White House releases national strategy to combat Islamophobia
WASHINGTON — The White House on Thursday announced the first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia, outlining more than 100 steps federal officials can take to curb hate, violence, prejudice and discrimination against Muslims and Arab Americans.
The proposal follows a similar proposal national plan to combat anti-Semitism that chairman Joe Biden unveiled in May 2023, as fears about the increasing hatred and discrimination were increasing among American Jews.
Officials have been working on the anti-Islamophobia plan for months, and its release came five weeks before Biden left office — meaning implementation will largely be in the hands of the newly elected president. Donald Trumpif his government decides to do so.
In a statement announcing the strategy, the Biden administration wrote: “Over the past year, this initiative has become even more important as threats against American Muslim and Arab communities have increased.” This included the murder in October 2023 of 6-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi, an American Muslim boy of Palestinian descent. who was stabbed to death in Illinois.
The plan outlines the actions the executive branch can take, along with more than a hundred other calls to action across all sectors of society.
The strategy has four basic priorities: raising awareness of hatred against Muslims and Arabs, while more broadly recognizing the legacies of these communities; broadly improving their safety and security; appropriately accommodate Islamic and Arab religious practices by working to curb discrimination against them; and encouraging solidarity between communities to further counter hate.
Many of those state goals are similar to those the Biden administration laid out in its plan to reduce anti-Semitism — especially a focus on improving safety and security and building solidarity among communities.
“While individuals are sometimes targeted because they are believed to be Muslim, it is also critical to recognize that Arabs are routinely targeted simply for being who they are,” the strategy announcement states, noting that Muslims and Arab Americans have helped build the country since its founding. It says new data collection and education efforts “raise awareness of these forms of hate and of the proud heritage of Muslim and Arab Americans.”
The plan calls for broader dissemination of successful practices to engage Muslim and Arab Americans in reporting hate crimes, and for federal agencies to now more clearly define that “discrimination against Muslim and Arab Americans in federally funded activities is illegal.”
The White House plan also urges “state, local and international counterparts, as well as the non-governmental sector, to pursue similar initiatives that seek to build greater unity by recognizing our common humanity, our affirm shared values and history and embrace equal justice. freedom and security for all.”
Pro-Palestinian groups denounce his government’s full support for Israel war with Hamas in Gazaoften disrupted Biden campaign events, as well as those of vice president Kamala Harris after Biden abandoned his re-election bid in July.
Trump, that one travel ban about people from several Muslim-majority countries during his first term, won the American city with the largest majority of Muslims in last month’s elections. Yet some Arab Americans who supported Trump did started voicing their concerns about some of his choices to fill his cabinet and other choices for his coming administration.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the US, labeled what it called “the long-delayed White House document” as “too little, too late.”
“The White House strategy includes some positive recommendations on anti-Muslim bigotry, but was released too late to have any impact and does not promise any changes to the federal programs that promote widespread anti-Muslim discrimination.” maintain,” the report said. The council said in a statement it further noted that the plan does not address what it called a “federal watch list” that identified some Arab-Americans as potential terrorists.
It added that the plan “fails to end the main driver of anti-Muslim bigotry today: the US-sponsored genocide in Gaza.”