Contact: Golnaz Fakhimi, [email protected]

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Yesterday, the Biden administration released the first-ever National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate. Muslim Advocates, like so many of our partners, has consistently cautioned the administration that it cannot address biases against people who are Black, African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and/or South Asian (“BAAMEMSA”) without addressing the U.S. government’s role in driving those biases. Furthermore, our communities have demanded one thing above all else this year: a stop to the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza and related U.S. complicity, which disregards Palestinian and BAAMEMSA lives everywhere. 

The following is a statement from Omar Farah, Executive Director of Muslim Advocates:

“The National Strategy to Combat Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate includes official recognition of widespread anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry. That recognition is appropriate but insufficient.  For years, our communities have been urging the government to address honestly the bigotry visited on them, by first acknowledging the glaring truth that government policies and practices wrongly cast their identities as presumptively threatening and then target them when they travel, gather, or organize. This has demeaned our communities and caused harm that they have decried for years; it also gives license to the interpersonal and institutional bigotry that is so pervasive in our society. The government knew, as it embarked on this endeavor in the midst of a genocide in Palestine that it is subsidizing, that, to combat biases against our communities, it first would have to look inward. It is a shame that it appears to have been unwilling to do so meaningfully.”