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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In Germany, a civil society report by the organization Claim documented more than 3,000 anti-Muslim incidents in the country in 2024 alone, meanwhile in the United Kingdom, trustees of the The Oxford Union, a student-led group based within Oxford University, are threatening to shut the group down if student’s don’t delete a video of a speech made by Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa, and in France, violent messages have surfaced in an official online support group for French far-right leader Jordan Bardella, reigniting concerns over the Rassemblement National’s efforts to curb extremist content. Our recommended read of the day is by Hanan Zaffar and Danish Pandit for TRT Global on how India’s anti-Muslim ‘love jihad’ conspiracy theory is slowly being exposed for what it is as mounting acquittals continue to upend this dangerous ideology. This and more below:
India
How ‘love jihad’ charges against Muslims are falling apart in India, one case at a time | Recommended Read
In December 2020, a 16-year-old Mohammad Saqib was dragged off a village road near his friend’s house in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and assaulted by a group of men. Hours later, he found himself behind bars, accused of one of India’s most controversial and politically-charged crimes: ‘love jihad’, the alleged conspiracy by Muslim men to seduce and convert Hindu women. “I was returning from a birthday party with a friend when I saw some boys stopping a girl on the road,” Saqib tells TRT World. “I asked what was going on, and they attacked me (without any apparent provocation). Later, the police arrived and took me to the station. Even though the girl told them I wasn’t with her, they still charged me.” Saqib, now 20, was recently acquitted after nearly four years of legal battles, over 70 court hearings, and a six-month jail stay. His case, according to his lawyer, is the first full acquittal in Uttar Pradesh under the state’s anti-conversion legislation, commonly known as the ‘love jihad law’. Enacted in 2020, Uttar Pradesh’s unlawful conversion law criminalises religious conversion through marriage, coercion, or deceit, but critics say the law is being misused to harass Muslim men. read the complete article
United States
Harvard Releases Antisemitism and Anti-Muslim Task Force Reports
The two reports fit together awkwardly. In some respects, they align: each task force calls for stronger anti-bullying policies, more respectful-discourse programs, and greater consistency in academic and disciplinary policies. Each report shares stories of students treated with disdain, attacked on social media, pressured to hide their identities, and pushed to the periphery of campus life. Each asks that the studied group’s suffering be assessed in its own right, not compared to the other group’s. Some of the most concrete—and concerning—passages in both reports come from a survey issued jointly by the two task forces in the spring of 2024, which found that most respondents (from a voluntary, self-selected group) “do not feel comfortable expressing their political views and believe doing so would jeopardize their academic and professional careers.” As the task forces wrote in a joint introduction to the survey: “On nearly every measure, Muslim and Jewish identifiers are less comfortable sharing their views and are more likely to report experience with discrimination than Christians and Atheists.” One stark example was physical safety: among the students who responded to the survey, 56 percent of Muslims, 26 percent of Jews, 12 percent of Christians, and 6 percent of atheists said they felt physically unsafe on campus. Another was the ability to speak freely: of the student survey respondents, 80 percent of Muslims, 67 percent of Jews, 53 percent of Christians, and 41 percent of atheists said they felt uncomfortable expressing their opinions to others on campus. Both task forces condemned some tactics by outside groups. The anti-Muslim report discusses the doxxing of pro-Palestine student activists and notes that many students felt that the University did not adequately defend its students. The antisemitism report begins with an addendum asking “external parties, even if well-intentioned”—a reference many have taken to mean the Trump administration—not to “seek to compel adoption of some of our proposed reforms.” It continued, “If they do so, they will make it more difficult for Harvard to fix itself.” read the complete article
ADL Fuels Islamophobia and Betrays Its Civil Rights Mission
For decades, when the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was mentioned, it was usually in reference to combatting antisemitism. Now the ADL is more accurately cited in the litany of pro-Israeli groups attempting to criminalize Muslim and Palestinian students for seeking an end to the horrific genocide in Gaza. For over a hundred years, the ADL has described itself as a leading civil rights organization focused on Jewish American communities but also recognizing that the civil rights of Jews are interconnected with those of other minority communities. Indeed, the ADL was among the few non-Black organizations supportive of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the gradual acceptance of Jewish Americans by white Christians into the social construction of “whiteness” starting in the 1970s, after decades of anti-Jewish discrimination, caused a divergence in economic and political interests with racial minority communities that continue to face systemic racism. Of course, that does not mean antisemitism no longer exists, but it is not structural—as it was when Jews were victims of housing segregation, admissions quotas at universities, explicit racial tropes in mainstream media, exclusion from elite law firms, and underrepresentation in elected office. Simultaneously, the ADL’s increasingly pro-Israeli donor base equated combating antisemitism with censoring critiques of Zionism and defending the state of Israel’s policies. The ADL branded their revised agenda as “The New Antisemitism.” The ADL has increasingly become associated with spreading Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism. Since the start of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza in the fall of 2023, the ADL has been deploying its substantial resources to stop student activism and protests on university campuses—with seemingly little regard for the fundamental American right to free speech and political assembly. Put simply, an established civil rights organization is targeting two of the minority groups most discriminated against today: Palestinians and Muslims. Such targeting goes beyond racist speech into advocacy to harm real people—mirroring the tactics of antisemites in the interwar years of the twentieth century. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Oxford Union defies trustees' threat to shut it down over pro-Palestine speech
The Oxford Union, founded in 1823, describes itself as the most prestigious debating society in the world. The student-led organisation at the University of Oxford says its "roots lie in free speech". It has hosted scores of world leaders and multiple British prime ministers. William Gladstone, Edward Heath and Boris Johnson were once union presidents. But now, the institution has been plunged into chaos over a debate it held last year on Israel's war on Gaza. Students are clashing with the union's trustees, who have threatened to shut the institution down if it publishes a video of a speech by Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa. Middle East Eye can reveal that the union's standing committee voted on Monday to publish the full video of Abulhawa's speech - but some union officials fear the president will not do so under pressure from trustees. "The Oxford Union was one of few places where we could have debates like this without the influence of moneyed interests," a senior union official who asked to remain anonymous told MEE. "Students are supposed to organise debates without being influenced by power and money. But now the trustees are pressuring the committee. "This is censorship of pro-Palestinian speech." read the complete article
Germany
Germany sees sharp rise in incidents of Islamophobia
A civil society report by the organization Claim documented more than 3,000 anti-Muslim incidents in Germany in 2024. The report links the surge to geopolitical events and warns of growing normalization and brutality in anti-Muslim racism. Separately, Germany's commissioner for victims of the former East German regime, Evelyn Zupke, has called for more public attention to the often-overlooked impact of East Germany's state-run doping program, especially on minors, in her 2025 annual report. read the complete article
International
‘Hate speech is poison in the well of society,’ says Guterres
“It is an alarm bell: the louder it rings, the greater the threat of genocide,” he warned. As part of its core mission to combat hatred, discrimination, racism and inequality, the UN is stepping up efforts to challenge hate speech wherever it arises. “Hate speech is poison in the well of society. It has paved the way for violence and atrocities during the darkest chapters of human history,” Mr. Guterres added. Hate speech often fuels violence and intolerance, with ethnic and religious minorities among the most frequent targets. While the destructive power of hatred is nothing new, today it is being amplified by modern communication technologies. Online hate speech has become one of the most prevalent means of spreading divisive narratives, posing a growing threat to peace and security around the world. read the complete article
France
French far-right urges MPs to quit Facebook groups spreading hate speech
Violent messages have surfaced in an official online support group for French far-right leader Jordan Bardella, reigniting concerns over the Rassemblement National's efforts to curb extremist content. On Tuesday, the secretary-general of the Rassemblement National (RN) group in the National Assembly, Renaud Labaye, confirmed to AFP that he had asked the far-right party’s MPs to leave any Facebook group sharing antisemitic, anti-Muslim or homophobic content. The controversy had been building in recent days following an investigation by the news site Les Jours, which revealed the presence of racist messages and calls to murder in an official support group for Bardella, the party’s president. Among the comments posted after unrest that followed Paris Saint-Germain’s Champions League victory were: “Getting rid of this shit is the solution”; “animals, nothing human about them”; and “how much I hate these savages”. Another post in the group urged members to “Vote properly next time”, directly echoing the racist message in a video made by a man who shot dead a Tunisian neighbour with five bullets in the South of France last month. The closed group, entitled 'France with Jordan Bardella', had more than 84,000 members before being deactivated days ago, including 16 far-right MPs. Four of them were listed among the group's 36 administrators, alongside party officials, elected representatives and parliamentary staff. read the complete article