Islamophobic hate has hit an all-time high across the United States of America, fuelled by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, according to a report by America’s largest Muslim advocacy group.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released its 2025 Civil Rights Report, “Unconstitutional Crackdowns,” which reveals that Islamophobia continues to be at an all-time high across the country.
In the report released on 11 March, CAIR offices nationwide received a total of 8,658 complaints in 2024.
This was the highest number ever recorded since the organisation’s first civil rights report in 1996.
This marks a 7.4 per cent increase from the 8,061 complaints received in 2023, signalling a worsening climate of intolerance and Islamophobia.
Most complaints were in the categories of employment discrimination (15.4 per cent), immigration and asylum (14.8 per cent), education discrimination (9.8 per cent), and hate crimes (7.5 per cent), according to the CAIR report.
“Vigorous public debate, a hallmark of healthy democracy, was replaced by crackdowns on people expressing politically disfavoured viewpoints in 2024. Speaking out against Israel’s policies of apartheid, occupation, and genocide came with a price,” CAIR Research and Advocacy Director Corey Saylor said.
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“For the first time in our report’s nearly 30-year history, complaints reported to us were often the result of viewpoint discrimination rather than religious identity.”
Constant Risk of Danger
Since Israel began its bloody war on Gaza following 7 October 2023, Islamophobic hate crimes targeting American Muslims and Arabs have spiked, with many examples going viral.
Last month, Joseph Czuba, 73, was found guilty of murder and hate crime charges for fatally stabbing a Palestinian-American child in 2023 and severely wounding his mother.
Other alarming examples since late 2023 include the attempted drowning of a three-year-old Palestinian-American girl in Texas, the stabbing of a Palestinian-American man, also in Texas, the beating of a Muslim man in New York, and the shooting of two Israeli visitors, whom a suspect mistook for Palestinians, in Florida.
The Michigan Chapter of Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI), is monitoring the case of an assault on a 7-year-old Yemeni-American Muslim girl in Detroit. During the assault which took place at a park on the North-West Side of Detroit, a Yemeni-American Muslim girl suffered non-life-threatening injuries to her neck after being attacked by 73-year-old Gary Lansky.
CAIR has placed some of the blame on the White House for its role in supporting the genocide in Gaza, which has assisted in dehumanising Arab Muslims living in the West.
“For the second year in a row, the US-backed Gaza genocide drove a wave of Islamophobia in the United States,” CAIR said.
CAIR said viewpoint discrimination against those speaking out against genocide and apartheid was a key factor in many cases.
Free Speech Under Attack
The CAIR report also details police and university crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests and encampments on university campuses.
Demonstrators and student groups have for months demanded an end to US and Western support for Israel.
At the height of the global university campus demonstrations in the summer of 2024, classes in the US were cancelled, some university administrators resigned, and student protesters were suspended and arrested.
The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent legal resident and recent Columbia University graduate who helped lead an anti-war, pro-Palestinian encampment on campus in April 2024, was highlighted as another case of Islamophobic and anti-Arab actions.
Mahmoud Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian heritage and a US green card holder, was detained by DHS agents on Saturday evening following a targeted campaign by pro-Israel activists at the university, said Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG).
In a statement released on Sunday, WAWOG said DHS agents initially refused to identify themselves and threatened Khalil’s eight-month-pregnant wife with detention if she stayed with her husband.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to deport Khalil, who was arrested over the weekend.
The arrest is part of President Donald Trump’s pledge to crack down on pro-Palestinian protesters on university campuses, in what he called “the first arrest of many to come.”
