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  • How Race-Baiting Against Zohran Mamdani Continues an American Political Tradition [MEE]

    “Terrorist supporter”, “antisemite”, “foreign invader”. These are just a few of the anti-Muslim racial tropes frequently hurled at Zohran Mamdani, the first Muslim-American frontrunner in the New York City mayoral race. While such overt anti-Muslim racism recalls the rapid surge in Islamophobia after 9/11, race-baiting against religious minorities has a far longer history in American politics. One need look no further than the grandparents…

  • ADL Fuels Islamophobia and Betrays Its Civil Rights Mission [Academe]

    For decades, when the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was mentioned, it was usually in reference to combatting antisemitism. Now the ADL is more accurately cited in the litany of pro-Israeli groups attempting to criminalize Muslim and Palestinian students for seeking an end to the horrific genocide in Gaza. For over a hundred years, the ADL has described itself as a leading…

  • How Trump’s attacks on DEI and Palestine activists are connected [Mondoweiss]

    The national crackdown against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) was inevitable. After racial progress, there is often retrenchment. DEI programs were the institutionalized response to the Black Lives Matter movement. They reshaped conversations around representation, missing perspectives, and ultimately who belongs, whether in universities, boardrooms, or other institutions of power.  So when President Donald Trump…

  • Israel’s Vision of No Palestinians “From the River to the Sea” [DAWN]

    Words matter. That is the purported principle behind a national campaign by pro-Israel organizations to censor, punish and even criminalize protests on American college campuses demanding a cease-fire to Israel’s unrestrained assault on 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza. University administrators have obliged with draconian restrictions that effectively deny their own students the ability to speak out against…

  • Rutgers Islamic Center’s Vandalization Shows Our Need to Combat Islamophobia [NJ.com]

    Emotionally draining is how best to describe the past six months for many Muslim Americans. Oscillating between outrage, hopelessness and determination, our diverse communities have spent the past six months doing whatever we can to end the senseless murder of over 33,000 Palestinians, including 13,000 children. We have watched in horror the Israeli military’s mass bombings, systematic starvation, and…

  • How a Leading Definition of Antisemitism Has Been Weaponized Against Israel’s Critics [The Nation]

    The chorus of criticism of Israel’s indiscriminate bombings and denial of food, water, and other humanitarian aid to 2 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza has only grown louder as the Palestinian death toll has skyrocketed beyond an estimated 22,000, nearly half of whom are children. Too often, however, supporters of continued military action by Israel respond not…

  • Muslim women in the West in the crosshairs of Zionists, white ‘feminists’ [Al Jazeera]

    At the forefront of numerous grassroots, intellectual, and political movements opposing Israel’s ongoing war crimes, in the United States and elsewhere in the staunchly pro-Israel West, are Muslim women. Courageous Palestinian, Arab, South Asian, and Black women are leading mass protests, political action campaigns, teach-ins at universities, fundraisers for humanitarian aid, and writing letters to…

  • Sure, the US cares about human rights — when it benefits us [The Hill]

    President Biden’s red-carpet treatment of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is another nail in the coffin of U.S. human rights policy. Such willful blindness to India’s poor human rights record extends to the Middle East.  Indeed, human rights advocates have long criticized the U.S. government for its selective, politicized enforcement of human rights laws and policies in furtherance of one goal: to…

  • The Hamline Controversy and the Real Threat to Academic Freedom [Al Jazeera]

    Over the past few weeks, there has been much debate about academic freedom in the United States. It was sparked by the decision of Hamline University not to renew the contract of an adjunct professor who showed a famous 14th-century Persian painting of the Prophet Muhammad and Angel Gabriel in her art history class. The…

  • Egypt Isn’t Qualified to Host COP27 [TIME]

    Climate change has no regard for state borders. Nor does a nation’s wealth or power immunize it from the annual rise in temperatures exacerbating extreme flooding, droughts, and storms. This reality is bringing together nearly 200 nations for COP27, to be held in Egypt—a nation highly vulnerable to climate change but antagonistic toward an essential stakeholder in the…

  • Confronting Liberal Islamophobia [ACS]

    Islamophobia, like other systems of bias, operates in both liberal and conservative spaces in American society, albeit in different ways. Islamophobia by conservatives is easily identifiable through hateful speech, hate crimes and support for state national security and immigration practices targeting Muslims.  The absence of such observable factors in liberal circles, however, does not make Islamophobia any…

  • Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and America’s Moment of Racial Reckoning [Al Jazeera]

    Today, the United States is experiencing a new moment of racial reckoning. A rapidly diversifying population is demanding systemic equity and meaningful access to constitutional freedoms. This transformation for the better is neither complete nor progressing without resistance. In an historic first, an African American woman, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, has been nominated to the Supreme Court.…

  • 9/11 and the Racial Limitations of Religious Freedom [Al Jazeera]

    Each anniversary of the 9/11 attacks generates debates on how to balance security with liberty in the United States. What is often lost in the conversation is the role that race plays in constraining civil liberties for religious minorities. Today, the targets are Muslims. A century ago, it was Jews and Catholics. The racialisation script is the…

  • The Power of Language in Combating Islamophobia [ACS]

    Twenty years ago, America experienced the worst terrorist attack in its history, triggering a “War on Terror” against Muslim communities. Today, our nation is undergoing a moment of racial reckoning. Tens of millions of Americans, especially our youth, are recognizing that systemic racism is pervasive. Their attempts to upend such systems offers an important insight:…

  • Cornel West’s Resignation: When Anti-Black and Anti-Palestinian Racism Converge [New Arab]

    It is no secret that Palestine is taboo in US academia. Harvard’s recent denial of tenure to renowned race scholar Cornel West is the most recent instance.  For decades, Arab American faculty have faced tenure denial or termination; students have been reprimanded and some even criminally charged; and Middle East studies programmes are under constant threat of…