Islamophobia

Biden, Whitmer join in condemnation of Wall Street Journal column accusing Dearborn, MI, of Muslim Radicalism

By: Jon King – ( Michigan Advance ) – Reaction to a Wall Street Journal opinion piece about Dearborn intensified through the weekend, as President Joe Biden and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joined the chorus of condemnation. The WSJ op-ed, “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital,” alleged thousands of residents in the predominantly Muslim city, including […]

Islamophobia

Girls in Hijab Experience overlapping Forms of Racial and Gendered Violence

The Conversation

By Salsabel Almanssori, University of Windsor and Muna Saleh, Concordia University of Edmonton | – World Hijab Day recognizes the millions of Muslim women and girls who wear the traditional Islamic headscarf. (The Conversation) – Around the world, Muslim girls in hijab are experiencing unique forms and heightened rates of gender and race-based violence and […]

Islamophobia

Israel, the United States, and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror: From September 11, 2001, to October 7, 2023 (and Beyond)

Maha Hilal

Maha Hilal ( Tomdispatch.com ) – In a New Yorker piece published five days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, American critic and public intellectual Susan Sontag wrote, “Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, […]

Antisemitism

“Stop Weaponizing Antisemitism:” Ex-Harvard Hillel Leader

Common Dreams

Jessica Corbett ( Commondreams.org) – “For the safety of Jews and Palestinians, stop weaponizing antisemitism.” That’s the headline of a Friday op-ed from Bernie Steinberg, who was the executive director of Harvard Hillel from 1993 to 2010. Harvard University is among many U.S. higher education institutions—including Brandeis University, Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), […]

European Union

The Empire of Whiteness: Race in the European Perspective

Marc Martorell Junyent

Review of Hans Kundnani, Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project. London: Hurst & Co., 2023. Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – What does it mean to be European? This is a complex but legitimate question. Still, one is unlikely to find an answer to the conundrum in the numerous billboards paid […]

Anti-intellectualism

The Other Israel-Gaza Conflict: On Campus (Juan at Dawn)

Juan Cole

Excerpted from Dawn (Democracy for the Arab World Now) Israel’s total war on Gaza, following Hamas’s horrific terrorist attack on Oct. 7, has roiled higher education in the United States. The atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel two months ago have reverberated on many U.S. campuses, deeply traumatizing many Jewish students. But so too […]

Anti-intellectualism

Statement of Juan Cole, Director of the program in Arab and Muslim American Studies in the American Culture Department at the University of Michigan

Juan Cole

I write in awareness that the ongoing, painful events in the Middle East are putting an enormous emotional burden on the faculty, staff and students of our program. I want them to know that AMAS is here for them as a supporter and that we are available to offer counsel in this difficult moment. Concrete […]

Arab Americans

Don’t Silence Palestinian Voices: Their Absence from News Coverage is Unfair and Harmful

OtherWords

By Sarah Gertler | ( Otherwords.org ) – Like many of us, I’ve been glued to media coverage of the terrible violence in Gaza and Israel. I was deeply shaken by the brutal killings of over a thousand Israelis on October 7. The families of Israelis killed and taken hostage deserve justice for these crimes. […]

Arab Americans

How Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian Racism are Manufactured through Disinformation

The Conversation

By Jasmin Zine, Wilfrid Laurier University | – (The Conversation) – In political communication, a big lie — what is known as the “illusory truth effect” — is when the constant repetition of misinformation makes people more likely to accept it as truth. Repetition is how lies gain traction. The more exposure to specific ideas […]