The White House presents a national strategy to combat Islamophobia
The White House announced this Thursday a national strategy to combat Islamophobia and anti-Arab hatred, the first of its kind in the United States, with a hundred executive measures and another hundred recommendations.
According to a statement, the initiative is the result of a group formed by President Joe Biden in December 2022 to coordinate several agencies in the fight against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia; In 2023, the strategy against anti-Semitism will be published.
The priorities of the strategy against Islamophobia are four: raising awareness about hatred towards Muslims and Arabs and recognizing their cultures; improve your security; address their discrimination and accommodate their religious practices; and foster solidarity and collective action to combat hate.
The 67-page strategy document begins with the memory of Wadee Alfayoumi, the 6-year-old American boy, Muslim and of Palestinian origin, murdered in his home in Illinois in October 2023 following Hamas attacks against Israel.
Other attacks on Palestinian Americans are also cited, such as the shooting of three young men in Vermont and the stabbing of another young man near a university campus in Texas.
In the past year, he adds, the country has seen a “wave of violent and sometimes deadly attacks” as well as incidents of discrimination and hatred against Muslim and Arab Americans, reflecting their experiences in the era after September 11, 2001.
A total of 24 US states annually publish hate crime reports that include statistics on anti-Arab attacks, and the FBI recorded 123 such incidents in the country in 2023, it maintains.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the United States, reacted to the strategy with criticism of Biden for its delay and “little” content, and for facilitating “the biggest driver of Islamophobia: the Israeli genocide facilitated by the US in Gaza.
