Police are investigating an incident in which Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian graffiti was discovered on a wall of Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland.
Police are investigating an incident in which Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian graffiti was discovered on a wall of Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland.
The message, which contained hateful rhetoric directed at Muslim and Palestinian communities, was discovered early Friday morning.
Hate speech toward Muslim and Palestinian communities found Friday, Jan. 16, 2026, on a wall at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland. (Credit CAIR)
In a letter home to the school community, Whitman Principal Gregory Miller said the graffiti was “profoundly offensive” and that type of “hate speech is completely unacceptable, hurtful, and will not be tolerated at Walt Whitman High School or any school in Montgomery County.”
Miller added that school officials are working with police to review security camera footage and meet with students.
Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said in a statement that the hateful act “does not reflect who we are as a County and will not be tolerated,” adding that the county police department is working with the school system to “find the perpetrators.”
At-Large Council member Will Jawando said in a post on social media the message is a “direct threat to the safety and well-being of our students.”
“As a parent of MCPS students and as Chair of the Education and Culture Committee, I find it unacceptable for any child to walk into a place of learning and be met with calls for the obliteration of their people or their faith,” Jawando said.
He added that his team is working with MCPS and local law enforcement to monitor the situation.
“It’s on each of us in Montgomery County to ensure that hate has no place here,” Council member Andrew Friedson added in a post.
The graffiti was quickly painted over Friday morning.
Anyone with information in the case is asked to contact the school administration, the police non-emergency line at 301-279-8000, or anonymously through the Maryland Safe Schools Tip-Line at 1-833-632-7233.
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New York just weathered one of the ugliest political seasons of the last 50 years, with multiple public figures pumping out literally thousands of divisive, hateful messages about Muslims that were seen and heard by millions. Unfortunately, the bigotry has continued postelection and will poison our city until and unless a vocal majority demands it come to an end.
On the night of Zohran Mamdani’s election victory, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, posted congratulations on social media, writing, “New Yorkers faced a clear choice — between hope and fear — and just like we’ve seen in London — hope won.” But Khan, the first Muslim mayor of London, knows all too well that even after hope wins, hatred hangs around like an angry drunk in an alley, spoiling for a rematch.
“Any decent New Yorker, certainly any Jew, should hate this bastard,” WABC radio’s morning host, Sid Rosenberg, recently told listeners in a rant against Mamdani that the station not only aired but excerpted and pushed out on social media. Two days before Thanksgiving, Rosenberg was at it again: “This punk is now the mayor. This little bitch,” he spat. “Now he’s putting together this transition team, which looks more and more like the Iraqi soccer team.”
These comments are typical of the sort of bigotry the station aired throughout the campaign. I asked WABC’s owner, billionaire and former Republican mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis, why he allows it. “You know what I said to Zohran? I said to him, ‘Look, before November 4, there was war. After November 5, let’s settle down and forget about the past and go forward,’” Catsimatidis told me.
I asked whether he plans to rein in the hate speech on his station. “I would not allow any hate speech,” Catsimatidis promised, and I will take him at his word.
It would be nice to believe that New York’s problems are confined to one radio station and a troubled broadcaster who has frequently gotten himself fired, but politicians who know better have generated similar garbage. The losing campaign of ex-governor Andrew Cuomo, who chuckled along when Rosenberg suggested during an interview that Mamdani would cheer if another 9/11 attack happened, created and posted — but then quickly took down — an overtly racist ad that included a Black man wearing a keffiyeh while going on a shoplifting spree.
“It was an ad that was created by a social-media personality, a comedian who came in at the very end, who put it together, and it was put up. And as soon as it was brought to my attention, other senior people on the staff’s attention that it was up, it was immediately pulled down because it hadn’t been approved,” Cuomo’s campaign adviser, Melissa DeRosa, told me. “It hadn’t gone through the right legal channels. And so that was a mistake, and we acknowledged it at the time.” The problem, of course, is that the ad was created in the first place.
“The depth to which they were willing to go to polarize the city, to polarize the Jewish community, to inflict real fear in the Jewish community, I think, is inexcusable,” Morris Katz, a strategist for Mamdani, told me. “Andrew Cuomo, at the top of his lungs, for six months, with millions of dollars behind the effort, was essentially telling Jewish New Yorkers that this person is an existential threat to your safety. And eventually, that’s going to break through, to a degree. It was a real organized, deliberate, cruel misinformation campaign that penetrated certain parts of the Jewish community in New York.”
The political ads were part of a deluge of online messaging, mostly on X, that only accelerated as Election Day approached. “We found a huge spike in online hate and fearmongering targeting Muslims in the aftermath of Mamdani’s primary win, blending racism, anti-Muslim bigotry, red-baiting, and anti-immigrant sentiment into one dangerous narrative,” Raqib Hameed Naik, the executive director of the Washington-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate, told immigrant-oriented news website Documented. The center issued a report after studying 6,669 public social media posts about Mamdani in a 17-day window during the campaign and found that just under 2,000 of the, “frame Islam itself, not any policy detail, as a public threat.”
In posts that racked up hundreds of millions of views and other forms of engagement, “Muslims were portrayed as threats to national security, incompatible with democracy, or as agents of an imagined foreign agenda,” Naik said. He’s talking about messages like the one right-wing agitator Laura Loomer posted the night Mamdani won the primary — “There will be another 9/11 in NYC and @ZohranKMamdani will be to blame” — which got more than a million views.
“We know from experience that this kind of online demonization and dehumanization doesn’t stay online,” Naik told Documented. “It creates a permissive environment for real-world harm.”
Real-world harm is exactly what a Texas man named Jeremy Fistel promised before he was arrested, extradited to Queens, and charged with making a series of graphic, terroristic threats against Mamdani and his family. “I get messages that say, ‘The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.’ I get threats on my life … on the people that I love. And I try not to talk about it,” Mamdani said at an emotional September press conference, placing some of the blame on his political opponents. “I’m characterized by those same rivals as being a monster, as being ‘at the gates,’ language that describes almost a barbarian looking to dismantle civilization,” he said. “Part of this is the sad burden of being the first Muslim candidate to run for mayor.”
Something similar happened when Khan, the mayor of London, first ran in 2016, defeating a Conservative Party opponent whose closing argument to voters was that “London stands on the brink of a catastrophe,” next to a photo of a bus blown up in a notorious terrorist attack. Khan went on to win by 13 points and has been reelected twice. As one Conservative activist noted, the party was blowing “a dog whistle in a city where there’s no dog.” It must also be noted that Khan continues to require as much security as King Charles III and has recently been the target of a surge in anti-Muslim online hate, according to a report commissioned by the Greater London Authority.
The lesson from overseas is that bigotry’s defeat is never final: People of goodwill must always be ready to speak up, again and again, to drown out the stale rants of the haters with the voice of a diverse, tolerant democracy.
Dhillon, a loyal Trump supporter who has a history of defending far-right provocateurs and peddling conspiracy theories, encouraged Lang in a tweet to “reach out to us please with the information needed to start an investigation.”
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon. Credit: DOJ
Dhillon was responding to a nine-minute video that Lang posted of conservative culture-war pundit Matt Walsh selectively highlighting brief moments when counter-protesters reacted to hours of racial slurs, taunting, and harassment.
Walsh, a Daily Wire commentator known for targeting LGBTQ+ people, attacking Muslims, and mobilizing his followers against marginalized communities, called Lang a victim of “violent Muslims,” omitting that Lang spent the day calling people the n-word, mocking them with monkey noises, waving bacon in their faces, and threatening to burn the Quran.
Lang’s tweet racked up more than 360,000 views in 16 hours, fueling islamophobic outrage from X users who only saw the carefully clipped moments designed to make Muslims look like out-of-control, intolerant aggressors. By replying, Dhillon poured gas on a manufactured fire and could put Dearborn in the crosshairs of the Trump administration.
Her response quickly drew a wide range of reactions, including from Trump supporters who warned she was being duped.
“Don’t fall for this. Lang is a provocateur who went looking for trouble. Did you see the video of him yelling the N word at people?” one outspoken MAGA supporter from Detroit wrote.
Another user asked, “Defending instigators trying to spark a holy war. Why?”
Others cheered Dhillon on and demanded immigration sweeps.
“Make ICE set up shop in Dearborn,” one X user wrote.
Some responses were openly racist toward Dhillon, with users insisting, “You won’t do crap, you hate White people” and “Not sure if a person named Harmeet is gonna protect the constitution but good luck.”
Dhillon said nothing about Lang’s harassment, bigotry, or the multiple instances of ethnic intimidation he engaged in Tuesday as he marched through a diverse city in a bulletproof vest and antagonized residents.
She said nothing about the slurs that Lang hurled at teenagers. Nothing about him calling non-white people the n-word. Nothing about him telling Muslims they were “chimping out,” making monkey noises at them, or calling them “violent, disgusting people.”
Here is insurrectionist and Florida man Jake Lang repeatedly using the n-word and denigrating George Floyd at the Dearborn protest. This was the rhetoric he continued to use, and when people responded, he called them animals. pic.twitter.com/isO16K4Klg
Instead, the first instinct of Trump’s DOJ was to consider investigating the handful of Muslims and allies who responded physically, including one person who punched Lang and ran and another who pepper-sprayed him.
Dhillon’s willingness to take cues from far-right influencers follows the Trump administration’s pattern of targeting Black and brown people while ignoring white supremacists, including those with violent records.
To be clear, Tuesday’s incident in Dearborn was not a spontaneous “clash,” as depicted by some local and national media. It was the culmination of Lang’s years-long attempt to portray Muslim Americans as violent, hateful, and intolerant of other religions. And it worked for many conservatives. His footage was spun by right-wing commentators to claim Dearborn was a “Muslim stronghold” attacking Christians.
Now the nation’s top law enforcement agency may be preparing to act on the propaganda. While Dhillon’s statement does not guarantee an investigation, her willingness to entertain Lang’s claims raises the risks that right-wingers will increasingly target and surveil Muslims in Dearborn and neighboring cities.
Dearborn’s 106,000 residents include Christians, Muslims, and non-religious people. About half the city’s residents aren’t Muslim.
This isn’t just a political stunt executed by right-wing racists and agitators. If the Trump administration starts investigating communities targeted by white extremists, it sets a dangerous precedent that won’t stop with Dearborn or Muslims.
A Republican gubernatorial candidate is spreading misinformation and stoking anti-Muslim sentiment ahead of a planned march in Dearborn that he’s calling the “American Crusade.”
Anthony Hudson, a truck driver from Grand Blanc Township and self-described “America First” candidate, has used his social media platforms to portray Dearborn as a threat, falsely suggesting the Detroit suburb is facing “Muslim infiltration” and “Sharia law.”
In a series of posts on X, Hudson announced plans for a “peaceful assembly” in Dearborn on Tuesday, calling on “patriots” to join him at Schaefer Road and Michigan Avenue at 4 p.m. He has repeatedly invoked Christian nationalist language, writing, “CHRIST WILL NOT BE MOCKED.” He also vowed to “expose Dearborn for what it is.”
Hudson has also claimed that the National Guard, Marines, and a “Patriot Militia” will attend the march, though no official agencies have confirmed any involvement.
The group plans to pray and sing gospel music before attending a Dearborn City Council meeting at 7 p.m.
“we won’t be leaving until a peace treaty is reached,” Hudson wrote. “Mark my words. The world is watching. We need all patriots there.”
He continued, “No backing down. No surrender. We the people will not be mocked, & neither will Christ.”
In another post, Hudson wrote that “Sharia law will be banned.”
Despite Hudson’s claims, Sharia law has never been practiced in Dearborn, nor would it be legally permissible under the U.S. Constitution. The city’s roughly 106,000 residents include Christians, Muslims, and non-religious people, with about 55% of Arab descent and an estimated 50,000 residents who are not Muslim.
Other X users have mocked Muslims or encouraged bigotry in replies to Hudson’s posts. One suggested, “Bring bacon bits….it’s like sprinkling holy water on a demon.”
Hudson responded, “They are demons lol.”
Another X user suggested bringing dogs, while others used pejoratives to describe Muslims.
The planned march follows the arrest of three young Dearborn men accused of plotting an ISIS-inspired attack on an LGBTQ+-friendly venue in Ferndale. Federal prosecutors say the men discussed the idea online but were stopped before carrying out any violence. Defense attorneys maintain there was no plan and that the defendants were engaging in online bravado.
Using the isolated and yet-proven case to justify his divisive rhetoric, Hudson falsely claimed there was Muslim “infiltration everywhere.”
Hudson insisted, “CHRIST WILL PREVAIL. LIGHT WILL WIN.”
“REMEMBER: THIS IS HOW THEY REALLY TREAT CHRISTIANS,” Hudson fumed. “DON’T LET THEM FOOL YOU. THEY HATE YOU. THEY DO NOT WANT PEACE. LIGHT WILL WIN.”
Since the FBI arrests, many right-wingers have been stoking fears with baseless and outrageous claims about Dearborn and Muslims. In a series of videos posted by conspiracy theorist Mellissa Carone, who was parodied on Saturday Night Live for her outlandish testimony as Rudy Giuliani’s “star” witness during a legislative election-fraud hearing, the bombastic Trump supporter alleged Muslims are intolerant and violent. She also inflated the Muslim population in Dearborn.
“A woman cannot walk down the street of east Dearborn and not get harassed in some way or even spit on,” Carone claimed. “I’ve seen friends of mine get spit on for not covering their hair and their face. You will not pass a building that is not written in Arabic. You cannot read anything. It’s like being in a third world country.”
Others mocked Hudson for his absurd, conspiratorial claims.
“Just looks like a fat guy with cardiovascular issues making his beard go grey prematurely,” Anthony Jorah wrote on X. “What’s he protecting us from, dessert?”
Hudson’s remarks have also drawn concern from civil rights advocates who warn that such language can incite harassment and deepen divisions.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Hudson is playing the politics of fear to apparently gain himself publicity,” Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), tells Metro Times. “Every city in Michigan, including Dearborn, is under the jurisdictions of the American and Michigan constitutions. We encourage the citizens of Dearborn not to take the bait of this individual and his acolytes who will attempt to provoke angry responses in order to demonize Muslims.”
Whether Hudson’s vitriolic, inflammatory, and divisive rhetoric can drum him up some votes isn’t yet clear. He has no statewide name recognition, and he’s facing well-known Republicans, including former Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, U.S. Rep. John James, former Michigan House of Representatives Speaker Tom Leonard, and Michigan Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt. Other GOP candidates are construction manager William Null, Pastor Ralph Rebandt, and political organizer Karla Wagner.
Beyond his odious rhetoric, Hudson is pushing a platform that would gut funding for schools, universities, police, health care, parks, libraries, and infrastructure. He has vowed to eliminate both the state income tax and property taxes, a proposal that economists say would devastate Michigan’s ability to fund essential services. The state income tax, which generates roughly $9 billion a year, accounts for most of the state’s general fund and a significant share of the School Aid Fund, which supports K-12 education. Without that revenue, lawmakers would have to slash spending or find new sources of funding for numerous resources and services.
Property taxes bring in about $18.8 billion annually, according to the Michigan Tax Commission, and serve as the lifeblood of local governments. They fund police and fire departments, libraries, parks, local road repairs, and public schools. Eliminating property taxes would strip cities, counties, and school districts of their primary revenue source and leave them unable to pay for basic operations unless the state imposed new taxes elsewhere.
Combined, property and income taxes make up more than half of Michigan’s total tax revenue. Scrapping both would create a multibillion-dollar hole in the state’s budget and cripple services.
Hudson declined to comment for this story, saying he wasn’t available until Friday.
Neither Dearborn police nor Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud returned calls for comment.
(CNN) — Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist whose focus on working-class issues and personal magnetism attracted a diverse coalition of volunteers and supporters to propel a once-underdog campaign, will win New York City’s general election race for mayor, CNN’s Decision Desk projects.
Mamdani beat former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for a second time, shattering the political scion’s hopes of a comeback after his loss to Mamdani in the June Democratic primary. Also running in the general election was Republican Curtis Sliwa, who refused to end his campaign despite pressure from Cuomo and his supporters.
Mamdani’s win marks a victory for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party at a time when national Democrats are divided over how to counter President Donald Trump. The president is himself a native New Yorker who has falsely derided Mamdani as a “communist” and suggested he’d “take over” the city if he is elected.
The results are likely to echo far beyond New York City, elevating both Mamdani’s profile and platform, including his proposals to freeze the rent for New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized apartments, make public buses free to ride and provide universal childcare by taxing the wealthy.
Mamdani’s win completes a meteoric rise a year after the state assemblyman launched his bid for mayor, promising to make the most expensive city in the country affordable for its working class.
Who is Zohran Mamdani?
Mamdani is a three-term state assemblyman who entered the mayor’s race as one of several apparent also-rans to what appeared to be Cuomo’s race to lose.
Born in Uganda and first raised in Cape Town, South Africa, Mamdani moved to New York City when he was 7. He attended the prestigious Bronx High School of Science and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bowdoin College. He is the son of Mahmood Mamdani, a professor at Columbia University, and Mira Nair, an Indian filmmaker whose credits include “Mississippi Masala” and “Monsoon Wedding.”
Before becoming an assemblyman, Mamdani was a housing counselor and self-described C-list rapper who went by the name “Mr. Cardamom.” His short-lived music career was sometimes front and center in his opponent’s attack ads.
The music video for “Nani,” a rap song where Mamdani pays homage to his grandma and New York City’s South Asian culture, also shows him shirtless, donning only an apron, looking directly at the camera while he rocks side to side. The image was plastered across anti-Mamdani campaign ads to poke fun at his past music career and his lack of governmental experience.
Andrew Epstein, a campaign aide, noted that Mamdani’s rapping career helped him indirectly in his campaign.
“An incredible asset for anybody seeking to run for office is bravery in the face of embarrassment and being able to push through the natural inclination many of us have not to kind of introduce themselves to strangers or do things in a kind of silly way in front of them,” Epstein told CNN.
But Mamdani made a steady climb in the mayor’s race by producing a constant stream of social media videos, including interviews with voters who had supported Trump in 2024 due to the high cost of living. He ran a groundbreaking digital campaign in which he spoke in multiple languages and connected with supporters with a message anchored to affordability. During the campaign, Mamdani, who natively speaks Urdu, released campaign videos in Bangla, Spanish, and Arabic.
One of his most memorable viral videos tackled what the candidate referred to as “halal-flation.” He set out to interview street meat vendors about the high cost of running a street food business in New York City. With a mouthful of rice and halal meat, Mamdani detailed how an arcane permit system in the city is in part to blame for the prices of what should be cheap street food.
“This was one of the coldest nights of the year, bitterly cold,” Epstein recalled recently. “We were downtown by Zuccotti Park near Wall Street and Zohran just asking people on the street, ‘Would you rather pay $10 or $8 for halal?’ People were pushing through trying to get home, you know, it was rejection over and over and over and over again, but it never fazed him.”
Mamdani was cutting into Cuomo’s lead in public polling by the June primary. The city’s traditional power brokers, including the real estate and business sectors concerned with Mamdani’s democratic socialist identity, banded together in support of Cuomo and donated millions of dollars to anti-Mamdani super PACs. Business leaders argued Mamdani would drive wealthy New Yorkers out and discourage businesses from operating in the nation’s financial capital.
Their push ultimately helped Mamdani cast his campaign as a fight between working-class people and billionaires.
Still, his primary victory shocked much of the political world.
“I don’t think the line is so much between progressives and moderates. It’s between fighters and fakers,” said city comptroller Brad Lander, who ran against Mamdani but allied with him under the primary’s ranked-choice voting system. “What Zohran is showing is that it’s worth putting up big bold ideas for change, standing up and fighting for them, and that’s pretty hopeful. Yes, he’s a democratic socialist, but he had a bold vision for the future of the city and that excited people.”
The general election campaign
After taking a vacation in Uganda to celebrate his wedding, Mamdani returned to a city mourning the deaths of New York police officer Didarul Islam and three others in a Midtown Manhattan shooting. He was confronted with his years of tweets criticizing the police, including references to law enforcement as racist and wicked and calling for them to be defunded.
“I am not defunding the police. I am not running to defund the police,” he would tell reporters after meeting with Islam’s family, part of an overall shift away from anti-police rhetoric that culminated in recent weeks with his commitment to retain the current police commissioner, Jessica Tisch.
He also reached out to New York’s Jewish community, roiled by his criticisms of Israel’s government and questions about democratic socialism. Mamdani is an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights, a supporter of the movement to boycott and divest from Israel and a fierce critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I hate my choices,” said Cydney Schwartz, a 33-year-old liberal Democrat who has lived in Israel and was in line to cast an early vote. She declined to say who she chose.
The last days of the campaign
In the closing days of the campaign, Mamdani referred to the race as a choice between “oligarchy and democracy.” His omnipresence on the campaign trail was on display during the last days of the race and in the lead-up to the last weekend of early voting in the city.
As more than half a million New Yorkers turned out to cast their votes early, Mamdani was everywhere: He was in church in the morning, calling into radio shows midday, stopping into ethnic supermarkets in the outer boroughs, popping up on influencer live streams, joining a Union Square freestyle rap battle and capping off his Saturday with a whirlwind tour of the city’s nightclub scene.
Paying homage to the city that never sleeps, Mamdani appeared to hardly do so either, stopping at six nightclubs in Brooklyn just to do it all over again on the last Sunday of early voting. He attended a church service with his parents, met campaign volunteers before stopping on the sidelines of the New York City Marathon, went to Queens for a meet-up with Gov. Kathy Hochul to cheer on the Buffalo Bills, and popped up in the nosebleeds of Madison Square Garden for a New York Knicks game.
Cuomo also campaigned across the city. Notably, he tried to cut into Mamdani’s core support of South Asian and Muslim voters by highlighting Mamdani’s opposition to criminal penalties for prostitution. He also laughed when a radio host suggested Mamdani would cheer another 9/11 attack, drawing allegations from Mamdani and others that he was playing to Islamophobia. Cuomo denied he was doing so.
Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams ended his independent bid and endorsed Cuomo. But Cuomo was unable to push Sliwa, the Republican nominee, out of the race, denying anti-Mamdani voters the chance to consolidate behind one opponent. Sliwa repeatedly and colorfully vowed he would die before making way for Cuomo, arguing he owed it to his supporters to keep running.
For Cuomo, Tuesday’s results are likely a coda to a long and eventful political career. He was governor of New York for nearly 11 years before resigning in 2021 after he was accused of sexual harassment, allegations he has denied, and amid criticism of how his administration handled Covid-19 cases in nursing homes. Running for mayor, Cuomo leaned into his executive experience, often pointing out Mamdani’s short career in politics and relative lack of work history.
He relaunched his mayoral bid as an independent after losing to Mamdani in June. He remained focused on public safety, promising to hire additional police officers and build more housing. Cuomo, who has a longstanding relationship with Trump, also sought to portray himself as the better candidate to fend off the president’s attacks on New York City.
A history-making mayor
Mamdani will be inaugurated on January 1, 2026. He inherits a deeply complex city home to 8.5 million people, a large bureaucracy, a municipal workforce of roughly 300,000 and a city budget of $115 billion.
Mamdani will make history as New York City’s first Muslim mayor, the first South Asian to hold the office and one of the youngest mayors elected in modern times. He recently married Rama Duwaji, an artist of Syrian descent who was born in Texas and moved to New York City to complete a master’s degree in illustration. Duwaji skipped traditional campaigning alongside her husband on the trail and while it remains unclear whether she will have any role in his administration, at 28, she will be the first member of Gen Z to serve as New York City’s first lady.
While Mamdani’s identity as both an immigrant and a South Asian New Yorker was central to his campaign, his connection to that community began to take shape long before he launched his run for City Hall. He first made national headlines in 2021 when he joined New York City cab drivers on a 15-day hunger strike seeking relief from excessive debt.
Mamdani has a strong connection to the cab driver community in New York City, which is largely made up of immigrants, including thousands of South Asians who were among his fiercest supporters. In the last days of the campaign, Mamdani made a stop at LaGuardia Airport’s taxi stand at midnight, catching cabbies at shift change.
“Without the night shift, there is no morning,” Mamdani told them.
In the autumn of 2008, Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State under George W. Bush, broke from the Republican Party and endorsed the Democratic nominee for President, Barack Obama. It had been a brutal summer of electoral warfare. Rumors that Obama was Muslim swirled, becoming a significant aspect of the media coverage of his campaign. A group working with his opponent, John McCain, called people in swing states, planted doubts about Obama’s religious background, and asked how they would vote if they knew that the Democrat was supported by Hamas. McCain’s spokesperson defended the calls, but when a voter later said, in a town hall, that she couldn’t trust Obama, who was “an Arab,” McCain shook his head. “No, ma’am,” he said. Obama was a “decent family man.” The implication that “an Arab” could not possess those qualities was poisonous enough, but it was Powell who tackled the unspoken. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he acknowledged that Obama “is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian.” Nevertheless, Powell went on, what if Obama were Muslim? “Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?”
Seventeen years later, that question has become central to New York City’s mayoral race, in which Zohran Mamdani, a thirty-four-year-old democratic socialist and a Muslim, has held a solid lead since winning the Democratic primary this past summer. There have been plenty of legitimate attacks on Mamdani’s candidacy, citing his inexperience and interrogating how he will deliver on his promises to make the city more affordable. In recent weeks, though, many critiques have been tinged with specifically anti-Muslim undertones. Ellie Cohanim, a former deputy special envoy to combat antisemitism in the first Trump Administration, posted a photo of the Twin Towers burning, on September 11, 2001, and wrote, “Never Forget. . . . Vote Andrew Cuomo & save our city”; the New York Post has run headlines that link Mamdani to terrorism, such as “WEAPONS OF HAMAS DESTRUCTION.” Cuomo himself, the former governor of New York, who is running against Mamdani as an Independent, recently made remarks about his opponent that garnered wide attention. In an interview with the conservative radio host Sid Rosenberg, Cuomo asked if anyone could “imagine Mamdani in the seat,” if there were another 9/11. When Rosenberg replied, “He’d be cheering,” Cuomo chuckled along and added, “That’s another problem.”
The comment echoed a similar declaration made during another much watched campaign. In November, 2015, Donald Trump, who was then running for President, claimed that he had seen “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating during 9/11. A month later, he called for a plan to ban Muslims from entering the country in a bid to keep it safe. After he took office, in January, 2017, the policy went into effect, and hundreds of New Yorkers descended on J.F.K. Airport to protest. Governor Cuomo, in a show of solidarity, declared, “As a New Yorker, I am a Muslim.” It was a politically useful sentiment back then.
Trump’s story was a lie, but it gave voice to long-held suspicions of so-called dual loyalty. After 9/11, authorities rounded up Muslim men across the country and detained them without charge—in some cases, for years—or deported them for minor visa violations. To avoid such fates, many Muslim families fled the U.S., leaving behind neighbors and friends. The New York City Police Department devised a Demographics Unit, whose undercover officers and informants combed through Muslim neighborhoods and hid in bookstores and mosques and restaurants in search of terrorist threats, leaving communities fearful that they were always being watched. The program continued for years and, after being challenged in court, was eventually disbanded.
Democratic mayoral nominee and frontrunner Zohran Mamdani delivered an address on Islamophobia in the Bronx. Firday, Oct. 24, 2025.
Photo by Ethan Stark-Miller
The 2025 NYC Mayor’s race rivalry between Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo grew even more personal on Friday.
Following a spate of recent controversial actions by Mamdani’s mayoral election rivals that he and others have condemned as Islamophobic, the Muslim Democratic nominee delivered an emotional, 10-minute address on Friday in which he described his own experience with anti-Muslim discrimination and vowed to address the issue head-on going forward.
During Mamdani’s address outside of the Muslim Cultural Center of the Bronx, he called out his chief rival Cuomo, Republican opponent Curtis Sliwa, and current Mayor Eric Adams for what he described as making Islamophobic remarks part of the closing messages of their campaigns and time in office.
Cuomo responded in his own fiery Friday news conference with Muslim leaders in Jackson Heights, Queens, where he charged that Mamdani is “an actor playing the victim,” but in reality, “he’s the offender.”
Sliwa’s camp also took exception to Mamdani’s statements, alleging that he was “weaponizing accusations of Islamophobia for political gain.”
A spokesperson for Adams has yet to respond to requests for comment.
Mamdani: ‘No amount of redirection is ever enough’
Mamdani, a democratic socialist Queens lawmaker, said his adversaries’ comments were emblematic of the persistent Islamophobia he has experienced throughout his year-long mayoral campaign.
“Every day, super PAC ads imply that I am a terrorist, or mock the way I eat,” Mamdani said. “Push polls that ask New Yorkers questions like whether they support invented proposals to make halal food mandatory, or political cartoons that represent my candidacy as an airplane hurtling towards the World Trade Center.”
Mamdani said that hate has persisted despite his attempt not to be seen as the “Muslim candidate,” but rather as the one who would represent all New Yorkers.
“I thought that if I could build a campaign of universality, I could define myself as the leader I aspire to be, one representing every New Yorker,” he said. “I was wrong. No amount of redirection is ever enough.”
But, he continued, “I do not want to use this moment to speak to them any further. I want to use this moment to speak to the Muslims of New York City.”
Mamdani spoke to the discrimination he personally faced growing up in the aftermath of 9/11,” such as being called by the name “Mohammed” or ending up in an airport interrogation room for questioning about whether he planned on attacking the city. He also spoke to the experiences of other Muslims he knew who suffered even more extreme forms of hate.
“I was never pressured to be an informant like a classmate of mine, I’ve never had the word ‘terrorist’ spray-painted on my garage as one of my staff had to endure, my Mosque has never been set on fire,” he said. “To be Muslim in New York is to expect indignity. But indignity does not make us distinct. There are many New Yorkers who face it. It is the tolerance of that indignity that does.”
Cuomo says he ‘didn’t take’ terror remark ‘seriously’
Mamdani also chided Adams for seeming to paint him as an Islamic extremist who seeks to “burn churches” and Sliwa for claiming that he supports “global jihad.”
The former governor defended his response to Rosenberg during his Friday event by saying he “didn’t take it seriously.”
“I can see where, if you took it seriously, it was offensive,” he said. “I didn’t take it seriously at the time, period.”
Cuomo also rejected the concept of Mamdani’s speech, contending that the Queens lawmaker is the one dividing people, not himself. He suggested that Mamdani is calling all New Yorkers Islamophobic.
“What he is doing is the oldest, dirtiest political trick in the book: Divide people,” Cuomo said. “It’s the cheapest trick … divide New Yorkers as a political tactic. It won’t work. New Yorkers won’t let you divide them.”
When asked by amNewYork whether he believed his past statements on Palestine had contributed to the campaign attacks he condemned Friday, the Mamdani campaign referred us back to his statement today about being subjected to discrimination as a Muslim New Yorker.
As for Sliwa, campaign spokesperson Daniel Kurzyna charged that Mamdani was attempting to smear his rivals as bigots merely to gain a political edge.
“Curtis Sliwa has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Muslim New Yorkers for 50 years, working to protect their communities from violence and hate, and he will continue to do so as mayor,” Kurzyna said. “To weaponize accusations of Islamophobia for political gain is wrong and desperate, and New Yorkers deserve a campaign based on facts and solutions, not smears.”
Video shows Israeli middle schoolers dancing and chanting hate messages at a Palestinian classmate who called for a free Palestine and accused Israeli forces of being “murderers”.
IT is the first far-right party to win German state elections since the Nazis – and the success of Alternative for Germany is down to younger supporters.
Paramedic Severin Kohler says that it is now trendy among Generation Z TikTokers to back the organisation known as AfD, which is led in the state of Thuringia by a man who has been labelled a “fascist”.
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AfD fans Severin Kohler and Carolin LichtenheldCredit: Paul Edwards
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AfD MP Torben Braga — who, curiously for a German anti-immigration party, was born in Brazil and is of Brazilian and Welsh ancestryCredit: Paul Edwards
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Professor Reinhard Schramm, who lost 20 close family to the Nazi extermination camps, has had death threats and bullets sent to him in the postCredit: Paul Edwards
Severin, 28, a leader of the party’s youth wing Junge Alternative, told me: “It’s a matter of a rebellion against their parents. Being from the right is punk now.”
Almost 40 per cent of 18 to 24-year-old voters backed the AfD in Thuringia, central Germany, last week. In neighbouring Saxony, 31 per cent did the same.
Yet the local branches of the party in the two states have been classified as “right-wing extremist” by the nation’s domestic intelligence agency.
On the Instagram page of Carolin Lichtenheld, who leads Thuringia’s Junge Alternative, the 21-year-old trainee pharmacist is shown brndishing a megaphone at a rally, with the caption: “Ready to fight for the preservation of our homeland and for our future. We are the youth who are ready to resist a woke society.”
The image is hashtagged with the word “reconquista” — a reference to the recapture by Christian kings of Spain and Portugal from the Muslim Moors.
Felix Steiner, from German far-right monitoring group Mobile Consulting, agrees that young voters are attracted to the AfD.
The activist told The Sun: “Almost no other party is so active on social media platforms, especially TikTok. The message is, ‘Young people, come to us. We are the next movement’.”
Youth campaigner Severin wears a T-shirt bearing the name Bjorn Hocke — the AfD’s leader in Thuringia who has twice been convicted this year of using Nazi slogans.
Former history teacher Hocke harnessed the power of TikTok to target the youth vote during the election.
Incredible story of Nazi hunter and holocaust refugee
In one post he leads a cavalcade of motorcyclists riding models made by Simson — a brand associated with national pride by the far right — in the old Communist East Germany.
Yet critics say that behind Hocke’s glossy social media campaigning is a man who is a political “danger”.
In 2019 a court in Thuringia ruled it was not libellous to call Hocke a “fascist” as the opinion had a “verifiable, factual basis”.
Thin-lipped and greying, Hocke once described Berlin’sHolocaust Memorial as a “monument of shame” and demanded a “180-degree turn” in Germany’s culture of remembrance.
The father-of-four once spoke of the Germans “longing for a historical figure” who would “heal the wounds of the people”.
Ulrike Grosse-Rothig, leader of Thuringia’s left-wing Die Linke party, told The Sun: “Hocke is a die-hard fascist. He’s a danger for German society, its voters and to democracy.”
Former AfD Thuringia MP Oskar Helmerich has called Hocke “a dangerous man”.
Little wonder Thuringia’s small Jewish community has been fearful.
Professor Reinhard Schramm, who lost 20 close family to the Nazi extermination camps, has had death threats and bullets sent to him in the post from unknown sources.
Speaking at a synagogue in Thuringia’s largest city Erfurt, the 80-year-old Holocaust survivor told me: “The Jewish community is insecure and some are afraid. They are quite allergically against the AfD. This is not a normal party.”
Of Hocke’s demand for a “180- degree turn” in Germany’s culture of remembrance, the grandfather-of-three says: “So does this mean that I am not supposed to speak about my grandmother who was gassed to death in a German gas chamber?”
‘Some are afraid’
Severin insists the AfD is “against political violence”, adding: “We don’t have anything in common with people sending bullets to synagogues.”
The AfD won Thuringia — a largely rural state in central Germany — with just under 33 per cent of the vote.
It’s the latest European convulsion of the far right which has seen rampaging thugs attempt to torch migrant hotels in Britain and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally topping parliamentary elections in France.
In Germany — as elsewhere — the touchstone issue has been immigration.
Days before the Thuringia vote, a Syrian asylum seeker went on a knife rampage, killing three in the west German city of Solingen.
It emerged that the man — linked to Islamic State — had previously had his claim for asylum turned down but he had not been deported because the authorities could not find him.
Germany’s lame duck premier Olaf Scholz promised to speed up deportations and other mainstream parties followed suit with tough talk on immigration, including the conservative Christian Democratic Union.
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Andreas Buhl, a Thuringian MP for Merkel’s CDU, concedes that the former Chancellor’s open border policy was wrongCredit: Paul Edwards
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A CDU poster calling to stop illegal migrationCredit: Paul Edwards
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An anti-multicultural bannerCredit: Paul Edwards
Yesterday, it was reported that Germany’s interior minister Nancy Faeser has told the EU that controls will be brought in on all the country’s land borders, to deal with the “continuing burden” of migration and “Islamist terrorism”.
Britain, where populists Reform won four million votes at the General Election, will be watching whether moves towards the AfD’s turf will win back voters.
As well as a hardline stance on immigration, the AfD is also against what it says are over-zealous green policies, and it wants to halt weapons supplies to Ukraine.
At the Thuringian parliament in Erfurt, I met key Hocke lieutenant Torben Braga — who, curiously for a German anti-immigration party, was born in Brazil and is of Brazilian and Welsh ancestry.
The 33-year-old Thuringia MP says: “Bjorn Hocke doesn’t have a single fascist vein in his body.”
‘Political firewall’
Of his boss’s infamous “shame” reference to the Berlin Holocaust memorial, Braga says he meant it was “a shameful part of our history”.
Braga believes the security services are monitoring him and suggests “provocateurs” from those agencies were behind the “two or three cases” of people doing the Hitler salute at a recent rally in Erfurt.
Picturesque Erfurt is, at first glance, perhaps an unlikely setting for a far-right upsurge. Half-timbered town houses crowd flower-bedecked medieval squares where tourists enjoy beers on its many restaurant terraces.
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A far-right mob gather at a demonstration in Solingen last monthCredit: EPA
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Far-right AfD supporters wave German flags, including one adorned with an Iron CrossCredit: Getty
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The AfD party’s slick TikTok videosCredit: tiktok/@afd
This summer the England squad had their Euro 2024 training base a short drive away and Three Lions star Jude Bellingham was spotted having coffee in the city of 215,000.
Yet Thuringia has seen too much history in the 20th century.
After the Americans liberated Thuringia, it fell under Soviet control.
From 1949 to 1990 it was part of the Communist state of East Germany.
Post-German reunification, Thuringia and other eastern states struggled economically, with many youngsters heading to western Germany.
Immigration became a key political battleground after conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to a million refugees in 2015 and 2016.
Last year around 334,000 people claimed asylum in Germany — more than France and Spain combined. In the UK the figure was just under 85,000 people.
The AfD — formed in 2013 as a Eurosceptic party — has seen its fortunes rise as it hammered home its anti-immigration stance.
No other party is so active on social media platforms, especially TikTok.The AfD post pictures of demonstrations. The message is: ‘Young people come to us. We are the next movement’
It called for a ban on burqas, minarets, and call to prayer using the slogan, “Islam is not a part of Germany” in 2016.
In Thuringia, Hocke led a radical AfD faction called The Wing, deemed beyond the pale even by many in his own party.
Andreas Buhl, a Thuringian MP for Merkel’s CDU, concedes that the former Chancellor’s open border policy was wrong.
He told me: “In hindsight, it should have been clearer that you can also push people back at the border who have already entered another European country.”
He pledged, as other mainstream parties have, not to work with the AfD, creating a political firewall likely to block it from taking power.
It raises the spectre that those who voted for it may come to believe that democracy is failing them.
But anti-far-right activist Felix Steiner says only around half of AfD supporters are wedded to their hardline doctrines, with the rest supporting them as a protest vote.
He added: “The AfD result could be halved if voters were satisfied with other parties’ policies.”
The fight for the political soul of Germany’s Generation Z goes on.
It’s a battle of ideas that may be won or lost on the feeds of TikTok and Instagram.
Marc Lamont Hill speaks with scholars of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
As the war in Gaza rages on, the death toll keeps increasing and residents face starvation. Despite the heavy civilian toll, the United States keeps voicing its strong support for Israel.
Criticism has been raised of Washington’s approach to Palestinian victims. Is there a double standard when it comes to Palestine? And why do some in the US seem to conflate solidarity with Palestinians with anti-Semitism?
On UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks with Sahar Aziz, professor of law and Middle East legal studies scholar at Rutgers University; and Mitchell Plitnick, president of Rethinking Foreign Policy and co-director of Jewish Voice for Peace, about whether Islamophobia affects US foreign policy.
In the United States, speaking freely about Israel’s war on Gaza often has a price.
For expressing their opinions on the Israel-Palestine, many Muslim Americans and Arab Americans have paid a hefty price, including the loss of jobs and suspension from college.
Universities across the US are also cracking down on student activism.
Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza on October 7, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has received double the usual amount of reports of bias and requests for help, according to the executive director, Nihad Awad.
Speaking to host Steve Clemons, Awad warns that as the Israeli narrative continues “falling apart”, more attempts to dehumanise the Palestinian people will be seen.
A former National Security Council official who served in ex-President Barack Obama’s administration on Wednesday was arrested on hate crime charges after he was caught on video harassing a halal food vendor in New York City.
The charges that Stuart Seldowitz faces include aggravated harassment and stalking as a hate crime, WABC reported.
The vendor had earlier filed a report with police saying a man had approached him multiple times using Islamophobic language that made him feel “afraid,” according to The New York Times.
Seldowitz did not respond to reporters’ questions as he was escorted out of the the police department in handcuffs.
Several videos posted on social media this month show Seldowitz making Islamophobic comments on multiple occasions toward the 24-year-old street food vendor.
In one of the videos, Seldowitz appears to threaten the Egyptian-born vendor, saying the Muhabarat, Egypt’s intelligence service, will get to his parents.
“Does your father like his fingernails?” Seldowitz asks. “They’ll take them out one by one.”
Seldowitz is then asked to leave, but refuses to.
“I’m an American… it’s a free country, it’s not like Egypt,” he says.
Seldowitz went on to insult the vendor for saying he doesn’t speak English.
“That’s why you’re selling food in a food cart, because you’re ignorant,” Seldowitz said.
In a separate encounter captured on camera, Seldowitz is heard calling the vendor a “terrorist” and a “terrible person.”
The vendor then responded: “You kill children, not me.”
“You know what, if we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what, it wasn’t enough,” Seldowitz replied.
In a phone interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Seldowitz claimed he called out the vendor only after the latter endorsed the Hamas militant group.
“At that point, I got rather upset and I’ve said things to him, that in retrospect, I probably regret, though — that I do regret,” he told the outlet.
Gotham Government Relations, a former employer of Seldowitz, announced it has severed ties with him, noting Seldowitz hasn’t worked with them in years.
“The video of his actions is vile, racist, and beneath the dignity of the standards we practice at our firm,” a note posted on the lobbying firm’s homepage reads.
A now-deleted profile of Seldowitz on the company’s website stated he served as Acting Director for the National Security Council South Asia Directorate in the early 2000s. A LinkedIn profile belonging to Seldowitz, which also appears to have been removed, said he was employed in that role from February 2009 to January 2011, according to CNN.
Seldowitz told the Times he had previously worked in both Democratic and Republican administrations, including holding a position at the State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs.
The arrest of Seldowitz comes as tensions are running high amid the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war following the unprecedented Oct. 7 attack the militant group launched on southern Israel. Attacks on Jewish and Muslim New Yorkers have been on the rise since the Middle East conflict broke out, according to the Times.
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An Arab Muslim student at Stanford University was struck by a driver in a hit-and-run collision that the California Highway Patrol is investigating as a hate crime, according to the university.
The student was walking on campus about 2 p.m. Friday when the driver made eye contact before accelerating and striking the student, according to a news release from the university’s Department of Public Safety. The driver shouted, “F— you people,” as he sped away, the release said. The student’s injuries are not life-threatening.
Stanford’s president, Richard Saller, sent a message to the community condemning the violence.
“We are profoundly disturbed to hear this report of potentially hate-based physical violence on our campus. Violence on our campus is unacceptable,” he said. “Hate-based violence is morally reprehensible, and we condemn it in the strongest terms.”
The driver remains at large, authorities said. The victim described him as “a white male in his mid-20s, with short dirty-blond hair and a short beard, wearing a gray shirt and round framed eyeglasses.”
The vehicle was described as a black Toyota 4Runner, model 2015 or newer, with a tire mounted on the back with a Toyota logo in the center of the wheel. The victim said it had a white California license plate with the letters M and J, with M possibly the first letter and J in the middle.
Campuses across the country have been pushed to confront anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel, in which militants killed 1,400 Israelis and took about 220 people hostage.
Relentless attacks by Israel in the Gaza Strip in the weeks since have killed more than 9,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
Earlier this month, Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez spoke to the university’s faculty senate, detailing concerns from Palestinian American and Muslim community members who fear for their safety and who have described “troubling incidents and interactions rooted in Islamophobia.” She also relayed that Jewish and Israeli students have reported feeling fearful on campus, “feeling that they are targets of hate because of their identity.”
The Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee has said it has heard from students across the country, including California, who have faced threats on campuses since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.
Abed Ayoub, the group’s national executive director, said his staff has also heard from students who are facing expulsion or losing job opportunities for expressing their beliefs. Others are having their social media posts monitored and are threatened with violence.
Nuh, India – In February this year, two Muslim men were abducted and allegedly burned alive in their car by a group of cow vigilantes in India’s northern state of Haryana.
As the charred skeletons of the two men – Nasir Hussain, 28, and Junaid Khan, 35 – were discovered inside an SUV car in the state’s Bhiwani district, the main accused, 28-year-old Mohit Yadav, became a poster boy of cow vigilantism in India and a subject of extensive public scrutiny.
Haryana is governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, which has been accused of patronising Yadav, better known as Monu Manesar, and preventing his arrest in numerous such cases of cow-related attacks and even killings.
Many Hindus belonging to the privileged castes consider cows sacred. The sale and consumption of beef are banned in several Indian states, mostly in the north.
Dozens of Muslims have been lynched on suspicion of killing or transporting cows since 2014 in attacks critics say were enabled by the rise of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power.
How is Manesar linked to Nuh violence?
In Nuh, Haryana’s only Muslim-majority district, Manesar heads the local cow protection unit of the Bajrang Dal, the far-right youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP), which in turn is affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological mentor.
Founded in 1925, the RSS aims to create an ethnic Hindu state out of a constitutionally secular and religiously diverse India. The secretive organisation has millions of lifetime members across the world’s most populous nation and also abroad.
On July 31, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal decided to take out a religious procession through Nuh, with many participants carrying swords, tridents, sticks and firearms, and allegedly raising anti-Muslim slogans.
Two days before the procession, a Facebook video went viral, showing Manesar exhorting Hindus to congregate “in large numbers” for the procession in Nuh, saying he will also be there.
According to the police and the Hindu groups, the mostly Muslim residents of Nuh, angry over the February killings of Nasir and Junaid and other such incidents involving Manesar, attacked their procession with stones and burned some vehicles along the highway.
Nuh’s Muslims, in turn, accuse the Hindu groups of starting the violence, in which at least six people, including two Bajrang Dal members and two police guards, one of them Muslim, were killed.
Soon, the violence spread to the neighbouring Gurugram district where a mosque was attacked and its imam beaten and stabbed to death.
In response to the violence, more than 1,000 properties – mostly belonging to Muslims – were bulldozed by the Haryana government in Nuh, forcing an Indian court to ask if it was an “exercise of ethnic cleansing”.
Last week, several village councils in the region and a leading farmers’ group demanded Manesar’s immediate arrest to restore communal harmony and peace in the region, less than 100km (62 miles) from the national capital, New Delhi.
But he remains at large as anger over police inaction continues to simmer in Nuh and Gurugram.
What else is Manesar accused of?
Since his college days, Manesar, who holds a polytechnic diploma in engineering, has been a member of the Bajrang Dal, a group with a decades-old history of attacking minorities, mainly Muslims and Christians.
He was only 21 when a horrifying video, again from Haryana, showing him and his men attacking Muslims went viral in the summer of 2016. The video showed two Muslim men, their faces swollen and bloodied, being forced to eat cow dung after they were beaten for allegedly transporting beef.
Such videos are shared widely by right-wing Hindu groups on social media and WhatsApp groups to terrorise Muslims and other minorities. Soon, Manesar began to gain notoriety as a hardline vigilante.
His YouTube channel won a silver play button for having over 200,000 subscribers while his Facebook page boasted of more than 83,000 followers.
His posts mostly featured videos of high-speed chases and crashes, men flashing firearms and firing at trucks allegedly carrying beef, and photos and videos of injured men, usually Muslims, attacked by his team. Some photos showed him with powerful politicians and officers, including Home Minister Amit Shah.
Despite Meta and Google taking down his Facebook and YouTube pages respectively earlier this year, his videos are still shared widely by numerous fan pages run by right-wing groups and individuals.
Meanwhile, Manesar began to appear in debates on pro-BJP news channels, where he defended his violent cow vigilantism and attacks on Muslims.
In 2021, Manesar was invited to speak at a mahapanchayat, or a grand council of villages, called in support of some Hindu men accused of murdering a Muslim gym trainer, Asif Khan, who was also from Nuh.
At the mahapanchayat, Manesar was introduced as someone who shoots and gets shot at by “cow-smugglers”. In his speech, Manesar asked the crowd to prepare a list of Muslim men allegedly involved in “love jihad” – a far-right conspiracy theory that believes Muslim men target Hindu women through romance and marriage in order to convert them to Islam.
Manesar vowed his team would kill these Muslims.
What do Muslims in Haryana allege?
After the killings of Hussain and Khan in February, multiple victims came out in public with chilling testimonies and video evidence of torture posted online by the vigilante groups. The demands to arrest Manesar and his associates grew.
Imran Khan told Al Jazeera his cousin, Waris Khan, a motorcycle mechanic, was also allegedly lynched by Manesar’s gang a few weeks before Nasir and Junaid were murdered.
While police claimed Waris’ death was an accident, a video appeared showing him and two other men being forcibly shoved into a car. The man shooting the video asks the men to tell their names on camera.
Imran alleged the video was telecast live on Manesar’s Facebook page and showed Waris injured and bleeding, hours before he succumbed to his injuries at a government hospital in Nalhar.
He said the video has now been deleted and can be independently verified by the authorities.
In recent years, Nuh, also known as Mewat, has become an easy target for vigilante raids under the garb of cow protection, adding to anger and distrust among its residents.
“There was anger in the whole village when Monu Manesar was not arrested after Nasir and Junaid’s murder. If he was not given impunity by the government, he would not be roaming free. If he had not released his video before the July 31 procession in Nuh, riots would not have taken place,” Maksood Khan, a 22-year-old truck driver from neighbouring Rajasthan state, told Al Jazeera.
Hindu groups hold a meeting in Gurugram, Haryana in support of accused Monu Manesar after the killing of Nasir and Junaid in February this year [File: Parveen Kumar/Hindustan Times via Getty Images]
Nasir Hussain and Junaid Khan belonged to Maksood’s village in Rajasthan.
Nuh-based lawyer Tahir Hussain Devla alleged Manesar himself was a cow smuggler.
“He is the biggest cow smuggler in Mewat. He extorts money from trucks for letting them pass through his area,” he told Al Jazeera.
Residents in Nuh blame Manesar and Bittu Bajrangi, another cow vigilante, for the recent violence.
Chaudhary Aftab Ahmad, the member of the legislative assembly from Nuh, accused the authorities of not acting despite his warning of possible violence in his constituency.
“There was definitely an apprehension of violence before the procession. It was building up through videos of Monu Manesar and Bittu Bajrangi on social media. I had flagged this to the SP [superintendent of police] of Nuh a day before through telephone that the situation may get out of control. They assured me that they are aware of all the things,” he told Al Jazeera.
How have the governments responded?
Raman Malik, the BJP spokesman in Haryana, rejected the demand for Manesar’s arrest. “Why should Monu Manesar be arrested?” he told Al Jazeera.
When he was reminded of Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar’s statement on August 2 calling Manesar a criminal and vowing to help the Rajasthan police in nabbing him, Malik replied: “Then the Rajasthan police should do it. Why should we do something that is not our responsibility?”
Malik said Manesar is already cooperating with the police investigation and so there is no need to arrest him. “If there is a threat of him fleeing or not cooperating with the police, then they will act accordingly,” he said.
In June, Manesar told The Indian Express newspaper he was not absconding. “I haven’t got a notice from any police, Rajasthan or Haryana. If they call me for questioning, I will cooperate,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Haryana and Rajasthan governments are involved in a blame game over acting against him. In a news conference on August 2, Khattar said: “Since the Rajasthan police is searching for him, we don’t have the inputs on his whereabouts. Rajasthan police is free to act against him.”
The next day, his Rajasthan counterpart Ashok Gehlot posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, alleging that when Rajasthan police went to arrest Manesar, the Haryana police did not cooperate and instead registered a report against some Rajasthan police officers.
Motion at the UN Human Rights Council urges action over Quran burning incidents in Sweden, which Pakistan says incited ‘religious hatred’.
Muslim nations including Iran and Pakistan say the desecration of the holy Quran amounts to an incitement of violence and called for accountability after a series of stunts in Sweden caused a backlash around the world.
A motion filed at the United Nations human rights body on Tuesday was in response to the latest incident last month, and calls on countries to review their laws and plug gaps that may “impede the prevention and prosecution of acts and advocacy of religious hatred”.
The debate highlighted rifts in the UN Human Rights Council between the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and Western members concerned about the motion’s implications for free speech and challenges posed to long-held practices in rights protection.
An Iraqi immigrant to Sweden ripped, burned, and stomped on the Quran outside a Stockholm mosque last month during the Eid al-Adha holiday, sparking outrage across the Muslim world and angry protests in several Pakistani cities.
“We must see this clearly for what it is: incitement to religious hatred, discrimination and attempts to provoke violence,” Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari told the Geneva-based council via video, saying such acts occurred under “government sanction and with the sense of impunity”.
— Spokesperson 🇵🇰 MoFA (@ForeignOfficePk) July 11, 2023
‘Irresponsible and wrong’
Bhutto Zardari’s remarks were echoed by comments from ministers from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia, with the latter calling the Quran burning an act of “Islamophobia”.
“Stop abusing freedom of expression,” said Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi. “Silence means complicity.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian urged Sweden and European nations to take “urgent and effective measures” against such incidents.
Some Western nations condemned the stunts, but also defended “free speech”.
Germany’s UN Ambassador Katharina Stasch called the acts in Sweden a “dreadful provocation”, but added “freedom of speech sometimes also means to bear opinions that may seem almost unbearable”.
France’s envoy said human rights were about protecting people, not religions and their symbols.
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk told the council that inflammatory acts against Muslims, as well as other religions or minorities, are “offensive, irresponsible and wrong”.
The @UN Human Rights Council is holding an URGENT DEBATE to “discuss the alarming rise in premeditated & public acts of religious hatred as manifested by recurrent desecration of the Holy Quran in some European & other countries” https://t.co/Rp5jDsAkcg
— United Nations Human Rights Council 📍 #HRC53 (@UN_HRC) July 11, 2023
Taliban targets ‘Sweden’
The Taliban administration said in a statement it halted all activities by Sweden in Afghanistan “after the insulting of the holy Quran and granting of permission for insulting of Muslim beliefs”.
It did not provide details on which organisations would be affected by its ban. Sweden no longer has an embassy in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over in 2021.
The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) aid organisation said it was seeking clarification with authorities.
“SCA is not a Swedish government entity. SCA is independent and impartial in relation to all political stakeholders and states, and strongly condemns all desecration of the holy Quran,” the NGO said in a statement.
“For over 40 years SCA has been working in close collaboration with the rural population and in deep respect of both Islam and local traditions in Afghanistan.”
Thousands of Afghan staff work for the organisation throughout the country in health, education and rural development. SCA treated 2.5 million patients in its health clinics last year.
SCA strongly condemns all acts of desecration of the Holy Quran and seeks clarity on the July 11 directive from the DFA on Sweden’s activities in Afghanistan. SCA is not a government entity. Full statement here: https://t.co/J3XoOa3txd
— Svenska Afghanistankommittén SAK/SCA (@SAK_Sweden) July 11, 2023
Montreal, Canada – It was a Sunday evening two years ago when an act “rooted in unspeakable hatred” changed one family forever and shook Muslim communities across Canada in the process.
The Afzaals were taking a walk in the city of London, Ontario on June 6, 2021, when a man ran them over with his truck in what authorities said was an intentional attack. Four members of the family were killed, and a young boy was seriously injured.
The deadly assault sent shock waves throughout the country, where Muslims were still reeling from a series of fatal attacks at mosques and a rise of Islamophobic rhetoric.
It also fuelled calls for action and pushed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to first establish a summit on Islamophobia and then earlier this year to name a special representative to tackle the problem.
The appointment of Amira Elghawaby in January as Canada’s first special representative on combatting Islamophobia was welcomed by Muslim community advocates. But it faced fierce criticism in the province of Quebec, where politicians called for her removal for past criticism of a law banning religious garb in the public sector that has drawn widespread accusations of racism.
Here, Al Jazeera speaks to Elghawaby about the two-year anniversary of the London attack, the state of Islamophobia in Canada today, and what her job entails.
Al Jazeera: What impact did the London attack have on Muslims in Canada?
Amira Elghawaby: I think it’s really important to note that London’s Muslim communities are still carrying the weight of what happened two years ago. It’s still quite heavy on people’s minds.
[I have been] meeting with some of the young people, in particular, who have been organising for the past two years, trying to ensure that not only the city of London, but Canadians, don’t forget what happened to this beautiful, intergenerational family that was targeted for no other reason than their Muslim faith.
There is still a lot of pain and anxiety and fear that hate is still in our communities. Especially women who are visibly Muslim, who wear the hijab [headscarf], are sometimes a little more worried about being singled out. And so I think that those sentiments are held in other communities, as well.
In the first 100 days of my office, I’ve had an opportunity to have community engagements in the top provinces where Muslims reside, so Ontario, Quebec and Alberta. While I consistently hear that Canadian Muslims are proud to be in Canada and contributing … at the same time, there are concerns about Islamophobia.
And there is hope that the Afzaal attack hopefully really galvanised people to understand that this is a type of hatred that we have to work collectively to address.
Al Jazeera: There was strong criticism of your appointment, notably from politicians from Quebec. Do you feel that you can speak out against Islamophobia in that province specifically?
Elghawaby: I have been quite clear in speaking out against Islamophobia right across Canada as a phenomenon that all of us have to come together to address.
Muslims living in different provinces experience discrimination and Islamophobia in different ways, and so I think what’s critical is for this office to continue to engage, to continue to listen, to the lived experiences of Muslims in every single part of this country.
The role is to bring those experiences forward to fellow Canadians, to the federal government, in helping to support legislation and policies that are helping to ensure the inclusion of all people in this country.
Al Jazeera: What is the state of Islamophobia in Canada right now?
Elghawaby: I think it’s very important to emphasise that many, many fellow Canadians are very committed to inclusive, warm, welcoming societies. Overall, we have values in this country, we have a democratic tradition, [and] we have a sense of pluralism and inclusion that really is part of our identity as Canadians.
But the reality is as well that, for instance, Islam is the most negatively viewed religion in Canada, according to a recent poll (PDF) by Angus Reid. Or another poll by Leger a few months ago showed that while 46 percent of Canadians do see themselves as allies to Muslim communities, there’s still a significant number who don’t.
Unfortunately for 2020 to 2021 – the most recent statistics – we’ve seen a 71-percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes, according to Statistics Canada. That only tells a partial story though, too, because a majority of people don’t report the hate that they experience.
We’re able to sort of piece together these statistics and these lived experiences to know that again, we certainly do have our work cut out for us.
The lives of three generations of the Afzaal family were taken in an appalling and cowardly terrorist attack two years ago. Today, we remember #OurLondonFamily – Talat, Salman, Madiha, and Yumna – and we stand with Fayez. We must, and we will, keep working to combat Islamophobia.
Al Jazeera: What can be done to address and end Islamophobia in the country?
Elghawaby: I think acknowledging that this phenomenon is real and impacts peoples’ lives has been a very important and hard-fought step. It did take the Quebec City mosque massacre and then the attack on the Afzaal family for there to be this wide consensus across Canada that this is clearly a phenomenon.
The good news is that various levels of government have taken concrete action. Here in London, there is an action plan to disrupt Islamophobia … They have hired a Muslim liaison officer to work with communities and to look for ways to address this, to raise awareness and education.
We have this office that I now sit in … that communities asked for. So we are taking positive steps forward. There is acknowledgement that this is a phenomenon that we need to address – as we need to address any form of racism in our country. What’s so critical I think for all Canadians to understand of course is that hate against one community is really hatred against all of us.
Al Jazeera: What would you say is your mission as Canada’s special representative? What are you focusing on?
Elghawaby: Number one is to provide the policy advice to the government: to provide guidance, as outlined in the mandate, around how policies and legislation are impacting on Muslim communities, as well as to provide guidance and support to national security agencies on training.
Number two is about raising awareness about Islamophobia and its impacts, and working with community partners to look for ways to address the various issues that not only impact on Canadian Muslims, but impact on other minorities. For example, I touched upon issues of online safety, the rise of hate in Canada.
Then the third level of work is really around that community engagement, to constantly be meeting and hearing from Canada’s Muslim communities on the experiences that people are having, not just with regards to hate but even discrimination, whether in the workplace, whether in other aspects of life – and to bring forward community-informed solutions.
Al Jazeera: What would you want people to know about why there needs to be a special representative for combatting Islamophobia in Canada?
Elghawaby: I think it’s extremely important that Canada has taken this step to appoint a special representative on combatting Islamophobia because it signals the importance of addressing a phenomenon that has led to deadly violence in this country.
And we know that along the continuum of hate, deadly violence is sort of the very pinnacle and the worst of what hate can lead to. And so we have reached that pinnacle several times in this country – more than any other G7 [Group of Seven] country.
But beyond even that, the day-to-day discrimination and Islamophobia and the systemic forms of Islamophobia that do exist are also impacting on people’s lives. And so the federal government has signalled that this is an issue that needs to be addressed.
And it sends a reassurance to communities that this is being taken seriously. I’m very committed to working with all government partners, as well as civil society, as well as all minority communities, to address hate and of course specifically to address Islamophobia.
Al Jazeera: How important is it to be able to freely speak out against policies that Muslim community members say are affecting them negatively – especially amid fears that these policies can lead to violence?
Elghawaby: I think that policymakers, as [those] having to be responsive to the needs of the community that they serve, will only be able to do that job if their basis for decision-making is reliant on the actual impact of those policies on people’s lives.
It’s not just an intention of what a law is meant to do, but it’s the impacts of policies and laws that are important to understand. So that if there are negative impacts of policies or legislation anywhere, there can be a course correction to ensure that everyone living in Canada is treated with dignity and respect, in their full rights as members of the society.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Washington, DC – In one of his first moves since becoming speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy is leading an effort to block Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from serving on the chamber’s Foreign Affairs Committee over her past criticism of Israel.
On Wednesday, the Republican majority in the House advanced a resolution to remove Omar from the panel. Democrats opposed the move, accusing McCarthy of bigotry for targeting the politician – a former refugee of Somali descent who is one of only two Muslim women serving in the US Congress.
A few Republicans initially opposed McCarthy’s effort, casting doubt over his ability to pass the resolution against Omar, given the GOP’s narrow majority.
But on Wednesday, all 218 House Republicans present voted to move forward with the measure, as Democrats remained united in support of Omar with 209 votes. A final vote is expected on Thursday as progressives rally around Omar.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) defended Omar, calling her an “esteemed and invaluable” legislator.
“You cannot remove a Member of Congress from a committee simply because you do not agree with their views. This is both ludicrous and dangerous,” CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal said in a statement on Monday.
.@IlhanMN is the first African-born congressmember and the only House Foreign Affairs Committee member who’s lived in a refugee camp. It’s shameful that Republicans are trying to remove her after smearing her for years. We need her voice, values, and expertise on the Committee. https://t.co/e1M5ajM0T4
The resolution aimed at Omar, introduced by Ohio Republican Max Miller on Tuesday, cites numerous controversies involving the congresswoman’s criticism of Israel and US foreign policy.
“Congresswoman Omar clearly cannot be an objective decision-maker on the Foreign Affairs Committee given her biases against Israel and against the Jewish people,” Miller said in a statement.
Omar retorted by saying there was nothing “objectively true” about the resolution, adding that “if not being objective is a reason to not serve on committees, no one would be on committees”.
While the Republican resolution accuses Omar of anti-Semitism, it only invokes remarks relating to Israel, not the Jewish people.
For example, the measure calls out the congresswoman for describing Israel as an “apartheid state”, although leading human rights groups – including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – have also accused Israel of imposing a system of apartheid on Palestinians.
Early in her congressional career in 2019, Omar faced a firestorm of criticism when she suggested that political donations from pro-Israel lobby groups – including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – drive support for Israel in Washington.
Omar later apologised for that remark but Palestinian rights advocates say accusations of anti-Semitism against Israel’s critics aim to stifle the debate around Israeli government policies.
In the past two years, AIPAC and other pro-Israel organisations spent millions of dollars in congressional elections to defeat progressives who support Palestinian human rights, including Michigan’s Andy Levin, a left-leaning, Jewish former House member.
‘Different standards’
Although the Democratic Party is standing behind Omar now, the Republican resolution prominently features previous criticism against the congresswoman by top Democrats.
Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, an advocacy and research group, said Republicans are trying to validate their talking points against Omar by using the statements and actions of Democrats.
“They own this,” she said of Democrats who previously attacked Omar. “They made a decision in the last few years to jump on board and score political points at Ilhan’s expense … And that decision is now the basis for the resolution that is being used to throw her off the committee.”
Friedman added that Omar and her fellow Muslim-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib are held to “different standards” when it comes to addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Both legislators were the subject of racist attacks by former President Donald Trump who in 2019 tweeted that they, along with other progressive congresswomen of colour, “should go back to the broken and crime-infested places from which they came”.
Omar in particular became a frequent target of Trump’s anti-refugee rhetoric in the lead-up to the 2020 elections. At one rally in 2019, Trump failed to intervene as his supporters chanted “send her back” in reference to Omar.
Friedman said attacks on Omar appeal to the Republican base and play well for the party politically.
“It’s a really handy way to embarrass and corner Democrats because when Democrats vote against this tomorrow, the Republican argument is going to be: ‘I don’t get it. You said all these things [against Omar]. Why are you not holding her accountable?’ Politically, this is just fantastic for them.”
For her part, Omar has remained defiant, calling McCarthy’s effort to remove her from the committee, against initial opposition from his own caucus, “pathetic”.
Rep. @Ilhan is a dedicated member of Congress, a refugee, a fierce fighter for human rights, and she has earned her spot on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Stop the bigotry and seat Rep. Omar.
Yasmine Taeb, legislative and political director at MPower Change Action Fund, a Muslim-American advocacy group, praised Omar’s commitment to a “human rights-centered foreign policy”.
“Rep. Omar speaks truth to power – a rarity in Congress. And House Republican leadership would rather waste time by attacking a progressive Black Muslim woman and pushing a far-right agenda than working on addressing the needs of the American people,” Taeb told Al Jazeera in an email.
Omar has been a vocal proponent of human rights and diplomacy in Congress. While her comments about Israel often make headlines, she criticises other countries too – including those in the Middle East – for human rights violations.
Still, critics accuse her of perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes in her criticism of Israel and even allies have described some of her comments as “sloppy”, if not malicious.
On Thursday, Win Without War, a group that promotes diplomacy in US foreign policy, decried the Republican push against Omar as an attempt to strip the House Foreign Affairs Committee of a “progressive champion and skilled legislator who challenges the political status quo”.
“Rep. Omar has helped raise the bar for progressive foreign policy in Congress. She has steadfastly advocated for cuts to the Pentagon budget, held US allies accountable for human rights abuses, and confronted the racism and Islamophobia present in US foreign policy,” Win Without War executive director Sara Haghdoosti said in a statement.
Committee wars
Congressional committees serve as specialised microcosms of Congress. The panels advance legislation, conduct oversight and hold immense power over the legislative process.
Usually, the party in power appoints the chairs and majority members of committees, while the opposition party names its own legislators to the panels.
But back in 2021, Democrats voted to remove Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from her assigned committees for past conspiratorial, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic comments.
That same year, the Democratic House majority also formally rebuked Paul Gosar, another far-right Republican, for sharing an animated video that depicted him killing Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Now, Greene is an outspoken proponent of removing Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee.
“No one should be on that committee with that stance towards Israel,” Greene said earlier this week. “In my opinion, I think it’s the wrong stance for any member of Congress of the United States – having that type of attitude towards our great ally, Israel.”
After Greene was stripped of her committee assignments, McCarthy had openly promised payback against the Democrats if they became the minority in the House, an event that came to pass in the 2022 midterm elections.
“You’ll regret this. And you may regret this a lot sooner than you think,” McCarthy said at that time.
The newly elected speaker has also blocked Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from joining the intelligence committee. Schiff was the former chair of the panel.
Meanwhile, Republican Congressman George Santos, who is facing calls to step down for lying about his heritage and professional and personal history, “temporarily recused” himself from committee assignments as he is being investigated over his campaign conduct.
HOBOKEN, N.J. — Audrey Truschke, a professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University, never thought her work could result in death threats and vicious vitriol.
Yet Truschke, a scholar, mom, wife and author of three books, now sometimes needs armed security at public events.
The publication of her first book, in 2016, challenging the predominant perception of 16th- and 17th-century Mughal kings — Muslim rulers who are widely vilified by Hindu nationalists — put a target on her back. Her email was bombarded with hate mail. Her Twitter account was inundated with threats. People wrote letters to news outlets about her.
“It felt like the world exploded at me,” said Truschke, pushing back her dark hair to reveal the salt and pepper streaks that frame her face. “This was my first brush with hate email. I’m sure it would seem like nothing to me now.”
Far-right Hindu nationalism, also referred to as Hindutva, is a political and extremist ideology that advocates for Hindu supremacy and seeks to transform a secular and diverse India into an ethnoreligious Hindu state. Hindu nationalism has been around for over 100 years and was initially inspired by ethnonationalism movements in early 20th-century Europe, including those in Germany and Italy. Champions of Hindutva have viciously targeted religious minorities including Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, and have sought to silence critics such as academics and activists.
Hinduism, the faith, is not Hindutva the far-right movement. But the label Hindu can be categorized as a religious, political or racial identifier depending on who is using it, explained Manan Ahmed, a professor and historian of South Asia at Columbia University. Hindu nationalists, he said, are morphing the religious, political and racial into one identity in order to advance a supremacist, majoritarian agenda.
People impacted by Hindutva in the U.S. say the movement has crept into their hometowns and workplaces, making life more dangerous for them and threatening to make their communities less diverse and tolerant. The ideology has deep ties to white nationalist movements across the globe, and the targets of nationalist groups warn that the impact could be deadly if Hindutva is not addressed and defeated.
“We see Hindu nationalism as an ideology which seeks to transform India from a pluralistic secular democracy to a Hindu state in which non-Hindus are seen at best as second-class citizens and at worst targets for extermination and disenfranchisement of all sorts,” said Nikhil Mandalaparthy, the deputy executive director of Hindus for Human Rights, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting pluralism and human rights in South Asia and in the U.S.
“It’s a vision that we think is in direct opposition to a lot of the values of Hindu religious traditions,” he added.
Professor Audrey Truschke shows some of the hate mail she has received at her home on Monday afternoon.
Natalie Keyssar for HuffPost
A Different Kind Of Extremism
In India, Hindu nationalism can be traced back to the 1920s. The formation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, in 1925 fortified the core belief in a Hindu state for Hindus, despite India’s secular constitution and the long history of ethnic and religious minorities in the country. The RSS has been banned three times since it was established, including after a former party member assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.
It was out of the RSS that India’s ruling political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, emerged. It has held power since Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected in 2014.
Since then, the crackdown on India’s minorities, particularly Muslims, has intensified with little to no accountability.
In April, bulldozers razed houses in majority-Muslim neighborhoods under dubious pretenses. Schools have banned Muslim students from wearing a hijab. Courts and government bodies have overturned convictions or withdrawn cases that accused Hindus of involvement in violence against Muslims. Hindu mobs routinely attack Muslims with little to no condemnation from the government.
“Hindu nationalism has redefined the Indian mainstream,” Truschke said. “It’s an incredible success story. Fifty years ago, no respectable Indian wanted to touch it. It was just completely verboten due to the Hindutva embrace of violence and hate, and now it’s the dominant political position in India.”
Other parts of the world, including the U.S., have not been immune to growing support for Hindutva.
Indian Americans make up the second-largest immigrant group in the United States, with nearly 4.2 million people of Indian origin living in the country, according to data from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The community is a diverse one, comprising both immigrants and American-born citizens who come from a variety of religious and socioeconomic backgrounds. The Carnegie poll indicates that at least 54% of Indian Americans report belonging to the Hindu faith, one of the largest and oldest religions in the world. There are about 1 billion Hindus around the world, and nearly 94% live in India. Around 2.5 million Hindus reside in the U.S. alone.
Indian Americans hold mixed opinions on the present trajectory of India’s democracy, but nearly half — particularly Republicans, Hindus and those not born in the U.S. — approve of Modi’s performance as India’s prime minister. In Texas, more than 50,000 people gathered to see him during a 2019 event called “Howdy Modi.”
In many ways, the rise of Hindu nationalism mirrors the rise of white nationalist extremism.
Anders Behring Breivik makes a Nazi salute as he arrives in court on Jan. 18, 2022, in Skien prison, Norway. The mass murderer, who said he was fighting a “Muslim invasion” in Europe, was sentenced in 2012 to at least 21 years in prison for terror attacks that killed 77 people. Under Norwegian law, Breivik was entitled to a review in court for possible release on parole after serving the initial 10 years of his sentence, but his parole was denied.
OLE BERG-RUSTEN via NTB/AFP via Getty Images
Norwegian police search Utoya island on July 24, 2011, after Anders Behring Breivik’s deadly terror attacks in Norway.
Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Anders Behring, the far-right Norwegian terrorist who killed 77 people, many of them teenagers, in 2011, reportedly praised Hindu nationalist groups who attacked Muslims in his manifesto.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, an Indian politician who became the face of Hindu nationalism in the 1920s, once applauded Hitler and said that India should treat Muslims the same way Nazis treated Jews.
Like white supremacists, Hindu nationalists have propagated a revisionist history built on the idea that India, despite its secular constitution, once was and should still be a Hindu state and that members of other religious groups are not true natives of the country.
“When we talk about threats to democracy and threats to multicultural, pluralist, way of life, of course, here in the U.S., our concern is white supremacy and Christian nationalism,” Mandalaparthy said. “But there are so many ways in which the Hindu nationalist movement here is trying to ally itself with white supremacist groups and with groups who are seeking to destroy democracy here in this country.”
Many Indian Americans, including those who are Hindu, have faced hate crimes and discrimination as minorities in the U.S. But Hindu nationalists often use “Hinduphobia” as a disingenuous claim to shut down valid criticism of Hindu nationalist political ideology, Mandalaparthy said.
“It’s dangerous to contribute to this narrative of rising anti-Hindu sentiments because the people who are using this language the most are then turning back on members of our own communities and those who speak out against Hindu nationalism or caste or Islamophobia,” he said.
“There are so many ways in which the Hindu nationalist movement here is trying to ally itself with white supremacist groups and with groups who are seeking to destroy democracy here in this country.””
– Nikhil Mandalaparthy, deputy executive director of Hindus for Human Rights
Support of Hindutva can take various forms, whether it’s applauding the violence taking place in India on social media or funneling donations to political figures who praise Hindu nationalism. At least five American organizations with ties to Hindu nationalist groups receive federal funding, according to a report by Al Jazeera.
It can also mean threatening people who raise awareness about the ideology.
In March 2021, two months after Truschke began researching U.S.-based Hindu nationalism, she began to receive an onslaught of attacks. She had received hate mail before, particularly after her book revisiting the legacy of Aurangzeb, a contentious emperor who ruled India for nearly 50 years.
But the severity of the new attacks, which Truschke said felt unprovoked, was unprecedented. She received a staggering amount of hate mail and tweets, with about one tweet coming in every minute, she said. People made memes out of her photos and laced their messages with antisemitism and misogyny. They threatened her and her children, promising they’d find her family if she continued to speak out.
She reported several threats to the police, and one was even forwarded to Homeland Security last July. After receiving several credible threats, venues that hosted Truschke hired armed security to be by her side at public events.
“Keep loving Mughals and we’ll keep loving Hitler you stupid jew,” read one tweet.
“I wouldn’t mind if this female bitch is beheaded,” read another comment.
“Be in your home, you don’t know from where you will be kidnapped,” read a message sent to her on Facebook.
“I will chop ur head if I get a chance,” read another.
A screenshot of a hateful message directed at Professor Audrey Truschke for her research and writing.
Natalie Keyssar for HuffPost
In September 2021, organizers of an online academic conference on Hindutva were also bombarded with thousands of threats of rape, violence and death. Several participants withdrew from the conference out of fear. Dozens of organizers and speakers said violent threats were made against their families. More than 30,000 threats were sent to one university, causing the server to crash.
Data collected by Columbia University’s Ahmed and other researchers indicate that the majority of tweets deployed against the conference organizers and participants were generated by individuals, not bots.
It’s not just online threats. Tensions have manifested into bitter communal tension and physical clashes across the country. In New Jersey in August, organizers of the local India Day parade came under fire for bringing bulldozers — symbolic of the bulldozers that have targeted Muslims in India — adorned with the faces of Modi and the hard-line Hindutva BJP minister Yogi Adityanath.
That same month in Anaheim, California, an Indian Independence Day parade turned physical when videos captured men shoving a group of protesters while shouting Islamophobic slurs and nationalists chants.
The alignment between Hindu nationalism and right-wing nationalist groups is flourishing in the U.S., which “doesn’t bode well for any marginalized groups,” Mandalaparthy said. “This is very much a domestic issue now and it’s very much a local issue.”
In many cases, those carrying out violence against religious minorities — Muslims, but other religious groups as well, including Christians, Sikhs and Dalits — feel direct support from India’s governing party. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a government agency, recommended this year that India be put on its red list for “severe violations of religious freedom.”
“The government continued to systemize its ideological vision of a Hindu state at both the national and state levels through the use of both existing and new laws and structural changes hostile to the country’s religious minorities,” the commission said in its report.
After two nights in police custody, Indian teenager Somaiya Fatima was released in time to watch live footage of an excavator claw smashing into the walls of her childhood home. The residence is among scores of dwellings and businesses flattened by wrecking crews this year in India.
SANJAY KANOJIA via Getty Images
People protest against the demolition of the house of activist Afreen Fatima and her father, Javed Mohammad, on June 13, 2022, in New Delhi, India.
Salman Ali/Hindustan Times via Getty Images
Holding Onto Their Identity
For more than 30 years, Minhaj Khan, a 48-year-old software engineer from South Brunswick, New Jersey, has prioritized giving back to his Indian community. At first, it was in the form of charity, especially right after moving to the U.S. in the late 1990s. He visited India often, especially since his extended family and sister still resided there.
But soon that charity became advocacy, and advocacy became a personal responsibility. As an American, an Indian, and a Muslim, Khan couldn’t look away from the human rights violations happening in his home state.
“When we use our free speech here, it makes a difference on the other side of the world,” Khan said. “Nobody is better than us presenting these issues to the American people.”
Khan and Mohammed Jawad, the president of the Indian American Muslim Council, an advocacy organization, led a campaign against the bulldozer that was paraded in Edison, New Jersey, this summer. In the days after the parade, members of IAMC and other organizations met with members of the state’s Department of Justice and its Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, as well as with the state attorney general’s office. The organization also raised concerns after a local church invited a Hindu nationalist to speak. The church later canceled the event.
The group’s work hasn’t gone unnoticed. The IAMC received a summons from one of India’s lower courts because of its activism, though it has no legal grounds in the U.S.
“If you like diversity, if you believe people who are different and who follow different religions should live together and that we are all Americans, Hindutva is a threat to that.”
– Audrey Truschke, professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University
Khan remembers harmony between his family and his Hindu neighbors when he was growing up in India.
“Muslims and Hindus, we were always together, side by side. They came to our place, we went to their place,” he said. “We never differentiated among ourselves. We lived comfortably.”
But with Hindu nationalism on the rise, those relationships are being strained, particularly in New Jersey, which has the largest South Asian population of any state in the U.S. In some cities in the state, South Asians make up around 40% of the population.
Khan adjusts the sleeves of his brown button-down that is cuffed at his elbows, revealing a green pattern that matches the color of his eyes. He is particularly concerned about how Hindu extremism will impact his children.
“I am incredibly proud to be an American Muslim. This is the land of freedom. This is the land of justice. I am a free Muslim. I can practice my faith here in America perhaps best as compared to anywhere on the planet. I am equally proud of my Indian origin, the land of my birth,” Khan said. “That is why it pains us to witness the current regime in India trying to take away the most beautiful aspect of the land — its richness, diversity and inclusivity — and now export it even to America.”
For Truschke, the attacks on her life and on her work have only emboldened her to pursue her work head-on. Instead of focusing only on history, she is currently dedicating a research project to the present and the future of Hindu nationalism in the U.S.
Academic freedom, an uptick in violence, and increasingly polarized communities are all major concerns, she said. Truschke and her colleagues worked with a group called the South Asia Scholar Activist Collective to publish the Hindutva Harassment Field Manual, a resource for academics and others whose work may make them targets of the Hindu nationalist movement.
“Hindu nationalism is threatening American multicultural values,” Truschke said. “If you like diversity, if you believe people who are different and who follow different religions should live together and that we are all Americans, Hindutva is a threat to that, and it is growing. It is not going away. It’s likely to get worse.”
Professor Audrey Truschke at her home in New Jersey on Oct. 16, 2022.
Natalie Keyssar for HuffPost
Hindu nationalists have targeted Truschke’s employer and colleagues over her work. Rutgers University told HuffPost in an emailed statement that it stood by Truschke’s work, saying “scholarship is sometimes controversial, perhaps especially when it is at the interface of history and religion, but the freedom to pursue such scholarship, as Professor Truschke does rigorously, is at the heart of the academic enterprise.”
“Just as strongly, Rutgers-Newark emphatically affirms its support for all members of the Hindu community to study and live in an environment in which they not only feel safe, but also fully supported in their religious identity,” the statement continued.
Truschke’s eldest daughter is starting to notice that her mother is getting attention, and it was a conversation Truschke never imagined having.
Still, Truschke said, she doesn’t have plans to stop researching and speaking out about Hindutva. She doesn’t know what the future holds — as an academic, she much prefers studying the past to predicting the future, but for now, she knows her scholarship will remain.
“They want me to not do my job. But how can I possibly do that? How can I possibly change my research interests, or God forbid, soft-peddle things?” she said. “Academics have to tell the truth.”
At the same time, 2020 has been a year of great (un)learning, resistance, and revolution. Just as we have seen the lethal forces of hate, apathy, lies, and violence used against the most marginalized among us, we have also seen Black, brown, undocumented, disabled, queer, trans, poor, working-class, and many other folks rise up and fight back to advocate for our lives and futures. This year has challenged us in so many ways, and yet, through showing us the cracks and failures of capitalism, white supremacy, a for-profit US health care system, criminal “justice”, and other cruel and outdated systems, 2020 has also shown us the power of the collective and the necessity of our dreams and activism.
As our founder Sonya Renee Taylor teaches us, it’s a powerful practice to live in the both/and — to embrace the at times uncomfortable and even painful liminal spaces we find ourselves in as we rupture old patterns, selves, and lives to co-create our future. Sonya shared back at the beginning of the COVID crisis:
“We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate, and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”
Throughout 2020, Sonya has been reaching out with lessons of radical self-love, not only through her written work and appearances via dozens of podcasts, round tables, panels, keynote speeches, and news programs, but also through her “What’s Up, Y’all?” videos posted to her Instagram and YouTube channels. She has provided us with wisdom for all seasons of this year. In November, as those of us in the US (and many of us around the world) were waiting with baited breath for the outcome of the presidential election, Sonya reminded us:
“Liberation is not a thing we will be delivered unto. It will be the act of daily creation — and it will be the act of daily creation in the midst of great chaos. Because it has always been the act of creation in the midst of great chaos.”
As we look back on 2020, gather the wisdom we’ve gained from it, and prepare to meet 2021, here is a countdown of Sonya’s top ten most popular “What’s Up, Y’all?” videos from the year. We share them here as an invitation for continued learning, reflection, inner inventory-taking, and outward action-taking as we dream a liberatory 2021 into existence.
May the lessons contained in each of these videos spark further discussion and carry us into the new year as brain, heart, and soul fuel and inspiration. There is no going back, but tomorrow can be better when we work together to create it.
[feature image:photo of Sonya Renee Taylor against a white background. She is visible from the torso up and is wearing a vibrant red, blue, and leopard print chiffon dress that flows like the dreamy gown of a goddess. She is wearing a gold statement necklace and earrings. Her eyes are closed in bliss as she smiles. She appears to be in mid-twirl.]
TBINAA is an independent, queer, Black woman run digital media and education organization promoting radical self love as the foundation for a more just, equitable and compassionate world. If you believe in our mission, please contribute to this necessary work at PRESSPATRON.com/TBINAA
We can’t do this work without you!
As a thank you gift, supporters who contribute $10+ (monthly) will receive a copy of our ebook, Shed Every Lie: Black and Brown Femmes on Healing As Liberation. Supporters contributing $20+ (monthly) will receive a copy of founder Sonya Renee Taylor’s book, The Body is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self Love delivered to your home.
