Israel’s Gaza Strip Attacks Stir Up Islam Around the World

Corey Saylor, the research and advocacy director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, told Anadolu Agency, that the main cause of Islamophobia was “the genocide that’s going on in Gaza,” where Israeli airstrikes killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, many of them civilians, since October 7.

He said that in the United States, Muslims and their allies faced a wave of hate for supporting “Palestinians’ right to live, to not have an occupation and not live under apartheid.”

But he also noted that Islamophobia was “baked into Western society, generally,” and that it was “out of control” worldwide.

He said the world was experiencing the worst surge of Islamophobia since December 2015, when Donald J. Trump, then a Republican presidential candidate, called for a total ban on Muslims entering the country.

CAIR received 2,171 requests or complaints of bias related to Islamophobia in the first 57 days after the Israeli regime began its war on Gaza, Saylor said. That figure represented almost half of the total cases the group had in 2022.

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He cited several examples of violence and harassment against Muslims in the United States, including:

– The stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy, Wadea al-Fayoume, and his mother, Hanaan Shahin, at their home in Illinois by their landlord, who shouted anti-Muslim slurs and expressed anger over the situation in Israel, according to court documents. The boy was stabbed 26 times and the mother was critically injured. The landlord, Joseph M. Czuba, 71, was charged with attempted murder and a hate crime.

– The use of cars as weapons against protesters in multiple locations, and the firing of guns into the air or at people who supported “Palestinian humanity,” Saylor said.

– The targeting of students in very personal ways, such as digital trucks driving around Harvard University with images and names of students who had supported Palestine.

– The reporting of employees who attended protests against Israel to human resources by anonymous people.

“It’s been a very difficult last couple of months for Muslims in the United States,” Saylor said.

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He also blamed the media for spreading disinformation and stereotypes about Muslims, such as the false reports of babies being beheaded during on Oct. 7.

He said that many media outlets had allowed anti-Muslim narratives to flourish on their platforms, and that the coverage of Muslims was “generally very negative” and focused on giving voice to people who said horrible things about Islam and Muslims.

He said that this was unfortunate because it led to real-world attacks on real-world human beings, who were suffering because of what was going on in the Middle East.

He said that Israel had used anti-Arab and Islamophobic stereotypes to push its agenda for decades, and that the US government was also promoting such narratives.