On December 12, 2024, the Biden administration released its National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate. The document is a moral obscenity that should insult the intelligence and dignity of every self-respecting person of conscience in America. The breathtaking hypocrisy of releasing this document while U.S.-funded bombs obliterate Palestinian civilians in Gaza defies comprehension.
The national strategy is a grotesque attempt at laundering the reputation of an administration actively enabling what genocide scholars recognize as textbook genocide in Gaza. The same government that maintains a sprawling surveillance apparatus targeting Muslim communities, operates a discriminatory watchlist system, and continues to run Guantanamo Bay now wants to lecture America about “countering Islamophobia.” The contempt for Muslim lives embedded in this cynical performance is staggering.
Hina Shamsi of the ACLU captures the outrageous inadequacy of this document: “While this strategy acknowledges discrimination and its harms, it does little to end them and is a squandered opportunity.” But calling this a “squandered opportunity” is far too gentle. This propaganda is the active gaslighting of Muslim communities while enabling their oppression.
As Shamsi notes: “For decades, American officials have invoked national security to pass laws and implement programs that disproportionately harm Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim.” Incidentally, this strategy does not actually dismantle a single one of these oppressive programs. Not one. While Palestinians are being bombed with U.S. weapons, while Muslim children face intensifying harassment in schools, while mosques require armed security to hold Friday prayers, the Biden administration offers empty verbiage about “understanding” and “dialogue.”
The timing of the release is particularly repugnant. How dare this administration speak of “countering hate” while expediting weapons shipments that have killed over 44,800 Palestinians? How dare they preach about religious tolerance while providing diplomatic cover for the destruction of mosques, churches, and entire neighborhoods? The cognitive dissonance would be laughable if it were not so blood-soaked.
This strategy’s proposed “solutions” are an insult to basic intelligence. Cultural sensitivity training while maintaining the surveillance state. Hate crimes reporting while continuing to arm governments that massacre Muslims. Interfaith dialogue while refusing to even acknowledge the institutional nature of anti-Muslim discrimination. As Shamsi states, the administration wouldn’t even take “the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.”
The document’s studied silence on U.S. foreign policy’s role in fomenting Islamophobia is particularly egregious. There’s no mention of ending the endless wars that have killed millions of Muslims; No commitment to stopping support for apartheid and authoritarian regimes; No acknowledgment that dropping bombs on Muslim populations might somehow contribute to anti-Muslim sentiment. The intellectual dishonesty is staggering.
Most infuriating is the strategy’s complete failure to address the discriminatory national security apparatus built after 9/11. There’s no plan to dismantle the vast surveillance infrastructure targeting Muslim communities. No reform of biased counterterrorism frameworks. No meaningful civil rights protections. Instead, we get a document that pretends to address Islamophobia while carefully preserving every system that perpetuates it.
For this strategy to have even basic credibility, it would need to:
- Immediately dismantle discriminatory surveillance programs
- End the racist watchlisting system
- Provide reparations for communities devastated by post-9/11 policies
- Stop arming governments that massacre Muslims
- Hold accountable every official who enabled discrimination
- End U.S. support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza
We get what Shamsi describes as the normalization of anti-Muslim discrimination by refusing to even acknowledge its institutional nature. The message to Muslim and Arab communities is your lives matter only as PR opportunities. Your children can be bombed with U.S. weapons, your communities can be surveilled, and your civil rights can be violated, but here’s a nice document about “countering hate” to make you feel better.
The strategy document is a blood-stained insult to every Muslim victim of U.S. policy. It’s a cynical attempt to whitewash decades of state violence while that violence actively continues. Until the U.S. government ends its war on Muslim communities at home and abroad, documents like this remain what they are: propaganda written in the blood of Muslim children.
The time for gentle critique is long past. Muslim communities need justice. They need an end to state violence. They need their children to stop being killed by U.S. weapons. Anything less is complicity in ongoing crimes against humanity.
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