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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In Germany, national election results are in and Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Conservative Party won local elections in the country’s most populous state, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) nearly tripled its share of the vote from five years ago, meanwhile in the United States, the Arizona House of Representatives will not investigate whether Rep. John Gillette violated ethics rules when he made Islamophobic comments on social media calling American Muslims “savages,” and lastly in the United Kingdom, Saturday’s far-right marches drew over 100K people to London with many ethnic minority Britons recalling similar far-right escalations 50 years ago, leaving many to fear for what the future may hold. Our recommended read of the day is by Gerhard Hoffstaedter, David Tittensor, Farida Fozdar and Adam Possamai for ABC News Australia, who write that while the new report out by the Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia addresses the symptoms of Islamophobia, it “falls short of addressing Australia’s hyper-securitisation of Islam and Muslims”. This and more below:
Australia
Can Islamophobia be addressed without dismantling the legal architecture that targets Muslims? | Recommended Read
Our research over the past few years reveals that Islamophobia in Australia is not merely a collection of individual prejudices requiring education and awareness campaigns. Rather, it is the predictable outcome of what we term “hyper-securitisation” — the unprecedented expansion of counter-terrorism laws, surveillance powers and security discourse that has institutionalised suspicion of Muslim communities and Islam more broadly. Since 2002, Australia has enacted over 90 separate pieces of counter-terrorism legislation — more than the United States, the UK or Spain, despite never experiencing a major terrorist attack on home soil. This legislative architecture, initially justified as temporary post-9/11 measures, has become permanent, creating what legal scholar Kent Roach calls “hyper-legislation” that inverts the presumption of innocence and enables punishment for pre-crimes that may never be committed. The Australian government enacted one of the most rigid and unprecedented rafts of counter-terrorism measures in a Western democracy. These laws, while ostensibly race-neutral, have disproportionately targeted Muslim communities, with the vast majority of proscribed organisations under the anti-terrorism package legislation self-identified as Islamic. How can we meaningfully combat Islamophobia while maintaining a legal framework which institutionalises the very suspicion and systemic othering that feeds anti-Muslim sentiment, which forms the basis of the “licence to hate” that the Special Envoy seeks to challenge? 2) Merz’s CDU wins election in key German state, as support for AfD surges (Germany) German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative party has won local elections in the country’s most populous state, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) nearly tripled its share of the vote from five years ago. Merz’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won about 33.3 percent of the vote in his home state of North Rhine-Westphalia, preliminary results showed on Monday. The centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) came in second with 22.1 percent, followed by the AfD, which won 14.5 percent. The figure marks a 9.4 percentage-point increase in support for the nationalist, anti-immigration party since the last election. North Rhine-Westphalia Premier Hendrik Wust, of the CDU, hailed the outcome, calling his state the “powerhouse” of the governing party. But the strong showing for the AfD, Wust told public broadcaster ARD, “must give us food for thought”. The outcome “cannot let us sleep peacefully,” he said, and centrist politicians must ask themselves “what the right answers are when it comes to poverty and migration”. read the complete article
Germany
Merz’s CDU wins election in key German state, as support for AfD surges
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative party has won local elections in the country’s most populous state, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) nearly tripled its share of the vote from five years ago. Merz’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won about 33.3 percent of the vote in his home state of North Rhine-Westphalia, preliminary results showed on Monday. The centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) came in second with 22.1 percent, followed by the AfD, which won 14.5 percent. The figure marks a 9.4 percentage-point increase in support for the nationalist, anti-immigration party since the last election. North Rhine-Westphalia Premier Hendrik Wust, of the CDU, hailed the outcome, calling his state the “powerhouse” of the governing party. But the strong showing for the AfD, Wust told public broadcaster ARD, “must give us food for thought”. The outcome “cannot let us sleep peacefully,” he said, and centrist politicians must ask themselves “what the right answers are when it comes to poverty and migration”. read the complete article
United States
Arizona House ethics panel will not investigate Rep. John Gillette over anti-Muslim comments
The Arizona House of Representatives will not investigate whether Rep. John Gillette violated ethics rules when he made Islamophobic comments on social media. House Democrats filed an ethics complaint against Gillette, a Kingman Republican, earlier this month over posts they say showed bigotry against an entire religious group by dehumanizing Muslims. That came after the Arizona Mirror reported Gillette made a series of profanity-laced posts calling Muslims “savages.” He also accused Muslim immigrants of failing to assimilate into American society and attempting to undermine the U.S. by advocating for Sharia Law. Democrats argued those comments could have dangerous impacts on Arizona residents and undermine public confidence in the Legislature. “He should be called before the Ethics Committee to answer these questions and explain to the public what his words intended and to take responsibility for the pain he has caused the community, and the potential danger in which he placed our Muslim constituents, with such hateful and inciteful words,” according to the complaint. Rep. Lupe Diaz (R-Benson), who chairs the House Ethics Committee, said he will not take any action on the complaint. read the complete article
United Kingdom
For some minority Britons the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally shows far-right politics is becoming legitimised
“I remember my father marching against the National Front in the 1970s. It felt like it was a minority. The majority of people are still decent. But now, the far right seems legitimised and popular,” Dabinderjit Singh, a retired senior civil servant said. Singh was reacting to Tommy Robinson’s 13 September far-right “unite the kingdom” rally, which drew 110,000 people to London. The rally’s attenders say they have a variety of concerns. But for some ethnic minority Britons, Saturday’s scenes were reminiscent of far-right marches 50 years ago. McIntosh knows exactly where racist sentiment can lead. The Home Office inexplicably refused to renew her and her husband’s British passports in the 1970s and 1980s, forcing them to leave the country for St Lucia for decades. She now fears, amid talk of “remigration” from the far right, hardening attitudes to legal migration in Westminster and a government struggling to convey a positive message of unity, that “another Windrush scandal” could happen. This year far-right groups have capitalised on asylum hotel protests, while the “raise the colours” campaign has led to St George’s and union flags being flown from lampposts and painted on roundabouts nationwide. Last week, police in Oldbury, West Midlands received a report that a Sikh woman had been violently sexually assaulted and told: “You don’t belong here, get out.” Robinson condemned the attack, saying shortly before the rally there was a distinction between “bad scumbags” and “decent minorities”, and that “as we attempt to unite this kingdom against mass immigration … I will speak personally of the sacrifices and great contribution that the Sikh community have made to Great Britain.” For Singh, among community leaders dealing with the attack’s aftermath, Robinson’s remarks are part of a “divide and rule” tactic in which the right has tried to “cozy up to Sikhs” and contrast them with Muslims, while Sikhs with “turbans and beards” were increasingly targeted in racial attacks after 9/11. read the complete article
India
India's top court suspends parts of contentious Muslim property law
India's Supreme Court has suspended key provisions of a controversial new law that changes how properties donated by Muslims are owned and managed in the country. The court was hearing pleas by Muslim groups and opposition parties who argue the Waqf (Amendment) Act 2025 infringes on the rights of Muslims. The government says it will make managing the properties more transparent. Historically, these properties have been governed by the Waqf Act, 1995, which mandated the formation of state-level waqf boards to manage them. But in April, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government amended the act, including changes to how a waqf property is determined and managed, sparking criticism from the community. On Monday, a bench of Chief Justice of India BR Gavai and Justice AG Masih refused to strike down the entire law saying that "the grant of stay is only in the rarest of rare category". It did, however, halt a controversial provision which allowed the government to decide whether a disputed property is waqf or not. read the complete article