User:CSMJS/Islamophobia in the United States

In Government
While campaigning for the presidency in 2015, then candidate Donald Trump said, "Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on." Shortly after his inauguration as President, Trump signed Executive Order 13769, known as the Travel Ban, Muslim Ban, and Muslim Ban 1.0.

Oklahoma's Save Our State Amendment, designated SQ 755, was passed by that state's voters in 2010. Key in the law's text was the line, "the [Oklahoma] courts shall not consider international law or Sharia Law." The ballot voters saw on election day read in part, "Sharia Law is Islamic law. It is based on two principal sources, the Koran and the teaching of Mohammed." Civil liberties activists immediately claimed the law would violate the First Amendment's prohibition on unequal treatment of religion by singling Islam out for different treatment than other faiths in Oklahoma. After an initial court agreed and issued a temporary restraining order against the legislation, the 10th Circuit Court struck the law down in 2012 "saying the state had not demonstrated any compelling reason for discrimination against one religion." Writing in the Cleveland State Law review, Penny Venetis observed, "It appears that the Oklahoma legislators preyed upon the electorate’s post-9/11 fears and insecurities to introduce an amendment that was wholly unnecessary. Notably, a search of Oklahoma cases reveals that the state judiciary has never used the word 'Sharia' in a published opinion."

The Oklahoma legislation was part of a broader wave of anti-Sharia bills. By 2011, "more than two dozen states" had considered anti-Sharia bills based on template legislation drafted by David Yerushalmi. Yerushalmi has a history of “anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black bigotry” according to the Anti-Defamation League. Sixteen states considered such legislation in 2013, eleven in 2014, and seventeen in 2015.

New York Congressman Rep. Peter King (R-NY), oversaw a series of Congressional hearing examining what he termed "radical Islam." King was

NYPD Spying

Anti-Islam Law Enforcement trainings (FBI, Sam Kharoba, John Guandolo)

In 2011, based on documents acquired from a Freedom of Information Act request, Wired reported, "The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that 'main stream' [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a 'cult leader'; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a 'funding mechanism for combat.'

In Corporations and Employment
Muslim Free Businesses Discriminatoy Policy (Dell, Ambercrombie and Fitch, Etc.

Resumes

In Media
Media Tenor Reports ISPU Terrorism coverages Private

Armed Anti-Islam Demostrations Public Polling (See ReThinks own work)

Health

After President Trump signed an Executive Order banning people from several Muslim majority countries from entering the United States, "visits to the emergency department of people born in Muslim-majority countries increased, and so did the number of diagnoses of conditions related to stress" among Muslims in the U.S.

Gene: a more 30,00 ft view of Islamophobia in the U.S. There are a few examples, which leaves a tepid feelings of its actual impact.

NEEDS: Islamophobia from the U.S. Government

Islamophobia is observed in both government policies designed to target Muslims and individual action.

President Trump's Muslim Ban, Oklahoma's anti-Islam legislation are overt. Many instances are less overt

Sources: Arsalan's new book, ISPU data (including Dalia's piece on its connection to elections, CAIR reports,

Muslim Free Business Sign: https://www.vox.com/2016/2/19/11059650/muslim-free-gun-range-lawsuit

Super Survey: https://bridge.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/The-Super-Survey.pdf

Anti-Islam Legislation: https://www.ispu.org/manufacturing-bigotry-community-brief/

Unequal media coverage: https://www.ispu.org/public-policy/equal-treatment/

Islamophobia is not new. According Georgetown University's Bridge Initiative it "has been present in Western discourse since the Middle Ages, when negative stereotypes about Muslims helped build popular support for the Crusades. Descriptions of Muslims as uncivilized and violent also helped rationalize European colonial domination of most of the Muslim majority world."

Where is the PRI data on mosque incidents?

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/us/politics/hate-crimes-american-muslims-rise.html

SAALT on hate: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/reported-anti-muslim-hate-incidents-rhetoric-rose-year-after-election-n843671

Source for older data on Islamophobia: https://www.cair.com/about_cair/cair-who-we-are/

2015-16 passed 9/11 levels: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/11/15/assaults-against-muslims-in-u-s-surpass-2001-level/

2016 Rise in hate: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3110202-SPECIAL-STATUS-REPORT-v5-9-16-16.html Review ReThink's 2019 audit

Financing U.S. Islamophobia
In 2018, the authors of Hijacked by Hate concluded that U.S. Islamophobia Network "has been drawing upon mainstream American philanthropic institutions for financial and political support for years." After reviewing "thousands of pages of publicly available tax filings" the authors identify "1,096 organizations responsible for funding 39 groups in the Islamophobia Network between 2014 and 2016. The report also reveals the total revenue capacity of the Islamophobia Network during this period to have reached at least $1.5 billion."

Hate crimes
See also: Islamophobic incidents in the United States

By 2014, Islamophobic hate crimes remained five times higher than before the 9/11 attacks. In 2015, this spiked to levels not seen since 2001. There is evidence that the 2015 spike is linked to then candidate and later President Trump, "researchers found strong statistical correlations between the number of Islam-related tweets made by Trump in a single week and the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes that took place in the days and weeks that followed."

Generally, a hate crime involves two elements that distinguish it from other illegal acts. Namely, that the crime must be a criminal offense that is backed by a biased motivation. This biased motivation is usually revealed when an individual targets an attack on an individual because of some immutable personal characteristic--such as race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity--that is protected by law. Hate crimes vary from assault, murder, damage to property, work place discrimination and housing discrimination. Hates crimes often go unreported, resulting in government reports that underrepresent the extent of the problem.

The 2015 Chapel Hill shooting is an example of a high profile Islamophobic hate crime. Craig Stephen Hicks murdered three Muslim college students in North Carolina. According to prosecutors, the suspect shot Deah Barakat multiple times after the latter opened a door in response to Hicks' knocking. Hicks then allegedly entered the living room and shot sisters Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha each in the head. The Islamic Center of Murfreesboro in Tennessee was reportedly shot at and had an arson committed to construction equipment while facing lawsuits challenging Islam's status as a religion. Islamophobic hate crimes impact people who are perceived as Muslim by attackers. For example, on September 15, 2001 the first victim of a 9/11 backlash murder was Balbir Singh Sodhi, an adherent of the Sikh faith.

In 2000, the FBI reported 28 hate crime incidents against Muslims. By the end of 2001, the number of hate crimes rose to 481. Although the FBI finds that the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes has decreased since 2001, the incidence rate is still five times as much their 2000 rate, suggesting that the stereotypes that negatively link Muslims, extremism, and terrorism are still pervasive.

Some scholars suggest that the spike in hate crimes against Muslims in a post-9/11 political climate is not surprising because of the phenomenon known as "vicarious retribution".

This phenomenon explains how when one member of a visibly identifiable group acts aggressively towards members of an out group, then the aggressor will also indirectly harm his or her fellow in group member.

In the context of anti-Muslim hate crimes, the terrorist attacks on 9/11 transformed the way U.S. society would view Muslims and people of Arab descent.

Other experts also point out that anti-Muslim sentiment existed prior to the terrorist attacks, however, this sentiment was more or less overshadowed by other anti-minority group sentiments.

In contrast, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Arabs and Muslims were largely depicted as monolithic group of foreigners, extremists and terrorists.

This is further supported by public polling data taken from between 2007 and 2009.

The poll found that 36% of Americans with no prejudice towards Muslims still heId unfavorable views towards Islam.

When Americans who held “a great deal of prejudice” towards Muslims were surveyed, the number jumped to 91%.

In that some poll, one-third of Americans felt that Muslim countries held a "very unfavorable" view of the United States, and one-in-five Americans felt that Muslims internationally held intolerant views of other races and religions.

Some publishers have opined that the increase in hate crimes against Muslims was an Islamophobic abuse with an ethnocentric trait.

This is because many of its proponents do not distinguish between Arabs and Muslims and think all Arabs are Muslim by shapeshifting the Muslim faith into an ethnoreligion.

This is in contrast to decreasing hate crimes against other racial groups, such as blacks, Asians and Latinos with the exception of Jews.

Ibrahim Hooper, the communications director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations attributes the spike in recent anti-Muslim attacks to the Charlie Hebdo shooting, as well as the coverage" 'radical Islam' on the news while not using the word "radical" for non-Muslim faiths. According to a report by CNN and a survey from the Council on American–Islamic Relations there have been over 63 acts of vandalism and anti-Muslim behavior in 2015 from January through December 3.

In 1994, a mosque in Yuba city, California was burnt to the ground. Following the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, CAIR received reports of more than 200 incidences of violence and vandalism. In April 1995, a mosque in High Point, NC was the target of arson, in June 1995 arson was reported at Springfield, Illinois and in October 1995 arson was reported at Greenville, SC.

Article Evaluation
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