on migration in its view. If it were up to Wilders alone, he would ban all new mosques and the Quran. He is also a vocal critic of green strategies to tackle climate change, and he views the European Union as being too overbearing. Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Alliance is probably the most successful far-right party in Europe. Thanks to its leader Viktor Orban, the party was in power in Hungary between 1998 and 2002 and continuously again since 2010. Founded in 1988, shortly before the collapse of communism, as a radical liberal force, the party remained on this course for a long time. But Orban and his party has swung to the right since at least 2015, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel proclaimed a "welcome culture" for refugees. Fidesz is now explicitly in favor of illiberal democracy, seeing the "Christian West" as threatened by foreign infiltration and wanting to strongly limit the influence of the EU. read the complete article
The more Israel kills, the more the West portrays it as a victim
Early on Friday morning, Israel launched unprovoked air strikes deep inside Iranian territory, targeting sites near Isfahan and Tehran. Among those reportedly killed were scientists, senior government officials and civilians, including women and children. Yet, within hours, western leaders and media outlets cast Israel's aggression as "preemptive" self-defence. US officials claimed that Israel acted to thwart an "imminent" Iranian threat, while Senate Majority Leader John Thune insisted the strikes were necessary to counter "Iranian aggression" and protect Americans. Despite its ongoing belligerence across the region, the depiction of violent, predatory Israel as a victim of its victims has prevailed in the West since before the establishment of the settler-colonial state in 1948. The more lands and people Israel conquers and oppresses, the more insistently the West portrays it as the victim. This framing was no accident. Today, even that genocide is presented in the West as a matter of self-defence. Israel, we are told, remains the victim of its victims - 200,000 of whom it has killed or injured in its latest war to "defend itself". The June 1967 War elevated Israel to the status of untouchable, saintly victimhood in the West. Its supporters multiplied, among western Christians and Jews alike, who viewed Arabs and Palestinians as the oppressors of Israel. Indeed, it was this climate of extreme anti-Arab hostility that marked a turning point in the politicisation of the late intellectual Edward Said, who witnessed it first-hand in the United States. Israel's territorial conquests were celebrated as acts of heroic self-defence - a deliberate inversion of victim and aggressor that continues to shape western perceptions. read the complete article
United States
The rise of Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s hardline immigration policy
With Los Angeles convulsed by confrontation between pro-migrant protesters and military units dispatched by Donald Trump, no figure apart from the president has loomed larger than Stephen Miller. As the long-term architect of Trump’s years-long effort to reinvent US immigration policy, he has pressed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents to intensify efforts to arrest migrants as deportation figures fell far short of pre-election promises. Amid the hullabaloo and expressions of outrage, Miller may allowed himself a quiet smile of satisfaction over sticking it to the city of his birth – in many ways emblematic of the progressive cultural trends despised by Trump’s “Make America great again” (Maga) followers but a place where his own hardline anti-immigrant views had long provoked derision. The son of affluent Jewish parents, Miller’s evolution into a race-baiting provocateur took shape in the upscale suburb of Santa Monica, where he gained notoriety as an incendiary agitator at the eponymous local high school. Video footage purportedly from the period and circulated on social media shows a bearded Miller stridently voicing his disdainful view of school janitorial staff. “Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do this,” he shouts into a microphone. The gross statement seems to have been representative of a broader canvas of toxic ideas, with racism at its core. Miller’s indulgence in far-right ideas continued during his college years at Duke University in North Carolina, where he associated with white nationalist thinkers and groups. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, he worked with the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which it defined as a “an anti-Muslim hate group”, and also with Richard Spencer, a white nationalist leader who popularized the term “alt-right” to describe groups that defined themselves through a white racial identity. read the complete article
CAIR-Chicago Condemns Islamophobic Fear-Mongering by Hemant Patel, the new President of the Federation of Indian Associations
The Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Chicago) today expressed serious concern regarding the recent Islamophobic fear mongering by Hemant Patel, the new President of the Federation of Indian Associations (FIA). Under Hemant Patel’s leadership, Shree Sanatan, the organization for which he serves as president, distributed a flyer containing content that CAIR-Chicago believes promotes harmful stereotypes and misinformation, that he personally shared on his public social media platforms in May 2025, raising concern among members of the local community. read the complete article
Germany
The politics of blame: Accusing immigrants won’t solve Germany’s antisemitism problem
In response to a report on the virulence of antisemitism in Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently cast the blame on attitudes held by immigrants. Merz stated in a Fox News interview that Germany has “imported antisemitism with the big numbers of migrants we have within the last 10 years.” Merz is pointing to a real and pressing issue. Yet his emphasis on so-called “imported antisemitism” serves as a convenient diversion from Germany’s persistent failure to confront home-grown antisemitism. His remarks also risk emboldening those who weaponize antisemitism as a rhetorical tool to fuel anti-immigrant sentiments. Blaming a rise in antisemitism on “imported” attitudes or “foreign ideologies” signals a crude simplification. Antisemitism has remained prevalent in German society even after the Second World War, and political movements or leaders can easily mobilize it. Blaming immigrants for challenges in Germany’s memory culture oversimplifies a deeper issue: the growing difficulty of making the country’s dominant remembrance — centred on the horrors of the Nazi dictatorship and the Holocaust — politically meaningful and emotionally resonant for younger generations. At the same time, the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party poses a direct threat to Germany’s culture of remembrance. The AfD has made it a central objective to challenge the primacy of Holocaust memory, calling for a U-turn in Germany’s remembrance culture. read the complete article
Canada
Montreal police investigating after a mosque was defaced with hateful graffiti
The Montreal police hate crimes unit is investigating after a mosque in the city's downtown was defaced with anti-Palestinian graffiti earlier this week. The words "F--k Gaza" were painted multiple times on the exterior walls of The Canadian Institute of Islamic Civilization, at the intersection of Belmont Street and Union Avenue, Tuesday evening. The organization that manages the mosque, the Muslim Association of Canada, said no one was injured, and that the incident isn't an isolated one. It's calling on officials to bring awareness to the growing convergence of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism given heightened tensions due to the situation in Gaza. "It reflects a dangerous national climate in which mosques, Muslims, Palestinians, and Canadians who speak out for Gaza are increasingly targeted and vilified," it said in a statement. Montreal police say they are looking at surveillance footage and no arrests have been made. read the complete article
France
A far-right inspired murder forces France to wrestle with what counts as terrorism
Hichem Miraoui, a 45-year-old Tunisian barber, was at home in the south of France late in May, chatting on the phone with his mother and sisters, when a neighbour drove past and shot him dead on his doorstep. After killing Miraoui and shooting Kurdish neighbour Akif Badur in the hand, Christophe Belgembe posted four videos on Facebook, according to France's anti-terror prosecutor's office, known as PNAT. Bemoaning a state "unable to protect us, unable to send them home," Belgembe said he had "taken out two or three pieces of shit" and this was only the beginning. Belgembe surrendered to police a few hours later and confessed his guilt, the PNAT said. Belgembe denied any racist or terrorist motivation but the PNAT charged him with racially motivated, premeditated murder and attempted murder as part of a terrorist undertaking. It was the first time the PNAT, which can take over any criminal investigation it believes meets the criteria for terrorism, has investigated a murder inspired by far-right ideas. Terrorism sentences are tougher, and counter-terrorism forces have greater investigative powers. The PNAT's move is indicative of a broader shift in France, where jihadist attacks have fallen while racist, xenophobic or anti-religious crimes are up 11% compared with last year amid growing support for the far-right. Miraoui's family, Muslim leaders and anti-racism groups welcomed the decision to investigate Belgembe under terrorism laws but said French authorities had been slow to view far-right crimes as terrorism. read the complete article