Policy Reports

Punished for Participating: Islamophobia in U.S. Electoral Politics

By the summer of 2026, more than 255 Muslim Americans were elected officials, including four in the U.S. House of Representatives and three more predicted to win in the November Congressional elections.  But rather than be embraced as engaged fellow citizens, Muslim American political candidates are encountering overt hostility and attempts to exclude them from public service.

Muslims are punished for participating in one of the most American acts—running for office in democratic elections.

Not only do Muslim Americans’ experiences contradict the fundamental American ideal of equal participation in self-governance, but they also reinforce the structural racism that has undermined this ideal since the nation’s founding. The report, Punished for Participating: Islamophobia in U.S. Electoral Politics, finds that despite historic gains in political representation, Muslim American candidates face a mainstreamed racialized backlash.

Through analysis of over thirty-one case studies of Muslim American candidates and elected officials between 2001-2026, four distinct manifestations of Islamophobia pervade electoral politics:

1) conspiracy theories of an Islamic invasion and imposition of Sharia law,

2) gendered Islamophobia,

3) political violence,

4) presumptions of antisemitism

Prevalence of these Islamophobic views is not the expected result of Al Qaeda’s September 11th terrorist attacks.  Nor does it arise from good faith attempts to distinguish a small number of Muslims in the United States who commit criminal acts from the vast majority of the approximately six million law-abiding Muslims. Instead, Islamophobia is driven by a relentless fixation on casting Muslims as radicals and extremists.

Not only is this fixation grounded in erroneous racial stereotypes, but it is factually false.   One need only look to the increasing number of Muslims who are literally “playing within the system” by running for office in democratic elections. Yet, this quintessential American act attracts the racial stereotyping premised on Muslims’ permanent outsider status, regardless of their individual actions, citizenship status, or civic participation.

The experiences of Muslim American candidates and elected officials documented in Punished for Participating offer a contemporary example of how racism threatens American democracy by creating different classes of citizens: a privileged class entitled to participate in self-governance and a subordinated class denied the same opportunity due to the extraordinary costs imposed on their safety, reputations, and mental wellbeing.  A hostile environment where large segments of the public view Muslim Americans’ religious identity with suspicion or fear before even considering the candidate’s policy positions or qualifications chills other Muslims from running for elected office.

When Muslims are penalized for participating in the electoral process, the harm reaches far beyond one religious minority—it undermines the foundational democratic principle that allows all Americans to participate equally and safely in public service.

The report offers three recommendations as a starting point for undoing decades of socialization that has legitimized discrimination against Muslims in all facets of life, including electoral politics.

1. Establish Task Forces at the State and Federal Level to Combat Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Racism

The federal government and each state should establish a Task Force to Combat Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Racism that is comprised of state and local government officials, educators, scholars, journalists, and diverse Muslim American civil society leaders. The task forces can learn from and build upon similar ones created to combat antisemitism across the United States.

2. Train Local and State Law Enforcement About Islamophobia, Anti-Muslim Hate Crimes, and Effective Strategies for Prosecution and Prevention

Each state government should train local law enforcement on how to identify, document, prevent, and prosecute anti-Muslim hate crimes and harassment, which empirical studies show rise with the increase in Islamophobic rhetoric in U.S. electoral politics. Such trainings should include developing and implementing safety protocols for Muslim American political candidates and elected officials who are frequently targets of hate crime threats and acts. Task forces to combat antisemitism offer a useful template.

3. Develop Curriculum and Trainings to Understand Muslims and Combat Islamophobia for K-12 Schools, Universities, and Government Agencies

Too often, Muslims in the United States are absent or inadequately covered in school curricula. Muslim-American history thus should be incorporated into state social-studies standards that allows for instruction concerning Islam as a major world religion, the history of Muslim Americans, Muslim immigration, Black Muslim movements and contemporary Muslim-American civic life. Likewise, existing anti-discrimination training and educational programming in public schools, universities, government agencies, and workplaces should incorporate the history and experiences of Muslim in the United States, as well as prevention of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism.

To read Punished for Participating: Islamophobia in U.S. Electoral Politics, click here.

Hindutva in America: A Threat to Equality and Religious Pluralism

Hindu nationalism, also known as Hindutva, is a transnational far-right political ideology grounded in Hindu supremacy. In India, Hindu nationalists advocate a strict form of ethnonationalism that reimagines the secular Indian republic as an exclusively Hindu nation and seeks to relegate religious minorities–especially Muslims–to an inferior status. Hindu nationalism is distinct from Hinduism, notwithstanding Hindutva proponents’ erroneous claims of representing all Hindus.

In the United States, Hindutva proponents seek to silence the voices of Indian Americans and others who disagree with their ideology, promote harmful policies favorable to India’s Hindu nationalist political parties, and control knowledge about South Asia’s diverse, multireligious history. In so doing, Hindutva advocates undermine American pluralism and spread hate against Muslims, Sikhs and other minority groups within American society.

To be sure, Hindutva is not Hinduism, both in terms of genre and its impact on American politics and society. Whereas the religion of Hinduism contributes to American pluralism and religious diversity, the political ideology of Hindu nationalism works against those core American values by perpetuating supremacist ideas and discriminatory conduct, especially against non-Hindu South Asians.

The report Hindutva in America: A Threat to Equality and Religious Pluralism examines how Hindu nationalists have capitalized on the anti-Muslim public discourse arising from the Global War on Terror to obtain greater acceptance of their ethnonationalist agenda.  By couching their rhetoric within the mainstream narrative that Muslims worldwide are presumptively terrorists and violent, Hindutva organizations join the chorus of other anti-Muslim right-wing groups.

Specifically, the various strands of Hindutva in the United States pursue two objectives: the othering Muslims as suspicious outsiders and stymying academic freedom.

To prevent Hindutva-inspired groups from threatening the equality, safety, and lives of their minoritized targets in the United States, the report offers five recommendations:

1. Law enforcement, politicians, and civil society groups should cease partnerships with U.S.-based Hindu nationalist groups.
2. Federal authorities should ensure that U.S. groups that act as proxies of India’s RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and its affiliate organizations register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
3. U.S.-based Hindu nationalist groups, particularly those registered as charities, must be fully transparent about their financial links abroad, including material support originating overseas, financial resources directed overseas, and ties to foreign governments.
4. The U.S. government should impose sanctions on or refuse entry into the United States to persons who facilitate or provide material support for anti-minority violence in India.
5. University administrations should educate themselves about the threats caused by Hindutva-inspired discrimination in the United States and protect professors, staff, and students within their universities from caste-based and religion-based discrimination.

To read Hindutva in America: A Threat to Equality and Religious Pluralism, click here.

Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine-Israel Discourse 

The struggle for Palestinian rights has never been more important – or more dire.

The conflict has reached a turning point, as the year 2023 became the deadliest for Palestinians on record. In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians face an existential crisis. Leading genocide scholars, experts in international law, and respected human rights organizations have warned that the world is witnessing a genocide, unchecked war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity by the state of Israel.

Simultaneously, the demonization of pro-Palestinian voices in the United States has risen to a fever pitch – particularly when those voices are Muslim and Arab. Zionists and Islamophobes attack critics of Israel’s policies and practices by conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism and seek to censor discussions within the context of the 56-year-long illegal Israeli occupation and the Nakba. Instead, antisemitism is weaponized to silence and discredit advocates of Palestinian human rights.

Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine-Israel Discourse examines an understudied and little-understood aspect of Palestine-Israel discourse: how Islamophobia works to fuel and sustain spurious allegations of antisemitism used by the Israel Lobby and its Zionist supporters to shame and silence critics of Israeli ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

While people of all faiths and ethnicities understand and empathize with the historic plight of the Palestinians, nowhere is pro-Israel bias more obvious than when directed against Muslim and Arab defenders of Palestinian human rights. And mainstream media often uncritically repeats such harmful, unsubstantiated claims against Arabs and Muslims.

Three recommendations for U.S. civil society, universities, and elected officials would help all those interested in confronting and countering both Islamophobia and genuine antisemitism – while maintaining necessary support for the human rights of Palestinians:

1. Congress and the President must include the experiences and perspectives of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim American communities in foreign policy development. U.S. foreign policy on Palestine and Israel currently excludes the lived experiences, analysis, and perspectives of Arabs (especially Palestinians) and Muslims. One-sided, biased input by pro-Israeli nonprofit organizations, elected officials, and analysts predictably dehumanizes Palestinians and exempts Israel from human rights norms.
2. Universities must preserve academic freedom and free speech rights. When it comes to the topic of Palestine, students and faculty face overt hostility when they host events, conduct research, publish articles, or engage in campus activism. University administrators enable, or participate in, harassment of faculty and students. Specious administrative complaints of antisemitism coupled with malicious blacklisting by a nationwide Islamophobic network work to quash criticism of Israel.
3. The U.S. government must hold Israel accountable for violations of Palestinians’ human rights. Ongoing violations of international law by Israel – such as settlement expansion, indefinite detention, extrajudicial killings, house demolitions, and collective punishment of the population of Gaza occur unchecked because the United States consistently looks the other way. Even U.S. domestic laws are flouted in order to craft human rights exceptions for the apartheid Israeli regime.

To read Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine-Israel Discourse, click here.

Shining a Light on New Jersey’s Secret State Intelligence System 

Civil liberties in the United States have been eroding for over two decades. Under the auspices of national security, federal agencies working with their state counterparts have built an expansive homeland security apparatus, facilitated by laws granting national security officials broader  surveillance and investigative authorities. Prior to the attempted insurrection of January 6, 2021, national security powers nearly exclusively targeted Muslim and Arab communities – with many South Asian communities targeted in the immediate wake of 9/11 as well. At the same time, these powers have also furthered the mass incarceration of African American communities.

The most invasive, and simultaneously secret, post-9/11 tool has been state fusion centers. Fusion centers coordinate federal, state, and local law enforcement through complex intelligence-gathering systems that retain, analyze, synthesize, and distribute data – with minimal oversight. They have become institutionalized within the American law enforcement framework post-9/11 despite little, if any, tangible results to show for their intended original purpose: preventing terrorism. New Jersey’s Regional Operations Intelligence Center is a prime example of expansive over-policing that targets marginalized communities fueled by the red herring of national security concerns – while much of its work remains opaque and inscrutable.

Shining a Light on New Jersey’s Secret State Intelligence System examines New Jersey law enforcement’s unique use of CIA-style intelligence-gathering, some of its known harms in certain, well-documented instances like the City of Camden, and the Kafkaesque legal regime that works to keep vast amounts of public information out of the public eye.

Three recommendations for New Jersey policymakers would help reign in these unaccountable drivers of mass incarceration and allay concerns that civil liberties are not still on the chopping block for Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and African American communities in the Garden State:

1. Governor Murphy should appoint an ombudsman to oversee New Jersey’s intelligence system. The mechanism for this appointment already exists by way of a long-ago issued executive order – but has never been used. This ombudsman should have the authority to oversee the ROIC’s activities in collaboration with minority communities most impacted by surveillance.
2. The New Jersey legislature should mandate regular reporting by the Chief Intelligence Director to ensure that the state’s domestic intelligence-gathering apparatus is focusing on actual terrorist threats while preserving civil liberties for all.
3. Civil society should conduct a People’s Audit of the fusion center to determine the privacy impact on New Jersey’s diverse populations.

To read Shining a Light on New Jersey’s Secret State Intelligence System, click here.

Toward Empowerment and Sustainability – Reforming America’s Syrian Refugee Policy 

The number of refugees and displaced people worldwide has reached unprecedented levels. Of the world’s 68.5 million refugees and displaced people, by far the largest number are Syrian. The nearly 13 million Syrian refugees and internally-displaced persons account for sixty percent of Syria’s pre-war population.

While media coverage has focused on Syrian refugees seeking asylum in third countries, such as Europe and the United States, eighty percent of the seven million externally displaced Syrians have sought refuge in the countries neighboring Syria: Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt and Lebanon resulting in an enormous strain on government services and the local economies.  As an influential player in Middle East politics, the United States has a national interest in sustaining the capacity of international systems to respond to protracted refugee crises.

Toward Empowerment and Sustainability: Reforming America’s Syrian Refugee Policies examines Jordan as a case study for informing U.S. Syrian refugee policy. Jordan’s experience exemplifies the myriad challenges facing neighboring countries that warrant a rethinking of America’s approach to the Syrian refugee crisis.

Four recommendations for government policy makers would contribute toward more sustainable and effective U.S. refugee policies:

1. Increase U.S. aid to fund programs that empower refugees to be economically independent in their host countries rather than indefinitely dependent on international aid. Refugees unable to survive off of limited international and domestic subsidies are forced to take their sons out of school to work, borrow money from friends and family, and marry off their daughters at a young age.
2. Use development aid to strengthen both state institutions and the private sector. A promising model is the Jordan Compact, an agreement between the Jordanian government and several European and international non-state actors launched in 2016.
3. Fund humanitarian projects with need-based eligibility criteria not limited solely to Syrian refugees.
4. Increase the number of Syrian refugees admitted into the United States.  Less than 100 Syrian refugees were admitted in fiscal year 2018 as compared to 12,000 in 2017.

To read Toward Empowerment and Sustainability – Reforming America’s Syrian Refugee Policy, click here.