Today in Islamophobia

Today in Islamophobia: In India, after the Hindu nationalist BJP came into power this month in West Bengal, beef traders across the state have reported a sharp decline in sales as a climate of fear engulfs the region’s meat sellers, restaurateurs and roadside food vendors, meanwhile in the United Kingdom, experts say Islamophobic, antisemitic and racist crimes are being fueled by online disinformation, global instability and divisive political rhetoric, and in the United States, following the deadly San Diego mosque attack, over 25,000 Muslims came together for the annual ICNA conference, where speakers encouraged against Islamophobia. Our recommended read of the day is by Kenneth Mohammed for The Guardian on how, across the world, Muslim identity is treated not as a constituency to be included, but as a problem to be managed. This and more below:

International

The real danger of Islamophobia? It rarely announces itself as hatred yet shapes how millions think | Recommended Read

The horrific terrorist attack on the Islamic Centre of San Diego in California has been reported by many news outlets over the past few days. Yet as the story travelled across screens and news feeds, something more subtle unfolded: the language of reporting. Some outlets spoke of “teen suspects” and “three deceased” rather than murdered worshippers or a terrorist attack on a mosque. Words matter. They shape sympathy, urgency, and influence how violence is understood. Too often, the vocabulary of terror and extremism appears unevenly distributed; sharpened for some perpetrators but softened for others. There is a growing sense that the world is slipping backwards – not through dramatic rupture, but through the steady normalisation of hate, the coarsening of public discourse and politicians increasingly fuelling division and racism. Across the world, anti-Muslim abuse has risen sharply: mosques vandalised, women in hijabs assaulted, online spaces saturated with hate, and far-right marches openly calling for the eradication of Islam. Yet such incidents rarely command sustained outrage. They appear briefly before disappearing into the churn of the news cycle. Since 9/11, global narratives around terrorism, migration and geopolitical conflict have associated Muslim identities with threat. Reinforced by political leaders, media and state policy, these narratives have reshaped public perception across continents. What began as a response to a moment has hardened into a permanent structure. What unites these cases is simple: Muslim identity is treated not as a constituency to be included, but as a problem to be managed. read the complete article

United States

'The mosque always felt like a safe space': San Diego's Muslims reel after deadly shooting

The deadly shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego has left southern California's Muslim community reeling, with grieving residents directing their fury at city leaders for ignoring years of warnings over rising Islamophobia. Authorities say the pair appeared to have been influenced by neo-Nazi propaganda and previous anti-Muslim attacks, including the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre in New Zealand. For many in San Diego's Muslim community, the attack has deepened fears over rising Islamophobia in the United States. "We've had so many times where someone has driven by the masjid [and] fired a BB gun - throwing something at the masjid, just a lot of incidents like that. Then my wife called me, and she's like 'did you see the news? Amin is dead'. I kinda just stopped in my tracks." The shooting comes amid what advocacy groups describe as a sharp rise in anti-Muslim hate incidents since the start of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) says it has documented at least 8,658 cases of Islamophobia and anti-Arab discrimination since 2024. Samar Ismail, a graduate student at the University of California in San Diego, said Muslim organisers had repeatedly warned officials about escalating hostility. "For the past three years, since the genocide started in Palestine... we've been trying to get universities, elected officials, schools… to understand the weight of the anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian Islamophobia, we've been seeing," she told MEE. read the complete article

San Diego’s Muslim community picks up the pieces after mass shooting: ‘We’re just your neighbors’

On the morning of the shooting, a group of non-Muslims was inside the center on a tour, learning about Islam. “American Muslim institutions almost uniformly aspire to openness, to be a good neighbor, connecting with others, working on the common good, and it is part of the inheritance of Muslims building religious life inside a pluralist society,” Hatem Albazian, director of the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project at UC Berkeley, said. “But very few have committed to it as completely, as publicly, and for as long as ICSD.” Albazian has known Hassane personally and visited the center many times. “The doors are literally unlocked between prayers. These are deliberate choices sustained over decades, in the face of considerable institutional and increasing societal pressure to retreat behind security perimeters.” Albazian, who has spent decades documenting Islamophobia in the US, said the threat has changed shape significantly since the years after September 11. The backlash back then, he said, was largely driven by the government – watchlists, surveillance and immigration enforcement. Street-level violence was real but scattered, and officials at least kept their distance, rhetorically, from vigilantes. What is happening now is different, he said: “The rhetoric that was previously confined to the fringe – that Islam is not a religion, that Muslims are a civilizational threat, that mosques are forward operating bases – is now spoken openly from the floor of Congress.” The internet, he added, has made radicalization faster and easier than anything that existed two decades ago: two teenagers exchanged manifestos and turned ideology into a mass shooting. read the complete article

After San Diego shooting, Muslim Americans aim to turn grief into action

At the annual conference for the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) in Baltimore, community leaders stressed the urgency of turning the sorrow into action. Nearly 25,000 people turned out for the annual event, held on Saturday and Sunday. Speakers addressed the recent shooting, pointing to the courage of the three victims as examples for the broader community in a time of heightened Islamophobia. “We owe them more than condolences. We owe them resolve,” said Lena Masri, a lawyer at the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “Our responsibility is to protect the civic space of our community: the right to worship, the right to speak, the right to organise, the right to defend Palestine, the right to build institutions.” That was the recurring theme of the conference: that the Muslim American community cannot afford to be passive and must draw on its strength to push back against bigotry and hate. read the complete article

As San Diego's Muslim community mourns a mosque shooting, prayers turn into resolve

San Diego's Muslim community has responded with calls for unity and resilience after a deadly shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, as authorities investigate the attack as a hate crime. Two gunmen opened fire at the mosque complex on Monday, killing three people and triggering panic across the community. Officials said the suspects were motivated by a "broad hatred" and had been radicalised online. The attack has sent shockwaves through the community, which makes up less than 1 per cent of the San Diego metropolitan area, and has also prompted a strong collective response rejecting intimidation. Thousands of people have gathered for vigils, drawing support from across California and beyond. Community leaders have emphasised resilience and solidarity, saying the response to the attack reflects a refusal to be driven into fear. read the complete article

How anti-Muslim hate enabled the San Diego mosque attack

The little boy’s mother immigrated to the United States from Gaza two decades ago. Being in this country did not, however, prevent her son from being victimised by the ideology of anti-Muslim hate that has targeted hundreds of thousands of children in her homeland. The same ideology that led to the massacre at the Islamic Center of San Diego has inspired the Israeli government’s killing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims, the expulsion of millions more from their homes, and attacks on countless mosques across Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. It is the ideology that justifies describing the Palestinian people as ‘Amalek’ and treating them as subhuman. It is also the ideology that justifies the Israeli government’s restriction of Muslims from entering one of their holiest sites, the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It is the hatred that inspires the Burmese government’s genocide of the Rohingya people, the far-right Hindutva government’s enabling of mob violence and persecution of Muslims in India, and the Chinese government’s mass internment of Uyghurs in concentration camps. It is an ideology held not only by the genocidal governments abroad and lunatic mass killers, but also by the current US administration and a large number of American lawmakers. read the complete article

United Kingdom

‘A Pyramid of Hate’: Why Racial and Religious Attacks Are Rising in Britain

On a cold October night in Walsall, England, last year, John Ashby followed a British Indian woman off a bus, broke into her house and then brutally raped and beat her. During the attack, Mr. Ashby, 32, told the woman, “You are a Muslim, I know” — though she was, in fact, Sikh — and he ordered her to perform acts to degrade the Islamic faith, prosecutors said at his sentencing last month. Mr. Ashby pleaded guilty to rape, to religiously aggravated assault and to other crimes and was sentenced to life in prison. The assault was one of a rising number of racial and religious attacks in recent years in Britain, where police data shows that antisemitic, anti-Muslim and racially motivated offenses have all increased. That reflects a broader trend in Europe, where countries including Spain have experienced anti-migrant riots and a recent election in France became a flashpoint for racial tensions. Chief Constable Mark Hobrough, who leads the British police’s efforts to tackle hate crime, said in an interview that he thinks the problem has been fueled in part by online disinformation, combined with global instability and increasingly divisive political rhetoric. He “passionately believes” in freedom of expression, he said, but warned of a “pyramid of hate” in which online vitriol and incitement “generate an acceptance” for real-world abuse. read the complete article

'Unite the Kingdom': How Islamophobia became central to British nationalism

British nationalism has now become so synonymous with Anti-Muslim sentiment that it’s almost impossible to disentangle national pride from Islamophobia. The “Unite the Kingdom” march that was organised by Tommy Robinson this past weekend exemplifies this shift towards a total eclipsing of patriotism with Islamophobic hate. As mainstream media’s silence appears to signal these are acceptable scenes of public display and use of national symbols, it has left many of us wondering why certain forms of racism are deemed proper and what it means that a political system is happy to sacrifice its entire self-image at the altar of xenophobia and fear. Anti-Muslim marches have reached such extremes and are so alarmingly common that we now have a definitive blueprint – the Union Jack-plastered crowds, the slurred expletive-filled Islamophobic chants, the incoherent ‘shariah law’-filled ramblings, all a charade of Islamophobic hate. Red, white and blue washed under the guise of patriotism. It has left many of us wondering why a supposedly pro-British rally ostensibly designed to foment national pride and belonging, centred so definitively on Muslims. read the complete article

India

Cattle market empties as fear grips Eid preparations in India’s West Bengal

For decades, the Dhulagarh cattle market was visited by sellers – almost all of them Hindus – and Muslim buyers to prepare for a ritualistic sacrifice to mark Eid al-Adha. Besides a goat or sheep, many Muslim families often pool together money to sacrifice a steer, buffalo or camel and divide the meat in seven equal shares for the “qurbani”. Although a 1950 law prohibits public slaughter of cattle, the culturally diverse state of West Bengal has long been ruled by Marxists or centrist political forces that chose not to implement it strictly. The state and its capital became thriving food hubs, famous for the several beef and meat delicacies sold on carts along its bustling streets and in its many restaurants. But all that changed on May 6 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stormed to power in West Bengal for the first time. A week after the elections, new Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, the highest elected official in the state, ordered the strict implementation of the 1950 law, which prevents any cattle slaughter without a valid certificate from a government official declaring the animals “fit for slaughter”. The butchering must be carried out only in a municipal slaughterhouse or one identified by the local administration. The law also mandates that all animals to be slaughtered must be above 14 years of age. After the BJP’s electoral win in the state, beef traders across West Bengal have reported a sharp decline in sales as a climate of fear engulfs the eastern state’s meat sellers, restaurateurs and roadside food vendors. read the complete article

New Zealand

Muslim leaders warn NZ facing worst anti-Muslim extremism in 20 years

Muslim community leaders are warning that New Zealand is facing the most dangerous environment with the worst anti-Muslim extremism in two decades. Terror threats have surged, along with online radicalisation and hate-fuelled crime now eclipsing even the climate before the March 15 Christchurch mosque attacks. Federation of Islamic Associations chairperson Abdur Razzaq said community leaders were preparing to urgently seek a meeting with the prime minister amid what he described as an "unprecedented" escalation in threats against mosques and Muslim communities nationwide. "What we are seeing now is a level of threat - really tangible, incredible threats against mosques and Muslims in New Zealand - which we have never seen before," Razzaq said. "Even before March 15 in 2019, this is a level that we haven't seen." Razzaq said online hate targeting Muslims had "gone through the roof." read the complete article

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