This week, Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani made historical past by turning into the primary Muslim mayor of New York Metropolis. His highway to victory was something however clean. After he secured a historic win within the mayoral major, he confronted a landslide of assaults from throughout the political spectrum. Within the months that adopted, the hateful rhetoric from right-wing provocateurs, social media personalities, and even his three opponents mushroomed.
Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa claimed that Mamdani helps “international jihad”; impartial candidate and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo agreed with a remark that Mamdani would have a good time “one other 9/11”; and outgoing NYC mayor, Eric Adams, who dropped out and endorsed Cuomo, advised {that a} Mamdani mayorship would flip New York into Europe, the place “Islamic extremists … are destroying communities.”
Sadly, as researchers of anti-Muslim bias, and Muslim people who got here of age in a post-9/11 America, we all know assaults of this nature – on somebody’s character or health for a job due to their spiritual background or nationwide origin – aren’t completely sudden. We all know that Islamophobia spikes not after a violent act, however somewhat throughout election campaigns and political occasions, when anti-Muslim rhetoric is used as a political tactic to garner help for a particular candidate or coverage.
Worryingly, these assaults additionally mirror a common development of rising Islamophobia, which our analysis has lately uncovered. The most recent version of the Institute for Social Coverage and Understanding’s (ISPU) American Muslim Ballot, which accommodates our Islamophobia Index, released on October 21, reveals that within the final three years, Islamophobia has sharply risen within the US, throughout nearly all demographic teams.
Among the many common inhabitants within the US, on our 1 to 100 scale, the index elevated from a rating of 25 in 2022 to a rating of 33 in 2025. This soar was most pronounced amongst white Evangelicals, whose rating elevated from 30 to 45 between 2022 and 2025, and Catholics, whose rating elevated from 28 to 40 throughout the identical interval. Protestants additionally noticed an increase of seven factors, from 23 in 2022 to 30 in 2025. Jews had an Islamophobia rating of 17 in 2022, the bottom of any group that 12 months, which elevated solely barely to 19 in 2025, the identical rating as Muslims in 2025. The one group that didn’t change since 2022 is the non-affiliated.
Undoubtedly, the weaponisation of Islamophobia by high-profile people is a significant driver of this worrying development. And it could result in devastating outcomes for Muslims: From job loss and incapability to freely worship, to religious-based bullying of Muslim youngsters in public colleges and discrimination in public settings, to even bodily violence. Merely put, harmful rhetoric can have harmful penalties.
A lot of this Islamophobic rhetoric depends on 5 widespread stereotypes about Muslims, which we utilized in placing collectively our index: That they condone violence, discriminate towards girls, are hostile to the US, are much less civilised, and are complicit in acts of violence dedicated by Muslims elsewhere. We then surveyed a nationally consultant pattern, together with 2,486 People, to establish the extent to which they believed in these tropes.
Extra People are embracing these stereotypes about Muslims, although they’re simply disproved.
For instance, regardless of fashionable media portrayals of Muslims as extra liable to violence or as being complicit in violence perpetrated by Muslims elsewhere on this planet, ISPU analysis reveals American Muslims overwhelmingly reject violence. They’re extra doubtless than most people to reject violence carried out by the navy towards civilians and are as prone to reject particular person actors focusing on civilians.
The favored stereotype that Muslim communities discriminate towards their girls additionally doesn’t maintain water. The actual fact is that Muslim girls face extra racial and spiritual discrimination than they do gender discrimination, which all girls, Muslim or not, report at equal ranges in the USA. The overwhelming majority (99 p.c) of Muslim girls who put on hijab say they accomplish that out of non-public devotion and selection – not coercion. And Muslim girls report that their religion is a supply of delight and happiness.
Our analysis additionally disproves the idea that almost all Muslims dwelling within the US are hostile to the nation. Now we have discovered that Muslims with sturdy spiritual identities are extra doubtless than these with weaker ones to carry a robust American id. It additionally reveals that Muslims take part in public life from the native to the nationwide degree by civic engagement, working with neighbours to unravel group issues, and contributing throughout occasions of nationwide crises just like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Flint water disaster.
The trope that almost all Muslims dwelling within the US are much less “civilised” than different folks has no factual foundation, as properly. Using the “civilised/uncivilised” dichotomy strips people of their human dignity and separates folks right into a false, ethnocentric hierarchy on the idea of race or faith. Accusing a bunch of being much less civilised than one other is a often used dehumanising tactic. Dehumanisation, outlined by Genocide Watch as when one group denies the humanity of the opposite group, is a step on the trail to genocide.
Now we have seen all of those tropes activated up to now few weeks to launch Islamophobic assaults on Mamdani. Now we have additionally seen too a lot of our flesh pressers and public figures use them comfortably of their public speech, putting a whole religion group in hurt’s means. As Mamdani mentioned in a speech addressing the Islamophobic assaults by his fellow candidates, “In an period of ever-diminishing bipartisanship, evidently Islamophobia has emerged as one of many few areas of settlement.”
However Islamophobia isn’t simply dangerous for Muslims – it undermines our democracy and constitutional freedoms. Analysis has linked perception in these anti-Muslim tropes to better tolerance for anti-democratic insurance policies. Individuals who embrace Islamophobic beliefs usually tend to comply with limiting democratic freedoms when the nation is below menace (suspending checks and balances, limiting freedom of the press), condone navy and particular person assaults on civilians (a struggle crime below the Geneva Conference), and approve of discriminatory insurance policies focusing on Muslims (banning Muslims, surveilling mosques, and even proscribing the flexibility to vote).
Weaponising Islamophobia in political speech could also be perceived as a successful technique to rally help, however communities the place it’s deployed find yourself dropping. That’s the reason such practices should be challenged. Confronting and denouncing hate means preserving democracy and human dignity. Maybe the election of Mamdani will sign an actual shift away from this political technique. Because the mayor-elect mentioned in his acceptance speech, “No extra will New York be a metropolis the place you’ll be able to visitors in Islamophobia and win an election.”
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial coverage.
