WIslamophobia in the United States can be described as the affective distrust and hostility towards Muslims, Islam, and those perceived as following the religion and or appear as members of the religion and its associative groups. This social aversion and bias is facilitated and perpetuated by violent and uncivilized stereotypes portrayed in various forms of American media networks and political platforms that result in the marginalization, discrimination, and exclusion of the Muslims and Muslim perceived individuals. Media and politicians capitalize on public fear and distrust of Muslims through laws that target Muslims, while the media emphasizes Muslim religious extremism in association with violent activity.
WACT! for America, founded in 2007, is a U.S.-based anti-Muslim, pro-Trump advocacy group dedicated to combating what it describes as "the threat of radical Islam" to the safety of Americans and to democracy.
WThe alt-right is a loosely connected far-right and white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the U.S. during the 2010s, although it has since established a presence in various other countries. The term is ill-defined, having been used in different ways by various self-described "alt-rightists", media commentators, and academics. Groups which have been identified as alt-right also espouse white supremacism, white separatism, right-wing populism, anti-immigration, racism, anti-communism, anti-Zionism, antisemitism, Holocaust denial, xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, antifeminism, homophobia, and Islamophobia.
WAmreeka is a 2009 independent film written and directed by first-time director Cherien Dabis. It stars Nisreen Faour, Melkar Muallem, Hiam Abbass, Alia Shawkat, Yussuf Abu-Warda, Joseph Ziegler, and Miriam Smith.
WThe Atomwaffen Division, also known as the National Socialist Order is a neo-Nazi terrorist network. Formed in 2015 and based in the Southern United States, it has since expanded across the United States and into the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, the Baltic states and other European countries. The group is part of the alt-right, although the group rejects the label and is considered extreme even within that movement. It is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
WOwen Benjamin Smith is an American comedian, actor, and alt-right political commentator. He has repeatedly had his social media accounts on various services suspended or removed for his statements, including allegations of hate speech and antisemitism.
WJohn R. Bennett is a U.S. politician from the state of Oklahoma, who formerly served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives for District 2, in the eastern part of the state.
WBreitbart News Network is an American far-right syndicated news, opinion and commentary website founded in mid-2007 by American conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart, who conceived it as "the Huffington Post of the right". Its journalists are widely considered to be ideologically driven, and some of its content has been called misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist by liberals and many traditional conservatives alike. The site has published a number of conspiracy theories and intentionally misleading stories.
WChick tracts are short evangelical gospel tracts, originally created and published by American publisher and religious cartoonist Jack Chick. Since his death, his company has continued to print new tracts using other authors working for the company.
WThe David Horowitz Freedom Center, formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC), is a conservative foundation founded in 1988 by political activist David Horowitz and his long-time collaborator Peter Collier. It was established with funding from groups including the John M. Olin Foundation, the Bradley Foundation and the Scaife Foundation. It runs several websites and blogs, including FrontPage Magazine, Students for Academic Freedom and the blog Jihad Watch. Both the foundation and Jihad Watch have been described as Islamophobic.
WNina Davuluri is an American public speaker and advocate, who is currently the host of the reality show Made in America on Zee TV America.
WSteven Emerson is an American journalist, author, and pundit on national security, terrorism, and Islamic extremism.
WThe Escondido mosque fire was a terrorist arson attack perpetrated against the Islamic Center of Escondido, California, in March 2019.
WExecutive Order 13769, titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, politically labeled as a Muslim Ban by detractors or a travel ban by supporters, was an executive order by United States President Donald Trump. Except for the extent to which it was blocked by various courts, it was in effect from January 27, 2017, until March 6, 2017, when it was superseded by Executive Order 13780. Executive Order 13769 lowered the number of refugees to be admitted into the United States in 2017 to 50,000, suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for 120 days, suspended the entry of Syrian refugees indefinitely, directed some cabinet secretaries to suspend entry of those whose countries do not meet adjudication standards under U.S. immigration law for 90 days, and included exceptions on a case-by-case basis. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lists these countries as Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. More than 700 travelers were detained, and up to 60,000 visas were "provisionally revoked".
WExecutive Order 13780, titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, is an executive order signed by United States President Donald Trump on March 6, 2017. It places limits on travel to the U.S. by nationals of several countries and bars entry for all refugees who do not possess either a visa or valid travel documents. This executive order—sometimes called "Travel Ban 2.0"—revoked and replaced Executive Order 13769 issued on January 27, 2017. Court rulings prohibited some of its key provisions from being enforced between March 15 and December 4, 2017. It has subsequently been revised by two presidential proclamations.
WFrank J. Gaffney Jr. is an American anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist and the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy. In the 1970s and 1980s, he worked for the federal government in multiple posts, including seven months as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan administration.
WGarden City is a city in and the county seat of Finney County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 26,658. The city is home to Garden City Community College and the Lee Richardson Zoo, the largest zoological park in western Kansas.
WBen Garrison is an American far-right political cartoonist. His cartoons have been promoted among the alt-right for various depictions of alt-right ideology. He has produced controversial cartoons that have been characterized as sexist, racist, Islamophobic, anti-vaccine and antisemitic. They have also been criticized for attempting to deny climate change, and promoting conspiracy theories. His cartoons often lionize conservative figures and politicians such as President Donald Trump. Some alt-right activists have edited his comics to incorporate antisemitic content, including the antisemitic "Happy Merchant" caricature.
WGatestone Institute is a far-right think tank known for publishing anti-Muslim articles. It was founded in 2008 by Nina Rosenwald, who serves as its president. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former national security advisor, John R. Bolton, was its chairman from 2013 to March 2018. Its current chairman is Amir Taheri.
WThe Gateway Pundit is an American far-right news and opinion website. The website is known for publishing falsehoods, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories.
WPamela Geller is an American anti-Muslim, far-right, political activist, blogger and commentator. Geller promoted birther conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama, saying that he was born in Kenya and that he is a Muslim. She has denied genocides where Muslims were victims, such as that of Albanians in Kosovo, Bosnians in Srebrenica and the Rohingya in Myanmar.
WJohn Charles Hagee is an American Protestant pastor and televangelist. The founder of John Hagee Ministries, his ministry is telecast to the United States and Canada. Hagee is also the founder and chairman of the Christian-Zionist organization Christians United for Israel. Hagee is active politically and is known for his activism regarding the State of Israel. He has also attracted controversy over his comments on Catholicism, Jews and Islam, and promotion of the blood moon prophecy.
WIslam: What the West Needs to Know is a 2006 documentary film produced by Quixotic Media. It features discussions using passages from religious texts and includes commentaries by Robert Spencer, Serge Trifkovic, Bat Ye'or, Abdullah Al-Araby, and Walid Shoebat. The film premiered at the American Film Renaissance Festival in Hollywood on January 15, 2006, and had a limited theatrical release in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta in summer 2006.
WThe Jewish Defense League (JDL) is a Jewish religious-political organization in the United States, whose stated goal is to "protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary". It is classified as "a right wing terrorist group" by the FBI since 2001, and has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to the FBI, the JDL has been involved in plotting and executing acts of terrorism within the United States. Most terrorism watch groups classify the group as inactive.
WKhizr Muazzam Khan and Ghazala Khan are the Pakistani American parents of United States Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in 2004 during the Iraq War. The couple received international attention following a speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention that criticized Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
WSteven Arnold King is an American politician and former businessman who has served as the U.S. Representative for Iowa's 4th congressional district since 2013. A member of the Republican Party, he first entered Congress in 2003, representing Iowa's 5th congressional district until redistricting. King's district encompasses northwestern Iowa, including Sioux City.
WThe Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, as well as Jews, immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims and Catholics. The Klan has existed in three distinct eras at different points in time during the history of the United States. Each has advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white nationalism, anti-immigration and – especially in later iterations – Nordicism, antisemitism, prohibition, right-wing populism, anti-communism, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-atheism, and anti-Catholicism. Historically, the first Klan used terrorism – both physical assault and murder – against politically active blacks and their allies in the South in the late 1860s, until it was suppressed around 1872. All three movements have called for the "purification" of American society and all are considered "right-wing extremist" organizations. In each era, membership was secret and estimates of the total were highly exaggerated by both friends and enemies.
WLaura Elizabeth Loomer is an American far-right and anti-Muslim political activist, conspiracy theorist, and internet personality. She was the Republican nominee to represent Florida's 21st congressional district in the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections, losing to Democrat Lois Frankel. Loomer's candidacy was considered a long shot.
WThe 2016 Minneapolis shooting took place on June 29, 2016 in Minneapolis, Minnesota when a man named Anthony Sawina shot at five Somali-Americans, wounding two of them. Witnesses later recounted that Sawina shouted anti-Muslim expletives and claimed he was "going to kill [them] all." The attack was condemned by civil rights groups as part of a larger rise of Islamophobia in the United States leading up the 2016 presidential election.
WThe Ahmed Mohamed clock incident occurred when 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was arrested on September 14, 2015, at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, for bringing a disassembled digital clock to school. The incident ignited allegations of racial profiling and Islamophobia from many media and commentators.
WRoy Stewart Moore is an American politician who served as the 27th and 31st chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama and was each time removed from that office by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary for judicial misconduct. He was the Republican nominee in the 2017 United States Senate special election in Alabama to fill the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, but lost to Democratic candidate Doug Jones. Moore ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate in 2020.
WMuslim Massacre: The Game of Modern Religious Genocide is a controversial 2008 amateur video game by former Something Awful forum member Eric Vaughn under the screen name "Sigvatr". It is a top-down shoot 'em up video game. The aim of the game is to kill all the Muslims that appear on the screen – in the words of its creator, "take control of the American hero and wipe out the Muslim race with an arsenal of the world's most destructive weapons."
WThe National Socialist Movement (NSM) is a neo-Nazi organization. It is a part of the Nationalist Front. The Party claimed to be the "largest and most active" National Socialist organization in the United States. It is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In January 2019, the leadership of the group was turned over to James Hart Stern, a black activist, who announced his intention to undermine the group and "eradicate" it. In March 2019 in a press release the group's leader, Jeff Schoep said that Stern “does not speak for the National Socialist Movement and he holds no legal standing with the NSM” and in addition to him speaking out against Stern he also noted that he was leaving and giving his position to Burt Colucci. Jeff Schoep has since renounced his racist past and involvement in any racist groups.
WObsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West is a 2005 documentary film about the purported threat of Islamism to Western civilization. The film shows Islamic radicals preaching hate speech and seeking to incite global jihad. It also draws parallels between World War II's Nazi movement and Islamism and the West's response to those threats.
WDaniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and commentator. He is the president of the Middle East Forum, and publisher of its Middle East Quarterly journal. His writing focuses on American foreign policy and the Middle East.
WOn May 26, 2017, Jeremy Joseph Christian fatally stabbed two men and injured a third after he was confronted for shouting racist and anti-Muslim slurs at two teenage Black girls, Destinee Mangum and Walia Mohamed, on a MAX Light Rail train in Portland, Oregon. Two of the victims, Ricky John Best of Happy Valley and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche of Portland, were killed; the third victim, Micah David-Cole Fletcher, survived serious wounds.
WQAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against US president Donald Trump, who is fighting the cabal. QAnon also commonly asserts that Trump is planning a day of reckoning known as the "Storm", when thousands of members of the cabal will be arrested. No part of the conspiracy claim is based in fact. QAnon supporters have accused many liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking government officials of being members of the cabal. They have also claimed that Trump feigned conspiracy with Russians to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the sex trafficking ring and preventing a coup d'état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and George Soros.
WRobert Bruce Spencer is an American anti-Muslim author, blogger and one of the key figures of the counter-jihad movement. Spencer describes himself as "the 'good' kind of Islamophobe". His published books include two New York Times bestsellers.
WStop Islamization of America (SIOA), also known as the American Freedom Defense Initiative, is an anti-Muslim, pro-Israel American organization known primarily for its controversial, Islamophobic advertising campaigns. The group has been described as extremist and far-right. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) lists SIOA as an anti-Muslim hate group.
WAllegations that Barack Obama secretly practices Islam, or that he is the antichrist of Christian eschatology, have been suggested since he campaigned for the U.S. Senate in 2004 and proliferated after his election as President of the United States in 2008. As with conspiracy theories surrounding his citizenship status, the claims are promoted by various fringe theorists and political opponents, with American bloggers and conservative talk radio hosts particularly promoting the theories.
WThe Unite the Right rally was a white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, from August 11 to 12, 2017. Protesters were members of the far-right and included self-identified members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and various right-wing militias. The marchers chanted racist and antisemitic slogans and carried weapons, Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols, the Valknut, Confederate battle flags, Deus Vult crosses, flags, and other symbols of various past and present anti-Muslim and antisemitic groups. The organizers' stated goals included unifying the American white nationalist movement and opposing the proposed removal of the statue of General Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville's former Lee Park.
WWestboro Baptist Church (WBC) is an American extremist cult and hate group known for engaging in pickets with inflammatory homophobic, anti-American, anti-atheist, anti-Christian, antisemitic, and Islamophobic hate speech. The WBC is monitored as such by the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center, and has faced accusations of brainwashing. It is not affiliated with any Baptist denomination and has been denounced by Baptist conventions, including the Baptist World Alliance and the Southern Baptist Convention, and by other mainstream Christian denominations.