Mobashra Tazamal

POLITICO Europe — Decades of hostile media rhetoric and discriminatory government policy have resulted in the normalization of Islamophobia. And the failure to tackle it guarantees we'll see a repeat of these ugly r...

Middle East Eye — Just days before World Hijab Day, Quebec's politicians took aim at Canada's newly appointed special envoy to combat Islamophobia, Amira Elghawaby, calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to remove her from the position. These voices claimed that Elghawaby, a visible Muslim woman, held "anti-Quebec sentiments", pointing to a 2019 piece she co-wrote as evidence.

Middle East Eye — For at least the past two decades, a recurring episode of Islamophobia has taken place in Europe. This is how it generally follows: some far-right figure looking to garner attention and cause controversy carries out a spectacle (i.e. burning the Quran) aimed at generating controversy and antagonising billions of Muslims around the globe.

The New Arab — The far-right in France has been normalised because anti-Muslim policies have been peddled by the government. Macron must now be confronted with the damage he has done by waging war on Muslims but it is unlikely he will be reformed.

The New Arab — The far-right in France has been normalised because anti-Muslim policies have been peddled by the government. Macron must now be confronted with the damage he has done by waging war on Muslims but it is unlikely he will be reformed.

The Bridge Initiative — Policy Exchange’s anti-Muslim agenda is clear and visible: it exclusively vilifies Muslim organizations, labeling them as “Islamist” and “extremist,” sending a clear signal to the public that they are somehow tied to terrorism. These unsubstantiated accusations are dangerous smears that inevitably sow fear within the Muslim community. Policy Exchange’s report seeks to blacklist individuals and groups who aim to hold the government accountable when it comes to policies that stigmatize millions of British Muslims. Similar to the actions of the government in neighboring France, the think-tanks write-up singles out Muslim civil society organizations that are critical of government policy.

The New Arab — Maya Angelou's famous words, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time," come to mind as the latest episode of anti-Muslim hate from the GOP party plays out. The party's silence in the face of Representative Lauren Boebert's hateful comments labelling fellow congresswoman Ilhan Omar as part of the "Jihad squad" and insinuating she is a "terrorist" is standard practice.

The New Arab — Maya Angelou's famous words, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time," come to mind as the latest episode of anti-Muslim hate from the GOP party plays out. The party's silence in the face of Representative Lauren Boebert's hateful comments labelling fellow congresswoman Ilhan Omar as part of the "Jihad squad" and insinuating she is a "terrorist" is standard practice.

The New Arab — Maya Angelou's famous words, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time," come to mind as the latest episode of anti-Muslim hate from the GOP party plays out. The party's silence in the face of Representative Lauren Boebert's hateful comments labelling fellow congresswoman Ilhan Omar as part of the "Jihad squad" and insinuating she is a "terrorist" is standard practice.

Al-Araby Al-Jadeed — The War on Terror playbook has given leaders and rulers around the globe the tools needed to repress, torture, imprison, and even kill dissidents, all in the name of “fighting terrorism.”

Byline Times — Emboldened by a sense of international impunity, a number of repressive regimes are subjecting their Muslim populations to imprisonment and subjugation.

The New Arab — This environment isn't the result of fringe groups or voices, it is the direct outcome of making Islamophobia part and parcel of society.

The New Arab — In recent months, the French government has been exceptionally busy constructing faux issues and supercharging anti-Muslim discrimination in an attempt to position President Emmanuel Macron as a defender of "French values." The ratcheting up of Islamophobia ahead of the 2022 presidential elections serves two purposes: divert attention from Macron's failures as a leader and court the far-right.

The New Arab — January 2021 will mark 19 years since the US opened the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Almost two decades later, this site of egregious crimes remains open, with 40 men still imprisoned there. Established by the Bush administration in 2002, the prison has functioned largely outside the purview of international law, as the US government built a Kafkaesque "justice" system to justify the illegal imprisonment of 780 Muslim boys and men in total. The detention camp at Guantanamo Bay is now widely seen as a stain on American democracy and history. However, a careful look at the context surrounding the prison and the reality that it remains open demonstrates that Guantanamo did not come about in a vacuum. The prison's existence and the torutre that occurred as part of the CIA's rendition detention and interrogation programme stems from the racist and Islamophobic logic of the "War on Terror," which has criminalised and dehumanised Muslims across the globe.

The New Arab — What differs in this instance is not the particular act of selling ones data; as consumers in the digital age we are all aware that our information online is never safe and there are always conditions to using these services. The shock can be summed up in two points: 1) an app tailored to the spiritual needs of Muslims sold users data: a clear ethical violation of a community that has frequently been surveilled by the state, and 2) the data was sold via a third party to the US military, an institution that has wreaked havoc in Muslim-majority countries, and in the past two decades has killed at least 800,000 individuals worldwide in post-9/11 wars.

The New Arab — For Nihad Awad, the Executive Director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest non-profit Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation in the United States, the last four years have consisted of fighting for justice and defending the civil rights of American Muslims in the face of discriminatory actions from the White House.

The New Arab — During the 2016 presidential election, the Arab American Institute (AAI) poll reported that 91 percent of Arab Americans held voting intentions. In 2020, according to experts, Arab Americans are actively participating in American politics in unprecedented numbers, both as voters and candidates.

The New Arab — By marking Muslim populations as "terrorists", states brand the entire population a threat to the global system, "making them not just deserving of marginalisation but of complete obliteration or intensive quarantining." Such is the "logic" China uses to defend its genocidal campaign against Uighur Muslims. Governments across the world continue to use the counterterror language to target, scapegoat, persecute, and eliminate Muslim communities in their own countries. The authorities label these groups "extremist" or "terrorists," allowing them the space to carry out violence without much international condemnation.

The New Arab — The most glaring example of this is, "the way Muslims act." If you want to understand why this is a problematic statement, just replace the word "Muslim" with any other identifier: Black people, Jews, women, etc. These words not only present Muslims, a population of 1.8 billion people from all walks of life across the globe, as a monolith but renders them a static collective. This leads to the dehumanisation of a community. Further, her reference to "the Muslim world" is confusing given such a place doesn't exist; "It's a western idea built on the faulty racial logic that Muslims live in a world of their own - that Islam is an eastern, foreign religion that properly belongs in a distant, faraway, dusty place," writes Yale Professor Zareen Grewal. And who exactly are the leaders Reid is referring to? Many Muslim-majority countries are run by dictators and authoritarians (often propped up by western governments) so they hardly represent the views of the people. Is she talking about leaders of militant groups? That makes little sense, given the overwhelming majority of Muslims condemn such individuals.

The New Arab — The Birther conspiracy theory, mainstreamed by Donald Trump in 2012, surfaced during the 2008 elections in chain emails questioning the birthplace of then-presidential candidate, Barack Obama. The unsubstantiated and irrational allegations claimed not only that Obama was born in Kenya, but that he was also a secret Muslim, pointing to his Kenyan Muslim father as proof. The claims tapped into the racist history of the nation, dating back to the European colonisers who never considered Black people and people of colour as Americans, despite the very clear fact that the free labour of enslaved Africans is what this country is built on. At the same time, Birthirism also employed Islamophobia by alleging Obama's secret Muslim identity proved he was a threat and could never be loyal to the country. In a post-9/11 environment, tying the first Black American presidential candidate to Islam tapped into the pervasive racism as well as dangerous levels of anti-Muslim hatred that had taken hold in the country.

The New Arab — In an effort to address this, Biden's campaign should take a look at a recent statement by a coalition of Muslim delegates to the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The statement includes a wide array of asks from domestic to foreign policy that aim to tackle state-led Islamophobia. These include, among many other things, an overhaul to the broken criminal justice system, dismantling of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), shutting down Guantanamo Bay prison, ending CVE, ending the Global War on Terror, and speaking out against China's genocide against Uighur Muslims. A decade ago, such policy demands would have been unheard of not because Muslim Americans weren't calling for them, but because the establishment simply refused to listen or view these issues as problems. The changes in attitudes can be attributed to both the ongoing grassroots community-led work pushing those in power to address such concerns, as well as the openly racist and blatantly anti-Muslim platform of Donald Trump.

The New Arab — Miller's racist and xenophobic views aren't a hallmark of his current role, rather they're a fundamental part of his identity. Prior to joining 45's administration, Miller worked for then-Senator Jeff Sessions, who also briefly served in the Trump administration, where he sent out mass emails about immigration and collaborated with Breitbart, a far-right media outlet. His affiliation with fringe right-wing organisations, particularly with an Islamophobic agenda, can be traced back to his mentor, David Horowitz. During Miller's college years, he worked with Horowitz's organisation and led an "Islamo-fascism awareness week" at Duke University, where he was reportedly friends with white supremacist, Richard Spencer.

The New Arab — The Covid-19 pandemic arrived in India on the heels of this anti-Muslim violence. While it has been regarded as a great "equalizer," in reality, Covid-19 has exacerbated the ethnic, religious, and class divides across the country. It has revealed the failures of the Modi-led government in tackling the public health crisis. In an effort to shield the stark inequality and suffering that can no longer be ignored from the public eye, mainstream media along with government officials have employed their usual tactics, scapegoating vulnerable communities - in this case, Muslims - by accusing them of spreading the novel coronavirus.

The New Arab — On Monday, President Donald Trump continued his divisive attacks by taking to his favourite platform to announce yet another iteration of his go-to policy move: an immigration ban. On the evening of 20 April, when over 42,000 Americans have lost their lives to the coronavirus, POTUS it was the perfect time to refocus the country's attention on the supposed real problem: immigrants.