In late August, Marine Le Pen revived the National Rally’s proposal to penalize the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in public spaces. The proposal would go beyond France’s existing restrictions and could affect Muslim women wearing the hijab in streets and other public areas.

The proposal has faced criticism from political opponents and legal experts, who have questioned its compatibility with religious freedom and France’s constitutional framework. Even within the National Rally, there have been reservations about extending restrictions to the public sphere.

In Austria From the beginning of the 2026/27 school year, girls under the age of 14 are prohibited from wearing a headscarf that covers the head according to Islamic traditions in school. The government argues that the measure is intended to protect girls’ development, autonomy and equality.

Critics, including Austria’s main Muslim representative organization, argue that it disproportionately targets Muslim girls and interferes with fundamental rights. The Austrian Constitutional Court is expected to face renewed challenges over the legislation, particularly given its earlier decision to strike down a narrower headscarf ban in 2020.

The Austrian government intends to officially ban schoolgirls under the age of 14 from wearing the hijab. This was reported by the Minister of Youth and Family Affairs, Claudia Plakolm, in an interview with the Austria Press Agency.

According to Plakolm, this ban is aimed not only at religious concerns but also at protecting the general well-being and rights of children. In her words, the headscarf is especially unnecessary for girls under 14. Therefore, the planned ban is based not on religious reasons but on the welfare of children and the educational environment.

It is still unknown what measures will be applied to girls who refuse to remove the hijab or breach the ban, and when this new regulation will take effect.

Austria’s Constitutional Court struck down an earlier headscarf ban in 2020, partly because it targeted Muslims.

Source: Anadolu Agency

The “European Islamophobia Report 2023”, which examined anti-Muslim sentiment in 28 European countries, revealed that Israel’s ongoing military actions in Gaza have contributed to a significant rise in Islamophobia across Western Europe.

Edited by Enes Bayrakli of the Turkish-German University in Istanbul and Farid Hafez of William & Mary University in the U.S., the report highlights how the Gaza conflict intensified Islamophobic rhetoric. It notes that pro-Palestinian solidarity has increasingly been framed as extremism, prompting protest bans and restrictive measures in countries such as Germany, France, and Denmark.

“No other political development has shaped the life of Muslims in 2023 as much as the war in Palestine,” the report said. “With the rising voices against the genocide in Gaza also coming from Muslims in European countries, the political response by various governments has put Muslims into an even more securitized position.”

Key highlights of the 2023 report include:

• Neglect of the International Day to Combat Islamophobia: Apart from Spain, no European government recognized this UN-designated day in 2023.
• Mainstream and far-right media, along with social media platforms, amplified anti-Muslim narratives, dehumanising Muslims and fostering disinformation.
• Hate crimes against Muslims increased significantly, especially in Norway, Spain and Greece.
• Legal and educational systems perpetuated biases against Muslims, with France and Denmark enforcing controversial policies targeting Muslim communities.

The report also focused on Islamophobia in several European countries:

United Kingdom

Aristotle Kallis, a professor at Keele University, UK, said that the UK witnessed a significant increase in Islamophobia in 2023, with a 600% surge in reported cases following the Hamas attack on Israel in October.

Mainstream Islamophobia saw a surge with the government’s anti-radicalization program, Prevent, continuing to focus disproportionately on “Islamist extremism” despite evidence of more significant threats from far-right ideologies.

Muslims faced workplace discrimination, underrepresentation, and hostility. In education, there were issues with teacher recruitment, student discrimination, and the influence of Prevent on Muslim students. The justice system showed biases with higher Muslim incarceration rates.

Media portrayal often vilified Muslims, contributing to Islamophobia. The internet, especially post-conflict, saw a surge in anti-Muslim content, with platforms like X (formerly Twitter) under scrutiny for poor moderation.

Suella Braverman’s role as Home Secretary in 2023 is highlighted for promoting anti-Muslim sentiments through policy and rhetoric.

France

The report noted that in France, President Emmanuel Macron’s pro-Israel statements following the attacks in Gaza by the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, have exacerbated institutional racism against Muslims.

Kawtar Najib, who authored the France section of the report, pointed out that the government’s ban on headscarves in schools has led to significant concern for Muslim students and their families. The move has been viewed as a sign of the institutionalization of anti-Muslim sentiment in France.

Najib referenced the police killing of Nahel Merzouk, 17, in June 2023, and the subsequent lack of an immediate arrest of the officer involved, which fueled protests and fears for the Muslim community.

Germany

Fabian Goldmann, a journalist focused on improving media coverage of Islam and immigration, said that the war in Israel and Palestine marked a significant escalation in violence, discrimination, and hostility towards Muslims in Germany in 2023, reaching unprecedented levels in recent history.

Police records showed a 140% increase in Islamophobic crimes, totaling 1,464 incidents, the highest since records began. The Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency noted a record 10,772 consultation requests.

Migration policies became more restrictive, mirroring demands previously associated with far-right politics, with the AfD gaining significant support in polls.

German media coverage of Islam was predominantly negative, focusing on themes of violence, crime, and cultural clash. Notable outlets like Bild and Die Welt were highlighted for their role in shaping anti-Muslim discourse.

The AfD remained a key producer of Islamophobia, with individuals like Ahmad Mansour and Susanne Schröter influencing public discourse.

Switzerland

In Switzerland, researcher Nadia Lahdili found that increasing anti-immigrant sentiment has directly contributed to rising Islamophobia.

There were 1,058 Islamophobic incidents reported in 2023, including 876 involving racial discrimination and 62 instances of anti-Muslim attacks.

Lahdili noted that Muslim women, particularly those wearing headscarves, face significant discrimination in the workplace, where they are often blocked from career advancement.

The report also discussed the political exploitation of Islamic dress by politicians during election campaigns, which has contributed to increasing institutional Islamophobia.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Hikmet Karcic from Sarajevo University highlighted the rise of radical anti-Muslim rhetoric in Bosnia and Herzegovina, particularly by Serbian nationalists.

It has led to tensions that mirror the situation in France and Switzerland, with hostile language used to weaken the multicultural fabric of Sarajevo.

The report noted that the closure of several mosques and the construction of hotels on land intended for mosques are part of efforts to erase the country’s cultural heritage and foster anti-Muslim sentiment.

Austria

Farid Hafez drew attention to Austria, where the United Arab Emirates has been implicated in funding anti-Muslim groups.

Anti-Muslim rhetoric surged after the outbreak of Israel’s attacks on Gaza, and schools in Austria held workshops against radicalization, which, in some cases, propagated Islamophobic sentiments.

The report also highlighted how protests against the Gaza violence were suppressed by police, with Austria voting against a UN General Assembly resolution that urged a cease-fire.

To address these challenges, EIR 2023 calls for:

• Full recognition of Islamophobia as a systemic issue by European governments.
• Strengthened legal frameworks to combat discrimination and hate crimes.
• Increased efforts by civil society and international organizations to promote inclusivity and counter anti-Muslim narratives.
• Enhanced monitoring and accountability for media and social media platforms to prevent the spread of hate speech and disinformation.

Source: 5Pillars 

An additional intensified wave of Islamophobic disinformation – or the deliberate spread of false information – comes amid a rising tide of Islamophobia across Europe.

Official data show that Islamophobic crimes in Germany more than doubled in 2023, with nearly one in 10 incidents involving violence, according to the German Alliance against Islamophobia and discrimination against Muslims (CLAIM).

Austria and other EU countries have also reported similar trends while racism and intolerance are rising in France, fuelled by the war in Gaza and far-right ideas in public debate, according to France’s human rights commission, the CNCDH.

It says reports of antisemitic and anti-Muslim acts have increased by 284% and 29% respectively, while other types of racist acts increased by 21%.

Anti-Muslim hate in the UK has more than tripled in the four months since Hamas’s attacks, says the charity Tell Mama which documented 2,010 Islamophobic incidents between 7 October and 7 February – a steep rise from the 600 it recorded for the same period the year previously.
It is the largest number over four months since the charity began in 2011.

Generally, anti-Muslim and anti-semitic attacks have surged in the UK following the Israel-Gaza conflict while in the U.S the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, received a staggering 3,578 complaints about discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or religion in the last three months of 2023.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is also concerned, saying that, “amidst an increase in prejudice and violence against Muslims in a growing number of countries, greater efforts are needed to build dialogue and counter anti-Muslim hatred.”

It hails the fact that all 57 OSCE states, including Uzbekistan, “have committed to fighting prejudice, intolerance and discrimination against Muslims and members of other religions. But it also called on all participating states “to intensify commitments and actions towards this crucial endeavor, striving to nurture an environment where every person can live free from hate and discrimination.”

The OSCE said, “There has been an upsurge in hatred against Muslims especially since the renewed outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East in October last year, with online and offline hate speech, threats and violence having a negative impact on Muslim communities, particularly women and girls.

The organization says all OSCE participating States have committed to combating discrimination and hate crime, adding: “Supporting countries across the OSCE region in combating anti-Muslim hate crime is a key area of our work, but victims across the OSCE area are reluctant to report their experiences to the authorities.”

This worrying trend is not confined to Europe or the U.S and was one of the issues of discussion by international scientists and scholars who got together recently in Uzbekistan to find ways to combat the problem.

Participants from 35 countries were attending the eighth annual Congress of the World Society for the Study, Preservation and Popularization of the Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan (WOSCU) in Uzbekistan, with representatives of the International Organization of Turkic Culture, Muslim World Islamic League, the Al-Furqan Foundation, the International Turkic Academy, the Arab World Institute and others.

The event heard that there is a growing global concern related to islamophobia and how the international community, both in the West and beyond, should deal with it.

The conference focused on efforts by Uzbekistan – a Muslim country- to address the issue.

The event heard that the Uzbek focus is on education and “enlightenment”, an approach and policy which the country’s president outlined during his landmark speech in the 78th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations in September last year in which he reaffirmed his commitment to freedom of speech.

He also spoke of the “need to strengthen our joint efforts in preventing the spread of the scourge of extremism.”

A declaration was issued at the end of the annual WOSCU congress by the 300 participants from 35 countries, including 15 academicians, 40 professors, 103 doctors of science, 54 directors of museums and libraries and others.

It said: “We are firmly convinced that the work on studying and preserving cultural legacy is of paramount importance for the sustainable development and prosperity of not only Uzbekistan, but also the entire world community.”

A resolution supporting Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s call for “enlightenment against ignorance” and for an end to Islamophobia was adopted.

Those attending agreed that education on Islam should be the main objective and agreed that improved understanding is vital for addressing the “irrational fear or hostility towards the religion of Islam and Muslims in general.”

In a letter to President Mirziyoyev, conference participants noted his broad support for the idea of a “humane Islam” that he expressed in his UN address and his emphasis on the importance of “spiritual enrichment”.

The letter said the congress “fully” supported his initiatives, including in large-scale projects to “preserve the cultural legacy of Uzbekistan for world civilization.”

The congress, held both in Uzbekistan’s capital Tashkent and ancient Samarkand, approved some 150 projects, including a forthcoming heritage project, developed around the world by the World Scientific Society on Preservation and Popularization of the Uzbek Heritage (WOSCU).

The projects, it was said, seek to foster recognition of “the great contribution of Oriental scholars who have made a significant contribution to world civilization.”

Participants went on to praise Uzbekistan’s investment in Tashkent’s Centre of Islamic Civilization and the Imam al Bukhari Spiritual Centre near Samarkand, both currently under construction, saying, “We consider it our most important task not only to join the activities of the Centre of Islamic Civilization, but also to create a powerful and rapidly developing scientific and cultural platform that will become a bright beacon of enlightenment and knowledge in the East.”

The declaration, adopted at the congress’s plenary session, recognizes the “importance” of the Centre, a “cultural and humanistic mega-project which will give a powerful impetus to fundamental research dedicated to the worthy contribution of great scholars and thinkers of the East to the development of world science and civilization.”

However, the declaration cautioned, “We are concerned about the situation in the world and believe that the ideas of the Uzbekistan president on the truly humanistic and educational essence of the religion of Islam are worthy of the closest attention.”

Established in 2017, the Tashkent-based WOSCU, sponsored by leading Uzbek businessman Bakhtiyor Fazilov, works to highlight the country’s cultural heritage around the world.

A conference in Baku, Azerbaijan in March heard similar concerns to those voiced at the WOSCU event, with Ilham Aliyev, the Azer president, saying, “Regrettably, Islamophobia trends across the world are on the rise.

“We are witnessing the portrayal of Islam as a potential threat, with doubt, discrimination and open hatred against the Muslims becoming increasingly widespread with each passing day.”

He said that Azerbaijan’s determination to combat Islamophobia was “one of the challenges of the modern era” and called for “concerted efforts” to combat Islamophobia and to “generate fresh initiatives aimed at promoting the culture of tolerance and peace found d on respect for religious and faith diversity”.

Source: EU Reporter

By Farid Hafez, Visiting Professor of International Studies at Williams College

In the early morning hours of Nov. 9, 2020, I woke to the sound of banging at the door of my family home in Vienna, Austria. As I made my way to the window of my bedroom — still half asleep in the morning darkness — to investigate the commotion, I witnessed a sight unlike any I could have ever imagined. Below my window were dozens of heavily armed police officers, preparing to breach my front door. When they saw me these men began screaming, gesturing and pointing their weapons at me. The laser sights from their guns bathed my body and the room behind me in a terrifying red glow. At that moment, my mind racing, I could think only of my wife and three children, now waking up to the sounds of these armed men, and the unknown terror that had arrived in the night for us.

As I learned later, the police raid on my home was part of a broader operation named Operation Luxor, a wide-ranging crackdown on Muslim civil society activists in Austria. I had been born and raised in Austria, growing up in a small town of fewer than 500 souls, before rising to become a well-known public commentator and academic, often writing as an interlocutor on Muslim issues for the Austrian public. In my mind, I was part of the diverse democratic fabric that gave voice to the unheard. I considered Austria not just my home but a place where I enjoyed the trust and respect of my compatriots, among them many influential figures in Austria’s government and civil society who knew me well.

The morning of the raid shattered that sense of belonging. As nearly three dozen police officers circled my house, including heavily armed special forces, I frantically tried to gather my family to safety, my mind racing for an explanation of what was occurring. The front door crashed open as police officers barged in screaming, brandishing guns. A large window near the entrance shattered so that more officers could pile in. The men stormed through the house, terrifying my wife as well as my young children. Barking orders, a group of special forces police trained their weapons on my chest and forced me to hold my arms up against the wall.

My heart pounding while I tried to make sense of the situation, I asked one of the officers whether they had a warrant — the only bit of guidance I could remember from watching Hollywood police movies. One officer passed me a sheet of paper to read. As I scanned the document, trying to focus amid the shock, I realized that I was holding a state prosecutor’s warrant. The document claimed that I was a member of a criminal and terrorist organization as well as an enemy of the Austrian state. In that instant, my previous identity seemed to vanish into smoke.

I was not charged with a crime that night, nor would I be in the future. Yet I was nonetheless treated as a criminal and enemy of the state. My bank account was frozen, as were other assets. The police took all my electronic devices. Following a lengthy interrogation at a police station, I was released on my own recognizance and sent home with not a single penny that I could say was mine. I had been scheduled to give a guest lecture that morning at the University of Vienna, but no longer even had a phone with which to contact my hosts to cancel. The Austrian news media sprang into action with alacrity to cast me as an extremist — even though I had long been a writer for many of its most prestigious publications.

The morning of the raid was a turning point in my life. But I was not the only one affected. Operation Luxor targeted nearly 70 individuals and organizations, with raids by nearly 1,000 police officers taking place in three different Austrian states. While cast as a crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood in Austria, a transnational political organization with which I had no connection, the raids were in reality part of an effort by an increasingly right-wing government to punish and silence politically active Austrian Muslims. I had woken up one day and discovered that, through no apparent fault of my own, I was no longer welcome in my country. It would take me some years more to unravel why and how I and many others had been targeted by smears intended to cast us out of society.

Aside from a few stretches of travel and scholarship programs abroad, I had spent my entire life in Austria. I grew up in a predominantly white, rural part of the country where conservative politics were the norm, before moving to the small town of Ried. The son of working-class parents — my father was of North African background and my mother Austrian — I grew up in places where most of my peers were Austrian and few immigrants could be seen. Though my father was of Muslim background, he was not particularly religious and I was baptized Catholic as a child. At times, I felt that I fit in and was welcome in the communities where I lived. But gradually, I began to notice that because of my race, there was something different in how my peers treated or saw me.

In my small town, though I was not Black, I had often been called the N-word. Many of my classmates had family members involved in far-right politics, and hearing ugly jokes about Adolf Hitler and the Jewish people was not uncommon. My experiences of belonging to a racial minority in rural Austria and learning that I could sometimes be ostracized because of differences in skin color or for having a foreign name led me to a gradual awakening about race and identity. I discovered the writings of Malcolm X as a teenager and developed a political consciousness, first studying the history of antisemitism in Austria and then the world of immigrant politics and Islam.

These readings would gradually blossom into a career in academia and journalism largely focused on the study of racism, including anti-Muslim racism in Europe. I wrote on a variety of topics in Austrian newspapers, where I became well known as a public commentator. I was awarded prizes for my work and was regularly interviewed about daily political events on television. My country, meanwhile, was going through changes that would gradually transform its political landscape. Joerg Haider had become one of the most successful far-right leaders, who mainstreamed his party, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), by both capitalizing on and encouraging anti-immigrant sentiment in the country. I found that my scholarship was welcomed by the public so long as my criticisms focused on him and other far-right parties, long considered to be the primary vectors of racism in the country.

Yet this honeymoon period lasted only until Islamophobia became politically mainstream in Austria. The anti-Muslim policies of the FPO were gradually coopted and implemented by the center-right Austrian People’s Party (OVP), under the leadership of its political wunderkind Sebastian Kurz. The focus of my own work shifted from the far right, as I now began criticizing not a political party in opposition but a party in power. The OVP began putting in force a laundry list of anti-Muslim policies that it had seemingly cribbed from Haider and others it had once deemed dangerous radicals. Under the leadership of the OVP, mosques were closed, the hijab was banned in several educational institutions, and plans were made to eventually ban it for college students and civil service employees. The surveillance of Muslim associations by the intelligence service and the criminalization of Muslim associations by the state authorities increased, leading to the establishment of state-funded institutions such as the Documentation Center for Political Islam, an advisory organization widely viewed as critical of Islam. Within the course of a few years, criticizing the far right had become redundant. The political mainstream had become hostile to Muslims.

The anti-Muslim policies of the OVP were good domestic politics. Unlike the far right’s discourse 10 years earlier, the OVP claimed that it was separating the vast majority of peace-loving Muslims from the few radicals that it claimed to be targeting with these measures. It was an untrue claim: The anti-Muslim policies targeted individuals without exception. Yet this sleight of hand was how they were able to persuade many in the opposition, from the center-left Social Democrats to the liberals and even some Greens, a party programmatically dedicated to anti-racism, to go along with their program of marginalizing and suppressing Austrian Muslims. To circumvent charges that it was violating Muslims’ religious freedom in contravention of its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, the government further claimed that it was combating only “political Islam.” This framing gradually became common sense in Austrian politics.

The groundwork for this policy had been years in the making. As news reports would later reveal, Sebastian Kurz and his team had planned to use anti-Muslim talking points as part of a broader strategy to build their political profile in the country. Initiating this plan required commissioning and publishing critical reports on Austrian Muslims that would outline the terms of their campaign. The main report that laid the groundwork for the anti-Muslim policies of the OVP, and that would be cited 14 times in the search warrant for the Operation Luxor raid that eventually targeted myself and others, was titled “The Muslim Brotherhood in Austria.” The report was funded by the government through a contribution of about $100,000 and authored by an individual named Lorenzo Vidino.

Vidino was not an Austrian, did not speak German and had not spent a great deal of time in the country. In my long life there I had never encountered him, even though I knew most people in Austria’s close-knit civil society, including political leaders like Kurz himself. Vidino had once appeared in Austrian media in 2015 to attack critics of Kurz’s new “Islam Act” that aimed to restructure the relationship between Muslim organizations and state authorities. I had been among those who criticized Kurz for this step. Vidino serves as the director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, a think tank established with the ostensible mission of combating radicalism and extremism. His academic affiliations in the U.S. gave an intellectual cachet to his commentary and the subsequent report he would write for the government.

Vidino’s report purported to document the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Austria. Yet he painted his targets with such a broad brush that almost anyone could be suspected of affiliation with the group. Vidino argued that talking about “Islamophobia,” as scholars of anti-racism like me did as a matter of course, was a tool of the brotherhood to subvert and undermine Austrian society. His report did not name me. Yet given his attacks on the concept of Islamophobia, there was a clear implication that I might be one of the shadowy figures he was talking about. I was well known in the Austrian public as the editor of an annual publication called the Islamophobia Studies Yearbook, the co-editor of another periodic study called the European Islamophobia Report and a critic of Kurz’s anti-Muslim policies. The report gave license to begin targeting individuals like me who talked about seemingly common-sense issues like anti-racism and Islamophobia as though we were seditious extremists or members of suspect political organizations like the brotherhood.

Upon its publication, the Austrian Ministry of the Interior summarized Vidino’s English-language report in a short press release. The press release quoted Vidino as saying that “the Muslim Brotherhood is aiming to divide society and strengthen the influence of political Islam.” In his comments, Vidino seems to criticize specifically discussion of anti-Muslim racism, an undeniable reality in Austrian life, even suggesting that such discussions amounted to encouragement of violence. “Especially against the backdrop of the sharp increase in Islamic radicalization in Europe,” Vidino writes, “the spread of the narrative of Muslims as victims must be viewed with concern.”

He would continue to press this case in the years to come. Two days after the raids that targeted my home and others, Vidino published an article on the Foreign Policy website, where he praised Austria for leading a crackdown on Islamism in Europe. This time he targeted me explicitly, linking to a publication of mine about Islamophobia and describing me as a “known Islamist actor.” True to his style, it was a vague accusation that I had no opportunity to contest, yet appeared calculated to further destroy my reputation. In that sense, his attacks on me were successful. I had become persona non grata in Austria, the only country I had ever known as home.

Following the raids, I left Austria for the U.S. to take up a teaching position that had been offered to me at a university. I was no longer able to work in my home country, where, while I was never charged with any crime, I had been turned into a pariah by the government and its media apparatchiks. This experience took a deep emotional toll on me, compounded by my own incomprehension of how I had become the subject of such sensational accusations. It would take years to find out what forces were at work behind Vidino and the Austrian authorities in this campaign to snuff out Muslim civil society in Austria.

In March 2023, The New Yorker published an investigative story outlining how a Swiss private investigative firm, Alp Services, had helped orchestrate the downfall of an American businessperson named Hazim Nada. Alp had run a clandestine operation branding Nada’s company a front for the Muslim Brotherhood, gradually destroying his reputation and financially ruining him. The New Yorker investigation further revealed that an authoritarian government had been behind this. In its campaign against Nada and many others, Alp Services had been commissioned by the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), compiling lists of people and organizations to be subjected to smears aimed at driving them out of public life. Integral to this campaign, the article revealed, was Lorenzo Vidino, who was contracted by Alp to help them find targets to characterize to the Emiratis as supporters of Islamism. According to The New Yorker, Vidino delivered “a series of gossipy reports about the Brotherhood’s reach” that helped create the framework for Alp’s work on behalf of the UAE. Alp ultimately earned millions of Euros in fees from the Emiratis, while few of the individuals like Nada were fortunate enough to learn what had been behind the attacks on them.

The information that made up the basis for The New Yorker’s investigation came from a leak of hacked documents from Alp that were given to Nada. The same documents showed that I too had been a target of the same campaign. While Vidino had been cautious and indirect in his public statements, in his private communications he showed no such discretion. In a secret paper he wrote for Alp Services, Vidino subsumed me under the category of “known Islamist actors and supporters” — an amorphous yet sensational charge that would prove sufficient to destroy my life.

The documents would be more than enough to allow me to launch a lawsuit against Vidino, Alp Services and the George Washington Program on Extremism. Vidino had cast me as a radical and extremist in order to further his own relationship as a contractor for firms like Alp, and possibly secure funding from the UAE, all potentially in violation of the Program on Extremism’s own mission and status as a nonprofit, ostensibly engaged in academic research. As I would later discover, Vidino also served thrice as an expert witness in the terrorism investigation against me, attempting to create a link between myself and the Muslim Brotherhood, which was considered a terrorist organization by the leading state prosecutor in Austria. I was never given a chance to defend myself in these closed-door meetings, nor even told that I was being accused.

Though neither I nor anyone else was charged with a crime in the raids of Operation Luxor, they were perhaps still a success from the Austrian government’s perspective. Under the new right-wing status quo in the country, my critique of anti-Muslim policies in Austria has effectively been silenced, in no small part thanks to Vidino’s work smearing me and other critics of Islamophobia as extremists. Risible as it may be, the argument now being propounded in Austria is that discussing issues of anti-Muslim racism is merely the first step in laying the groundwork for an Islamic caliphate. That is exactly what a regional court argued in dismissing my appeal in trial court to end the investigation against me. According to the regional court, my “activities in the preparation of the so-called Islamophobia Report and activity with the Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University is intended to disseminate the fighting term ‘Islamophobia’ with the goal of preventing any critical engagement with Islam as a religion […] in order to establish an Islamic state.”

The trauma following both the brutal intrusion of heavily weaponized police forces into my private home and the character assassination that ensued left me with little choice but to leave my country of origin and begin anew in the United States. Uprooted from our place of birth, my children, my wife and I started a new life in a place where we could enjoy dignity and the protection of the law and not live under a regime where Muslim identity per se is criminalized. As painful as it has been, my forced displacement has deepened the commitment to advocating for justice that began so many years ago when I was a young man. Having gone through this nightmare, I see the opportunity to educate and inspire a new generation of students, fostering a more nuanced understanding of Islamophobia and its consequences.

Suing Vidino, Alp Services, George Washington University and their Emirati financiers may bring some measure of justice to my life and expose the malicious intent behind their actions. However, the broader issue persists: Too many ideological extremists have allied with corrupt and authoritarian financial backers in order to crack down on Muslim civil society. This sordid marriage enables monarchies to introduce authoritarian policies in Western nation-states for their own benefit, while undermining democratic basic principles under the guise of combating extremism.

Vidino is now readying to dispute the lawsuit in court. While hearings are expected later this year, the legal fight may continue for years. Underlying this battle is my contention that individuals like Vidino have become mercenaries, using the shield of their academic connections to conceal an ugly and destructive campaign that has ruined the lives of countless innocents.

My ordeal began on that night in November 2020, when the police came for me and my family. Yet I do not plan to go silently or to forfeit the rights to which I know I am entitled. As the far right rises across Europe, allied in some cases with ideologues in the U.S. and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, I intend to keep fighting against Islamophobia and injustice with the same vigor I have throughout my life. While I may have fallen victim to the same forces I sought to document, my hope is that, by my taking a stand now, future generations of Muslims in Austria and across the continent may be spared the same fate.

Source: New Lines Magazine

Starting on Thursday, August 22, the Wien Museum has begun a three-part Summer Academy dedicated to Islamic heritage in Austria’s capital Vienna, to shed light on how deeply Islam is interwoven into Vienna’s history – and not just through the historic sieges by the Ottomans.

In the first part of the academy, experts and interested participants will examine various objects that have been collected as a result of a long-standing fascination with the so-called “Orient”. The following event on August 29 will focus on the visible traces of Islamic heritage in Vienna’s public space. Finally, on September 5, the focus will be on the aesthetics of this heritage, in particular calligraphy and arabesques.

“Discussions about migration are intermingled with claims about its alleged alienation. Muslims are supposed to be completely different from ‘us,’” writes the museum in its announcement.

According to the exhibition organizers, however, there are countless traces of the Muslim presence in the city in the Wien Museum’s collection. “They shed new light on the relationship between Islam and Vienna,” the museum said.

The art historian Zeinab Abbas-Metwally-Abdelhamed, who is leading the Summer Academy along with Lukas Sperlich, mentioned that the Wien Museum owns Ottoman objects from the 17^th to 19^th centuries. “It is not actually known how the objects first came to the Burgerliches Zeughaus and later to the museum,” Abdelhamed explained. She suggested that they could also have been “trade goods and gifts. In this case, the objects would have much more to do with diplomatic and economic relations and the fascination of the ‘Orient’ than with the war.”

Abdelhamed highlighted that among the Ottoman objects are mainly weapons such as bows, sabers, rifles, spears, shields, and everyday items like lanterns or incense burners. She pointed out that the most valuable object in the museum is an Ottoman map of the Second Ottoman Siege of 1683. While there are comparable objects in other collections, she emphasized, “This object is truly unique.”

Interest in the Summer Academy has been “huge,” according to Abdelhamed. “A large number of people have registered. In addition, our unique Islamic heritage tour attracted considerable interest and participation,” she noted.

Source: Anadolu Agency (AA)

Muslim civil society groups from Europe warned of the growing level of Islamophobia spreading across the continent at a major security and human rights conference in Poland.

Seven Muslim groups from Austria, France, Sweden, Spain, and the Netherlands spoke out against the climate of “state-sponsored” Islamophobia facing them in their countries.

Their address to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Human Dimension Conference in Warsaw came days after Polish authorities banned Cage’s international director, Muhammad Rabbani, from entering Poland after his name appeared on the Schengen Information System, which lets any Schengen member-state place an individual on a no-entry list to the Schengen zone.

Adil El-Kanfoudi, spokesperson for Muslim Rights Watch in the Netherlands, told the OSCE conference that he was due to meet Rabbani alongside other European Muslim civil society groups.

“This incident, among many others, is a perfect example of a broader pattern, where key figures from the Muslim community are unjustly placed on blacklists,” said Adil El-Kanfoudi. “Muslims are systematically targeted, a blatant violation of their constitutional rights.”

Commenting on his own country’s situation, Kanfoudi spoke of the hundreds of Dutch Muslims who approached his organization and said they had been wrongly placed on the terror list by the Dutch authorities, leading some to lose their livelihoods, face banking and travel restrictions and being treated like “second class citizens.”

Nehal Abdalla, Cage’s researcher in Austria, condemned the Austrian government’s Operation Luxor, which led to Austrian police raiding the homes of 70 Muslim households and the arrest of 30 Muslim academics in 2020.

Campaigners from France also spoke at the OSCE session and said the ban on the abaya in schools and recent police killings of young North African men had further heightened tensions.

“Undressed, harassed, humiliated. The young girls in France suffer, yet no one reacts,” said Elias d’Imzalene, from Perspective Musulmanes. “All my respect goes to these young Muslim girls who continue to fight for their freedom to remain Muslim even though the French state does everything it can to prevent them from remaining Muslim.”

The OSCE describes itself as “the world’s largest regional security organization”, drawing together 57 member states from Europe, Central Asia, and North America.

Source: Middle East Eye

Those “certain groups of women” are Muslim women.

It is ironic that the vote will take place on the eve of International Women’s Day on March 8, which strives for a gender-equal world. Removing a Muslim woman’s right to wear a face veil is not equality.

Why should a Muslim woman who chooses to cover her face because of her faith not be allowed to do so? People of different faiths adhere to different dress codes, yet it is Muslim women who bear the brunt of this policing around the world.

Switzerland is far from the first country to propose laws limiting Muslim women’s choice of attire: France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Latvia, Austria, Bulgaria, Belgium, Republic of the Congo, Chad, Gabon and Sri Lanka all have laws prohibiting the wearing of religious face coverings. These bans are called a “security measure,” even though women’s role throughout history in political violence is not linked to the clothing they wore.

Source: Washington Post

Anxious debates on the place of Islam in Europe and claims that European Muslims are footsoldiers in an existential confrontation between Europe and Islam and represent an impossible-to-integrate “other” have dogged Muslims across the continent for decades.

There is a dangerous new shrillness to the conversation this time, however.

The rhetoric over the alleged “Islamisation” of Europe is fired up by xenophobic and populist parties including such figures as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, but it has been embraced by too many mainstream European politicians.

Source: The Guardian

Today, it is perpetuated by a poorly regulated media and sustained by agenda-driven think-tanks and self-professed ‘experts’ who brazenly deny the existence of anti-Muslim bigotry. In its most implicit incarnation, Islamophobia is a prejudicial barrier, and in its most explicit form it manifests as an existential threat to all who suffer in its shadow.

“Migration is the mother of all problems” – that’s according to German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. But central to the flagrant anti-immigration and anti-refugee sentiment stoked by politicians across our continent is an unchecked undercurrent of Islamophobia.

Muslims have been selectively scapegoated for the ills of society, and relentless suspicion has been unfairly and unjustly cast our way for merely existing. Often the first to suffer are women who choose to express their Muslim faith and identity in the clothes they wear – in 2018, 76% of victims of Islamophobic incidents in Belgium were female.

Instead of defending people’s liberties to the last; their basic human rights and freedom to eat what they want, to wear what they like. and practice the faith of their choice, we have mainstream political leaders telling Muslim girls they don’t have a right to freedom of expression, issuing fines for calls to prayer, or banning halal meat.

While far-right extremism and populism proliferates, European governments and political leaders have been culpably complicit in condoning and abetting anti-Muslim hatred like no other form of racism…

Source: EURACTIV