Understanding the National Strategy on Countering Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate:A Guide for Groups and Leaders
“The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate represents yet another missed opportunity to meaningfully address the historic systemic oppression, discrimination, and violence against BAMEMSA communities. By failing to dismantle a single harmful policy rooted in the post-9/11 War on Terror, the Strategy perpetuates the very Islamophobia it claims to combat, leaving communities vulnerable to further harm under current and future administrations. In lieu of dismantling post-9/11 War on Terror policies rooted in Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism, the current administration is leaving these discriminatory policies fully intact and ripe for exploitation by the incoming administration that has promised mass deportations, border militarization, suppression of dissent, and expanded surveillance. By failing to act decisively, the Biden Administration has paved the road for a more authoritarian future with devastating consequences for BAMEMSA communities both at home and abroad. “
December 15th, 2024
Understanding the National Strategy on Countering Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate: A Guide for Groups and Leaders
This guide analyzes the inaugural U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate (Strategy) by examining how the Strategy reinforces harmful national security frameworks, lifting up components of the strategy that align with community recommendations, and offering guidance for groups to engage with the Strategy moving forward. In April 2024, Muslims for Just Futures formally delivered its Community Memorandum to the White House (the Community Memo), as endorsed by 95 community organizations, which uplifted dozens of reasonable community-based and cross-movement demands around a foundational White House Islamophobia strategy. Our Community Memo identified flaws in the strategy’s development process and stressed that eradicating structural Islamophobia required a multifaceted approach led by those directly impacted since government policies are the key drivers of systemic oppression against Muslim communities. The Strategy issued in December 2024 was developed with input from an estimated 50 community-based organizations, while the Administration’s research and outreach for other similar strategies on community-specific discrimination sought and received input from thousands of community stakeholders. Unfortunately, the Biden Administration’s decision to embed key pillars of structural Islamophobia into a foundational government strategy to counter Islamophobia will have lasting consequences for our communities.
Overall, the National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate fails to address the urgency of this moment and the long-standing, systemic targeting of BAMEMSA communities by our own government. The Strategy lacks substantive remedies for BAMEMSA communities that are frequently targets of state and hate-fueled violence. The omission of terms like “genocide,” “anti-Palestinian racism” and “structural violence” from the Strategy is particularly egregious, when considered how frequently the Strategy references the brutal murder of Wadee al-Fayome, a clear case of anti-Palestinian racism. The contradictory approach taken by the Biden Administration is underscored by the administration's National Strategy. On one hand, the Administration funds the ongoing genocide of Palestinians and strengthens institutions like the FBI and law enforcement, which are deeply implicated in structural Islamophobia. On the other hand, it promotes an anti-Islamophobia strategy that paradoxically entrusts the protection of Muslim communities to entities like the Department of Homeland Security—agencies actively complicit in violence against BAMEMSA communities. Despite grassroots advocacy led by Muslims for Just Futures—including the Community Memo endorsed by 95 organizations and a second transition memo supported by 32 groups—the current administration has ignored urgent calls to take a single material step to prevent structural Islamophobia or even name it as an issue. However, in lieu of dismantling post-9/11 War on Terror policies rooted in Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism, the current administration is leaving these discriminatory policies fully intact and ripe for exploitation by the incoming administration that has promised mass deportations, border militarization, suppression of dissent, and expanded surveillance. By failing to act decisively, the Biden Administration has paved the road for a more authoritarian future with devastating consequences for BAMEMSA communities both at home and abroad.
Executive Analysis: Laying the Groundwork for Future Administrations to Expand Structural Islamophobia
The Biden Administration's National Strategy to counter Islamophobia missed a critical opportunity to dismantle discriminatory programs and practices that disproportionately target BAMEMSA communities. Instead of addressing harmful mechanisms like biased watchlists, material support for terrorism statutes, and the weaponization of Section 702 of FISA, the Strategy further entrenches these tools within a national security framework. By conflating domestic terrorism and hate violence, expanding counter-terrorism approaches into educational spaces, and advocating for increased funding for surveillance programs, the Strategy exacerbates the structural Islamophobia it claims to combat. Particularly egregious is the Strategy’s explicit call for Congress to fund DHS's Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) program, which legitimizes the surveillance and criminalization of BAMEMSA communities under the guise of prevention. Additionally, it fails to hold federal agencies like the FBI and DHS accountable for their roles in perpetuating systemic discrimination. Rather than implementing meaningful reforms to protect affected communities, the Strategy reinforces harmful post-9/11 policies, normalizing the dehumanization of BAMEMSA communities and neglecting the extensive violence and displacement caused by these systems both domestically and globally.
While the Strategy offers some useful measures on discrimination through DOL, HUD, ED, and banking, it ultimately fails to address the core of our community’s recommendations that are the driving forces behind these forms of discrimination—War on Terror policies, suppression of dissent, the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, and harmful government actions. Below we have offered recommendations on how groups can approach the White House Strategy:
Recommendation for Groups: MJF strongly recommends that groups reject the White House Strategy on Combatting Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate. The Strategy is wholly dismissive of the reasonable demands put forth by nearly 100 BAMEMSA grassroots and community-based organizations—nearly double the number of community organizations that the government actually consulted to prepare the Strategy. The Strategy is neither inclusive of the broader community nor reflective of its diverse needs. The Strategy fails to offer any substantive new solutions beyond the actions already undertaken by individual administrative agencies and many performative undertakings that will result in more paperwork and place the onus on individual BAMEMSA community members for redress, not improved conditions for our communities. While the proposal of a government strategy to counter Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate is commendable and had the potential to mark a momentous turning point in American history, this particular strategy falls shamelessly short. After decades of enduring systemic oppression, wars, genocide, and hate-fueled violence, we demand far better for our communities. By focusing on expansion of national security mechanisms and authority vested in the DOJ, DHS, and the FBI to police and torment BAMEMSA communities, the Strategy ignores and seeks to erase the lived realities of impacted communities while wholly failing to align with any reasonable justice-oriented approaches. MJF calls again on the White House and government institutions, philanthropy, academia, and broader social institutions to adopt the grassroots policy framework outlined in our community memorandum.This alternative framework emphasizes transformative and transitional justice, truth commissions, and builds from cross-community and cross-movement solidarity.
Recommendations for BAMEMSA Groups Endorsing the Strategy: Muslims for Just Futures (MJF) calls on those groups that have endorsed the Strategy or otherwise plan to use it to engage the incoming Trump administration, to incorporate the critical concerns outlined in this Guide in their advocacy and narrative messaging—particularly those concerns related to the Strategy on security. National and policy organizations have a responsibility to provide honest guidance to community and faith-based institutions and must ensure that constituents are not misled about the significant flaws in this Strategy or ways certain subset of community members could be further marginalized given the reliance on federal law enforcement agencies to counter hate violence. We also recommend that advocacy groups push for any future iterations of this strategy to eliminate the Strategy’s most harmful elements and glaring omissions, especially its entrenchment of discriminatory national security frameworks.
Caution Against State and Local-level Replication of Strategy: We strongly caution against advocating for replicating this strategy wholesale at the state and local level. Numerous recommendations within the strategy focus on mayors, governors, state and local-level actors. In particular, we call on well-intentioned allies and caution against potential state-level advocacy that may advocate for state-level countering Antisemitism and Islamophobia strategies that are modeled after the national strategies. Many BAMEMSA groups are reporting the significant challenges they are facing in their Palestine advocacy efforts due to the weaponization of Antisemitism legislation at the state and local-level that has proliferated after the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism was released. State and local level replication of this Countering Islamophobia Strategy would place an additional burden on state and local-level BAMEMSA grassroots groups—advocates against mass surveillance and discriminatory national security policies—to also have to combat the weaponization of both antisemitism and Islamophobia in service of the expansion of discriminatory national security programs while preparing and confronting a myriad of other critical issues on the ground.
In conclusion, the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate represents yet another missed opportunity to meaningfully address the historic systemic oppression, discrimination, and violence against BAMEMSA communities. By failing to dismantle a single harmful policy rooted in the post-9/11 War on Terror, the Strategy perpetuates the very Islamophobia it claims to combat, leaving communities vulnerable to further harm under current and future administrations. Muslims for Just Futures urges a rejection of this flawed strategy in its current form; instead, we call for the adoption of a justice-oriented framework rooted in the principles of transformative change, truth-telling, and community empowerment as we outlined in our Community Memorandum. This moment demands bold, nondiscriminating leadership and an unwavering commitment to the same system of justice for all, not just some.
