Group of survivors says such language fuels anti-Muslim sentiments in the United Kingdom.
Dozens of “terror” attack survivors have urged politicians to stop equating British Muslims with “extremism”.
In an open letter published Saturday, a group of 58 survivors said such language would fuel anti-Muslim sentiments in the United Kingdom, and said using it was the “height of irresponsibility”.
The signatories included survivors of several “terror” attacks in the UK, such as the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing and the July 7, 2005 London bombing, and survivors of attacks in other countries.
“To defeat this threat the single most important thing we can do is to isolate the extremists and the terrorists from the vast majority of British Muslims who deplore such violence,” the letter, published by the advocacy group Survivors Against Terror, read.
“[But] in recent weeks there have been too many cases where politicians and others have failed to do this, in some cases equating being Muslim with being an extremist, facilitating anti-Muslim hate or failing to challenge it,” the missive added.
Our open letter from our members impacted by Islamist extremism – https://t.co/HwKsEFF8KO : “To defeat this threat the single most important thing we can do is to isolate the extremists and the terrorists from the vast majority of British Muslims who deplore such violence.
— Survivors Against Terror (@survivors_a_t) March 10, 2024
Saturday’s warning came after Conservative MP Lee Anderson was suspended in late February after he refused to apologise for comments that claimed London mayor Sadiq Khan and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer were “controlled by Islamists”.
Separately, former Home Secretary Suella Braverman wrote in a February 22 opinion piece in The Telegraph that “Islamists are bullying Britain into submission” and that “Islamist cranks and leftwing extremists” held influence “in our judiciary, our legal profession and our universities”.
Rising anti-Muslim sentiments
Reports of anti-Muslim incidents have risen since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, according to Tell MAMA, which monitors hate crimes directed at Muslims.
The group said it recorded more than 2,000 anti-Muslim cases in the four months after the Gaza war broke out – 335 percent more than were registered at the same time in the previous year.
Most cases were online, but Tell MAMA also recorded cases of physical assault, abusive behaviour, threats and acts of vandalism. The largest number of incidents – 576 cases – were reported in London.
An estimated four million Muslims reside in the UK, making up about 6.5 percent of the population, according to the Muslim Council of Britain. Most live in Birmingham, Bradford, London and Manchester.
Wakeel Hasan was labelled a national hero in India for saving dozens of workers trapped in a collapsed tunnel. Three months on, authorities have demolished his home. He says it’s because he is Muslim.
On February 28, 2021, just after 9pm, nine Muslim men removed their shoes, lined up in single file, and knelt quietly for Isha, their faith’s mandatory night prayer, inside a Missouri state prison in the small city of Bonne Terre.
Their action was neither unusual nor provocative. The men had been praying together in the common space of their wing at Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center (ERDCC) for several months without incident, up to four times a day, after COVID restrictions put the prison’s chapel off-limits.
They lived in Housing Unit Four or 4-House’s B wing, which was known as the “honour dorm” and was reserved for prisoners with no recent infractions. In other wings of the men’s prison, prisoners were given limited time out of their cells. But in the honour dorm, the men could be out of their cells all day long in the wing’s ground floor common area, heating food that they had purchased at the commissary in the shared microwave, or gathering to talk or play cards or chess at tables bolted to the concrete floors.
The group of worshippers who gathered to pray at the back of the common area began with three prisoners and had grown to between nine and 14. Qadir (Reginald) Clemons, 52, who usually gave the call to prayer, says he had periodically checked in with the prison chaplain, and the “bubble officer” in the control room, which commanded a view of all four wings, to confirm that there would be no problem with the group praying. Christian prisoners also held communal prayer circles throughout ERDCC, including in the honour dorm.
The ERDCC prison in Missouri [Jen Marlowe/Al Jazeera]
On this night, however, the kneeling men would be charged at by prison guards. Five of them would be doused with pepper spray until they writhed in pain. Seven would be shackled and, most of them shoeless, marched about 50 metres through the winter mud of a recreation yard to another housing unit where they would be put into solitary confinement, also called administrative segregation, AdSeg, or simply – “the Hole”.
The group’s leader, Mustafa (Steven) Stafford, 58, a short, jovial man whom the others called “Sheikh” due to his commitment to Islam, would be assaulted en route to AdSeg and again once there. After their release from the Hole 10 days later, Stafford and others would face further retaliation.
None of the men – who dubbed themselves the “Bonne Terre Seven” after the incident – were accused of anything aside from disobeying a lieutenant’s orders to stop praying, which their faith dictates they cannot do, except in an emergency. According to the now-retired lieutenant, no prison official was disciplined over the incident.
This account of a peaceful prayer’s violent disruption and its aftermath is based on dozens of in-person and telephone interviews, including with six of the Bonne Terre Seven, eight other prisoners who witnessed the attack and several officers. It is bolstered by accounts from a lawsuit filed in 2022 by Clemons, now amended to include his eight fellow worshippers, who are petitioning the court to declare that the Missouri Department of Corrections (MODOC) cannot deny their religious rights and to award them damages for what they suffered. It also draws on interviews with human and prisoner rights advocates and the men’s lawyers from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
The picture that emerges is of a facility, and a larger prison system, that often treats Muslim prisoners, the majority of whom are Black, with suspicion, hostility and racism.
Even against this backdrop, the ERDCC attack stands out for its savagery. “I’ve never seen a case that involves this level of violence,” says Kimberly Noe-Lehenbauer, a CAIR lawyer representing the nine victims.
The prison
ERDCC is located on the outskirts of Bonne Terre in the low, rolling hills of the Ozark Plateau, 60 miles (96.6km) south of Missouri’s second-largest city, St Louis.
Bonne Terre is in St Francois County, which is nearly 93 percent white and squarely Republican; 73 percent of voters supported Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Trump signs still proliferate today, along with other markers of local beliefs; a “Jesus Loves You” billboard sits on the side of a state highway, followed soon after by a front door wrapped in the Confederate flag.
A Confederate flag covers the door of a house in Bonne Terre [Jen Marlowe/Al Jazeera]
ERDCC opened in 2003, bringing a new main industry to the former mining town, whose centre sits atop a large mine that was shuttered in 1962. The city has a population of under 7,000, including the prisoners, which as of July 2020 numbered nearly 2,600 men.
ERDCC is a sprawling D-shaped mixed-security encampment. It has the state’s largest prison population and encompasses 11 housing units, 10 of those with four wings and a control unit or “bubble” in the centre.
The encampment also has a dining hall, a building housing educational programmes and a medical facility, three recreational yards, an intake area, and a small factory where some prisoners produce soap and other cleaning supplies. A visitation room lies in a building just past the prison entrance. That same building houses Missouri’s only execution chamber, though condemned prisoners are held in Potosi, 15 miles (24km) west, and brought to ERDCC shortly before their scheduled execution.
New Delhi, India – India averaged nearly two anti-Muslim hate speech events per day in 2023 and three in every four of those events – or 75 percent – took place in states ruled by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, revealed a report released Monday.
In 2023, the hate speech events peaked between August and November, the period of political campaigning and polling in four major states, according to a report released by India Hate Lab (IHL), a Washington, DC-based research group.
As India heads for a national vote in the upcoming months, a first-of-its-kind report by the IHL maps the spread of anti-Muslim hate speech across the country. The group documented a total of 668 hate speech events.
Last month, the website of India Hate Lab was rendered inaccessible in India after the government blocked it under the controversial Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000. The government also blocked the website of Hindutva Watch, an independent hate-crime tracker also run by the IHL’s founder.
The new report – the first time a research group has tracked hate speech events in India over a year – tracks how these events spread geographically across India, the triggers behind these events, and when they occur.
Which are India’s hate speech hotbeds?
The group documented a total of 668 hate speech events across 18 states and three federally governed territories. The top-ranking Indian states for these events were: Maharashtra in the west with 118 incidents, Uttar Pradesh in the north with 104 incidents, and Madhya Pradesh in central India with 65 incidents.
These three states are among the biggest voter bases, are currently ruled by the BJP, and collectively account for 43 percent of the total hate speech events recorded in 2023.
But relatively smaller states, like Haryana and Uttarakhand in northern India, weren’t immune either.
While Haryana witnessed 48 hate speech events, or about 7.2 percent, events in Uttarakhand made up 6 percent – both states are among the emerging hotbeds for anti-Muslim violence as well. Seven people died and over 70 were injured in violence in the Nuh region of Haryana in August 2023; earlier this month, five Muslims were killed in Haldwani, Uttarakhand, while protesting against the demolition of a mosque and a religious school in the town.
Prem Shukla, a national spokesperson of the BJP, told Al Jazeera that the party has been opposing the “Islamic fundamentalist forces” and alleged that the IHL data represented a “biased picture of the situation”.
“The other so-called secular states are targeting the Hindu majority community by hate speeches, but no one will talk about it,” Shukla said in a phone interview. He also dismissed the IHL report, alleging that those behind it “have sworn to destroy the BJP”.
Who rules states with the most hate speech?
As per the report, 498 hate speech events, which make up 75 percent, took place in the states ruled by the BJP or in territories that it effectively governs through the central government. Among the 10 states with the most hate speech events, six were ruled by the BJP throughout the year. The other three states, Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Chhattisgarh had legislative elections in 2023, in which power changed hands: Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh moved from the opposition Congress party to the BJP, and Karnataka from the BJP to the Congress. Bihar, the last of the 10 states with the most hate-speech events, was ruled by an opposition coalition until last month, when its chief minister switched sides to join a BJP-led alliance.
More than 77 percent of speeches that included a direct call of violence against Muslims were also delivered in states and territories governed by the BJP.
A third of all hate speech events documented by the IHL were organised by two far-right organisations, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal, which are associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor of the BJP. In 2018, the United States Central Intelligence Agency tagged the VHP and Bajrang Dal as “religious militant organisations”.
“Our analysis shows that anti-Muslim hate speech has been normalised and become part of India’s socio-political sphere,” said Raqib Hameed Naik, founder of the IHL. “We foresee rampant use of anti-Muslim hate during the upcoming general elections to polarise voters.”
What are the provocations used for hate speech events?
The report documented that 63 percent of the total 668 hate speech events referenced Islamophobic conspiracy theories.
The theories included “love jihad”, an alleged phenomenon where Muslim men lure Hindu women into marrying them and converting to Islam; “land jihad”, which alleges Muslims are occupying public lands by building religious structures or holding prayers; “halal jihad”, which views Islamic practices as the economic exclusion of non-Muslim traders; and “population jihad”, which alleges that Muslims reproduce with the intention of eventually outnumbering and dominating other populations.
All of these conspiracy theories have been debunked: The government’s own data, for instance, shows that Muslim fertility rates are dropping faster than those of any other major community in India.
Over 48 percent of the events occurred between August and November, a period that saw state elections in four major states.
Reacting to the IHL report, Amnesty International called on Indian authorities to put an end to the rise in speeches calling for violence and hatred against religious minorities.
“[The authorities] must take concrete measures to counter stereotypes, eradicate discrimination, and foster greater equality,” Aakar Patel, chair of the board at Amnesty International India, told Al Jazeera.
Activists from various leftist organisations shout slogans during a protest against hate speech in New Delhi on December 27, 2021. [Manish Swarup/AP Photo]
What’s the latest hate weapon being used against Indian Muslims?
Since October 7, Indian far-right groups have been weaponising the Hamas attack on southern Israel, and Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza to stoke anti-Indian Muslim fears and hate.
From October 7 to December 31, 2023, one in every five hate-speech events invoked Israel’s war, a phenomenon that peaked in November, according to the IHL report.
Pravin Togadia, founder and current president of the Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad, said in an event in Haryana on November 20: “Today it is Israel’s turn. That same Palestine is rising in our villages and our streets. Saving our prosperity, our women, from them is a big challenge for us.”
In the same month, Kapil Mishra, a BJP leader, said: “What Israel faced is what we have been facing for 1,400 years.”
Other analysts have found that India has also emerged as an epicentre of disinformation on Israel’s war on Gaza, spreading through the internet.
The BJP government says the law allowed child marriages, but Muslim leaders allege the move is aimed at polarising voters ahead of election.
The Indian state of Assam, which has a large Muslim population, has repealed a British-era law on Muslim marriage and divorce, prompting anger among the minority community whose leaders say the plan is an attempt to polarise voters on religious lines ahead of the national election.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma wrote on X on Saturday that the state has repealed the Assam Muslim Marriages and Divorces Registration Act that was enacted close to nine decades ago.
“This act contained provisions allowing marriage registration even if the bride and groom had not reached the legal ages of 18 and 21, as required by law. This move marks another significant step towards prohibiting child marriages in Assam,” he wrote.
On 23.22024, the Assam cabinet made a significant decision to repeal the age-old Assam Muslim Marriages & Divorces Registration Act. This act contained provisions allowing marriage registration even if the bride and groom had not reached the legal ages of 18 and 21, as required…
The legislation, enacted in 1935, laid down the legal process in line with the Muslim personal law. After a 2010 amendment, it made the registration of Muslim marriages and divorces compulsory in the state, whereas registration was voluntary before.
Authorities in the state, which is governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had called the law “outdated” and alleged it allowed child marriages.
The state government’s crackdown on child marriages, which started last year, has included several thousand arrests under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act in a quest to “eradicate” child marriages by 2026.
But representatives of the Muslim community in the state said the crackdown was largely directed against them.
Assam, which has the highest percentage of Muslims among Indian states at 34 percent, has previously said it wants to implement uniform civil laws for marriage, divorce, adoption and inheritance, as the northern state of Uttarakhand – also governed by the BJP – did earlier this month.
Nationwide, Hindus, Muslims, Christians and other groups follow their own laws and customs or a secular code for such matters. The BJP has promised a Uniform Civil Code.
Assam’s government has said it intends to enact the same law as Uttarakhand. The Reuters news agency quoted Chief Minister Sarma as saying on Sunday the state is “not immediately” engaged in efforts to implement a unified code before the general election, due by May.
Bengali-speaking Muslims comprise the bulk of the Muslim population in Assam, and tensions often rise between them and ethnic Assamese, who are mostly Hindu. Nationalist politicians say a large-scale migration from neighbouring Bangladesh altered the demographic of the northeastern state.
‘They want to polarise voters’
Assam’s decision on the Muslim marriage and divorce law prompted Muslim opposition leaders to accuse the BJP of trying to use the colonial-era law as an election ploy.
“They want to polarise their voters by provoking Muslims, which Muslims will not let happen,” Badruddin Ajmal, a legislator from Assam who heads the All India United Democratic Front that mainly fights for Muslim causes, told reporters on Saturday.
“It’s a first step towards bringing a Uniform Civil Code, but this is how the BJP government will come to an end in Assam.”
Other opposition parties also criticised the decision.
“Just before the election, the government is trying to polarise the voters, depriving and discriminating against Muslims in some fields, like repealing the registration and divorce act, saying that it is a pre-independence act of 1935,” said Abdur Rashid Mandal of the main opposition Indian National Congress party.
Mandal dismissed assertions that the law allows for child marriage, adding that it was “the only mechanism to register the marriages of Muslims” in the state.
“There is no other scope or institution and it is also as per the constitution of India. It is the personal law of the Muslims that can’t be repealed.”
Lee Anderson will now sit as an independent lawmaker in parliament after his remarks prompted a flood of criticism.
The UK’s Conservative Party has suspended one of its lawmakers, Lee Anderson, after he said the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, was under the control of “Islamists”.
Khan, the first Muslim to be mayor of London and a member of the opposition Labour Party, is a frequent target of Conservative criticism for his handling of policing in the UK’s capital, including regular pro-Palestinian marches.
The speaker of the lower house of parliament, Lindsay Hoyle, said he broke with the usual parliamentary procedure for the vote because of previous threats of violence some lawmakers had received due to their views on the conflict. Pro-Israeli voices in the UK, such as Anderson, have attempted to portray the pro-Palestinian movement as dangerous, despite the majority of British respondents in several polls supporting an end to Israel’s attack on Gaza.
Speaking on Friday to the television channel GB News, Anderson said, “I don’t actually believe these Islamists have got control of our country. But what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan and they’ve got control of London. He’s actually given our capital city to his mates.”
His remarks prompted a flood of criticism from across the political spectrum, with Labour Party chairwoman Anneliese Dodds calling them “unambiguously racist and Islamophobic”.
Conservative business minister Nus Ghani, senior backbencher Sajid Javid and Tory peer Gavin Barwell were among senior Tory figures to join the complaints, with Barwell calling the comments a “despicable slur”.
The Muslim Council of Britain said they were “disgusting” and extremist.
Khan – who regularly speaks of the importance of fighting anti-Semitism, misogyny and homophobia – told reporters that he regarded Anderson’s comments as racist and Islamophobic and that they would “pour fuel on the fire of anti-Muslim hatred”.
Amid growing criticism of Anderson’s remarks on Saturday, the Conservative Party said it had decided he could no longer represent them in Parliament.
“Following his refusal to apologise for comments made yesterday, the Chief Whip has suspended the Conservative whip from Lee Anderson MP,” a spokesperson for Simon Hart, the government minister in charge of party discipline, said.
Anderson, a former Conservative Party vice chairman, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He will now sit as an independent lawmaker in parliament.
A survey conducted from February 16-18 by Savanta showed that 29 percent of Britons believed the Conservatives had a problem with Islamophobia, the most of any major political party.
Sayeeda Warsi, a Conservative member of the House of Lords and a former co-chairwoman of the party, has previously said that the Tories were “institutionally Islamophobic“.
Anderson’s comments come as incidents of Islamophobia have spiked dramatically across the UK. A monitoring group said Thursday that anti-Muslim hate incidents in the UK more than tripled following the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas in October.
Since then Tell MAMA recorded 2,010 such cases, the largest recorded number of cases in a four-month period, a statement from the organisation said, which was set up to monitor and report such incidents.
The latest figures were up from 600 incidents over the same period in 2022-2023, a rise of 335 percent.
“We are deeply concerned about the impacts that the Israel and Gaza war are having on hate crimes and on social cohesion in the UK,” Tell MAMA director Iman Atta said.
“This rise in anti-Muslim hate is unacceptable and we hope that political leaders speak out to send a clear message that anti-Muslim hate, like anti-Semitism, is unacceptable in our country.”
The judge in the case said Nathaniel Veltman’s attack represented an act of ‘terrorism’.
A Canadian white supremacist who deliberately ran over four members of a Muslim family has been sentenced to life in prison for the murders.
Nathaniel Veltman, 23, was convicted in November of four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder for the attack that shocked Canada
Salman Afzaal, 46; his wife, Madiha Salman, 44; their daughter Yumnah, 15; and Afzaal’s mother, Talat, 74, were killed. The couple’s nine-year-old son suffered serious injuries but survived.
The family had been out for a walk near their home in the town of London, Ontario, at the time of the attack.
The judge in the case said Veltman’s attack represented an act of terrorism, the first time that the term has been used to describe white nationalist violence.
“I find that the offender’s actions constitute terrorist activity,” Judge Renee Pomerance of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice said at this sentencing on Thursday.
The 2021 attack was the worst against Canadian Muslims since a man gunned down six members of a Quebec City mosque in 2017.
Prosecutors noted Veltman had written a manifesto in which he outlined hatred of Islam and opposition to mass immigration and multiculturalism.
Shortly after the assault, Veltman said, “I did it. I killed those people.”
Veltman pleaded not guilty to the charges of murder. His defence, citing what it called Veltman’s mental challenges, said the actions amounted to a lesser charge of manslaughter.
Worshippers from a New Delhi mosque are shocked over the destruction of the centuries-old structure. The property was left in ruins, and a case has been filed in court alleging no notice was given before the demolition.
Sao Paulo, Brazil – It wasn’t unusual for patients to arrive in a foul temper at the hospital emergency room in São Paulo, Brazil, where physician Batull Sleiman worked.
After all, every day brought new medical crises, new requests for urgent care. Sleiman had seen it all. But she was not expecting the level of anger she received several weeks ago.
A patient had arrived in her examination room frustrated over the time he spent waiting for a doctor’s care. Sleiman recalled his issue was “not urgent”. Still, as she treated him, he accused her of being impolite.
“You’re being rude with me because you’re not from Brazil,” Sleiman remembers him saying. “If you were in your country…”
Batull Sleiman believes one of her patients lashed out after seeing her hijab [Courtesy of Batull Sleiman]
Sleiman said she turned away rather than hear the rest. The daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she believes the man reacted the way he did because of one thing: her hijab.
“I was surprised and outraged,” Sleiman told Al Jazeera. But, she added, the atmosphere in Brazil had grown more tense since the war in Gaza had erupted. “I’ve been noticing that people have been staring more at me on the street since October.”
But Sleiman is not alone in feeling singled out. As the war in Gaza grinds on, Brazil is one of many countries facing increased fears about religious discrimination, particularly towards its Muslim community.
A survey released last month from the Anthropology Group on Islamic and Arab Contexts — an organisation based at the University of São Paulo — found that reports of harassment among Muslim Brazilians have been widespread since the war began.
An estimated 70 percent of respondents said they knew someone who experienced religious intolerance since October 7, when the Palestinian group Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel, killing 1,140 people.
Israel has since led a military offensive against Gaza, a Palestinian enclave, killing more than 21,000 people. That response has raised human rights concerns, with United Nations experts warning of a “grave risk of genocide”.
While Palestinians are an ethnic group — and not a religious one — the University of São Paulo’s Professor Francirosy Barbosa found that the events of October 7 resulted in incidents of religious intolerance in Brazil, as Palestinian identity was conflated with Muslim identity.
She led November’s survey of 310 Muslim Brazilians. Respondents, she explained, reported receiving insults that reflected tensions in the Gaza war.
“Many Muslim women told us they are now called things like ‘Hamas daughter’ or ‘Hamas terrorist’,” she told Al Jazeera.
The survey, conducted online, also found that many of the respondents also had firsthand experience with religious intolerance.
“About 60 percent of the respondents affirmed that they suffered some kind of offence, either on social media or in their daily lives at work, at home or in public spaces,” Barbosa said.
Women in particular, the study noted, reported slightly higher rates of religious intolerance.
A Palestinian Brazilian woman holds up a sign at a protest in Brasilia on October 20 that reads, ‘Muslim women of Brazil: anti-Zionism, anti-militarism, anti-extremism’ [File: Eraldo Peres/AP Photo]
The question of Islamophobia was catapulted into the national spotlight this month when a video spread on social media appearing to show a resident of Mogi das Cruzes, a suburb of São Paulo, rushing towards a Muslim woman and grabbing at her headscarf. The video was even broadcast on news outlets like CNN Brasil.
One of the women involved, Karen Gimenez Oubidi, who goes by Khadija, had married a Moroccan man and converted to Islam eight years ago. She told Al Jazeera that the altercation involved one of her neighbours: She was upset after their children had argued.
“She came down with her brother and was very aggressive. She called me a ‘cloth-wrapped bitch’. I soon realised it was not only about the kids’ fight,” Gimenez Oubidi said.
Neighbours attempted to separate the two women. One man in the video, however, grabbed Gimenez Oubidi from behind, wrapping an arm around her throat to hold her down. Gimenez Oubidi identified him to Al Jazeera as her neighbour’s brother.
Karen Gimenez Oubidi, known as Khadija, was the subject of a viral video that raised questions about Islamophobia [Courtesy of Karen Gimenez Oubidi]
“He said a few times to me, ‘What are you doing now, terrorist?’ He didn’t say it loudly: It was just for me to hear. He knew what he was doing,” Gimenez Oubidi said. She added that the fight her son had had with the neighbour’s child was also over her hijab.
The woman who attacked Oubidi, Fernanda — she said she did not want her full name revealed for fear of a public backlash — disputed this account.
Fernanda said her son had been hit by Oubidi’s son in the playground, and while she had physically attacked Fernanda, she had not referenced her religion. “I never insulted her for her religion. That simply didn’t happen. I’d never do something like that,” she said.
A government report from July noted that religious intolerance “occurs most intensely against those of African origin, but it also affects Indigenous, Roma, immigrant and converted individuals, including Muslims and Jews, as well as atheist, agnostic and non-religious people”.
Brazil is predominantly Christian, home to an estimated 123 million Catholics — more than any other country in the world.
But it has a long-standing, if smaller, Muslim population. Academics believe Islam arrived in the country with the transatlantic slave trade, as kidnapped African Muslims continued to practice their religion in their new surroundings.
One group of enslaved Muslim Brazilians even launched a rebellion against the government in 1835, called the Malê uprising — a term derived from the Yoruba word for Muslim.
Brazil’s Muslim population grew with waves of immigration in the late 19th and 20th centuries, particularly after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Arab immigrants, particularly from Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, came to know Brazil as their home.
The exact number of Muslims in Brazil today is unknown. The 2010 census counted 35,167 people identified as Muslim, but in the years since, other estimates have come out, setting the population as high as 1.5 million.
Some advocates, however, point to other demographic and political trends as setting the stage for tensions to rise between Muslim and non-Muslim groups.
Evangelical Christians make up the fastest-growing religious segment in Brazil today, comprising about a third of the population. Their numbers have turned them into a significant political force.
Evangelical voters were credited with helping to elect far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in 2016, with polls showing 70 percent supporting him.
During his failed 2022 re-election bid, Bolsonaro repeatedly invoked Christian imagery in his appeals to voters, framing the race as a “fight of good against evil”.
Mahmoud Ibrahim, who heads a mosque in Porto Alegre, believes that the us-versus-them mentality has translated into antagonism against his community.
A man marches in a religious freedom demonstration in 2022, holding a sign that reads, ‘I am a Muslim man. Ask me a question!!’ [File: Bruna Prado/AP Photo]
At recent protests against the war in Gaza, he said onlookers called him a “terrorist” and “child rapist”.
“Evangelicals and Bolsonarists insult us all the time. They even chased a person who was going to our demonstration the other day,” he said.
Ibrahim added that he had heard of at least one woman who was left bleeding after attackers attempted to tear her hijab off, causing the pins in the scarf to dig into her skin.
Girrad Sammour heads the National Association of Muslim Jurists (ANAJI), a group that offers legal support in cases of Islamophobia. He said the number of reports to ANAJI has always been high, but since the start of the war on October 7, it has exploded.
“There was a rise of 1,000 percent in the denunciations that we received,” he told Al Jazeera, crediting some to inflammatory remarks from far-right evangelical pastors.
But Barbosa, the survey leader, believes there are ways to lessen the hatred and suspicion directed at Muslim Brazilians. She pointed to a lack of media representation as an example.
“Few Palestinian leaders and experts in the Middle East with a pro-Palestine view have been invited by TV shows, for instance, to comment on the conflict in Gaza,” Barbosa said.
But she also encouraged Muslim Brazilians to speak up about their experiences, in order to raise awareness.
“What is not denounced doesn’t exist for the government,” she said. “Only if the authorities know what is happening will they be able to take adequate measures, like investing in education against religious intolerance.”
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