In episode 19 of Unpacking Islamophobia, Bridge Associate Director Mobashra Tazamal speaks with Faisal Hanif, a media analyst at the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) in the United Kingdom. They discuss CfMM’s latest report highlighting the systemic bias in the BBC’s coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza. For nearly two years, Israel’s assault on Gaza—described by leading human rights organizations and UN experts as a genocide—has involved relentless bombing, forced starvation, the destruction of every university in the Strip, and the near-total collapse of the healthcare system. Israel’s violence in Gaza has produced the highest number of child amputees in the world and become the deadliest conflict for journalists in modern history. At least 62,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 17,500 children. And because civil society has been decimated and tens of thousands remain buried under rubble, some academic estimates suggest the real death toll could be in the hundreds of thousands. But if you’re relying on Western media, much of this information is minimized—or missing altogether. Since the war began on October 7th, 2023, following Hamas’s attack on Israel, Western media coverage has consistently shown a troubling pattern of bias: downplaying Palestinian suffering while centering Israeli narratives. A new report from the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), titled “BBC on Gaza-Israel: One Story, Double Standards,” offers hard data to back this up. The report analyzed over 35,000 pieces of BBC content and found a clear trend: Palestinian voices and pain were routinely sidelined, while Israeli perspectives were given emotional depth and prominence.

In episode 17 of Unpacking Islamophobia, Bridge Associate Director speaks with Dr. Saher Selod, an Associate Professor and previous Chair of the Department of Sociology at Simmons University in Boston, MA. They discuss Islamophobia and ethno-nationalist populism in the United States, specifically talking about Professor Selod’s chapter in the newly-released book, Global Islamophobia and Rise of Populism. In the chapter, she highlights various events that took place in the last two decades that contributed to the election of the populist president, Donald Trump. The two also discuss Professor Selod’s book, A Global Racial Enemy: Muslims and Twenty-First Century Racism, which analyzed how Islamophobia and the “Muslim problem” has manifested in a number of countries around the globe. Lastly, we touched on a new report from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), which look at Muslim American voters in swing states and the policy issues they are concerned about ahead of the presidential elections.

In Episode 16 of “Unpacking Islamophobia,” our guest is Professor Shenila Khoja-Moolji. She is the Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani Chair of Muslim Societies and an Associate Professor at Georgetown University. She is an award-winning author of three award winning books including her most recent book Rebuilding Community: Displaced Women and the Making of a Shia Ismaili Muslim Sociality (Oxford University Press, 2023). In her latest book, The Impossibility of Muslim Boyhood (University of Minnesota Press, 2024), Professor Khoja-Moolji asks: How do we understand an incident where a five-year-old Muslim boy arrives at Dulles airport and is preemptively detained as a “threat”? To answer that question, she examines American public culture, arguing that Muslim boyhood has been invented as a threat within an ideology that seeks to predict future terrorism. Muslim boyhood bridges actual past terrorism and possible future events, justifying preemptive enclosure, surveillance, and punishment. Even in the occasional reframing of individual Muslim boys as innocent, Professor Khoja-Moolji identifies a pattern of commodity antiracism, through which elites buy public goodwill but leave intact the collective anti-Muslim notion that fuels an expanding carceral and security state. Framing Muslim boyhood as a heuristic device, she turns to a discussion of Hindutva ideology in India to show how Muslim boyhood may be re-situated in global contexts. The book is freely available on University of Minnesota's manifold platform: https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/the-impossibility-of-muslim-boyhood To purchase a copy of the book click here: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517917197/the-impossibility-of-muslim-boyhood/

In Episode 15 of “Unpacking #Islamophobia”, we are joined by Al-Jazeera journalist Laila Al-Arian who answers “Five Questions On The Media's Coverage Of Israel's War In Gaza" #Gaza War Coverage” and how that impacts the global community today. #Islam #muslims #islamophobia #palestine #gaza #palestinian #palestinians #palestinianvoices #media

In Episode #14 of “Unpacking #Islamophobia”, we are joined by ADC National Executive Director Abed Ayoub who discusses anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism during the Gaza war including campus protests and rise in employment discrimination claims across the country.

In Episode #13 of “Unpacking #Islamophobia”, we are joined by British journalist Peter Oborne who discusses #Islamophobia in #Britain today. We touch on Israel’s war in #Gaza, the #GreatReplacement conspiracy theory, and anti-Muslim sentiment in both the Labour and Conservative parties.

Our guests on this month's episode of Unpacking Islamophobia are Sahar Aziz and Mitchell Plitnick who are co-authors of a November 2023 Rutgers University report from the Center for Security, Race and Rights called “Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine-Israel Discourse,” which examines how anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia have been used to silence criticism of the Israeli government.

In Episode #11 of “Unpacking #Islamophobia”, we are joined by Canadian sports journalist Shireen Ahmed who analyzes #hijab bans in national and international sports like #soccer, #basketball and #Olympics which affect female #Muslim athletes across the globe.

In Episode #10 of “Unpacking #Islamophobia”, we sit down with French legal scholar Rim-Sarah Alouane who discusses important topics related to anti-Muslim trends across France, including hijab bans, the mainstreaming of far-right politicians and political parties, laïcité and how it has been used to discriminate against Muslims, and the role of the French media in perpetuating Islamophobia.

In Episode 9 of “Unpacking Islamophobia,” our guest is Spencer Ackerman, a Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award–winning reporter and author of the book Reign of Terror: How The 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump. “We saw through the War on Terror that Islamophobia impacts everyone, whether you are Muslim or not,” began Mr. Ackerman as he analyzed many post-9/11 surveillance programs affecting millions of innocent people. He began by discussing the STELLARWIND program which involved mass data mining of a large database of the communications of American citizens; including email communications, telephone conversations, financial transactions, and Internet activity of millions of innocent people. In this episode, Ackerman also discussed the global torture campaigns inflicted on countless Muslim and Arab men around the globe who were subjected to inhumane treatment in places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. He also discussed “sexual abuse” at CIA black sites where Muslim detainees were victims of sexual torture around the world with very little government oversight.

In Episode 8 of “Unpacking Islamophobia,” our guest is Professor Farid Hafez, an Austrian academic who currently serves as a distinguished visiting Professor of International Studies at Williams College in Massachusetts and co-editor of the annual European Islamophobia Report, a collaborative work with 40 scholars covering more than 30 European countries. Professor Hafez provides historical context on the recent trends of Quran burnings across Europe, especially Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Denmark. Professor Hafez begins by noting the rise of “not-so-popular far-right activists” on the fringe who are trying to provoke social unrest with Quran burning publicity stunts. He noted that Danish-Swedish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan was the first prominent Scandinavian to conduct a series of “public Quran burnings” across Sweden in 2019 and most recently in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, Sweden which made global headlines.

In Episode 7 of “Unpacking Islamophobia,” our guest is Professor Susan Carland, an Australian Muslim academic and television presenter who specializes on a wide array of topics, including issues related to women in Islam. Since Islamophobia manifests in different parts of the world in different ways, Professor Carland provides insight into how Islamophobia has shown up in Australia for the last several decades.

In Episode 6 of "Unpacking Islamophobia," our guest is Amira Elghawaby who is Canada’s first-ever Special Representative on Combating Islamophobia. In the past few years, Canada has experienced more mass killings motivated by Islamophobia than any other country in the G7. As hate crimes against Muslims have skyrocketed, there’s also institutional and structural Islamophobia, such as discriminatory legislation and pushback from some politicians who fail to acknowledge the realities faced by Canadian Muslims today.

In Episode Five of "Unpacking Islamophobia," our guest is Kashmiri Muslim journalist, Raqib Hameed Naik, who discusses Hindu nationalism in India and the growing violence and intolerance against the country's 200 million Muslims.

In Episode 4 of “Unpacking Islamophobia,” our host Arsalan Iftikhar sits down with Nury Turkel to discuss the China's ongoing genocide targeting Uyghur and Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, which includes the internment of an estimated 1-3 million Uyghur Muslims in a network of camps across the region. Turkel recounts his own personal story of being born in a Chinese re-education camp during the height of the cultural revolution, and how he has been unable to see his family for decades due to his advocacy work. In this episode, Turkel also discusses how the international community should respond to China's ongoing repression targeting Uyghur Muslims.

Check out Episode #3 of our video podcast called "5 Islamophobia Questions with Rep. Ilhan Omar" where Rep. Omar discusses #Islamophobia in American & European politics and addresses the rise in genocidal Islamophobia in places like #India, #Myanmar, and #China.

In this second episode of The Bridge Initiative's Unpacking Islamophobia, Bridge Initiative host Arsalan Iftikhar interviews Peter Beinart, Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York and Contributing Opinion Writer at The New York Times. Peter is also a CNN Political Commentator, Editor-at-Large of Jewish Currents, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace Follow Bridge on Twitter: @bridgeinit Follow Bridge on Instagram: @bridgeinit Like our page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gubridgeinit Visit our website: https://bridge.georgetown.edu

In this first episode of Unpacking Islamophobia, brought to you by The Bridge Initiative, host Arsalan Iftikhar interviews internationally renowned scholar and author Dr. John L. Esposito on how government’s play a role in fostering anti-Muslim racism, the role of the media in promoting discriminatory narratives about Islam and Muslims, the impact on the rights and safety of Muslims, and the globalization of Islamophobia.