AWC Stands in Solidarity with local Muslim Community
May 31, 2023
The Anti-War Committee condemns the recent mosque burnings in the Twin Cities and stands in solidarity with the Muslim community against Islamophobia, racism, and anti-immigrant violence. Six mosques have been burned or vandalized this year, two of them in the last month.
The recent arson attacks on the Masjid Al Rahma Mosque and Masjid Omar Islamic Center are not isolated incidents. They are the result of institutional Islamophobia and decades-long propaganda campaigns to demonize Muslims. The United States government and right-wing pundits promote and use Islamophobia to sell wars to Americans and to normalize racist, imperialist violence against Muslim-majority countries, notably against Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Palestine.
The Islamophobic rhetoric used to justify US imperialist violence abroad also promotes fear of Muslims and widespread violence against Muslim communities across the country. In the year following 9/11, when American TV sets were saturated with language and images making Islam out to be the number one enemy of the people of the United States, hate crimes against Muslims increased by more than 1,700 percent. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, 1,717 recorded incidents of Islamophobic discrimination, from employment discrimination to acts of violence, occurred between September 11, 2001, and January 2002. These documented incidents of Islamophobia highlight the pervasive atmosphere of hostility, distrust, and bigotry that many Muslims living in the United States experience on a daily basis.
Foreign and domestic Islamophobia are inextricably connected. We must hold accountable the individuals and institutions responsible for anti-Islamic violence, from the white supremacist domestic terrorists attacking local mosques, to the right-wing pundits who spread Islamophobic rhetoric, to US war criminals responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslims worldwide. We must stand up against racist, discriminatory, Islamophobic violence, and the imperialism that promotes this Islamophobic violence worldwide.