Visualizing Islamophobia and its effect

Islamophobia refers to anti-Muslim hostility, or negative attitudes towards Islam and Muslims. Like other forms of prejudice, it reflects dislike or suspicion of a particular group of people based on negative assumptions about who they are, where they come from, what they believe, and how they live their lives. Islamophobia has been present in the United States for a long time. More recent developments have made it part of public life as never before. At the same time, we see vital efforts from American Muslim communities to counter this trend. This project is dedicated to illuminating these phenomena, exploring both anti-Muslim hate and its effects on American Muslim participation in public life.

This web site offers minimal analysis of the information we present. We have produced these maps as tools to help you reach your own conclusions about how Islamophobia affects American Muslims, American Muslim communities, and our broader American national community. Each of the interactive maps on this site include sources so that you can explore the stories behind the data.

In the “Islamophobia Dataset,” each item includes a date, geolocation, an event short name, an event description, a source, and is coded in two ways: (1) an Event Class [using one of six designations, “crimes against people,” “crimes against property,” “public speech,” “public campaigns (targeting community),” bias-related incidents (targeting individual or specific group),” and “legislation (targeting community)”] and (2) Gender of Victim(s). We decided to code incidents and events affecting American Muslim communities in general, as opposed to an individual or group of individuals, “male and female.”

In the “Countering Islamophobia” dataset, each item includes a date, geolocation, an event short name, an event description, a source, and is coded with one of the following categories: “political outreach,” political activity,” “community outreach,” mosque open house,” “interfaith efforts,” and “ask a Muslim.”

Website: http://mappingislamophobia.org/