The FBI says there are 7 times as many anti-Jewish as anti-Muslim hate crimes. Yet the New York Times is stoking a panic.
Anti-Jewish hate crimes outnumber anti-Muslim hate crimes about seven to one, according to FBI crime statistics. Yet the New York Times is offering its readers a different view of the relative seriousness of the issues. The newspaper—which the Israeli government says “consistently demonizes and delegitimizes the Jewish State and publishes false blood libels against the State of Israel”—has escalated its coverage of supposed anti-Muslim bias to the point that, by some measures and at some times, the volume exceeds or roughly equals Times coverage of anti-Jewish bias.
Critics accuse the Trump administration and supporters of Israel of “weaponizing antisemitism,” a frequently groundless charge that is shorthand for the assertion that the antisemitism complaint is being used to silence criticism of Israel and also as a pretext for an authoritarian crackdown. Yet some of the Times coverage seems to engage in—to borrow a phrase—weaponizing Islamophobia, using the hate label in an attempt to silence criticism of Islamist extremism, of Muslim-dominated countries, or of support for terrorism.
Among the recent New York Times headlines and articles that exemplify or approach this pattern are:
— An August 10 article by Zolan Kanno-Youngs headlined, “Trump Stokes Islamophobia by Calling Democratic Candidates ‘Jihadists.’” That article reported, “President Trump on Monday described Democratic candidates in the midterm elections as ‘jihadists,’ adding to Islamophobic statements recently made by Republican elected officials.” It went on, “in the past few months, anti-Muslim rhetoric has become increasingly normalized in the ranks of the G.O.P., particularly after the election victories of prominent Muslim politicians, including Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral race and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate primary last week. Mr. Trump has declined to condemn such rhetoric, and, as was the case on Monday, has leaned into it.” It seems heavyhanded for the Times to describe Trump’s rhetoric as Islamophobic when the president is accurately pointing out that some of the Democratic candidates are aligned with Islamist terrorist groups and their goals.
— A front-page article featuring the bylines of four Times reporters, purporting to describe “Islamophobia’s Rise in Texas.” This one is actually funny, because it takes the position that Muslims should have totally maximal free exercise rights under the First Amendment without being at all self-aware of the fact that when Times readers or Democratic politicians try to prevent Christians or Orthodox Jews from doing these things, the Times doesn’t describe those people as anti-religious bigots. “State leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, have since opened investigations into Muslim institutions across Texas. They’ve sought to block the real estate development and investigate religious divorce counseling. Mr. Abbott threatened to take state funding from Texas airports that provide ritual washing stations for Muslim travelers, ordered the cancellation of a private water park party celebrating a Muslim holiday and labeled the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national civil rights group, as a terrorist group — a step that even the Trump administration has so far not taken. (Florida followed Texas in applying the same label to CAIR.)” Rather than skeptically investigate CAIR or its positions, the Times just describes it as a civil rights group. The Times cheerled government investigations into Jewish schools in New York, but when Republican politicians investigate Muslim institutions, it’s “Islamphobia.” When Democrats try to force Catholics to cover birth control in health insurance plans or use antifraud laws to crack down on crisis pregnancy centers, the Times doesn’t write about the rise of anti-Catholic bias. It’s a total double standard, where Muslims are the one religious group that the Times apparently thinks should be beyond the reach of government oversight.
— An August 11 Times story, “With El-Sayed’s Victory Comes a Wave of Islamophobia.” The same New York Times that is constantly trying to draw fine distinctions so that falsely accusing Israel of apartheid and genocide isn’t antisemitic and calling it antisemitic is just weaponizing antisemitism to silence criticism of Israel—well, when it comes to pointing out that the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan is hanging out with and getting money from terrorist sympathizers and is aligned with their policy goals, that’s “Islamaphobia”?
— An August 20 Times story headlined “Targeted by an Islamophobic Provocateur, a City’s Muslims Are on Edge.” The article about Dearborn, Mich., waited until the 24th paragraph to mention a Wall Street Journal opinion article about, as the Times summarized it, “support among some Muslims for the Hamas attack and a local Islamic institute that celebrated as ‘martyrs’ two men on the U.S. list of designated terrorists.” In the 25th paragraph, the Times article mentioned, “In March, a man who worked in Dearborn Heights rammed a truck into a nearby synagogue and was killed while exchanging gunfire with security guards. Authorities described it as a deliberate antisemitic attack.” A Times photo cutline describes Dearborn as “an orderly city with wide avenues.”
— Even a Times feature on Jewish life at Harvard went off on a tangent to insist that “Other forms of bias, such as Islamophobia, have not received the same level of national attention as antisemitism, but remain a problem.” Maybe the editor of that one missed the surprisingly sensible Times editorial about how “University leaders have often felt uncomfortable decrying antisemitism without also decrying Islamophobia. …antisemitism seems to be a rare type of bigotry that some intellectuals are uncomfortable rebuking without caveat. … People should be able to denounce a growing form of hatred without ritually denouncing other forms.”
For numerically inclined readers, the FBI reports 8,236 hate crimes with anti-Jewish bias in the U.S. over the past 5 years, and 1,170 hate crimes with anti-Islamic or anti-Muslim bias. That’s about 7 times more anti-Jewish hate crimes than anti-Muslim ones.
If you search the NYTimes.com archive, over the past year, “anti-Jewish” gives 1,089 results and “anti-Muslim” 1,012 results. Antisemitism yields 1,368 results and Islamophobia 704 results. Islamophobic yields 678 results; antisemitic, 1,202 results. Anti-Catholic gets 826 results in the last year, and Anti-Christian 1,051 results. Anyway, the surge in Muslim political power and cultural clout (the Halal Guys fast food chain, for example) in America is a fascinating, newsworthy story, as is the backlash to it. But slapping an “Islamophobia” label on it can do more to obscure than to illuminate the underlying issues, and may even accelerate the backlash.
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