Today in Islamophobia

Today in Islamophobia: In the United States, a tenured art therapy professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) was suspended from teaching and placed under investigation following a student’s complaint about a case study that mentioned violence against Palestinians, meanwhile in Canada, hundreds of Londoners gathered at the site where four members of the Afzaal family were tragically killed five years ago on June 6, and in the UK, antisemitic hate crimes recorded in May by the Metropolitan Police in London jumped by 72 per cent month-on-month, with Islamophobic hate crime was up by a third. Our recommended read of the day is by Lily Greenberg Call for the San Diego Union-Tribune on last month’s deadly shooting in San Diego and how the horrific act is being called a “direct and predictable consequence of a political climate” by Muslim community leaders. This and more below:

United States

Opinion: Leaders should have acted before attack on mosque | Recommended Read

Growing up embedded in the San Diego Jewish community, I did not know San Diego’s Muslim community well until my adulthood. That saddens me, and is a symptom of the way that Israel-Palestine has been framed in this country as a religious conflict — Jews versus Muslims — rather than what it actually is: a struggle over land, power, resources and military occupation. The communities kept apart should be neighbors, collaborators and friends. It took leaving home, serving as a political appointee in the Biden administration’s Department of the Interior, and resigning from that position in protest of U.S. policy in Gaza, before I built the relationships with San Diego’s Muslim community that I have now. The Islamic Center of San Diego is a hub for one of the largest Muslim communities in Southern California, including many Palestinian families, who have spent the past few years grieving on two continents at once. For three years, Muslim organizers and community leaders warned universities, elected officials and schools about the escalating anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hostility they were experiencing. Then the shooting happened, and the statements came. Showing up after the bodies fall is not the same as showing up when the community asks you to act. Our entire political class has to answer for the hard truth that this abandonment of a community enables the conditions that produced this attack. Muslim community leaders called the shooting a “direct and predictable consequence of a political climate” tolerant of anti-Muslim sentiment. That climate has been stoked by Republican politicians and commentators who have called for Muslims to be “destroyed” and made Islamophobia a governing ideology. But Democrats have echoed and reinforced it too — through silence, votes and policies funded. read the complete article

Muslim Rights Group CAIR Sues Virginia Schools Over Student Suspensions | Dawn News English

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, has filed a federal lawsuit against Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, alleging that four Muslim students were unlawfully disciplined because of their religion and ethnic background. The lawsuit centres on students at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, one of the United States’ top-ranked public schools. According to the complaint, school officials suspended the students over a social media video posted in October 2025 by members of the school’s Muslim Student Association. read the complete article

Open Letter to UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk

Following your announcement on May 14, 2026, “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism Publishes Roadmap to Fight Discrimination,” we write to remind you that your continuing silence on anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim racism at UCLA is highly consequential and contributes to intensifying racism and violence against Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and their allies, including Jews, on our campus. As our letters and reports show, we have tried for the past three years to bring documentary evidence of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim racism to the attention of the chancellor’s office. We have produced three substantive reports and sought often during the past three years to communicate the climate of entrenched and institutionalized anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim racism at UCLA, to no avail. Our recommendations have been summarily dismissed, as have the recommendations and resolutions of the UCLA student body addressing the same urgent matter. read the complete article

‘We call it the P-word’: Chicago professor suspended after assignment mentions Palestinians

A tenured art therapy professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) was suspended from teaching and placed under investigation following a student’s complaint about an assigned case study that mentioned violence against Palestinians. Savneet Talwar, a faculty member with the school’s art therapy and counseling program, assigned the case study in April to a class on the cultural dimensions of therapy. The assignment asked students to develop an ethical treatment plan for a hypothetical queer, Muslim woman living in the US. The language of the assignment read: “While she was not particularly politically active in her home country, protests in support of Palestine resonated with her on a personal level. She felt deeply affected by the violence against Palestinian civilians and was critical of the home government’s limited response.” The two-page assignment, which was reviewed by the Guardian, mostly focused on other elements of the client’s case, including her family history, relationships and status as an immigrant. It made no additional references to Palestine or Palestinians, and no mention of Israel. But Talwar’s department had already been mired in multiple complaints and investigations about alleged antisemitism involving the same student, and faculty had been required to take anti-bias training as the school sought to address the “climate” in the department. read the complete article

Deadly neo-Nazi attacks worsening under increased vitriol

The recent deadly attack at a San Diego mosque had all the trappings of a violent neo-Nazi ideology that has grown virulent in modern-day America. A pair of troubled, gun-toting teenage boys. A lengthy “manifesto” spewing hatred and racist-fueled myths against minorities of all types. A trail of online radicalization and warning signs that reached the FBI and local police months beforehand. A Nazi insignia left at the crime scene. And a live streaming of the attack for some of the shooters’ followers to watch. Shocking as it was, the attack – which killed three people on May 18 at the Islamic Center of San Diego, including a Muslim security guard whose heroism likely saved 140 children sent into lockdown at the center's school – was no isolated episode. And as USA TODAY reported June 3, a major White supremacist group called Patriot Front has been adding hundreds of members across 49 states in the past two years. read the complete article

N.Y.C. Council Speaker Urged to Act After Member’s Anti-Muslim Posts

City Council Speaker Julie Menin is facing increasing pressure to take action against a Republican council member with a history of making inflammatory and baseless claims about Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other Muslims, after community leaders said her recent online activity could endanger Muslims in New York. The council member, Inna Vernikov, was elected by the Council’s Jewish Caucus in January to lead its antisemitism task force, a choice that drew outrage given her past description of the mayor as a “terrorist lover” who wanted to see Jews “burn in an oven.” Ms. Menin had publicly vowed to push for Ms. Vernikov’s removal from the task force if she continued making anti-Muslim statements. But on Friday, she said she would not follow through on that pledge, despite a widely shared social media post Ms. Vernikov made last month that questioned whether Muslims were praying near a Jewish school in Brooklyn as an “intentional” act of intimidation. Through a spokesman, Ms. Menin said the Jewish Caucus, of which she is a nonvoting member, bore ultimate responsibility for Ms. Vernikov’s future on the task force. read the complete article

Canada

Moncton Muslim community denounces hate after graffiti on mosque

Graffiti telling Muslims to “go home” appeared overnight on a local mosque this week. read the complete article

Londoners honour the Afzaal family on the anniversary of their tragic deaths

Hundreds of Londoners gathered at the site where four members of the Afzaal family were tragically killed five years ago on June 6. The local Muslim community held a vigil at the intersection of South Carriage and Hyde Park Roads, then walked to Oakridge Secondary School. The event honoured the Muslim family known as Our London Family, and also aimed to raise awareness about combating hate and Islamophobia. read the complete article

Police investigating hate-motivated arson threats against Whitby women's shelter

Police in Durham Region say they are investigating a series of arson threats and hateful online comments directed at a Muslim-run women's shelter in Whitby, Ont. The threats were made against the Muslim Welfare Residences in a deleted social media post in a public Facebook group, called "Canadians Against Overreach." The original post, which CBC News read before it was deleted, incorrectly suggested the shelter was being funded by "the government" to provide "Muslim housing," and suggested Muslims should not be allowed to apply for social housing. At least two people commenting on the post discussed setting it on fire. read the complete article

Muslims in Canada release guide to combat Islamophobia

On Thursday, June 4, 2026, the National Council of Canadian Muslims presented a policy document aimed at combating Islamophobia. The guide was prepared in memory of three generations of the Afzaal family, who were killed in 2021, Anadolu Ajansı reports. Council Executive Director Khaled Al-Qazzaz told a press conference in Ottawa that Muslims continue to face violence and unequal treatment despite years of promises from the authorities. Activists urged the federal government to move beyond symbolic gestures and implement long-standing recommendations to protect religious communities. The document sets out a four-point plan to counter aggression. Muslim representatives called for stronger security at mosques and schools, as well as an accountability system within state institutions to eliminate systemic bias. read the complete article

United Kingdom

Britain’s “Sectarian Politics” Narrative Is a Dangerous Con

In February this year, the Green Party won a parliamentary by-election in Manchester’s Gorton and Denton constituency. Disgruntled members of Reform UK, whose candidate the Greens had bested, leveled allegations of “sectarianism” and “sectarian voting” at Muslim voters in the constituency. Since then, use of such language has dramatically increased. Politicians and media commentators routinely use it to stigmatize any political choices by British Muslims of which they disapprove. The Muslim voters who opted for the Greens in Gorton and Denton had given their support to a non-Muslim woman whose party is led by Zack Polanski, a gay Jewish man. This seems a long way removed from any conventional understanding of “sectarianism.” By presenting the defense of Palestine as a sectarian issue, Harris and his co-thinkers erase all the Jews in Britain and around the world who have condemned the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. There is a perverse logic behind it all: whether someone is Muslim or Jewish, they cannot take a stand in support of the Palestinians without forfeiting their right to be considered a legitimate political actor by right-wing politicians and commentators. Whatever terminology the think tanks use, the core argument is the same: issues like the genocide in Gaza have no place in local politics, which should be exclusively concerned with bin collections, fixing potholes, and the like. As Taj Ali pointed out in the Guardian, Muslim voters are in fact perfectly capable of combining anger about international issues with local concerns. read the complete article

International

Israel-linked AI firm Palantir wins £9mn contract to run UK police database

The British government has awarded US spy tech firm Palantir a multi-million-pound contract to manage a national police database despite growing public concern about the secretive company's influence over UK public services. The £9 million contract will see the controversial company set up a system for managing firearms licenses on behalf of all 43 police forces in England and Wales. Palantir – whose co-founder Peter Thiel and CEO Alex Karp are staunch Trump supporters - has become notorious for its collaboration with Israel and US immigration authorities. The $340 billion company is thought to have assisted the Israeli military creating AI-generated 'kill lists' during its genocidal assault in Gaza. It was among dozens of Western firms accused by UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese of "profiting from genocide". read the complete article

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