Today marks the annual International Day to Combat Islamophobia. Designated back in 2022, it is safe to say that the world has not exactly been winning the fight against Islamophobia in the four years since. While the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to measure to combat Islamophobia in 2024 and even appointed a special envoy to combat Islamophobia last year, none of this has done much to save discrimination, hostility and violence in the West and, yes, even in the Muslim world itself. Since 2023, the world has been witnessing a genocide in the occupied Palestinian territories that is estimated to have claimed the lives of over 100,000 Palestinians, and now, the same parties presiding over this extended massacre have launched an illegal war that has claimed the lives of at least 1300 Iranian civilians. How does the world tolerate so much death and destruction against Muslims? While racism and neo-colonialism have a lot to do with it, Islamophobia is also a big part of the answer. In its annual report released on Tuesday, the Centre for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) indicated its offices across the country received 8,683 complaints of anti-Muslim discrimination nationwide in 2025, the highest volume of complaints since it started publishing its civil rights report in 1996. This is not a surprise; anyone who follows right-wing figures from the West on social media can come up with hundreds of examples of hate speech directed towards Muslims in under a day. And while such speech was once the exclusive province of internet racists, it is quickly becoming mainstream. Elected republican party representatives in the US are now comfortable claiming ‘Muslims do not belong in American society’ and the president himself, a man famous for his Muslim ban, continues to call for Muslim groups like Somalis to be thrown out of the country.
While such comments are usually associated with the right wing, the so-called liberals have no problem indulging in Islamophobia. During last year’s election for mayor of New York, Andrew Cuomo compared a Zohran Mamdani victory to ‘another 9/11’. The latter still managed to grab around 40 per cent of the vote. Comments like these have real-world consequences. Make-shift bombs were tossed near the now mayor Mamdani’s home just this week, and Representative Ilhan Omar, another favourite target of Islamophobes, was assaulted at a town hall meeting earlier this year. Even supposedly independent institutions like the FBI can, reportedly, come up with hairbrained theories about Iranian drones targeting California.
Islamophobia in the US is now bipartisan and deeply rooted. This is an inevitable consequence of one group being thoroughly dehumanised. The Israelis, for their part, are in a league of their own. This is a country where even doctors compare killing Palestinians to ‘eliminating cockroaches’. Is it a surprise that the US’s closest ally is this Islamophobic? Not really. Europe is also no stranger. It is the Muslim home secretary of a supposedly left-wing government in the UK that banned the Al-Quds Day march in the UK, a gross violation of Muslims’ right to protest and free assembly. However, not all is lost. Mamdani did in fact become mayor of New York, and the tide of Islamophobia is failing to deter thousands of others like him. In the Muslim countries themselves, there is a growing will to solve the problem and that is visible in the fact that this day did not exist 10 years ago. While it is nowhere near enough, progress is being made. What is needed now is more support for those seeking to tackle Islamophobia.
