Shafaqna English- Anti-Muslim attacks have risen 1,000% in Early 2026, according to a new report from the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (Mpac).
The group documented an eleven-fold increase in targeted incidents in the first three months of this year alone.
At least nine of the attacks occurred in March, ranging from vandalism and bomb threats at mosques to sexual assaults against Muslim women, according to Mpac’s policy paper entitled, “The Pitfalls of Operation Epic Fury: How the Undeclared War Against Iran Hurts Americans’ Interests Abroad and at Home.”
“The one factor we can identify in March is that at the end of February, the war in Iran started, and that is what we think is the delineation between what we saw before in 2025 versus what we’re seeing here,” Khuram Zaman, the founding director of the Center for Security, Technology and Policy at Mpac, told Middle East Eye.
“It’s become so mainstream to talk about Muslims,” he added.
“The talk of burning a mosque down, or doing an IED at a mosque, that’s not stuff that you would normally see on social media. And all of a sudden, since the war in Iran, it’s becoming acceptable for people [to] use that kind of terminology.”
Last month, the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) said it tracked posts that explicitly dehumanized, excluded, and incited violence against Muslims from January 1 to March 5, and noted a “sharp spike” in anti-Muslim posts on Elon Musk’s X platform in the hours after the war on Iran began.
The content examined by CSOH encompassed a wide swath that included everything from personal, hate-fueled opinions to calls for lawmakers to institute strict anti-Muslim policy, including a “Muslim Exclusion Act” and the deportation of all Muslims.
But such rhetoric is also coming from Republican lawmakers, which is normalizing the matter, Mpac’s policy paper indicated.
Florida Congressman Randy Fine has largely led the charge, with his calls for the deportation of New York City’s Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and his assertion that: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
He has come under fire from Democrats, but not from his own party or the US president.
Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles has also made it clear he believes “Muslims don’t belong in American society”.
Both lawmakers are members of the newly-formed “Sharia-Free America” caucus, which now boasts more than 60 members of the Republican Party.
“[That] makes it larger than the Hispanic Caucus. It’s larger than the Freedom Caucus, and I think it’s about the same size as the Congressional Black Caucus. And members of this caucus have called for the denaturalization and deportation of Muslims from America, which is ethnic cleansing,” Zaman told MEE.
The overall anti-Muslim sentiment is not particularly new – at least not since the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks – but the concern is that it is becoming far more accepted, Mpac’s policy paper showed.
Source: IQNA