14 DAY TRIAL // The conclusion of the first-of-its-kind report on the status of Islamophobia in the United States shows a widespread fear and anger at Muslims across the country. The work also shows that half of the political class in the country somewhat agrees to this as well.
The report was put together by experts with the Center for Race and Gender (CRG) at the University of California in Berkeley (UCB), who worked together with colleagues from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Details of the study were made public during a news conference that was held on Thursday, June 23, on Capitol Hill, in Washington DC. The annual report is rightfully entitled “Same Hate, New Target.”
Also included in the paper – which is available for download here – were the names of the most outspoken Islamophobes, and the names of those who made an important contribution fighting the spread of this type of behavior in a democratic country.
“This groundbreaking report creates a benchmark for examining the troubling growth of anti-Muslim sentiment in our society and offers a who's who of those promoting or challenging Islamophobia,” CAIR National executive director Nihad Awad said at the conference.
“As the recent GOP presidential debate demonstrated, Islamophobia is moving toward the mainstream and therefore must be challenged by all Americans who learned from those periods in our nation's history when other minorities were similarly targeted,” he added.
Scientists who worked on the report say that there used to be a time when being a Muslim had a positive connotation. Now, partially due to action of right-wing politicians and media, the word Muslim is equated to terrorist in the mind of many uneducated people.
This is precisely the state of affair some people wanted to achieve, and the population needs to fight the discrimination and hatred. Otherwise, the country may return to the days when Black people were ostracized, Asians looked upon with disrespect and so on.
The report shows that Islamophobia spans multiple areas, including but not limited to, hate crimes, workplace, school and public accommodation discrimination, the vandalism of mosques, and profiling.
Islamophobia is close-minded prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims. An Islamophobe is an individual who holds a closed-minded view of Islam and promotes prejudice against or hatred of Muslims,” the report reads.
“It is not appropriate to label all, or even the majority of those, who question Islam and Muslims as Islamophobes,” it adds, concluding that Islamophobia in the US now stands at 6.4 on a scale from 1 to 10.