Resources on Islamophobia


Anyone who spends time researching and discussing Islamic history whilst operating in online spaces will inevitably encounter Islamophobes: those who demonise Islam and harbour a seething hatred and resentment towards Muslims, spewing an endless torrent of ahistorical, bigoted, and xenophobic drivel. Sometimes these ideas and attitudes are expressed politely or in a mild tone (especially by the liberal variety of Islamophobe), but the underlying tendency is the same: a fundamental animosity or discrimination towards, or singling-out or special-problematising of, Muslims and Islam.


My general advice when dealing with such individuals as actually just to ignore or block them: after more than a decade of dealing with such people (and as a former Islamophobe myself), it is my opinion that they are invariably driven by deep insecurity and resentment, not mere ignorance. Rational argumentation is largely wasted upon people who are driven by arational considerations, or to put it simply: Islamophobes typically care more about their feelings than facts.


That said, there plenty of people who are simply misled or misinformed about Muslims and Islam—above all, those who have been influenced by the ubiquitous vilification of Muslims and Islam in (for example, Western) media and politics, thereby absorbing certain stereotypes, etc. In contrast to the kind of deeply-committed or ideological Islamophobes described above, these people are more open to having their views and attitudes assessed and modified, at least in my experience.


Thus, for those interested debunking, combatting, or otherwise evaluating common Islamophobic lies, distortions, and rhetoric, I have found the following miscellaneous resources to be particularly useful, insightful, or otherwise shareable. To make the material more accessible, I have divided it into the following six themes: (1) Essentialism on Islam; (2) Islamic Terrorism and Western Imperialism; (3) Global Muslim Social and Political Attitudes; (4) Muslim Immigration and Integration in Western Contexts; (5) Muslim Refugees in Western Contexts; and (6) Institutional Islamophobia in the West.



Section 1: Essentialism on Islam


Concerning the assumption or claim that Islam has an essence or true nature and, more specifically, that it is inherently violent or political, or inherently more violent or political than other religions, etc., see the following.


Dimitri Gutas, “Islam and Science: A False Statement of the Problem”, Islam & Science, Volume 1, Number 2 (2003), 215-220.

  • A refutation of essentialist notions of Islam in general, which is transferable to rhetoric about Islam’s being essentially violent, theocratic, political, etc.
  • p. 215: “Islam, like all other religions, is the specific ideology of a particular, historically determined society (i.e., Islam in Baghdad in the 830s, in Damascus in 1300, in Cairo around 1000, etc.) and has itself no historical agency; what that particular society accomplishes in the way of science wholly depends on who is using that ideology (if it is being used) and to what ends.”


Daniel Pipes, ‘Is Islam Compatible with Democracy?’, Fora TV (15th/April/2008): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPYfGydqpZ4

  • “It would be a mistake to see Islam as unchanging, to see Islam as what it has been in the past. Islam is what Muslims make of it. Or, to use a metaphor of Ḥasan Ḥanafī, a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cairo: he said the Quran ‘is a supermarket where one takes what one wants and leaves what one doesn’t want’.”
  • Given that Pipes is a Neoconservative Islamophobe, this is a particularly useful concession regarding the non-essential nature of religions, including specifically Islam.


Maxime Rodinson, Marxism and the Muslim World (London, UK: Zed Books, 2015), p. 12.

  • “…one cannot maintain that the Muslim religion is a total invariant. It has varied much over the centuries, and this is recognized by Muslim thought itself, since it currently uses such notions as ihya (revival), tajdid (renovation) and reform. If Islam needs to be periodically revivified, reformed or renovated, it is because it has fallen prey to torpor, archaism and various deviations which call for correction.”
  • “The weight of ideology, of organization, of the continuously evolving social and national base constantly, if imperceptibly, gives rise to practical revision. Eventually one realizes that there is a considerable gap between Islam, as it has come to be, and the original inspiration. Were it not so, how could one explain these appeals to ihya and tajdid which recur throughout the history of Islam? This dynamic holds for all religions.”
  • “…we can move away from the idealist conception of religion as a set of ideas floating above earthly realities and constantly animating the spirit and actions of all its followers. We can assume, on the contrary, that religious ideologies, like all ideologies, have a concrete and real basis in the constantly competing human groups who share out the planet between themselves or form the different strata of a society. We can take into account the constant interaction of these groups and the fact that their primary consideration must be the demands of material and social life.”


The notion that there is some kind of fixed, ‘true’ Islam in the world—especially if you are not a Muslim and do not believe that there is some kind of divine template or archetype thereof in the mind or intention of God—is ahistorical at best and unintelligible at worst. ‘Islam’ picks out an ideology (or set of ideologies) and/or community (or set of communities), and ideologies and communities constantly change and evolve according to the ever-changing conditions to which humans are subjected. Even if you are Muslim and believe that there is a divine blueprint of Islam, the lack of an essence in practice—in the wildly-varying interpretations and implementations of Islam across time and space—cannot be denied. All talk of Islam as “inherently” political, violent, etc., can thus be discarded: to put it bluntly, Islam is—and will be—whatever Muslims make it, violent or peaceful.



Section 2: Islamic Terrorism and Western Imperialism


Concerning the claim that Islamic militancy and terrorism are caused merely by Islam, and the claim that Islamic militancy and terrorism directed against Western countries particular arises from some kind of doctrinal animosity towards Western culture (“they hate us for our freedom”), etc., see the following.


Peter Waldman, Stephen J. Glain, Robert S. Greenberger, Hugh Pope & Steve LeVine, ‘The Question in the Rubble: Why Us? — Muslims Who Hate the U.S. Have Reasons Deeper Than the Old Cliches’, the Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition (14th/September/2001).

  • A WSJ article written three days after 9/11, exploring the causes behind anti-American “anger” in the Muslim world—in particular, American imperialism.
  • “This resentment is deeper and more complex than mere hatred of the U.S. for its support of Israel, say Arabs and Mideast scholars, though the daily images of embattled Palestinians on satellite TV have certainly fueled Islamic rage. Anti-Americanism has also taken root among well-educated middle-class professionals and businesspeople in the Arab and Muslim worlds, born of frustrations much closer to home: the perception that unlimited American power is responsible for propping up hated, oppressive regimes.”


Peter Waldman & Hugh Pope, ‘Worlds Apart: Some Muslims Fear War on Terrorism Is Really a War on Them — West Undercuts Islam, They Say, by Backing Israel, Autocratic Mideast Rule — The Risk of Radicalization’, the Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition (21st/September/2001).

  • A WSJ article summarising “interviews with Muslim professionals and intellectuals across a wide swath of countries.”
  • “…most Muslims still revere the U.S. for its democratic ideals and economic and technological prowess,” and don’t support an anti-American jihād or “an East-West war of cultures.”
  • John Esposito: “This is not a clash of civilizations but a clash over American foreign policy… Political grievances feed anti-Americanism.”
  • “What galls many in the Islamic world is what they perceive—rightly or wrongly—as the hypocrisy of American foreign policy that preaches democracy and human rights, while seeming to undermine those values in Muslim countries. In addition to the Palestinians’ problems with Israel, resentment runs high toward the U.S. and its colonial forbears in Europe for maintaining authoritarian political systems across the Mideast that have resisted all efforts at liberalization.”
  • “This sense of betrayal by an America perceived as touting democracy but propagating authoritarianism is echoed in all corners of the Muslim world. It is heard in Morocco, Syria and Jordan, where long-ruling strongmen have died in recent years, only to have their sons elevated to power in sumptuous coronations with full American support. It is heard in Algeria, Egypt and Turkey, where secular, American-backed regimes dominated by the military thwart Islamic activists from winning seats in parliament. And it is heard in the oil-rich Persian Gulf countries, where even wealthy businesspeople are growing tired of what they see as a U.S. double standard.”


Chalmers A. Johnson, ‘Blowback’, the Nation (27th/September/2001): https://www.thenation.com/article/blowback/

  • An important comment by a CIA consultant and specialist in American foreign policy, describing 9/11 as motivated by opposition towards American imperialism.
  • “The suicidal assassins of September 11, 2001, did not “attack America,” as our political leaders and the news media like to maintain; they attacked American foreign policy.”


Joint Intelligence Committee, ‘International Terrorism: War with Iraq’, UK Government Web Archive (10th/February/2003): http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20171123123130/http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/230918/2003-02-10-jic-assessment-international-terrorism-war-with-iraq.pdf

  • A declassified 2003 British Joint Intelligence Committee assessment, which was produced immediately prior to the invasion of Iraq and which predicted—correctly—that the Western invasion of a Muslim society would cause a substantial increase in Islamic terrorism against the West.
  • “The threat from Al Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq. They will target Coalition forces and other Western interests in the Middle East. Attacks against Western interests elsewhere are also likely, especially in the US and UK, for maximum impact. The worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups and individuals will increase significantly.”


Thomas H. Kean et al., ‘The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States’, The 9/11 Commission (22nd/July/2004): https://9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf

  • pp. 48-49: “The history, culture, and body of beliefs from which Bin Ladin has shaped and spread his message are largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on symbols of Islam’s past greatness, he promises to restore pride to people who consider themselves the victims of successive foreign masters. He uses cultural and religious allusions to the holy Qur’an and some of its interpreters. He appeals to people disoriented by cyclonic change as they confront modernity and globalization. His rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources—Islam, history, and the region’s political and economic malaise. He also stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in the Muslim world. He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites. He spoke of the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War, and he protested U.S. support of Israel.”
  • p. 362: “Usama Bin Ladin and other Islamist terrorist leaders draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within one stream of Islam (a minority tradition), from at least Ibn Taimiyyah, though the founders of Wahhabism, through the Muslim Brotherhood, to Sayyid Qutb. That stream is motivated by religion and does not distinguish politics from religion, thus distorting both. It is further fed by grievances stressed by Bin Ladin and widely felt throughout the Muslim world—against the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, policies perceived as anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, and support of Israel.”
  • p. 376: “American foreign policy is part of the message. America’s policy choices have consequences. Right or wrong, it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.”


Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication, ‘Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication’ (Washington, USA: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics; September, 2004): https://irp.fas.org/agency/dod/dsb/commun.pdf

  • A 2004 internal report conducted by the Bush administration.
  • p. 40: “American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists.”
  • p. 40: “What was a marginal network is now an Ummah-wide movement of fighting groups. Not only has there been a proliferation of “terrorist” groups: the unifying context of a shared cause creates a sense of affiliation across the many cultural and sectarian boundaries that divide Islam.”
  • p. 40: “Muslims do not “hate our freedom,” but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.”
  • p. 40: “Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self-determination.”


Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (New York, USA: Metropolitan Books, 2005).

  • Documents how Islamism and Islamist terrorism have been massively funded (with literally billions of dollars overall) and supported (diplomatically and militarily) for many decades by the USA for various strategic purposes, hugely contributing to the present global situation (e.g., the rise of al-Qaeda).


Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York, USA: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2006).

  • A study of the causes of suicide terrorism, which finds that the primary motivation of such terrorists is not any particular religion, but rather, the expulsion of foreign military occupations.
  • p. 4: “The data show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world’s religions. In fact, the leading instigators of suicide attacks are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion. This group committed 76 of the 315 incidents, more suicide attacks than Hamas. Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective.”


Peter Bergen & Paul Cruickshank, ‘The Iraq Effect: The War in Iraq and Its Impact on the War on Terrorism – Pg. 2’, Mother Jones (1st/March/2007): http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/03/iraq-effect-war-iraq-and-its-impact-war-terrorism-pg-2/

  • A summary of a study on the gigantic increase in and proliferation of Islamism and Islamist terrorism as a direct consequence of the British and American “War on Terror” (especially the invasion of Iraq).
  • “Our study shows that the Iraq War has generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost; even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one-third.”


Stephen Holmes, The Matador’s Cape: America’s Reckless Response to Terror (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

  • An analysis of post-9/11 American foreign policy by an American political scientist.
  • p. 20: “Many commentators offhandedly assert that the hijackers were simply programmed for death, having been socialized inside a cultural system that normalizes suicide terrorism. About al Qaeda, some even assert that “the culture of martyrdom is firmly embedded in its collective psyche.” Such appeals to social norms or a culture of martyrdom are not very helpful, however. They are tantamount to saying that suicide terrorism is caused by a proclivity to suicide terrorism. A less tautological approach starts elsewhere, with the observation that, at some level, [Mohammed al-Amir] Atta and the others did what they did because they were recruited, trained, and instructed to do so by their commanders in a quasi-military hierarchical organization that had “declared war” on America. That is to say, their murderous act must be explained organizationally and not merely ideologically or psychologically, or even sociologically. They were told what to do and behaved like soldiers, obeying superiors and dying for their (imaginary) country.”
  • p. 63: “The mobilizing ideology behind 9/11 was not Islam, or even Islamic fundamentalism, but rather a specific narrative of blame.”


Alan Travis, ‘MI5 report challenges views on terrorism in Britain’, the Guardian (20th/August/2008): https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/aug/20/uksecurity.terrorism1

  • A restricted 2008 report by MI5 concluded that most British-Muslim terrorists and militants are religiously-illiterate and impious.
  • “…a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation”.


Dalia Mogahed & Ahmed Younis, ‘Religion Does Not Color Views About Violence’, Gallup (9th/September/2011): https://news.gallup.com/poll/149369/religion-not-color-views-violence.aspx

  • A report on a Gallup poll that found that “OIC countries [are] slightly less likely to see military attacks on civilians as sometimes justified”.
  • “Evidence refutes the argument that Islam encourages violence more than other religions. Residents of the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member states are slightly less likely than residents of non-member states to view military attacks on civilians as sometimes justified, and about as likely as those of non-member states to say the same about individual attacks.”


Michael Scheuer, Osama bin Laden (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011).

  • A useful exposition by the former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit on the way in which opposition to American imperialism, rather than merely Islam, is the primary motivation behind Islamism and Islamist terrorism directed against the USA.
  • Given that Scheuer is an extremely reactionary palaeo-conservative and Trump-supporter, this source will be particularly effective on conservative Islamophobes (as opposed to the liberal type).
  • p. 112: “…no one, whether in the United States, the West, or the Muslim world, can justifiably profess doubt that U.S. policies motivated bin Laden, and have inspired other Muslims to support that struggle by picking up arms, donating funds, or offering prayers.”


Pew Global Attitudes Project, ‘Muslim-Western Tensions Persist: Common Concerns About Islamic Extremism’, Pew Research Centre (21st/July/2011): https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2011/07/21/muslim-western-tensions-persist/

  • A Pew survey evidencing widespread resentment towards Western policy in the Muslim world.
  • p. 2: “One note of agreement between Westerners and Muslims is that both believe Muslim nations should be more economically prosperous than they are today. But they gauge the problem quite differently. Muslim publics have an aggrieved view of the West – they blame Western policies for their own lack of prosperity. Across the Muslim publics surveyed, a median of 53% say U.S. and Western policies are one of the top two reasons why Muslim nations are not wealthier.”


Michael Scheuer, interview with Lou Dobbs on Lou Dobbs Tonight (14th/September/2012): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBJ6VL3XQM0

  • “We have not had an enemy anywhere in the world who has been so clear about what motivates them since we fought Ho Chi Minh and General Giap. This is all about American intervention in the Middle East.”


Doug Saunders, The Myth of the Muslim Tide: Do Immigrants Threaten the West? (New York, USA: Vintage Books, 2012).

  • Refutes a plethora of lies and distortions about Muslim communities in Western countries, including on issues relating to demographics, immigration, integration, and terrorism, based upon “the most comprehensive demographic, statistical, scholarly and survey data available” (p. 6).
  • pp. 86-87: American Muslims are 4-to-6 times less likely than non-Muslim Americans to condone violence against civilians (7% vs. 24%), whilst British, German, and French Muslims were statistically indistinguishable from British, German, and French non-Muslims on similar questions (whether attacks on civilians are justified, and whether violence for a noble cause is justified); in fact, “the majority who said it was “not justifiable” was usually somewhat higher among Muslims than among non-Muslims.”
  • pp. 87 ff.: “The facts are unambiguous here. Across the Western world, support for violence and terrorism among Muslims is no higher than that of the general population, and in some cases it is lower.”
  • p. 101: “This, however, is one area where a decade of counterterrorism research, the analysis of volumes of extremist literature and dialogue, and interviews with thousands of current and former jihadists and terror-cell members by large groups of scholars have produced two unambiguous conclusions. First, it is not generally devout or fundamentalist Muslims who become terrorists. Second, terrorists are driven by political belief, not by religious faith. The Muslims who support violence and terrorism are not the Muslims who are the most religious or fundamentalist in their views; in fact, the two rarely have anything to do with one another, and the latter are usually opposed to the former.”
  • p. 102: “religious devotion simply does not correlate with violent radicalism.”
  • pp. 105 ff.: “Islamist terrorism in the West has generally been declining.”


The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, ‘The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society’, Pew Research Centre (30th/April/2013): https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/

  • p. 29: “Muslims around the world strongly reject violence in the name of Islam.”
  • p. 29: The super-majority of polled Muslims around the world say that “suicide bombing in defense of Islam is rarely/never justified.”


Michael Scheuer, presentation at Committee on Homeland Security House of Representatives, 113th Congress, 1st session (9th/October/2013), Serial No. 113-38: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egnsDDJdKuk

  • “And if you think I place too much emphasis on the motivation provided by US citizens and other Western mujāhidīn by US and Western interventionism, I would draw your attention to the reality that, to the best of my knowledge, neither we nor any of our NATO partners have yet to capture an Islamist whose words or written or electronic documents have shown a motivation to attack based on hatred for liberty, elections, democracy, or gender equality. Invariably, they attribute their motivation to the US and Western military intervention.”


Michael Scheuer, interview with Ron Paul on the Ron Paul Liberty Report (12th/May/2015): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF2beaBcdhc

  • “There’s a direct correlation between the growth in attacks, the growth in the enemy’s manpower, the growth in his geographic reach, and the pursual by the United States of interventionist policies in the Islamic world. Whether it’s Egypt, or Libya, or Syria, or Iraq, or Yemen, or Pakistan, or Afghanistan—the more we’re there, the worse this problem is going to become, and the more focused on the United States this problem will become. It’s like night following day: intervention brings war, and we are governed by two thoroughly interventionist parties.”


T. J. Coles, ‘The New Atheism Hoax’, Axis of Logic (19th/June/2015): http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_70715.shtml

  • A brief but devastating exposé of the intensive cherry-picking of popular New Atheist authors regarding Islamic terrorism.


T. J. Coles, ‘How the New Atheists Lie About Palestine: Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris Contradict Their Own Sources’, PIPR: The Plymouth Institute for Peace Research (24th/June/2015): http://www.pipr.co.uk/how-the-new-atheists-lie-about-palestine-dawkins-dennett-and-harris-contradict-their-own-sources/

  • Another brief but devastating exposé of the intensive cherry-picking of popular New Atheist authors regarding Islamic terrorism.


Richard Carrier, ‘You Might Be an Islamophobe If…’, Richard Carrier blogs (11th/December/2015): https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/9211

  • A useful general resource on miscellaneous Islamophobic lies and distortions, and on the political and social effects of Islamophobia. Since Carrier is a New Atheist, this resource is especially useful for combatting New Atheist varieties of Islamophobia.


Patrick Cockburn, ‘How politicians duck the blame for terrorism’, Independent (19th/March/2016): http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/how-politicians-duck-the-blame-for-terrorism-a6942016.html

  • An article written in the aftermath of the 2016 attack in Paris by Salah Abdeslam et al.
  • “But there is a more insidious reason why Europeans do not sufficiently take on board the connection between the wars in the Middle East and the threat to their own security. Separating the two is much in the interests of Western political leaders, because it means that the public does not see that their disastrous policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and beyond created the conditions for the rise of Isis and for terrorist gangs such as that to which Salah Abdeslam belonged.”


Noam Chomsky, ‘The Costs of Violence: Masters of Mankind (Part 2)’, Guernica (17th/May/2016): https://www.guernicamag.com/noam-chomsky-the-costs-of-violence/

  • “In brief, the Global War on Terror sledgehammer strategy has spread jihadi terror from a tiny corner of Afghanistan to much of the world, from Africa through the Levant and South Asia to Southeast Asia. It has also incited attacks in Europe and the United States. The invasion of Iraq made a substantial contribution to this process, much as intelligence agencies had predicted.”


Davide Lerner, ‘It’s Not Islam That Drives Young Europeans to Jihad, France’s Top Terrorism Expert Explains’, Haaretz (20th/August/2017): https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2017-08-20/ty-article/its-not-islam-that-drives-young-europeans-to-jihad-terrorism-expert-says/0000017f-f79a-d47e-a37f-ffbe0bc60000

  • An interview with—and summary of the findings of—Olivier Roy, a French counterterrorism expert, who argues that social alienation and dislocation make young people vulnerable to terrorist recruitment.
  • “In his recent book “Jihad and Death: The Global Appeal of Islamic State,” Roy argues that about 70 percent of these young people have scant knowledge of Islam, and suggests they are “radical” before even choosing Islam. He dubs them “born again Muslims” who lead libertine lives before their sudden conversion to violent fundamentalism.”
  • “These “new radicals” embrace the Islamic State’s narrative as it’s the only radical narrative available in the “global market of fundamentalist ideologies,” Roy says. “In the past they would have been drawn, for example, to far-left political extremism.” Half of violent jihadis in France, Germany and the United States also have criminal records for petty crime, just like Abedi, who appears to have been radicalized without the involvement of the local mosque or religious community, an element that mirrors patterns in the rest of Europe.”
  • However, Roy wrongly discounts outrage at Western imperialism as a key factor in motivating Muslim terrorists, as in the instance of the British Libyan suicide bomber Salman Abedi in 2017: “Had he been concerned about acts of Western imperialism, he would have mentioned the British attack in Libya in 2012, making his act political in one way or another,” Roy says.” Cf. not just all of the other evidence cited in this section, but the testimony of Salman’s sister Jomana concerning his motivations (here): “He saw the explosives America drops on children in Syria, and he wanted revenge.” Roy’s research provides an important factor (alienation and discontent), but one that should complement—rather than displace—the other, omnipresent factor of Western imperialism.


Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam, new updated ed. (London, UK: Serpent’s Tail, 2018).

  • Documents—above all, on the basis of declassified government documents and the statements of military and intelligence personnel—how Islamism and Islamist terrorism have been massively funded and supported (financially, diplomatically, and militarily) for many decades by the UK for various strategic purposes, hugely contributing to the present global situation (e.g., the rise of ISIS).


The Western imperialist powers—especially the USA and the UK—are directly responsible for the mass-proliferation of militant Islamism throughout the Muslim world: firstly, by supporting Islamism against the secular forces that initially predominated in the region; and secondly, by triggering Islamist hostility and support for anti-Western Islamism through their continued regional aggression subsequently. Despite this, most “Muslims around the world strongly reject violence in the name of Islam” and support democracy and religious freedom, etc.



Section 3: Global Muslim Social and Political Attitudes


Concerning the claim that Muslims around the world are largely or overwhelmingly theocratic, reactionary, violent, and/or otherwise “extremist” (whatever that means), see the following.


Saranga Jain & Kathleen Kurz, ‘New Insights on Preventing Child Marriage: A Global Analysis of Factors and Programs’, International Center for Research on Women (April, 2007): http://lastradainternational.org/lsidocs/icrw_child_marriage_0607.pdf

  • p. 21: “The factors, in order of significance, were: (1) education of girls, (2) age gap, (3) region, (4) wealth, (5) religion, (6) education of the partner (secondary and higher) and (7) polygyny.”
  • p. 25: “Religion was significant in eight countries both with logistic and linear regression, and it was significant in five countries using the tipping point regression. However, the analysis found that no one religious affiliation was associated with child marriage across countries.”
  • p. 25: “These results indicate that targeting a particular religion across countries is not an effective way to address early marriage.”


‘This Alien Legacy: The Origins of “Sodomy” Laws in British Colonialism’, Human Rights Watch (17th/December/2008): https://www.hrw.org/report/2008/12/17/alien-legacy/origins-sodomy-laws-british-colonialism

  • A Human Rights Watch report that documents how most of the anti-gay laws in countries across Africa and Asia have their roots in the imposition—from the outside—of colonial British anti-sodomy laws.
  • p. 10: “Sodomy laws throughout Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have consistently been colonial impositions.”


The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, ‘The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society’, Pew Research Centre (30th/April/2013): https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/

  • Islamophobes like to cherry-pick this poll, but taken as a whole, it reveals a staggering amount of variation across Muslim societies, which immediately undermines their general thesis of an Islamic cause: if rates of acceptance of the contemporaneous applicability of ḥudūd vary widely, for example, but Islam is the common denominator between the varying groups, then how can Islam explain the acceptance as opposed to the rejection?
  • Beyond widespread reactionary views on homosexuality and apostasy, the poll also documents high rates of support for democracy, religious freedom (including for religious minorities), and the right of women to choose whether to veil.
  • p. 15: Muslim support for “making sharia the official law in their country” is low in the Muslim societies of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, medium-to-high in sub-Saharan Africa, and high in South and Southeast Asia—although most of those polled “say it should apply only to their country’s Muslim population,” and significant variation exists as to what is even meant by “sharia.”
  • p. 27: The majority of polled Muslims around the world “completely or mostly agree” that “a woman should have the right to choose if she veils”.
  • p. 29: “Muslims around the world strongly reject violence in the name of Islam.”
  • p. 29: The super-majority of polled Muslims around the world say that “suicide bombing in defense of Islam is rarely/never justified.”
  • p. 32: The majority of polled Muslims around the world “prefer democracy over [a] strong leader”.
  • p. 32: The super-majority of polled Muslims around the world say that “religious freedom”—including for non-Muslims—“is a good thing.”
  • For some caveats (e.g., on the apostasy point), cf. Sahil Badruddin, interviewing Dalia Mogahed, ‘Dalia Mogahed on Islam and the Promise of America’, Candid Insights (2019): https://sahilbadruddin.com/dalia-mogahed-on-islam-and-the-promise-of-america/


Rachel Vogelstein, ‘Child marriage and religion’, Council on Foreign Relations (2nd/January/2014): https://www.cfr.org/blog/child-marriage-and-religion-0

  • A useful summary of recent research on the causes of child marriage, which are primarily poverty and lack of female access to education, not any particular religion.
  • “Religion is often blamed for the prevalence of child marriage. Notably, however, the practice is not unique to any one faith; in fact, it occurs across religions and regions. For example, in India, where 40 percent of the world’s known child brides reside, child marriage is prevalent among both Muslims and Hindus. In Burkina Faso and Ethiopia, child marriage is practiced by Christians and Muslims alike. An analysis by the International Center for Research on Women found that what is constant across countries with high child marriage rates is not adherence to one particular faith, but rather factors such as poverty and limited education opportunities for girls.”
  • “The prevalence of child marriage varies greatly even among countries that incorporate religious doctrine into their legal systems. Some Muslim-majority countries, for example, that integrate Sharia law, such as Libya and Algeria, have relatively low rates of child marriage. In other countries that practice Sharia law, such as Yemen, the practice is rampant.”


Jonathan A. C. Brown, ‘Stoning and Hand Cutting—Understanding the Hudud and the Shariah in Islam’, Yaqeen Institute (12th/January/2019): https://yaqeeninstitute.org/jonathan-brown/stoning-and-hand-cutting-understanding-the-hudud-and-the-shariah-in-islam/

  • An article exploring the concept and application of the ḥudūd (Islamic corporal and capital punishments derived from the Quran and Hadith). Of particular interest is the rarity of their application.
  • “The hudud are probably carried out in Saudi Arabia at a higher rate than they were historically in Muslim societies. But they are still very rare. Between 1981 and 1992, there were four executions by stoning in Saudi Arabia and forty-five amputations for theft. In a one-year sample (1982-83), out of 4,925 convictions for theft, only two hands were cut off. The rest of the guilty were punished by taʿzīr [judicial discretion]. In the same time period, out of 659 convictions for hudud-level sexual crimes, no one was stoned. Many death sentences are the result of political punishments, not the hudud. In Nigeria’s northern states, all of which have adopted Shariah-based legal codes, a few amputations for theft have taken place. There have been at least two sentences to death for adultery, but in all cases so far ambiguities were found to release the guilty party.”


In short, Muslim attitudes vary widely from one society to the next: those in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia (with the notable exceptions of Tunisia and Lebanon) tend to be more conservative or even in some cases theocratic, whilst those in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia tend to be more liberal or secular. Moreover, even within the same societies, Muslim attitudes vary from theocratic and conservative to liberal or secular, depending on the issue. Of course, as we have already seen, theocratic and reactionary forces across the Muslim world have been variously supported and sustained by Western imperialist powers over the past half-century—yet liberal tendencies and secularist tendencies also remain strong in many Muslim majority countries.



Section 4: Muslim Immigration and Integration in Western Contexts


Concerning the claim that Muslim immigration poses an existential threat to Western societies due to the higher fertility rates of Muslims, their refusal to integrate into the society and culture of their new home countries, and their fostering of theocracy, extremism, etc., see the following.


Nicole Naurath, ‘Most Muslim Americans See No Justification for Violence’, Gallup (2nd/August/2011): https://news.gallup.com/poll/148763/muslim-americans-no-justification-violence.aspx

  • A report on a Gallup poll that found that “Muslims Americans more likely than other faith groups to reject attacks on civilians”.


Doug Saunders, The Myth of the Muslim Tide: Do Immigrants Threaten the West? (New York, USA: Vintage Books, 2012).

  • Refutes a plethora of lies and distortions about Muslim communities in Western countries, including on issues relating to demographics, immigration, integration, and terrorism, based upon “the most comprehensive demographic, statistical, scholarly and survey data available” (p. 6).
  • pp. 39 ff., 48 ff.: Western Muslims have similar—or are tending towards similar—fertility-rates to non-Muslim Westerners.
  • pp. 64-65: American Muslims and American Christians exhibit similar rates of the importance they assign to religion, their attendance of regular religious services, and the belief that their religion is compatible with a modern society.
  • pp. 64, 66: French Muslims generally exhibit similar rates of religiosity and observance to those of French society at large: 20% of French people from “Muslim backgrounds” are not even religious at all, and of those who are religious, only 8-15% attend regular religious services, a mere 5% attend weekly Friday prayers, 28% never pray, 48% regard fornication as morally-acceptable, most send their children to non-Islamic schools, and 40% even support the chauvinistic French ban of hijabs in public schools.
  • p. 66: German Muslims (most of whom originate from rural Turkey) exhibit higher rates of acceptance of homosexuality (47%) than those in their places of origin, evidencing a shift in perspective towards the average of their new society.
  • pp. 69-70: “A 2009 Gallup survey of opinions held by minorities in European countries found that “British Muslims are more likely than all populations surveyed to identify strongly with their nation, and to express stronger confidence in its democratic institutions.”
  • p. 74: Muslim immigrants in the West “are generally becoming enthusiastic supporters of the state and democratic institutions around them.”
  • pp. 74-75: Muslim immigrants are often “impoverished and isolated from the mainstream economy,” but research from Europe shows that this is (1) common to most “visible minority ethnic groups” (such as Caribbean Christians and Surinamese Christians and Hindus) and (2) likely caused by “an ethnic and religion penalty in the labour market” (i.e., discrimination).
  • pp. 75-76: There are similar findings from Canada.
  • pp. 76-77: A 2011 study by an American economist found that Muslim immigrants from the same countries of origin varied in their level of assimilation according to their new Western home country: those in North America tend to be far more assimilated than those in Europe, likely due to the prevalence of restrictive European laws stymying the attainment of full legal citizenship (and thus, property-ownership) for such immigrants.
  • pp. 77-79: Schooling systems in Europe play a decisive role in the level of assimilation of second-generation Muslim immigrants, shunting “poor immigrant children into the same low-skill, low-education trajectories as their parents.”
  • p. 80: Like their parents, second-generation Muslim immigrants in Europe face “both an ethnic and a religion penalty in the labour market” (i.e., discrimination).
  • pp. 83 ff.: “Muslims appear to be among the least disenchanted and most satisfied people in the West. We already saw that Muslim immigrants are unusually content with their new Western home countries, governments and democratic institutions. Recent years have seen a series of major investigations into the broader feelings and beliefs of these Muslims, and the results are both unambiguous and reassuring.”
  • pp. 86-87: American Muslims are 4-to-6 times less likely than non-Muslim Americans to condone violence against civilians (7% vs. 24%), whilst British, German, and French Muslims were statistically indistinguishable from British, German, and French non-Muslims on similar questions (whether attacks on civilians are justified, and whether violence for a noble cause is justified); in fact, “the majority who said it was “not justifiable” was usually somewhat higher among Muslims than among non-Muslims.”
  • pp. 87 ff.: “The facts are unambiguous here. Across the Western world, support for violence and terrorism among Muslims is no higher than that of the general population, and in some cases it is lower.”
  • pp. 90 ff.: Beginning in the 1980s and the 1990s, certain Western governments (such as the UK, the USA, and Canada) sought to lessen state expenditure on their justice systems by encouraging citizens to use independent communal mediators and arbitrators to settle contested “contracts, divorces and other torts” (which were both far less costly and often yielded satisfactory resolutions). Jews and Catholics were thereby allowed to establish religious tribunals of this kind for their respective communities during the early 1990s, and in the early 2000s, some Muslim communities in the same countries followed suit. However, Islamic tribunals in the West, like their Catholic and Jewish counterparts, are (1) voluntary and (2) restricted to civil issues such as divorce.
  • p. 97: A 2012 study by a Canadian law professor found that most American Muslims don’t even favour a limited application of Islamic law, preferring ordinary civil courts over Islamic tribunals.
  • p. 97: “when Muslims move to the West, their interest in religious-based law declines.”
  • pp. 97-98: A 2008 poll by Le Monde found that 75% of French Muslims are “opposed to the imposition” of Islamic law.
  • p. 98: A 2007 poll by Policy Exchange found that the majority of British Muslims prefer to live under “British law” rather than “sharia law”.
  • p. 99: “These findings suggest that Muslims in the West are far less interested in religious commandments than Muslims in the countries from which they immigrated, but that like earlier religious-minority immigrants, they remain more faith-driven than the rest of the population. If you consider their strong expressions of loyalty to their host countries and their institutions, as well as their low tolerance for violence, Muslims’ views about religion and law are little different from those of, for example, Christians in the United States. The figures do point to a portion of the population in Europe who, like earlier waves of poor immigrants, are having an awkward and difficult period of integration. In some instances (such as in Britain), they are clinging to traditional social views, despite the rapid trend of secularization across most of the Muslim world. But this does not suggest that there is any widespread desire or drive to make sharia law a reality in the West. Those who support sharia appear to be the Muslims who are most marginal and disconnected from society. Those with the best chance of influencing the legal system are those who are least interested in religious law.”
  • p. 101: “This, however, is one area where a decade of counterterrorism research, the analysis of volumes of extremist literature and dialogue, and interviews with thousands of current and former jihadists and terror-cell members by large groups of scholars have produced two unambiguous conclusions. First, it is not generally devout or fundamentalist Muslims who become terrorists. Second, terrorists are driven by political belief, not by religious faith. The Muslims who support violence and terrorism are not the Muslims who are the most religious or fundamentalist in their views; in fact, the two rarely have anything to do with one another, and the latter are usually opposed to the former.”
  • p. 102: “religious devotion simply does not correlate with violent radicalism.”
  • pp. 105 ff.: “Islamist terrorism in the West has generally been declining.”


Adam Goldman & Matt Apuzzo, ‘NYPD: Muslim spying led to no leads, terror cases’, Associated Press (21st/August/2012): https://www.ap.org/ap-in-the-news/2012/nypd-muslim-spying-led-to-no-leads-terror-cases

  • “In more than six years of spying on Muslim neighborhoods, eavesdropping on conversations and cataloguing mosques, the New York Police Department’s secret Demographics Unit never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation, the department acknowledged in court testimony unsealed late Monday.”


David Mikkelson, ‘Sharia Law Muslim ‘No-Go’ Zones’, Snopes (30th/March/2015): https://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/nogozones.asp

  • A refutation of a common xenophobic lie about Muslim immigrants and the spread of theocracy in Western countries.


Richard Carrier, ‘You Might Be an Islamophobe If…’, Richard Carrier blogs (11th/December/2015): https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/9211

  • A useful general resource on miscellaneous Islamophobic lies and distortions, and on the political and social effects of Islamophobia. Since Carrier is a New Atheist, this resource is especially useful for combatting New Atheist varieties of Islamophobia.


Dalia Mogahed & Fouad Pervez, ‘American Muslim Poll: Participation, Priorities, and Facing Prejudice in the 2016 Elections’, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (2016): https://www.ispu.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/poll2016-1.pdf

  • A poll of American Muslim opinion that found, amongst other things, that “Muslims and Protestants have similar views of the role of religion in law” and that “Muslims [are the] Most Likely Faith Group to Reject Military Attacks on Civilians”.


Shaun, “Moderate Muslims & Terror Attacks”, YouTube (21st/June/2017): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtCFr34KhSI

  • Refutes lies about Muslim communities in the UK supporting and being sympathetic of Muslim terrorism.
  • Notes how the ludicrous solutions favoured by Islamophobes—restricting or banning Muslim immigration; banning Islam—would not only be ineffective but would only serve to cause further suffering.


‘Like Americans overall, Muslims now more accepting of homosexuality’, Pew Research Centre (25th/July/2017): https://www.pewforum.org/2017/07/26/political-and-social-views/pf_2017-06-26_muslimamericans-04new-06/

  • According to this 2017 Pew poll, the Muslim-American acceptance-rate of homosexuality has rapidly increased over the last two decades to a slight majority: 52% say that “homosexuality should be accepted by society”, such that American Muslims are now as accepting of homosexuality as Evangelical Protestants (52%), and more accepting of homosexuality than White Evangelical Protestants in particular (34%).


Alex Vandermaas-Peeler, Daniel Cox, Molly Fisch-Friedman, Rob Griffin, & Robert P. Jones, ‘Emerging Consensus on LGBT Issues: Findings From the 2017 American Values Atlas’, PRRI (1st/May/2018): https://www.prri.org/research/emerging-consensus-on-lgbt-issues-findings-from-the-2017-american-values-atlas/

  • A 2018 PRRI study that found that 51% of American Muslims “favor same-sex marriage” and that only 34% oppose, again in contrast to White Evangelical Protestants (and also Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses), the majority of whom oppose same-sex marriage.
  • This same study also found that the majority of American Muslims (59%) “also reject a policy allowing religiously based refusals to serve gay and lesbian people” (again in contrast to the majority of White Evangelical Protestants and Mormons).


Zack Hassan, ‘Young British Muslims are becoming much more liberal – but they aren’t less religious as a result’, the Independent (5th/May/2018): https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/british-muslims-ipsos-mori-liberal-imams-islam-a8334196.html

  • A 2009 Gallup poll found that 0% of British Muslims believe that homosexuality is morally acceptable (discussed here), but a 2016 ICM poll found that 18% of British Muslims believe that homosexuality should be legal and only 52% disagreed (discussed here), and in general, recent data suggests that British “Muslims are becoming more liberal” (per this Hassan article).
  • This suggests that British Muslims are following the same general pattern of integration outlined by Saunders above, i.e., moving towards the mainstream liberal views of the broader society.


Richard Carrier, ‘There Are No Muslim “No Go” Zones,’ Richard Carrier blogs (3rd/March/2019): https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/15117

  • A refutation—and useful case study—of a common xenophobic lie about Muslim immigrants and the spread of theocracy in Western countries.


Brian Reed & Hamza Syed, ‘The Trojan Horse Affair’, The New York Times (3rd/February/2022): https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/podcasts/trojan-horse-affair.html

  • A podcast series exposing that the “Operation Trojan Horse” document from the so-called Trojan Horse Scandal in the UK back in 2013 was known by the government to be obvious fabrication already back then, but that the government cynically exploited the situation regardless to expand its powers.
  • For the fallout surrounding this podcast (especially the intransigence and gaslighting of the British media establishment), see Zarah Sultana, ‘The Response to the Trojan Horse Affair Tells Us All We Need to Know About Islamophobia in Britain’, Novara Media (19th/April/2022): https://novaramedia.com/2022/04/19/the-response-to-the-trojan-horse-affair-tells-us-all-we-need-to-know-about-islamophobia-in-britain/


Ella Cockbain, ‘Media manufacturing of the ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ crisis’, The New Arab (4th/July/2022): https://english.alaraby.co.uk/opinion/media-manufacturing-muslim-grooming-gangs-crisis

  • A refutation of the British media’s fabrication of the Islamophobic “Muslim grooming gangs” hysteria by an Associate Professor at UCL in the Department of Security and Crime Science.
  • “…what we are dealing with here has all the hallmarks of a moral panic: a relatively small number of cases have been cherrypicked, decontextualised, heavily publicised and relentlessly spun to create the illusion of a vast threat from the “Other”.”
  • “In response to public concern, media pressure and, I suspect, its own immigration-related interests, the Government reportedly ordered civil servants to investigate the ethnic composition of “grooming gangs”. Many of the challenges encountered in doing so were entirely predictable and had been foreshadowed in much more rigorous prior research on child sexual abuse. The eventual report – which the Government initially refused to publish – found no reliable evidence of ethnic or religious overrepresentation, concluding that “research has found that group-based offenders are most commonly White”. Notably, the Home Office’s accompanying literature review echoed concerns from our and others’ work about the dangers of racialising child sexual abuse and agreed that Quilliam’s infamous 84% statistic was simply not credible.”


I do not grant the Islamophobic assumption that a Muslim-majority West would be inherently negative or worse than a Christian-majority West; nor do I grant the chauvinistic axiom that people should conform to the values and customs of their new home country; nor do I grant the alleged necessity to preserve some fictional ideal of a national or civilisational heritage. However, regardless of how we feel about it, Muslims are indeed integrating into Western society. Time and time again, xenophobic and alarmist claims about Muslim immigrants—and indeed, all immigrants—have turned out to be extremely exaggerated and distorted at best, and outright lies at worst. Thus, skepticism obtains: whenever you encounter an anti-immigrant claim of this kind (in an email, on the television, in a Youtube video, on a website, in a newspaper, or as an anecdote from a friend or family member), you should presume that it is a distortion or a lie, until the contrary is demonstrated.



Section 5: Muslim Refugees in Western Contexts


Concerning the claims that recent Muslim refugees from Syria and other conflict zones pose some kind of threat to Western societies, by refusing to integrate and being violent, see the following.


Snopes:

https://www.snopes.com/?s=Islam

https://www.snopes.com/?s=refugees


Richard Carrier, ‘You Might Be an Islamophobe If…’, Richard Carrier blogs (11th/December/2015): https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/9211

  • A useful general resource on miscellaneous Islamophobic lies and distortions, and on the political and social effects of Islamophobia. Since Carrier is a New Atheist, this resource is especially useful for combatting New Atheist varieties of Islamophobia.


Franz Solms-Laubach, ‘Flüchtlingskriminalität 2015 – der BKA-Bericht’, Bild (16th/February/2016): http://www.bild.de/politik/inland/bundeskriminalamt/der-bka-bericht-44587004.bild.html

  • A 2015 report concluded that “the vast majority of asylum seekers are not committing crimes” [translated from German].


Shaun, “Source Check: The XY Einzelfall Map”, YouTube (23rd/December/2016): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PuXoOvDYPE

  • A refutation of lies and distortions about refugees in Germany [many of whom are Muslim], falsely depicted as causing some kind of crime epidemic.


Harriet Agerholm, ‘Germany has seen an increase in violence since it opened its doors to refugees… due to attacks on refugees’, Independent (26/February/2017): http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-attacks-germany-ten-angela-merkel-hate-crime-a7600616.html

  • The recent spike in crime in Germany since the commencement of the ‘Syrian refugee crisis’ is actually due to the drastic rise of Rightwing anti-refugee violence in the country.


Erin Rubin, ‘Statistics Show Syrian Refugees Help Host Country Economies’, Nonprofit Quarterly (12th/May/2017): https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2017/05/12/statistics-show-syrian-refugees-help-host-country-economies/

  • Syrian refugees [who are often Muslim] tend to be better-educated and more entrepreneurial than, for example, the average native-born American.


Kathryn Casteel & Michelle Cheng, ‘Refugees may be good for the economy’, FiveThirtyEight (14th/June/2017): https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/refugees-may-be-good-for-the-economy/

  • According to research undertaken by the National Bureau of Economic Research, refugees in the USA tend to give back (in terms of taxes) more than they take (in terms of government support).


Michael Clemens, ‘The Real Economic Cost of Accepting Refugees’, News Deeply (8th/August/2017): https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/community/2017/08/08/the-real-economic-cost-of-accepting-refugees

  • Refugees (and migrants in general) often stimulate economic growth, by increasing demand for products and services and providing more taxes.


In short, Muslim refugees are not gratuitously criminal and do not pose an existential or civilisational threat to Western societies. Given the vast amount of lying on this subject, skepticism again obtains: whenever you encounter an anti-refugee claim like this, you should presume that it is a distortion or a lie until the contrary is demonstrated.



Section 6: Institutional Islamophobia in the West


This section does not respond to specific Islamophobic claim, but instead, documents how Islamophobia has been manufactured and acted upon in both media and government in the West.


Nafeez Ahmed, ‘Time to Hold the Media to Account for Islamophobia’, HuffPost (18th/July/2012): https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-nafeez-mosaddeq-ahmed/muslims-and-the-media_b_1682041.html

  • A summary of various studies documenting the persistent demonisation of Muslims and Islam in the British media.


Adam Goldman & Matt Apuzzo, ‘NYPD: Muslim spying led to no leads, terror cases’, Associated Press (21st/August/2012): https://www.ap.org/ap-in-the-news/2012/nypd-muslim-spying-led-to-no-leads-terror-cases

  • “This is a terribly pernicious set of policies,” Eisenstein said. “No other group since the Japanese Americans in World War II has been subjected to this kind of widespread public policy.”


Fleur Allen, ‘Islamophobia in the UK: The role of British newspapers in shaping attitudes towards Islam and Muslims’ (PhD Thesis, University of Wales, 2014): http://repository.uwtsd.ac.uk/413/1/Fleur%20Allen%20new.pdf

  • p. 25: “…the Leveson Inquiry has included an examination of how the press has portrayed Islam. The evidence and witness statements from the Inquiry reaffirm much of what previous reports and studies have concluded and raise some serious questions about press standards. During the inquiry Richard Peppiatt, a former journalist for the Daily Star, admitted that some stories were inaccurate and journalists had often been under pressure from superiors to distort the facts in order to sell more papers. He suggested that competition amongst journalists to get their story to stand out had led to facts being embellished.”
  • p. 65: “From an analysis of articles from this period it is evident that the ways in which Muslims were conceived and perceived had changed little. In particular those newspapers which had played a role in shaping anti-Muslim feeling in the decades prior appear to have been all too happy to continue in the same vein after 7/7. Key themes such as those connected to Muslims being seen as a ‘threat’, ‘extreme’, ‘barbaric’ and ‘other’ appeared regularly during this period. Reports from this time also serve to highlight questions about the agendas of both journalists and newspapers especially in relation to stories being fabricated.”


Matthew Duss, Yasmine Taeb, Ken Gude, & Ken Sofer, ‘Fear, Inc. 2.0: The Islamophobia Network’s Efforts to Manufacture Hate in America’, Center for American Progress (11th/February/2015): https://www.americanprogress.org/article/fear-inc-2-0/

Fear, Inc., Center for American Progress: https://islamophobianetwork.com/

  • Documents the vast rightwing funding network behind organised Islamophobia, including the key doners, politicians, pundits, and activists involved.


Nesrine Malik, ‘Can’t talk about Muslims? It seems we do little else in the UK’, The Guardian (5th/September/2017): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/05/muslims-criticism-religion-right-left-gag-debate

  • A refutation of the Orwellian, gaslighting, Islamophobic myth that it is taboo to talk about Muslims and Islam in the UK, when the British media constantly demonises them.


Ken Livingstone, ‘Tommy Robinson and the impact of the super-rich on UK politics’, Russia Today (2nd/January/2019): https://www.rt.com/op-ed/447939-tommy-robinson-support-us-billionaire/

  • An exposé of the billionaire funding and support behind the British Islamophobic activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (better known as “Tommy Robinson”).
  • “Although Robinson depicts himself as a mere underdog whose campaign against Islam has been suppressed by the establishment, he is now receiving more funding from right-wing groups than anyone else in Britain.”
  • “Robinson admits he has received several hundred thousand pounds in donations, but the Guardian investigation raised disturbing issues about the groups funding him. The US think tank Middle East Forum admits it has given $60,000 to support his legal fees and the London demo.”


David Brennan, ‘Muslim Terror Attacks Get 357 Percent More Media Coverage Than Those by Other Groups: Study’, Newsweek (20th/February/2019): https://www.newsweek.com/terrorism-muslim-islamic-attacks-media-coverage-1336669

  • “In a study published in Justice Quarterly, researchers at Georgia State University and the University of Alabama found that terror attacks by Muslims receive an average of 357 percent more media coverage than those by other groups.”
  • “The team studied 136 terrorist attacks that took place in the U.S. between 2006 and 2015, and analyzed national print and online media using information form the Global Terrorism Database. Of these attacks, Muslims committed an average 12.5 percent. However, this “tiny” number of incidents received half of all news coverage, researchers explain.”


Layla Aitlhadj, ‘The British Conservative Government & Prevent’, interviewed on The Thinking Muslim Podcast (20th/October/2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApZo6BspJIQ

  • An exposé of the Islamophobic and McCarthyite—not to mention extremely ineffective—British government “anti-terrorism” program “Prevent”, which tramples on civil liberties, institutionally gives free reign to the biases, prejudices, and ignorance of teachers, and largely functions simply to intimidate, harass, inconvenience, and criminalise ordinary Muslims.


In sum, Islamophobia is rampant in Western—especially British—media, and is also facilitated and enacted by governments.



Summary


Together, these resources—including polls, surveys, intelligence reports, declassified documents, and the conclusions of relevant experts—expose the most common lies and distortions of Islamophobes concerning Islam and Muslims in the contemporary world. To summarise the basic facts:

  1. Islam is not inherently violent or political; like all religions, it is constantly evolving and varies according to context.
  2. The primary cause of Islamic militancy and terrorism directed against the West—and a primary cause of modern Islamic militancy and terrorism in general—is Western imperialism.
  3. Global Muslim opinion varies widely from conservative to liberal depending on the issue, and regardless, Islamism would be far less prominent in Muslim societies if not for Western imperialism in the region.
  4. Muslim immigrants to Western societies are integrating and certainly do not pose an existential threat to their new home countries.
  5. Recent Muslim refugees fleeing from Syria and other such conflict zones are not disproportionately criminal and certainly do not pose an existential threat to their host countries.
  6. Islamophobia is widely propagated in both major media and government policy in the West.

Given the sheer volume and intensity of lying and distortion on these topics, a skeptical heuristic is warranted: whenever you encounter a claim like those addressed above, you should presume that it is a lie or distortion until proven otherwise.


These resources are only the tip of the iceberg, and many more will be added to this collection going forward.