Islamophobic

Anti-Muslim incidents in person have increased by 150 percent – and by 250 percent online — according to an independent report.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said his government will “carefully consider” the recommendations of an independent report which found that anti-Muslim incidents in the country have “skyrocketed” since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza.

During a media briefing at the Commonwealth Parliament Offices in Sydney on Friday, Albanese said targeting Australians based on their religious beliefs was an attack on the country’s core values.

“Australians should be able to feel safe at home in any community … we must stamp out the hate, fear and prejudice that drives Islamophobia and division in our society,” he said.

Aftab Malik, who has been serving as the government’s special envoy to combat Islamophobia since last October, was appointed to the three-year role to recommend steps to prevent anti-Muslim hatred. The appointment came as Australia had been experiencing a surge in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel.

The independent report, released on Friday and Malik’s first since assuming the position, said the normalisation of Islamophobia has become so widespread in Australia that many incidents are not even getting reported.

“The reality is that Islamophobia in Australia has been persistent, at times ignored and other times denied, but never fully addressed,” said Malik, appearing alongside Albanese.

“We have seen public abuse, graffiti … we have seen Muslim women and children targeted, not for what they have done, but for who they are and what they wear.”

The 60-page report’s 54 recommendations to the government include a review of counterterrorism laws and procedures to investigate potential discrimination.

Malik also recommended a wide-ranging inquiry into Islamophobia to investigate its main drivers and potential discrimination in government policies.

Islamophobia had intensified since the al-Qaeda attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 and had become entrenched, said Malik.

Islamophobic incidents in person had skyrocketed by 150 percent — and by 250 percent online — since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, Malik said.

The Australian government has acknowledged steep rises in both Islamophobic and anti-Semitic incidents in Australia.

Jillian Segal was appointed envoy to combat anti-Semitism in July 2024.

Segal recommended, in her first report two months ago, that Australian universities lose government funding unless they address attacks on Jewish students, and that potential migrants be screened for political affiliations.

According to the 2021 Australian Census, 3.2 percent of the Australian population is Muslim.

Islamophobia has also risen across Europe, fuelled by political parties touting a populist anti-immigration stance.

The ban, originally proposed by far-right Vox party, affects Muslims celebrating religious holidays in sports centres in Jumilla.

A ban imposed by a southeastern Spanish town on religious gatherings in public sports centres, which will mainly affect members of the local Muslim community, has sparked criticism from the left-wing government and a United Nations official.

Spain’s Migration Minister Elma Saiz said on Friday that the ban, approved by the conservative local government of Jumilla last week, was “shameful”, urging local leaders to “take a step back” and apologise to residents.

The ban, approved by the mayor’s centre-right Popular Party, would be enacted in sports centres used by local Muslims in recent years to celebrate religious holidays like Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.

It was originally proposed by the far-right Vox party, with amendments passed before approval. Earlier this week, Vox’s branch in the Murcia region celebrated the measure, saying on X that “Spain is and always will be a land of Christian roots!”

The town’s mayor, Seve Gonzalez, told Spain’s El Pais newspaper that the measure did not single out any one group and that her government wanted to “promote cultural campaigns that defend our identity”.

But Mohamed El Ghaidouni, secretary of the Union of Islamic Communities of Spain, said it amounted to “institutionalised Islamophobia”, taking issue with the local government’s assertion that the Muslim festivals celebrated in the centres were “foreign to the town’s identity”.

The ban, he said, “clashes with the institutions of the Spanish state” that protect religious freedom.

Saiz told Spain’s Antena 3 broadcaster that policies like the ban in Jumilla harm “citizens who have been living for decades in our towns, in our cities, in our country, contributing and perfectly integrated without any problems of coexistence”.

Separately, Miguel Moratinos, the UN special envoy to combat Islamophobia, said he was “shocked” by the City Council of Jumilla’s decision and expressed “deep concern about the rise in xenophobic rhetoric and Islamophobic sentiments in some regions in Spain”.

I am shocked by the decision of the City Council of Jumilla to ban religious rituals and/or celebrations in municipal facilities in the municipality of Jumilla, region of Murcia, Spain.

🔗 Full Statement ⬇️https://t.co/WHADpxgITo pic.twitter.com/Rd92XMdpVF

— Miguel Ángel Moratinos (@MiguelMoratinos) August 8, 2025

“The decision undermines the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion” as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he said in a statement on Friday.

“Policies that single out or disproportionately affect one community pose a threat to social cohesion and erode the principle of living together in peace,” he added.

Far-right clashes with locals

For centuries, Spain was ruled by Muslims, whose influence is present both in the Spanish language and in many of the country’s most celebrated landmarks, including Granada’s famed Moorish Alhambra Palace.

Islamic rule ended in 1492 when the last Arab kingdom in Spain fell to the Catholics.

The ban stipulates that municipal sports facilities can only be used for athletic activities or events organised by local authorities. Under no circumstance, it said, can the centre be used for “cultural, social or religious activities foreign to the City Council”.

Its introduction follows clashes between far-right groups and residents and migrants that erupted last month in the southern Murcia region after an elderly resident in the town of Torre-Pacheco was beaten up by assailants believed to be of Moroccan origin.

Right-wing governments elsewhere in Europe have passed measures similar to the ban in Jumilla, striking at the heart of ongoing debates across the continent about nationalism and religious and cultural pluralism.

Last year in Monfalcone, a large industrial port city in northeastern Italy with a significant Bangladeshi immigrant population, far-right mayor Anna Maria Cisint banned prayers in a cultural centre.

The move led to protests involving some 8,000 people, and the city’s Muslim community is appealing it in a regional court.

For years, Muslim New Yorkers have gathered at Washington Square Park on the Eid holidays for prayer services, putting the city’s religious and ethnic diversity on display.

But this year, right-wing influencers have been sharing footage of the gatherings, presenting them as a nefarious “invasion” tied to Muslim American New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.

“The fear-mongering is insane,” said Asad Dandia, a local historian and Muslim American activist who supports Mamdani’s campaign. “I think the community and our leadership know that we’re on the radar now.”

Muslim Americans in New York and across the United States said the country is seeing a spike in Islamophobic rhetoric in response to Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic primaries.

Advocates said the wave of hateful comments shows that Islamophobia remains a tolerated form of bigotry in the US despite appearing to have receded in recent years.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” Dandia said.

‘Islam is not a religion’

It is not just anonymous internet users and online anti-Muslim figures attacking Mamdani and his identity. A flood of politicians, including some in the orbit of President Donald Trump, have joined in.

Congressman Randy Fine went as far as to suggest without evidence that Mamdani will install a “caliphate” in New York City if elected while Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a cartoon of the Statue of Liberty in a burqa on X.

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn attacked the mayoral candidate, arguing that Islam is a political ideology and “not a religion”.

Others, like conservative activist Charlie Kirk invoked the 9/11 attacks and called Mamdani a “Muslim Maoist” while right-wing commentator Angie Wong told CNN that people in New York are “concerned about their safety, living here with a Muslim mayor”.

Far-right activist Laura Loomer, a Trump confidant, referred to the mayoral candidate as a “jihadist Muslim”, baselessly alleging that he has ties to both Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.

And Republican Representative Andy Ogles sent a letter to the Department of Justice, calling for Mamdani’s citizenship to be revoked and for him to be deported.

On Sunday, Congressman Brandon Gill posted a video of Mamdani eating biryani with his hand and called on him “to go back to the Third World”, saying that “civilized people” in the US “don’t eat like this”.

Calls for condemnation

“I’m getting flashbacks from after 9/11,” New York City Council member Shahana Hanif said. “I was a kid then, and still the bigotry and Islamophobia were horrifying as a child.”

Hanif, who represents a district in Brooklyn, comfortably won re-election last week in a race that focused on her advocacy for Palestinian rights and calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.

She told Al Jazeera that the anti-Muslim rhetoric in response to Mamdani’s win aims to distract and derail the progressive energy that defeated the establishment to secure the Democratic nomination for him.

Hanif said Islamophobic comments should be condemned across the political spectrum, stressing that there is “so much more work to do” to undo racism in the US.

While several Democrats have denounced the campaign against Mamdani, leading figures in the party – including many in New York – have not released formal statements on the issue.

“We should all be disgusted by the flood of anti-Muslim remarks spewed in the aftermath of Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the NYC mayoral primary – some blatant, others latent,” US Senator Chris Van Hollen said in a statement.

“Shame on the members of Congress who have engaged in such bigotry and anyone who doesn’t challenge it.”

Our joint statement on the vile, anti-Muslim, racist attacks on Zohran Mamdani: pic.twitter.com/QRGOvh0jdG

— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) June 27, 2025

Trump and Muslim voters

At the same time, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who represents New York, has been accused of fuelling bigotry against Mamdani. Last week, she falsely accused Mamdani of making “references to global jihad”.

Her office later told US media outlets that she “misspoke” and was raising concerns over Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the phrase “globalise the intifada”, a call for activism using the Arabic word for uprising.

Critics of the chant claimed that it makes Jews feel unsafe because it invokes the Palestinian uprisings of the late 1980s and early 2000s, which saw both peaceful opposition and armed struggle against the Israeli occupation.

While Mamdani, who is of South Asian descent, focused his campaign on making New York affordable, his support for Palestinian rights took centre stage in the criticism against him. Since the election, the attacks – particularly on the right – appear to have shifted to his Muslim identity.

That backlash comes after Trump and his allies courted Muslim voters during his bid for the presidency last year. In fact, the US president has nominated two Muslim mayors from Michigan as ambassadors to Tunisia and Kuwait.

In the lead-up to the elections, Trump called Muslim Americans “smart” and “good people”.

The Republican Party seemed to tone down the anti-Muslim language as it sought the socially conservative community’s votes.

But Corey Saylor, research and advocacy director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Islamophobia goes in cycles.

“Islamophobia is sort of baked into American society,” Saylor told Al Jazeera.

“It wasn’t front and centre, but all it required was something to flip the switch right back on, and I would say, we’re seeing that once again.”

Islamophobia ‘industry’

Negative portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the US media, pop culture and political discourse have persisted for decades.

That trend intensified after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 by al-Qaeda. In subsequent years, right-wing activists started to warn about what they said were plans to implement Islamic religious law in the West.

Muslims were also the subjects of conspiracy theories warning against the “Islamisation” of the US through immigration.

The early 2000s saw the rise of provocateurs, “counterterrorism experts” and think tanks dedicated to bashing Islam and drumming up fear against the religion in a loosely connected network that community advocates have described as an “industry”.

That atmosphere regularly seeped into mainstream political conversations. For example, then-candidate Trump called in 2015 for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”.

Even in liberal New York, where the 9/11 attacks killed more than 2,600 people at the World Trade Center in 2001, the Muslim community endured a backlash.

After the attacks, the New York Police Department established a network of undercover informants to surveil the Muslim community’s mosques, businesses and student associations.

The programme was disbanded in 2014, and a few years later, the city reached a legal settlement with the Muslim community, agreeing to implement stronger oversight on police investigations to prevent abuse.

In 2010, the city’s Muslim community burst into the national spotlight again after plans for a Muslim community centre in lower Manhattan faced intense opposition due to its proximity to the destroyed World Trade Center.

While many Republicans whipped up conspiracy theories against the community centre, several Democrats as well as the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent pro-Israel group, joined them in opposing the project, which was eventually scrapped.

‘We are above this’

Now New York Muslims find themselves once again in the eye of an Islamophobia storm. This time, however, advocates said their communities are more resilient than ever.

“We feel more confident in our community’s voice and our institutional power and in the support that we will have from allies,” Dandia said.

“Yes, we’re dealing with this Islamophobic backlash, but I don’t want to make it seem like we’re just victims because we are able to now fight back. The fact that this was the largest Muslim voter mobilisation in American history is a testament to that.”

Hanif echoed his comments.

“Over the last 25 years, we’ve built a strong coalition that includes our Jewish communities, that includes Asian, Latino, Black communities, to be able to say like we are above this and we will care for one another,” she told Al Jazeera.