Today in Islamophobia: In the UK, a mosque in Sheffield has been a target of a hate crime after Muslim worshippers found Qurans thrown on the floor, the kitchen and rest facilities vandalized, and various technological devices stolen, meanwhile in Myanmar, authorities arrested 112 Rohingya Muslims for attempting to escape refugee camps without the proper paperwork, which is a result of the military government’s own refusal to recognize Rohingya as citizens, and in India, Muslim women from the state of Karnataka recount how a court order upholding the hijab ban in schools and universities legitimized anti-Muslim discrimination and locked them out of their education. Our recommended read of the day is by Carol Rosenberg for The New York Times on the three men who were held as detainees at Guantánamo Bay whose Supreme Court cases came to shape the military’s authority to detain men at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

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Today In Islamophobia: January 11, 2023

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.

Today In Islamophobia: January 11, 2023

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