Today in Islamophobia

Today in Islamophobia: In India, churches around Mumbai have begun asking worshippers to sign declarations stating that they are attending voluntarily under a new law aimed at preventing forced religious conversions, meanwhile in the United States, student leaders and organizations at George Washington University have criticized a Turning Point USA screening of a film they say contains anti-Muslim themes, and lastly, in the United Kingdom, women’s groups say far-right anti-immigration protests are disrupting their work and creating fear among staff and communities. Our recommended read of the day is by David J. Bier for Cato Institute on State Department data showing a 96% decline in legal immigration and refugee admissions from 45 majority-Muslim countries between December 2024 and February 2026. This and more below:

United States

Legal Immigration from Majority-Muslim Nations Was Cut 96% Since 2024 | Recommended Read

During his campaign in 2016, President Trump repeatedly proposed an outright ban on Muslims entering the United States. He then claimed that this policy idea morphed into the travel ban to avoid potential constitutional problems. During his 2024 campaign, he said he would bring back an even stricter ban than the one in his first term. He has succeeded. Data from the State Department through February 2026 show that the Trump administration has cut legal immigration by nationals of 45 majority-Muslim countries by 96 percent since December 2024. Monthly immigrant visa issuances and permanent lawful refugee admissions fell from 21,096 in December 2024 to 808 in February 2026. The graph below shows that this outcome was not the result of seasonal trends since the drop from February 2024 was nearly as significant. Immigrant visas—primarily for family members of US citizens—were down 95 percent. Meanwhile, refugee resettlement—immigrants admitted lawfully based on threats of persecution abroad—was completely ended for majority-Muslim countries, dropping from 5,157 admissions in December 2024 to 0 admissions in February 2026. read the complete article

Republicans Are Road-Testing an Anti-Muslim Strategy

Attacks on Muslims have been a permanent feature of the post-9/11 political landscape. Abdul El-Sayed’s August 4th victory in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary—and the possibility of him becoming the first Muslim senator in US history—has led to a renewed outpouring of Islamophobic sentiment; in the week after El-Sayed’s win, there was a twenty-fold increase in anti-Muslim social media posts targeting him, according to the Center for the Study of Organized Hate. Mike Rogers, his Republican opponent, has falsely claimed that El-Sayed thinks the US “deserved” the September 11th attacks and that he has taken campaign contributions from “terrorist” organizations. These attacks could find purchase in a landscape where anti-Muslim bigotry runs fairly high: A September Washington Post poll found that 45% of likely Michigan voters would not back a Muslim presidential candidate, and that voters among that group were less likely to support El-Sayed. Meanwhile, in Texas, the Republican Senate and gubernatorial candidates—Attorney General Ken Paxton and incumbent Governor Greg Abbott—have waged a relentless anti-Muslim campaign by attempting to block the building of a planned residential community marketed to Muslims, and by declaring the Council on American-Islamic Relations a “terrorist” group and subsequently investigating and suing the organization. Paxton also ran anti-Muslim ads during the GOP Senate primary. Jewish Currents spoke to Saher Selod, the director of research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, to talk about the role of Islamophobia in American politics today. read the complete article

Student leaders, organizations slam Turning Point movie screening as Islamophobic

In the days and hours before Turning Point USA at GW hosted a screening of a film about Muslim extremists overtaking a pro-Palestinian encampment, a flurry of student leaders and organizations released statements condemning the screening as Islamophobic and promoting violence. TPUSA screened “Run Hide Fight: Infidels” — a September 2026 film produced by right-wing media company The Daily Wire that has received critical reviews for its perceived anti-Muslim sentiments and hateful rhetoric — at an event held Monday at 6:30 p.m. in Jack Morton Auditorium in the School of Media & Public Affairs, causing several cultural, religious and political student organizations to race to show their opposition to the event. At least 11 student organizations, including DMV Students for Justice in Palestine, Arab Student Association, Muslim Students Association, Jewish on Campus and the Student Government Association, have put out public social media statements criticizing TPUSA for showing the “discriminatory” film as well as GW officials for allowing TPUSA to hold the event on campus. read the complete article

How the War on Terror Came for America’s Muslims

Rozina Ali’s unforgettable new book, “Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America,” takes an overdue hammer to these myths. A thorough, subtle reporter and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, Ali presents a disparate record of American Muslim life as she follows a Michigan-born civil rights lawyer; working-class Pakistani immigrants in Queens; a suburban Palestinian family; and a Republican mayor in Basking Ridge, N.J. Through their varied experiences, Ali details what it is to survive state persecution draped in the legitimacy of counterterrorism. Often their ordeals were greeted with silence by neighbors, and sometimes with approval. President George W. Bush might have said that Islam was not the enemy, but his words provided no comfort to those living under the threat of the surveillance, sanctions, detention and deportation apparatus that he built or expanded. “Parents who once lived under oppressive regimes in Syria and Egypt now repeated a familiar refrain to their kids in the United States,” Ali writes: “The walls have ears.” The overwhelming majority of Muslims targeted by law enforcement and immigration authorities over the past 25 years had no connection to 9/11, Al Qaeda or political violence. In the post-9/11 atmosphere of collective suspicion, it did not matter. Within two months of the attacks, at least 1,182 people had been rounded up and detained, and many had been deported. The next year, the Justice Department required “special registration” for immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries, eventually creating a database of more than 80,000 people. Registrants, Ali writes, feared they would be jailed and deported whether they complied or not. read the complete article

India

Sign before praying: A new conversion law is affecting churchgoers in Indian state

Some churches in and around India's financial capital Mumbai have begun asking worshippers to give a declaration in writing - "I came here to pray of my own free will." Visitors write down their names, sometimes add an ID card number, and sign to say that nobody forced or enticed them to attend church. The forms, a copy of which the BBC has seen, have no official standing. Churches keep them in case a prayer meeting is challenged and its organisers are accused of trying to convert those inside. The practice began at some churches in late August, just before a new law against religious conversion took effect in Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital. The law prohibits religious conversions brought about by force, fraud, coercion or inducement. It also requires people who want to convert voluntarily to notify authorities in advance. An unlawful conversion can lead to a prison sentence of up to seven years, rising to 10 for a repeat offence. While the law applies to all religions, the anxiety is being felt most deeply at places where minorities, especially Christians, worship. At the heart of the debate is a long-running tension over allegations, usually made by right-wing groups, about people being coerced or induced to change their religion for benefits. read the complete article

India’s Ujjain tense as mosque partially demolished for Hindu pilgrimage

It began on Sunday when the 30-year-old joined hundreds of Muslims in central India’s Ujjain city for a night vigil outside a prominent mosque to prevent its partial demolition to widen the road for a Hindu pilgrimage festival held every 12 years. The Hindu nationalist BJP has been accused of a deliberate campaign to target Muslim religious structures – mosques, shrines, graveyards and madrasas (Islamic schools) – by claiming they were either illegally built or stood on former Hindu temples. Hundreds of Muslim sites have been partially or fully demolished by the authorities in several BJP-governed states in recent years, many of them in the dead of night. In many cases, the demolitions took place even as the matter was still pending in courts. The Muslim residents of Ujjain, who had similar fears of a nightly demolition, congregated outside the Shahi Mosque in Ujjain’s Chhatri Chowk area on Sunday night to protest against the planned demolition. The government aims to clear and widen the road for Simhastha Kumbh Mela, a Hindu pilgrimage to be held on the banks of the Kshipra River in 2028. read the complete article

United Kingdom

‘Fear is part of our life now’: women’s groups thrown into disarray by the far right

That was in July 2024, the start of a summer when riots broke out across the UK, sparked by false rumours that the killer of three young girls in Southport was a Muslim asylum seeker. In the ensuing months, far-right protesters rallied around what has since become a pervasive trope: that British women and girls need to be protected from violent migrant men. That rhetoric was repeated by the crowd that gathered in Dover earlier this month, this time clad in black and wearing masks. At Sikh Women’s Aid, a charity set up to protect women from violence, the effect of this activity has been immensely damaging. Workers have been equipped with panic alarms and so-called tactical pens, which double as a self-defence tool. They are encouraged to wear face masks in public and turn their ID badges inwards. Risk assessments and detailed safety planning have become the norm for routine activities like supporting survivors in court. Public-facing events are held on police property or come with an expensive security bill. Vital services have been changed from in-person to remote. As Kaur puts it: “Violence against women and girls is being weaponised to turn people against each other.” read the complete article

International

The Hyphen view from Europe: the far right has found a way to win while losing

September brought some heartening news from Europe: the far right can still lose elections. Less heartening was the discovery that it doesn’t particularly need to win them. In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats — a far-right party with roots in actual Nazism — lost around three percentage points of vote share in the general election, their first decline since entering parliament in 2010. This followed a campaign featuring proposals to stop the building of mosques, questions about whether Muslims could actually be Swedish and promises to restrict Islamic dress, suggesting there may be limits to the electoral rewards of worrying about what Muslims are wearing. Germany gave us a more complicated glimpse into voters’ minds in three state elections. There were encouraging scenes in Berlin, where Die Linke (The Left) was the most popular party in the German capital for the first time with a campaign that had little to do with division and a lot to do with its promise to “make Berlin affordable again”. The AfD didn’t do as well as predicted, even if it did nearly double its vote share to 16.3%, having blamed the housing crisis on immigration with the slogan “apartments are not asylum homes”. Unfortunately, Berlin was the exception. The AfD came first in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and, earlier in September, won a 43.8% landslide in Saxony-Anhalt — not despite its extremism but because of it, as Mohamed Amjahid argued in an article for Hyphen. read the complete article

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