The real danger of Islamophobia? It rarely announces itself as hatred yet shapes how millions think

T he horrific terrorist attack on the Islamic Centre of San Diego in California has been reported by many news outlets over the past few days. Yet as the story travelled across screens and news feeds, something more subtle unfolded: the language of reporting. Some outlets spoke of “teen suspects” and “three deceased” rather than murdered worshippers or a terrorist attack on a mosque.

They shape sympathy, urgency, and influence how violence is understood. Too often, the vocabulary of terror and extremism appears unevenly distributed; sharpened for some perpetrators but softened for others. There is a growing sense that the world is slipping backwards – not through dramatic rupture, but through the steady normalisation of hate, the coarsening of public discourse and politicians increasingly fuelling division and racism. Across the world, anti-Muslim abuse has risen sharply: mosques vandalised, women in hijabs assaulted, online spaces saturated with hate, and far-right marches openly calling for the eradication of Islam . Yet such incidents rarely command sustained outrage. They appear briefly before disappearing into the churn of the news cycle. In the US, the presidency of Donald Trump has normalised policies such as the “Muslim ban” , which barred travel to the US for 90 days from seven predominantly Muslim countries, embedding suspicion within immigration systems. Across Britain and Europe , parties such as Reform UK, the National Rally and Alternative for Germany have built political capital by framing Islam as incompatible with national identity. In India, under Narendra Modi, anti-Muslim sentiment has increasingly moved from the fringes towards the political mainstream. Inflammatory rhetoric, mob violence, discriminatory legislation and the growing marginalisation of Muslims are all evidence of a climate that has been encouraged and insufficiently challenged by political and international leadership. What emerges is not merely prejudice, but the normalisation of exclusion under the language of nationalism. In China, the mass detention of Uyghur Muslims represents a more extreme form of state-led repression, widely condemned, yet met with limited sustained global action.

Key points

• They shape sympathy, urgency, and influence how violence is understood.
• Too often, the vocabulary of terror and extremism appears unevenly distributed; sharpened for some perpetrators but softened for others.
• There is a growing sense that the world is slipping backwards – not through dramatic rupture, but through the steady normalisation of hate, the coarsening of public discourse and politicians increa…
• Across the world, anti-Muslim abuse has risen sharply: mosques vandalised, women in hijabs assaulted, online spaces saturated with hate, and far-right marches openly calling for the eradication of…
• Yet such incidents rarely command sustained outrage.