Islamophobia manifests in many different anti-Muslim activities. Khaled Beydoun, a scholar of Islamophobia, identifies three types of Islamophobia: structural, individual, and dialectic.
Structural Islamophobia is reflected in institutionalized anti-Muslim legislation and further perpetuated through dialectical Islamophobia via policing, bias in media representation and in the legal system, and the use of anti-Muslim rhetoric and statements by political candidates and elected or appointed officials.
On a community level, the emergence of anti-Muslim hate groups, anti-Muslim rallies, organized and anti-mosque activity, including opposition to mosque construction or expansion, vandalism, and opposition to refugee resettlement, demonstrate Islamophobia.
At the private individual level, Islamophobia takes the form of harassment and violence. The 2018 FBI Hate Crime Statistics show an increase in violent “crimes against persons,” even as the vast majority of incidents go unreported. Overall, race and ethnic origin and religious bias accounted for over 78% of all single-bias incidents in 2018. As a religious minority, an ethnically diverse group (half of whom are immigrants), and with a third of the community living in poverty, American Muslims are at a unique demographic intersection that makes them vulnerable to hate crimes. Though FBI statistics show anti-Muslim hate crimes make up 15% of all religiously motivated incidents, tellingly, the Sikh community—often because they are perceived to be Muslim—saw hate crimes triple over 2017-2018.
Several studies have shown that most Americans do not personally know a Muslim, which allows the media and public figures to distort public opinion of Islam and Muslims.
This toolkit is a collection of resources and proven best practices to empower communities and individuals to effectively counter and dismantle Islamophobia in its various forms. As a living document, the toolkit may be updated from time to time with new resources.