WH Releases Islamophobia Strategy      12/13 06:11

   

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House on Thursday announced what it called the 
first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia, detailing more than 100 
steps federal officials are taking to curb hate, violence, bias and 
discrimination against Muslims and Arab Americans.

   The proposal follows a similar national plan to battle antisemitism that 
President Joe Biden unveiled in May 2023, as fears about increasing hatred and 
discrimination were rising among U.S. Jews.

   Officials worked on the anti-Islamophobia plan for months, and its release 
came five weeks before Biden leaves office. The White House said the bulk of 
its actions had been implemented, with the goal to roll out the rest before 
Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, when President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

   In a statement announcing the strategy, the Biden administration wrote, 
"Over the past year, this initiative has become even more important as threats 
against American Muslim and Arab communities have spiked." It said that 
included the October 2023 slaying of 6-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi, an American 
Muslim boy of Palestinian descent, who was stabbed to death in Illinois.

   The plan details actions the Executive Branch is taking, along with more 
than 100 other calls to action across all sectors of society.

   The strategy has four basic priorities: increasing awareness of hatred 
against Muslims and Arabs while more widely recognizing these communities' 
heritages; broadly improving their safety and security; appropriately 
accommodating Muslim and Arab religious practices by working to curb 
discrimination against them; and encouraging cross-community solidarity to 
further counter hate.

   Many of those state goals are similar to the ones the Biden administration 
laid out in its plan to reduce antisemitism -- especially the emphasis on 
improving safety and security and building cross-community solidarity.

   "While individuals have sometimes been targeted because they are thought to 
be Muslim, it is also crucial to recognize that Arabs are routinely targeted 
simply for being who they are," the announcement of the strategy states, noting 
that Muslims and Arab Americans have helped build out the nation since its 
founding. It says that new data collection and education efforts are 
"increasing awareness of these forms of hate as well of the proud heritages of 
Muslim and Arab Americans."

   The plan calls for more widely disseminating successful practices of 
engaging Muslim and Arab Americans in the reporting of hate crimes, and that 
federal agencies are now more clearly spelling out that "discrimination against 
Muslim and Arab Americans in federally funded activities is illegal."

   The White House's plan also urges "state, local, and international 
counterparts, as well as the nongovernmental sector, to pursue similar 
initiatives that seek to build greater unity by recognizing our common 
humanity, affirming our shared values and history, and embracing equal justice, 
liberty, and security for all."

   Pro-Palestinian groups decrying his administration's full-throated support 
for Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza frequently disrupted Biden campaign 
events, as well as those of Vice President Kamala Harris after Biden abandoned 
his reelection bid in July.

   Trump, who implemented a travel ban on people from several Muslim-majority 
countries during his first term, won the largest majority-Muslim U.S. city in 
last month's elections. Yet some Arab Americans who backed Trump have begun 
expressing concerns about his some of his choices to fill out his Cabinet and 
other picks for his incoming administration.

   The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil rights 
and advocacy organization in the U.S., panned what it called "the White House's 
long-delayed document" as "too little, too late."

   "The White House strategy lays out some positive recommendations related to 
anti-Muslim bigotry, but it has been released too late to make an impact, fails 
to promise any changes to federal programs that perpetuate anti-Muslim 
discrimination on a massive scale," the council said in a statement further 
noting that the plan doesn't address what it called a "federal watchlist" 
targeting some Arab-Americans as potential terrorists.

   It added that the plan "fails to promise an end the most significant driver 
of anti-Muslim bigotry today: the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza."