Today in Islamophobia

Today in Islamophobia: In the United States, an ex-Israeli intelligence agent has drawn widespread condemnation after delivering a bigoted and hostile speech targeting American Muslims, the global Muslim community, the Holy Quran, and Prophet Muhammad during a Jewish-American summit held recently in Los Angeles, meanwhile in France, far-right presidential front-runner Marine Le Pen is under fire after doubling down on her proposal to ban women from wearing the hijab in public, despite doubts within her own party about the policy, and lastly, CBS reporter Zak Hudak published an article headlined with the critique that Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed “deleted tweets on Sept. 11 attacks” in a move several media analysts are calling Islamophobic. Our recommended read of the day is by Tyler Hicks for Inkstick on how ahead of the upcoming Midterms, Texas Republicans are putting Muslims “in the line of fire” to further their political appeal in the region. This and more below:

United States

Ahead of Midterms, Texas Republicans Put Muslims in Line of Fire | Recommended Read

From standing-room-only city council meetings debating the supposed “Islamization of Texas” to campaign ads warning of “Muslim mass immigration,” Islamophobia has become a fixture in Texas politics. Texas Republicans have claimed the state is at risk of an “Islamic takeover” and that Muslims are seeking to impose Sharia law, the moral and religious code drawn from the Qur’an. During a recent city council meeting in McKinney, for instance, US Representative Keith Self went as far as to describe plans for a new mosque as the manifestation of “political Islam.” Self has also introduced legislation in Congress to ban the implementation of the jizya, a religious tax on non-Muslims that no one has attempted to introduce in Texas or the rest of the country. At the same time, state Republicans have championed similar bills in the state legislature. Meanwhile, data shows that anti-Muslim hate is increasing online at the same time that discrimination and hate crimes are on the rise in the US and abroad. In 2025, the Council on American Islamic Relations received complaints of more than 8,600 Islamophobic incidents. That tally includes violence, workplace harassment, and hate speech — and it marks the highest the advocacy group has ever recorded in nearly three decades. The many Muslim Americans interviewed for this story worry about both the violence and the mental toll the hatred takes on their community as a contentious primary election draws closer. What’s more, as anti-Muslim xenophobia creeps closer into everyday life, Texans worry that violence like the Mooswi shooting, the stabbing of an Austin man, or the attempted drowning of a three-year-old still isn’t being taken seriously enough by people in power. In fact, many argue there is a clear, underdiscussed link between a rise in public hate and Israel’s war in Gaza that many human rights organizations call a genocide. read the complete article

Cisco accused of fostering a hostile workplace for Muslim and Arab employees

The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has found that the networking technology company Cisco may have violated the civil rights of Middle Eastern and Muslim employees amid a wave of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim comments on internal messaging platforms at the company. In June, the EEOC, which is tasked with enforcing the US’s anti-discrimination laws, said Cisco subjected its employees to a hostile work environment, according to a letter of determination obtained by Al Jazeera. “These Cisconians have, among other things, repeatedly glorified violence, joked about sending people to their deaths, likened Palestinians and those with opposing viewpoints to animals, labeled Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims as murderous, violent terrorists, joked about respecting a person’s gender identity,” the 76-page report said. It added that the Connected Jewish Network was not even a “safe space for all of our Jewish colleagues”. The EEOC’s determination said that the company had retaliated against one unnamed staffer for “her involvement in pro-Palestine efforts by terminating the individual”. read the complete article

Cisco accused of fostering a hostile workplace for Muslim and Arab employees

The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has found that the networking technology company Cisco may have violated the civil rights of Middle Eastern and Muslim employees amid a wave of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim comments on internal messaging platforms at the company. In June, the EEOC, which is tasked with enforcing the US’s anti-discrimination laws, said Cisco subjected its employees to a hostile work environment, according to a letter of determination obtained by Al Jazeera. “These Cisconians have, among other things, repeatedly glorified violence, joked about sending people to their deaths, likened Palestinians and those with opposing viewpoints to animals, labeled Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims as murderous, violent terrorists, joked about respecting a person’s gender identity,” the 76-page report said. It added that the Connected Jewish Network was not even a “safe space for all of our Jewish colleagues”. The EEOC’s determination said that the company had retaliated against one unnamed staffer for “her involvement in pro-Palestine efforts by terminating the individual”. read the complete article

CBS News Spins El-Sayed’s 9/11 Tweets Into a Manufactured Anti-Muslim Scandal

It always felt inevitable that Bari Weiss’s tenure at CBS News would see the network devolve into rank Islamophobia — but even for most of us, who took a dim view of her takeover of the news behemoth, tying Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed to the 9/11 attacks was an unexpected new low. To make matters worse, many centrist Democrats and their allies cleared the way for just this kind of attack. On Monday, CBS reporter Zak Hudak published an article headlined with the critique that El-Sayed’s “deleted tweets on Sept. 11 attacks invite scrutiny of past remarks.” Weiss, whose time in charge of CBS has been rife with controversy, was reportedly deeply involved with the story’s promotion and framing, going so far as to praise it in a newsroom meeting and champion it “to the entire network,” according to media-industry newsletter Status. She “even personally directed the headline to be tweaked to specifically mention” the 9/11 angle. Weiss’s guidance led to CBS News’s racist framing that there’s just something different — even untrustworthy — about El-Sayed, and that the upcoming 25th anniversary of 9/11 is the right time to ask what that is. In doing so, she’s embracing a long-standing bipartisan tradition of Muslim dehumanization — a playbook still being deployed on both sides of the aisle. The current anti-Muslim environment reflects the growth and regression in the country since the 9/11 moment: growth in the number of Muslims in political and public life, and the regressive backlash to multicultural liberalism that’s defined the Trump era. read the complete article

Islamophobia, 25 years after 9/11

Journalist Rozina Ali’s new book, “Seasons of Fury,” traces the history of Islamophobia — from FBI surveillance in the 1960s to the surveillance programs that followed 9/11 — through the lives of four American families. In this episode of “Settle In,” Amna Nawaz spoke with Ali about her new book, what she learned about decades of government surveillance and what she thinks about anti-Muslim rhetoric today. read the complete article

How Islamophobia Was Built Into U.S. Policy and Law Even Before 9/11

Constant surveillance, anti-immigration policies, and open hatred… Has Islamophobia in the U.S. gotten worse since 9/11? And did anti-Muslim bigotry in America exist long before then? Yes and yes, argues journalist and author Rozina Ali, as she joins Mehdi for a conversation about the history of Islamophobia and her powerful new book, Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America. Ali’s book examines the way Islamophobia is “manufactured and encouraged” in the U.S., tracing its roots back well before 9/11, to the 1940s. Today, xenophobic persecution is not reserved for Muslims. Ali explains how the Donald Trump administration is using vague anti-terror laws to target anyone it deems a political enemy. Watch the full video to hear Ali break down the way “thousands and thousands” of Muslim Americans were surveilled by the FBI and undercover informants, and explore the role Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu played in shaping what we know to be Islamophobia today. read the complete article

Fury as ex-Israeli spy delivers bigoted speech against Muslims, Quran and Prophet Muhammad in US

Israeli intelligence agency as "the Green Prince", has drawn widespread condemnation after delivering a hostile speech targeting American Muslims, the global Muslim community, the Holy Quran, and Prophet Muhammad during a Jewish-American summit held in Los Angeles. A video widely shared on social media from the summit shows Yousef — son of a senior Hamas leader and a Christian convert — remarking: "I don't want Muslims in America. Get the f**k out of the United States. Go back to the "sh**house where you came from and reform your own countries." Ironically, the crowd applauded the speaker's incendiary remarks in the summit organised by Aish Los Angeles, an Orthodox Jewish outreach group, and sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish National Fund, and other major pro-Israel and pro-Gaza genocide groups. Yousef, who backs Israeli genocide in Gaza and occupation of Palestine, continued: "I don't give a f*** about your Quran, I don't give a f*** about your p********* prophet, and I don't give a f*** about your entire belief system. You disgust me." read the complete article

It's Always 9/11 Somewhere

This is 9/11 politics. It's supposed to be a four-move checkmate, to shut down any consideration of El-Sayed on the merits, by making you fear someone different from you. It sits at the intersection of racism and class war, since the purpose of demonizing El-Sayed is to keep him from a position where he might tax wealth and redistribute it to fund access to health care for the working class. We saw this—and continue to see this—deployed against Zohran Mamdani. It failed. I will not lie to you and act like my two weeks in Michigan give me any insight into the senate race. But these will be the stakes of the race, whether El-Sayed wins or loses. I've seen some reaction implying that this is a "return" to 9/11 politics. All I would say is that over the past 25 years, these politics have never disappeared—they’ve only gone into occasional abeyance. The reason for that is two-fold. First, because of the persistent utility that 9/11 politics have for maintaining the status quo; and second, because decent people don't fight back against them with the ferocity required. The imminent 25th anniversary of 9/11 is a depressingly obvious hook for their rejuvenation. But with 25 years of disastrous consequences on display, they're the feeblest they've ever been, and it's long past time to shatter Islamophobia's glass jaw. read the complete article

‘Led us down such a dark path’: documentary explores how 9/11 changed America

In Netflix film Turning Point: Generation 9/11, the lives of people forever impacted by the terrorist attack in 2001 are explored. Twenty-five years on, memory is giving way to history. Soon the US will cross the point where half its population were born after 11 September 2001 or were too young to remember the day that terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in northern Virginia and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Indeed, Knappenberger’s film captures a paradox: even as 9/11 fades from living memory, we are still living in a vividly 9/11 world. “We are at a place where it is moving into distant history. But I would like people to understand what we went through and record in a documentary what those decisions did to us – and ask what kind of country we want to be.” The domestic fallout of September 11 was not confined to the internet. The film tracks how the institutional apparatus constructed in the immediate aftermath of the attacks permanently altered civil liberties at home. It visits Brooklyn’s “Little Pakistan” to capture the experience of shopkeepers and families who lived the American dream before 2001, only to find their neighbourhoods subjected to FBI monitoring, harassment and suspicion almost overnight. Knappenberger highlights the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the subsequent formation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which, under Donald Trump, has been widely condemned for its aggressive enforcement tactics and arrests of people without criminal records in cities such as Minneapolis. read the complete article

International

Arabs, Blacks, and Islam in German Colonial Imagination

Colonial usurpation first required ideological justification, and anti-Muslim discourse served precisely that purpose. A telling example is an 1888 article by Gustav Meinecke, editor of the Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, drawing on the ideas of the Egyptologist Heinrich Karl Brugsch, which portrayed Arabs as merchants, soldiers, and missionaries who spread “hate against Christians and Europeans” alongside Islam, and cast “Mohammedanism” as an “eternal enemy” while framing fetishism as a “natural ally” of European colonialism. The piece concluded with a call for Christian civilization to overcome what it termed the “semi-barbarity of Arabdom,” so that “the Arabic tide, which has brought a curse rather than a blessing, will be dammed up, freeing the way for the cultural mission of Japheth.”[33] This militaristic register dominated discourse on Muslims throughout the first half of 1888, and was echoed by the missionaries as well as by Hermann von Wissmann, who declared in an article that there was “but one terribly dangerous enemy: the Arab.”[34] According to Haustein, this coordinated rhetoric was designed to “pressure the German government into taking a hard stance toward the Sultan,”[35] while simultaneously rallying German public opinion behind the colonial agenda. Arabs were systematically cast as “racially inferior, a geopolitical foe, slave traders, and religious fanatics.”[36] From 1892 onward, the integrated Muslim elite were incorporated into official ceremonies and symbolic acts of power-sharing, including celebrations of the emperor’s birthday, where they were allowed to address the population alongside district officers and the Offizierskorps. Muslim festivals, such as the end of Ramadan, were deliberately leveraged to cultivate closer ties with local Islamic elites. The German colonial authorities further sought to bring Muslims into the fold through a race-based criminal code that placed “true” Muslims and Arabs — identified by lighter skin tone — above the darker-skinned “Swahili” and those classified as Mischlinge, or half-castes, who were regarded as superficial, half-formed Muslims. As German rule consolidated, African Islam — Islam noire, as French scholars had termed it — came to be distinguished from Arab Islam, with the former portrayed as moderate, peaceful, and less prone to fanaticism.[41] In the hands of the colonial authorities, differential racialization thus generated contrasting Muslim figures: the allied Muslim on one side, the suspect Muslim on the other. In the White German imagination, Muslim African peoples occupied an intermediate position in the racial hierarchy — culturally backward and inferior to Europeans, yet considered superior to non-Muslim Africans, who were placed at the very bottom of that hierarchy,[44] but still to be won, especially by the Christian missions, who focused on proselytization in the hinterlands and on keeping them away from Islam, seeing “Islam as a threat for our African colonies,”[45] as one missionary had put it. read the complete article

France

Le Pen sparks backlash with hijab ban proposal

Far-right French presidential front-runner Marine Le Pen is under fire after doubling down on her proposal to ban women from wearing the hijab in public, despite doubts within her own party about the policy. A person close to Le Pen, who was granted anonymity to discuss the candidate’s plan, told POLITICO that the she planned to propose a ban by including it in a law on combating “radical Islamism.” That law would then be put to a referendum — a way to steer the debate away from the topic of religion and and place it on “Islamist ideology,” the person said. read the complete article

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