perspectives on c-span's new books, the presidents. noted historians on the best and worst chief executive. on c-span's q & a. counsel on american-islamic relations hosted on islamfobia. began with opening remarkses from minnesota governor tim walls. two representatives, thank you for being in your insight and expertise, this deep dive we will go into islam phobia and hate. we are ready to hear and we welcome your insights advising guidance. to everyone else, minnesotans who took time to be here, as president author said, those

from minnesota kind of know i talk about, one, minnesota a lot. this room is the embodiment of that and i am grateful. we are trying to understand what one minnesota means. you embrace it. when mankato thrives, minnesota thrives. we know that our muslim community is deeply tied into the fabric of minnesota. you are our teachers, our doctors, your entrepreneurs, brothers and sisters. the culture that comes from the muslim community has made minnesota so much better, strengthened our community and made us who we can be. but i know platitudes are not enough. after the horrific events in christ church and islam phobia, so many in this room know christ church nearly was in our

backyard and those are our neighbors, that warm summer day in -- just 2 years ago nearly avoided tragedy on an unbelievable scale, which we saw unfolding in christ's church. i'm here to deliver a pretty simple message, hate and islam phobia have no home in minnesota, but you do. our administration along with governor peggy flanagan and our education commissioner mary, are here with you. we understand -- mary captain is a lifelong educator and we want to see actions and our administration draw it is line at zero tolerance. we will not have our islam youth bullied in a single day in a single place on a single day in minnesota and our commissioner is here to mange sure that

happens. we will call out attacks at every chance and hold accountability politicians at every turn. we are also here to understand again what the presenters will tell us. we need to transfer this into actions and change the culture and speak loudly. but we need to have the ability and capacity to turn against islam phobia to talk about it in every community. that's why we are prepared to open three more offices in bemidgeny and duluth. those will be places where the law stands behind the rightness of what we are doing, a place of sanctuary for our citizens and educations that will come out of conversations like this and magnify it across the state and the actions of the governor's office and the message is very clear and this is on behalf of

our administration and my wife the first lady. very clearly you are welcome here. we are committed to your safety and well-being. we are walking towards the light together. we support your safety and well-being and minnesota will be behind that and we support you and your right to practice your faith in the way you see fit in a way that makes a better and one minnesota. the whole month of ramadan will be among us. i am very good at iftar, but not the fasting part of this. but i am learning and we get out and try to spend our fridays in our community and in our mosque and church. my wife and i are going to be honored to host what we think is

the first ipthar in the governor's residence. so i welcome you here. i wish you the best and insights that come out of this, knowing that our team is here to implement this that one minnesota doesn't mean we are all the same, but it mean that is we share a common humanity and that we come together as one community to ensure peace and prosperity for all of us. we are all better for it. i thank you fsh the leadership in this room and the commitment that minnesota is only beginning and we can be the ones that show the world just exactly what it looks like to be in peace together. so i thank you all.

. >> thank you, governor. president jenny. i forgot to mention a little story. i used to work here at the university and i loved every minute that i was here. it was one of my difficult decisions to switch to care minnesota. i worked with jenny as a provost and always left and there was always be one light up, that one office that had its light on at the upper floor and it was aught always jenny. i tried to be there so many times. so the -- president jenny, they are lucky to have you. i will bring our first panelist. i want to be clear, we have been

struggling and heidi from splc could not make it today. unfortunately there are some challenges at her organization and she sends her apologies and hopefully will be with us in future events. we are unfortunately male dominant at this first panel. we definitely apologize for that. we have been trying to fill this first panel all this past week and a half and even until last night. but we really have amazing speakers, people who are really cutting edge leaders and particularly on this topic and i hope you will benefit. but the rest of the program today you will see is a balanced representation of our community. i will bring the moderator matt

philosopher at the political development and he will guide our next session. >> well, thanks, everyone, for being here. i have to apologize as a professor i think of these events in a professorial way. you are basically getting an education in one day. an extraordinary event and opportunity and you don't have to write any papers. so i would like to set a couple ground rules for this session. this will be a moderated session. i will be posing questions and i would ask that you introduce yourselves, your organization. you have already met jalani and toward the end we will let the audience ask questions. so without further adieu, i think it's important to start with this panel on the islammy phobia, don't forget islam

phobia is not natural. that it is manufactured and it can change. i just want to post to the panel your thoughts on the islam phobia industry. and we can -- bob, you are first on the list. do you want to start? >> good morning, everybody. before we get started if i could ask you to join me in a round of applause for jalani and the team. you know, united states is a diverse space. i think what he said this morning 50 countries and minnesota has been doing some amazing work as it sits at the front lines of some of the worst islam phobia in the country, so i do commend you for forming solidarity and making an event

like this possible. so i will just say. my name is imas barsigad. in my office's capacity, we really do explore ways to provide long term solutions and frameworks for understanding the challenge of islam phobia and specifically what we might call the islam phobia industry or network. it is really important to understand the nature of the beast that we are wrestling here and if you would indulge me for a moment in a metaphor, i tend to think of islam phobia racism generally as a climate problem. you think about pollution and climate change, you realize that we are in a lot of trouble. we have an acute crisis, like flint, minnesota, for example, for the combination of the

environmental racism, climate change and corporate greed and government negligence, you know, produce acute problems. and we have acute problems in islam phobia by way of bullying, attacks, horrific ones, attacks threat toned our communities every single day. in our office we receive complaints. my office tracks and monitors civil rights abuse and acts of discrimination around the country. but if we look at the origin of this, like climate change and pollution, we realize there are some bad actors, but once they pollute the air and that acid rain comes down, you have a complex problem at hand. even if we were to shut down the factories and implement all the sort of best metrics and best practices we know to reverse this action, we would still be dealing with the oil spill that happened decades ago. so how do we engage this kind of

problem? it is possible to overcome it, but you do have to realize challenging islam phobia doesn't doesn't -- simply challenging a couple bad actors on media or politicians. we have to look at the infrastructures, the thing that is contribute to the long material pollution of space. we have been tracking the islam network, individuals, actor, very powerful pools of funding and political connections that are very, very organized and very deliberate in the way they are manipulating our institutions around the world. this is the islam phobia network, you might know some of them as fox news commentators, you might see some of their actions, but where is it they

are getting their funding from, their grassroots. next week we will release a report that will go further out there about the funding networks behind islam phobia. in the past we have done care and allied communities around the country, in the past what we have done is to monitor the strength of these organizations by looking at their financial power, right, and looking at their connections, looking at their connections to politicians and whatnot. this year we did a simple declaration and said let me simply find out who is funding and who is receiving funding. let us draw that map out and chart what the money flow looks like, so we can go from donor base all the way to media appearance to position in the white house and what we found were things that most of us

would already predict. typically 70, 80% of these funders are somehow connected to defense industries, associated with aggressive politics and policies. anina rose enwalled. you may not know these name names, they use tax laws and philanthropic and chairable institutions in the united states that are the hallmark of our civil society. they use those mechanisms to fund hate speech, sort of violent actions and that you thoughts and thinking and those hide behind

the cover of c13. so the same tax benefits that a food bank receives, a tycoon was funding hate speech and hate actors are benefits the same as a food bank does and the fillen thereonic institutions now have been so caught up on this, these founders of course of american charity, nina rosenwald is from the founders of sears. but forget about the ideological actors. what we find is mainstream institutions have been caught up on this. fidelity, institutions that are charitable vehicles, those institutions are being exploited

by these big donors and funding millions of dollars into the islam phobia network. sol how is it we challenge this sort of thing? i can get into a little bit of that. i will stop there. but think about the challenges we face and we will get into the details. >> thank you. i know we will want to respond to a lot of comments. i'm going to ask the panel to continue to discuss the islam phobia industry before we get into response. >> great to be here. i'm a law professor i'm also the author of the book islam phobia. i look at the islam phobia network from a legal lens. just discussed the commercial mention of the network. i try to theorize and frame how the law is looking at islam phobia and i'm going to look at a general framework and frame of concept that allow us to think

about islam phobia from a legal standpoint. first it's critical to understand above all islam phobia is private in nature. it's unleashed by private actors, hate mongers like the terrorist in new zealand not acting on behalf of the state directly are individuals that are driven to engage in violence and bigotry. identity somehow tied to terrorism, somehow tied to invasion and ideas that this cannot be imt assimilated and these private networks, whether it be organizations, whether it be pundits. these are individuals act not guilty a private capacity. this is islam phobia i frame and talk about in my book private in nature. the second form is state sponsored islam phobia or structural islam phobia, the same thing we think of racism

being individual, or institutional in nature is one frame we need to talk about. what am i talking about specifically? i'm talking about laws, right, things like the patriot act, which was enacted after 911 and the muslim ban which was an order signed by the president that eventually became a law upheld by the law of the land, supreme court and things like state action, state action that isn't manifested in the form of law legislation or executive order. so items like rhetoric from the president qualify as state sponsored islam phobia. ideas like provisions being passed by the house of representatives which prevented omar from wearing the hijab. it enables us to see it is not only being unleash and enacted by the rights.

we character which you are it has a phenomenon or form of bigotry that is exclusively coming from the right. but as we look at it as a state sponsored enterprise -- engage in islam phobia as well. you are familiar with minneapolis, the twin cigs, surveillance that has been enacted by the federal government, but also the state government, which was enlisted by the obama administration. it's critical to understand my opinion -- i'm a law professor, so i might be biased, is the most potent in entrenching islam phobia. third, it is also a dialectic. there is a synergy going on between what the state does -- by virtue of the state enlisting these laws, it's endorsing the negative sentiments held by

private individuals, private hate among mongors and what private actors, the person in new zealand, siting the headscarf in france, siting trump as the -- about private islam folks. enable us to have a more fruitful conversation. >> thank you. jeff, your thoughts on the islam phobia industry? >> my name is todd green. i'm a professor after lutheran college in iowa, just south of the border. this is kind of my backyard. thank you to care and all the

sponsors for participating and sponsoring this event. this is wonderful. wonderful to see the amount of people who are here today. i'm a religious historian and people automatically start to fall asleep when i say that. but it's the angle i take when i study islam phobia. this is my primary area of research, islam phobia is not something that is new or certainly prejudiced against muslims, discrimination of muslims is not even post 911 phenomenon. there is a longer history to this. there are a lot of troops stereotypes employed against muslims that have been employed against other minorities and racial minorities in the united states, jews, catholics, to some

extent mormons. and not fit not guilty as belonging to us, right, and of course we have to think about who us is. the islam phobia industry, one of the interesting things i have been thinking of is probably all of us could tell personal stories about personal entanglements. this is not an abstract sort of area of study for most of us. this is a personal thing and knee what it's like to receive that attention and very little that's good comes out of that when they focus on you individually. but i will say this about the islam phobia industry. legal aspect or funding or the impact here locally. i'm interested in the tactics they have been using and the arguments they use and to what

extent they have been succeeding or not. they have been succeeding quite well and there are four tactics in terms of the arguments used by the industry that i have been tracking over the last deck kate and how they change and where have they been putting their energy in the political discourse in fact united states. one has been around for a while, particularly violent forms of jihad and assault and attack and kill and murder anyone who is not muslim in order to get them to submit to perform some violent order. that is not new and not particular to the islam industry. all trying to draw on the stereotypes. what we have seen in the past decade are three others i have

been tracking. a favorite of frank gaffe who has come to have a lot of influence in washington. i will talk about that in a moment. but gaffe regularly jumps on the notion of brotherhood has infiltrated the united states and the federal government at highest levels including the white house and department of justice and state department. so what you have happening is seemingly nice muslims who have decided to play along with the constitution and infiltrate the nation and once they are in positions of power we have the violence, the islamic state that presumably they are trying to implement and trying to do this in a stealth way as opposed to a more violent way. i think this is also efforts by senator cruz and others to label the brotherhood terror organization and any other group

they can tie to the muslim group. muslim political groups and other activists who are trying to shape policy and discourse when it comes to racism and bigotry. the third tactic i have been tracking is this notion of schleya. you all are familiar with that, that they are trying to impose some islam wall to all of us and con injure up fear. no nuance in this conversation. i think it has been gaining traction significantly in the past several years and the islamic industries efforts to do so have succeeded in a large degree. even after new zealand i did a lot of interviews and the journalist asked me a question

about schleya. that's the impact of the islam industry. they will repeat, promote it through their rarist networks and sooner or later it sticks and has begun to stick and now i find myself regularly trying to field questions about that even though the news event is on something completely different. i will also say this about that whole narrative is last year the republican national committee and trump re-election website had a question and one of the question was do you fear the spread of schleya. so i think we can anticipate in the upcoming election that will be deployed and it could be deployed with great effect, so we need to keep that in mind in terms of countering the strategy. the final point is takia and this idea that muslims are required to deceive the rest of us and the terms of the overall

political efforts to impose islam on the rest of the country. but we saw this gaining traction, bing carson was notable for complaining that muslims are required to deceive us in order to acquire their more insidious ends. and this came right out of the islam phobia industry. you see these now being repeated in implicit ways by presidential candidates that people in positions of power, i can think of all sorts used in the last election from registration systems to data bases to islam hates us to muslim bans. these are drawn on the narratives that are coming right out of the muslim phobia industry. they have been become quite powerful in a short period of time and great concern and i'm glad we are devoting an entire session to this industry.

>> thank you, ted. jalani, can you give us some perspective? >> yeah. for minnesota, i would say we actually recently produced a report on the network here in minnesota particularly. and with a large number of social justice groups and that report is available online. but i would say just in addition to the conversation, what we have noticed in minnesota particularly is we do it minnesota hate here, passive aggressive style. so there are three things that we look for. obviously the number one is the malitia groups that have focused on the muslim community. there is a group called 3% malitia that have focused on the muslim community and what we

found out from the bombing, they are more militarized and the most dangerous of the groups and you have the second group, the mom and pop shops, usual will i very small dep graphically older in age and these are the groups that either stem from religious based groups or places like veterans, vfw's, so if you come to the greater minnesota panel, you will hear about it specifically because we see that happening in st. cloud and the central region of the state and northern region of the state and we see these types of groups becoming much, much more aggressive, but mostly well organized and working together. so if there is an anti-muslim speaker who comes to minnesota he is going to six towns and in all those six towns there are

groups rallying those people. usually five or six people, but they get these people together. so that level of the mom and pop shop type of small group of hate groups are really -- are really the biggest ones impacting. there is, for example, policies that they have been pushing particularly in st. cloud in st. -- actually here in our neighboring wisconsin. and what we are seeing is that these groups then put a lot of information online and they are now attacking obviously my organization and many of the other organizations. so when we actually put that earlier report that i mentioned, all the groups that were able to sign on and be part of that report were all attacked online. the names of their organizations were put online and what we were also seeing in minnesota is some form of increased hostility. i know how to engage these people as i mentioned earlier,

they show up and we try to talk with them or have a conversation with them and most recently we had a conversation about islammy culture and there was a group that came and i seen this group multiple times, but for the first time they militarily stopped me from leaving the building and when i left, one of them was stupid enough to actually personally threaten me to say he was going to come after me and make it look like it's an accident. so we're now concerned about what's their relationship between the actual malitia groups that have that type of militarize -- or the groups that come to the events and even here that will try to pass information out. but i would say the industry is growing because of dark money. it's growing because of people who are extremely healthy, who

are giving funding to these organizations who it will be very difficult for us to find out who these people are. and while, yes, there are right now in the conservative right you see a lot of them there, but you also see a great deal on the progressive as well. and again, the issue goes back to what todd mentioned just a minute ago about security and fear and that's why the islam phobia, this idea of irrational fear is really important because easily people slip into that. but i think we are starting to see change and also hope. >> thank you. so when we studied, we kind of think of industry as having a vertical position from the very top all the way down to the grassroots and think of the industry as being horizontal in terms of covering a wide variety

of people and institution can you talk about how it is vertical, reaching from the donors down to the grassroots and vice versa and across states and across institutions. vos, maybe you would like to start us? >> yeah, sure thing. i think it's an interesting way to think about it, you know. the industry, if you will, definitely has top donors that are feeling it and you can think about them. i imagine -- i imagine that they do sit around and talk about how they are going to enhance a certain agenda and aware of what they are doing. they are aware and effective and if you look at the activities they are engaged in, it does look like they are in a concrete and tandem way where they are accenting and helping one another. so one of the ways i think this

really works out at the vertical and horizontal level is a fellow named david wilshalany, you know, all these are like veterans for a better america and it's really interesting because even though i started this, i get the acronyms wrong. but david basically bring bogus cases to court and add vance bogus legislation. so if you look at his funding network in his funding capacity, it does come from the major actors, jalani mentioned dark money institutions. this is important to recognize and i will stop and explain what this mechanism looks like. there is an institution in kind of the tax and charity world

called a donor advice fund and outside of the conversation of islam phobia, many ethicists are worried about this tradition of philanthropy. what it does is i want to donate to care, but i don't want anybody to know i donate to care. so i donate to a fund that might be housed in as good nature as the california community association or fidelity or swab. i got my bank with fidelity, so i tell them. they are donating to tens and thousands of institutions. they have no way of knowing where it all goes to. so i donate to gaffe. i get my receipt from fidelity

or swhab shwab. so what it does is breaks the transparency, which is really part of the tradition. we want to be patrons of our public sphere. we want to take responsibility for it and now you have these commercial conglomerates that are doing that. that funding goes into that space, but somebody like that advances legislation in partnership with somebody like gaffe across the united states and approach legislatures in places that are easy to win and pass junk resolution either concrete legislation or resolution that are actually false or lies. there is a southern state recently passed a resolution against us, against care and it is factual by incorrect. we are not talking half truths there.

it is absolutely wrong. something happened in congress recently, a resolution attacking an american muslim humanitarian organization. it is actually false. i can't say anything else. it is wrong. and amazingly how this works horizontally and vertically, it sites sources that are also paid for by the network and so-called journal i'lls are pumping out the same lies every single week. there is a man pumping out the same lie over and over and over again. so when i see the resolution introduced against this muslim institution, i see the language in it. i know who wrote it because i have been reading this guy's articles. so you can see the coordination there. it's extremely sophisticated. think about what it takes to put something like that together and the opportunity cost it takes to fight something like that. but really, you know, as bad as it is, we do have to spend the

time to recognize their tactics and understand the way that they operate. civilization increasingly we will see that in state legislatures all across the country. >> i don't know how much to add. that was a great explanation. i think i was thinking in terms of the way you're putting it the vertical reach. in terms of traveling around the country and speaking on islamophobia for some years now i've seen it gain more and more traction so it's not unusual for a audience should to start invoking language but i have also found they don't often know this so they don't know quite the source and they

cannot trace the genealogy of these ideas because they been reproduced in 70 complex ways and frankly we haven't mentioned this but the industry is savvy with social media. far more than most of us are countering it and are good at spreading their message in that way and platforms that really spread their narratives far and wide, much more than i used to really take serious. i take it very seriously now. i have encountered in terms of the reach of this industry in two places in america into populations who are repeating these but the language itself is coming out of a frank gaffney so that vertical reach from top to bottom is quite pervasive. >> can you talk about the horizontal legal changes whether it is that the state level or local level where you are seeing changes that might help institute the gaffney

perspective. >> there is one take away i want folks to walk away with which is do not think about islamophobia as exclusively irrational. if it's irrational when it's coming from private actors but when it's the state, corporation, actual industry it is very rational. their objective is to disseminate a specific portrayal of to achieve a specific objective whether political or legal or economic. that is entirely rational. when you think of rationalism that is the very definition. i don't like the term islamophobia industry, i think it is far too monolithic a concept. i think it is too limited here i like the framing of islamophobia network because it allows us to think about how the state actually impacts what

the media is doing. when we think about it horizontally speaking we could look at how our funding think tanks to construct and conjure up specific narratives and to produce scholarships that are wrong about muslims. scholarships that 100 years ago would now say that specific racial groups are inferior and specific groups of people are subordinate and can't be assimilated. that body of research and scholarship is doing the same thing like muslims can't be conformed with american society because their objective is to take over american society. that research then enables politicians, especially individuals within state power to pass bills to effectively say the same thing. we can look at even before the rise of drop and the tea party

they were really effective with spreading this movement. in 2011 there were something like being spread that effectively looked at sharia law as being deviant with american law. by the way i teach first amendment law and there is no need for such a bill because the first amendment establishment clause restricts the enshrinement of any religious body of any religious law whether it be muslim jewish or christian. it is idiotic and absurd and political in nature because it mobilizes voters. that is what this does. immobilizes voters to vote for right-wing politicians and entrench their influence. and other law on the books right now in a state which i teach arkansas. the state of arkansas is looking to criminalize and outlaw care to organizations

even though cair doesn't have an organization within the state of arkansas. for instance looking to ban the nra in a state where the nra doesn't exist is completely idiotic and absurd. but it is a defective political tool because what that does is the politician wielding that bill can effectively raise it when he is running for office next time. he can say i look to criminalize, but for me it is effective. that is the horizontal chain in which the private actors and private donors fund, the pundits fund the researchers who then provide politicians with the intellectual introspect or anti-intellectual ammunition to pass bills that entrench their presence within government. >> can you talk about ideas whether gaffney's ideas? >> one of the interesting things is minnesota is not

really, i'm trying to get the right words out, minnesota is a good state. it is unique but it is a good state and i think you have a lot of wonderful people here. however, i think the muslim community in minnesota has become a target for all the islamophobia networks . in fact there was a blogger several bloggers who came and harassed the mosque just a couple of weeks ago. and one of those bloggers actually made a false police report by creating a fake twitter account and then made a threat to himself from a twitter account and raised money online. all of the islamophobia networks are using this community as a scapegoat and as an example to launch their efforts elsewhere.

it really is the success in minnesota that they are fighting. the success of the muslim community here in minnesota. the success of the fact that we have the first congressman key in the success we are seeing in the state is becoming a problem. all of the talking points are looking at these areas that have no [ indiscernible - low volume ] i fear that because the attack came from illinois and the question we were asking is how did they target this specific mosque? for most people going back to the mom and pop shut shop type a groups that know what they are doing there is a group that sounds like a nice group but friends of smith park and the reality is smith park is adjacent to the islamic center

and it is a group that is just really two people or less. they have literally created an image of that building and that community and they continually document this online. a few years back the network actually picked it up and it became a huge headline. that is why we believe that those i mean that's the only logical for us to think about that because of these articles that connected to this larger network that when these guys decided to target a mosque they passed probably a couple hundred on their way to that specific mosque right? that is one of the things i would just say that in minnesota outside i mean there are challenges obviously. i think st. cloud is an area that is struggling. i think there is tremendous progress happening with the

efforts from the interfaith groups and social justice groups. there are a lot of good things happening and i don't want you to but st. cloud is still a very difficult place. one of the things we are we really need and the reason we keep doing these conferences is we really need the actual folks in st. cloud the big stakeholders like the catholic church and other groups that have prominent roles to take serious leadership and the problem right now is as soon as something happens these major stakeholders are backing out. even politicians are afraid to step forward and push this back. the reality is most people are making decisions with very limited basic information. but at the same time i believe these groups project to be very powerful. we kind of allow that. >> i wanted to go back to the theme of pollution and the way

in which we are all effected and in all effect polluted by islamophobia and how little information most people know. when you think about climate change we each are maybe naove about the way was we contribute, what role we each play in the network of climate change and recognizing that you are driving a car that may contribute to climate change, could you talk about what people may be unknowingly contributing to the network? i think it is clear the worst actions are most problematic but how are people contributing to the network? >> this is one thing i am preaching and i hope all of you who listen to they can at least

do this, the space usually that is extremely toxic is social media. what i keep finding is allies, advocates have fear of saying something. the silence is killing us and the reality is usually islam of folks have very opinionated laced questions they throw out and most of our allies are trying to answer that with an intelligent answer. , how many of you have commented and then hit delete? and then you're like i'm going to go? that is what we all do. we have to completely change that. i will give you the answer. if you don't have the time to figure out something smart to say, just say something. let's fill the comment section

with something positive, hopeful and something. we cannot allow hate to dominate these spaces. nobody reads the articles anymore they just go directly to the comment section. and what happens is someone will come after you right? then you will get emotionally tied to this comment and then you will go fight for that and that happens all the time. my biggest thing is if we could get the majority of people when they see raise him and racism and bigotry to call it out and say something and walk away. don't carry that with you. when you do that you have showed the other person behind you what it would look like. go to any local tv or any story that comes up in the muslim community just check the streaming. even in our new zealand press conference you could see people literally going off.

there are people responding but a lot of times people don't know what is appropriate and i would say the silence is the biggest problem and it is something every single person can do something about. >> thank you. >> thank you that was very well said. i would like to pick up on that because i am not muslim. i seek to be an ally. the audience i tried to primarily reach are my people. why is that? because islamophobia does not emanate from -- and the united states of america majority is responsible for this. there is a lot of silence and dr. king's words silence is complicity. if you are silent you have taken the side of status quo. that is not a legitimate side to take. that is a difficult thing to do in america right now and the day after the election i

thought a lot about this question about why are things getting worse? almost every metric on islamophobia is getting worse . why? who do we talk to and who do we try to encourage to speak out is very important here. as evincing a friend of mine wrote a piece a couple of months ago on soldiers and she said christians, white christians included need to be speaking with other christians. we need to be talking to each other about islamophobia . it's great to talk with muslims. they did it pretty quickly right? people with my background don't particularly but and this is a hard point to make so bear with me about what is islamophobia . it is primarily ignorance [ inaudible-static] a lot of organizations that do a great job especially here in the twin cities at trying to educate the public on islam and

its rituals and teachings and traditions etc. this is important work but we must also understand to address islamophobia we can only [ indiscernible - low volume ] because it's not primarily that's what makes it so difficult to call attention to the anonymous majority because you are asking them and myself, what are we doing that is complicit that makes islamophobia worse is so effective to our silence or inability to recognize the everyday practices? patters that contribute to a political order? here in the united states i would say globally as well. fear is connected to this which sustains islamophobia and this form of racism. just remember one take away is

islamophobia is not just about not knowing stuff about islam. you can know a lot of things about islam and still be a big it . the name as such a person as robert spencer. he can quote the quran, he knows information he's able to pick from different pieces of islam and then wield a picture portrayed in his life with that narrative. knowing information isn't enough, knowing this is racism and the majority population is the one that needs to be addressed. those of us seeking the seeking to be allies need to be speaking to these populations. we need to raise the bar higher when it comes to how we address islamophobia which i think will help in pushing back on the industry. i fear too many of us even those of us seeking allies have not raised the bar enough with other white christian americans who struggle to come to terms with their history of racism

and white supremacy, the history of white violence, white christian violence which is one of my big talking points because the islamophobia industry has done so well . anymore said it so well, the function of racism is distraction. islamophobia industry is the master of distraction and we have to stop paying attention to the other stuff that we should be. >> thank you. >> i will just say briefly i'm really glad that phrase white supremacy and it is important to think about islamophobia as an and emanation and once we understand islamophobia as an extension of white supremacy we see it is far far more entrenched and extended than it is a novel phenomenon. before there was a muslim band being signed by trompe, a band

that so from 1790 through 1944 that restricted from becoming naturalized citizens. there was a civilization narrative that muslims was not a bona fide religion but a political ideology and civilization that was anti- cynical to american identity and american values. before there was islamophobia there was orientalism, who knows what that is? it is a system and master discourse that effectively seized these key stereotypes that go on and the the manufacturing and perpetuation of anti-muslim today. the third is critical to understand -- can't breed greater islamophobia we see that especially when we look at radicalization. we think the last administration [ inaudible-

static] any administration before it and they used that knowledge to further state sponsor violent extremism specifically where i come from they use that knowledge to put the certain communities against other communities and then at surveillance. the idea that knowledge is very much a myth and ms. number especially when we are talking about more intelligent fashions of the islamophobia network. again critical to think about islamophobia as a whites's premises project . it is really critical because it helps us understand that part of the project of this white supremacy idea is to minimize non- christian believers especially during this moment of considerable demographic shifts , this country is predicted to be majority minority in 2023 which intensifies white

paranoia and a main reason why this administration has been so effective in popularizing idea ideas like the mexico wall and things of that nature. the objective is to maintain the white majority integrity of the country and islamophobia helps deliver that promise and that greater objective. >> thank you. i was struck thinking about white supremacy over american history and you mentioned cair to keep arkansas there is a case in which alabama outlawed the naacp and the supreme court ruled for the naacp and it's the same thing and same issue. is just repeated in a different way. >> i will say this for the next round. i will say one of the spaces that we fail in that we could do better in is to not allow

the debates of the islamophobia networks that they tried to frame this we cannot allow them to not dominate those debates. a lot of the silence coming from this is not out of even fear of a backlash, i believe we are unequipped it and often flat-footed to deal with the complexity of issues out there. what ends up happening is we know something is racist and we hear it but we can't actually fight on their terms or argue on their terms because of the way they framed it. for example we know the frame black on black violence is a racist framework. that is a way of confiscating state responsibility and particular responsibility to do his work justice to black communities in the united state. if someone falls into the trap of talking about black on black violence and gang violence instead of historical discrimination and disenfranchisement if we allow that to go forward we lose that

battle in the same way we talk about islamophobia or they are often more knowledgeable that even people in our own community to be able to debate those things on those terms. so i believe in addition to mobilizing our solidarity and being willing to stand up we have to equip ourselves to be able to engage these debates in a more sophisticated way which is why we have to make use of our scholars and teachers and researchers and professors to absorb that knowledge and not be afraid to jump into the complexities of the world out there. it is linked to white supremacy , it is complex but we have to create the bandwidth to educate ourselves. thank you. >> we have a couple of minutes to entertain some audience

questions. if someone has a question they would like to ask the panel over here. i would ask you for the interest of time to keep the questions brief. >> thank you. [ inaudible-static]

>> the reality is all of them are happening in small rural towns where they are really getting pumped up. some of those op-ed's if you

just do a word search you will find that same exact op-ed was published in florida somewhere else. it wasn't even their words they just reprinted and reshuffled the same talking points. particularly the language in minnesota and also somali may mean muslim to. people may look at someone that is wearing a hijab and it's part of the ignorance but it's also a [ indiscernible - low volume ] to an extent. >> i could say something about the refugee, it's not only hear that the term refugee is disparaging. what i've been confused about is why that media space is so dominated by the right. we have settlement work that happens across this country and

we find some of the most powerful stories of american civil society coming together. it is in refugee resettlement and the hosting of people coming from other parts of this country where we see the best of america. we really do see churches, secular groups and children, we see people coming together on a regular basis to uplift, contribute and really do amazing work. i don't understand why we don't have greater media capacity around the storytelling that should go there literally in today's age. i am encouraging humanitarian agencies to outfit themselves with better storytelling capacity in that regard. that to me is a very easy way to overcome and i would encourage those in that work to consider a little investment in that way. >> and pitching those stories to the media. >> absolutely. they are great stories and it is great work to be done. again local media that is

perfect. >> i just want to say briefly the use of proxies by the media is actually a lesson learned. the reason the media uses proxies like refugees to effectively [ indiscernible - low volume ] in that instance is because of by using proxies in legislation and executive orders it enables the state the maker of that law to effectively avoid the highest scrutiny from the court. the media emulates applause and have been doing it a long time to appear nonracist and to appear not bigoted to essentially steer away from the highest forms of public scrutiny. it is another highlight of the way in which there is interesting dialect the media and the courts have a doing a long time.

>> two things on the questions of refugees. i think of the muslim band coming to mind and i still can't shake the that the muslim band was not just about refugees and immigrants from outside our orders, the two are connected. immigration policy and domestic policy towards marginalized groups are almost always connected. that was an intended political victory targeting many people sitting in this room. that is a scary thought but when you are fighting consequences in terms of the impact it has on other countries but also you are pushing back against policy that is meant to demonize muslims and muslim americans. >> especially when it is paired with an effort to delegitimize citizenship or evoke citizenship rights. >> right. that is a classic long-standing

historical battle. in terms of media i'm trying to say something positive here particularly about mainstream national media. i'm very cynical about media and maybe not the best person to inspire you. we should be careful here because mainstream media is corporate media and corporate media interests and state interests are often intertwined. i've learned more and more to approach mainstream media outlets as state media outlets. i was once criticized for giving an interview to a state media outlet in turkey. when i give a interview i feel like i am also giving an interview with state media as well with cnn but as far as i mentioned iraq war and have many jump on board that quickly? most critical media studies confirm the same thing, the way mainstream media frames the story in terms of violence and terrorism is incredibly disproportionate in terms of

extremism and now most people who actually don't responsible so that is one example. local media can build relationships. relationships with journalists you have access to and locals in a city or town can make a difference in the long run and it takes time to invest in that here in terms of so yes i am skeptical about the media which we have to push back on. i don't see the media as a primary source of islamophobia, it is a mechanism. i'm not losing sleep over whether cnn is the cause of islamophobia but sometimes folks like that can serve as a mouthpiece for islamophobia because of the deeper rooted interests or print media has. that is what we need to start calling attention to in terms

of the structural nature of islamophobia and its relationship to the media. >> i think god do we have time for one more question? in the middle. >> hello. i'm palestinian american and just wondering you haven't spoken to the role of evangelical institutions in upholding islamophobia , what are the roles? >> if i can broaden the question a little bit? >> what is the role of specifically institutions or other religions contributing to the industry? it is a complex story so we don't have time to fully the story but made a couple of

comments. >> there are people here that do better work on it, i think evangelical christians of my generation and older who are very much invested in a certain policy when it comes to israel and then certain policies that very much feed the islamophobia industry and the broader narratives of islamophobia that we should continue to pay attention to. the reason we should call out this group and again there are exceptions christians absolutely but in terms of a broader sense this is important because if you remember not long ago a controversy a couple involving a representative in which he criticized, you don't have to know much that evangelical christians are very much invested, this is not a jewish organization. therefore

her comments were interpreted in the worst possible light as opposed to who she was trying to engage with which was a nuanced debate about u.s. policy towards israel which would include evangelical christians. calling attention to this piece of the puzzle i think is significant to addressing islamophobia including the islamophobia that had caused the comments that were framed against anti-semitism. >> i think one thing we should just know is that islamophobia can be found in any [ indiscernible - low volume ] and in fact i would say almost every group has islamophobe's. even the lengthiest conferences i have to deal with, someone who attended had a hard time understanding the work repressive website of talking

spaces is an islamophobe. [ indiscernible - low volume ] even though they share the same stage. i think one of those things is looking into our own communities to recognize those voices do exist. i would say went you pull particularly g the jewish community they know more about islamophobia than most people. the first calls i get in my office are from the jewish community. at our first press conference we had a third of the people who showed up were jewish americans who have been with the muslim community. a study was done that communities of faith have muslims coming under some sort of prejudice and muslims themselves said 60% of the jewish communities said 66%. the only way to explain that is to know the jewish community because they are dealing with anti-semitism this is not an

anomaly issue. i think we need to recognize that we have to quantify and understand the threat of white nationalism and this is a great introduction to the next panel. i think some of us really need to understand islamophobia can be found in all communities. >> did you want to add? >> specifically zion is him isn't necessarily a religious project right? many are in fact secular so we shouldn't necessarily conflate religion with zion is him. is important to identify that above all. second i will be sure but i want everyone to look up an article written by who brilliantly deconstructed the relationship between zionism and the islamophobia network.

if there is any work that has tackle that question it is that piece. i can't articulate what he says but i highly recommend reading that piece. >> he is with us today? >> come to the other panel. a really great piece. >> i think we need to finish our session because that session starts at 1030 and there is a break now. thank you to our panelists. >> welcome to this first panel, this first breakout session on white supremacy anti-semitism. i