last year. >> seth moulton spoke this morning and watch the entire speech this evening at 7:00 eastern on c-span. then california senator kamala harris, she held a town hall at dartmouth college in new hampshire. we will have at 8:00 eastern here on c-span. you can find all of our coverage online at c-span.org, or listen on the free c-span radio app. ♪ >> c-span's newest book "the presidents." provides insight into the lives of the american presidents through stories gathered by interviews with noted historians. it is the life events that shaped our leaders, challenges they faced, and the legacy they left. order your copy today. it is now available as a hardcover or ebook at

c-span.org/thepresidents. walshnesota governor tim wants to open human rights offices in his state to fight islamaphobia. he made the announcement before a council in st. paul. the justice department has listed the council as an unindicted conspirator saying the group helped fund hamas. following the governor's remarks, a panel discussed the methods and impact of spreading hate. [applause] to our presenters, thank you for bringing your insight and expertise. these deep dive that we will go into is needed. it is one that as you can see, the community is ready to hear, and we welcome your insights, advice, and guidance. to everyone else who took time

out, the students who are here and the minnesotans, thank you. as president arthur said, those of you from minnesota kind of know that i talk about minnesota a lot. this room is the embodiment of that, and i am grateful. we are here to try and understand what one minnesota means. i know that you each and brace it. muslim community thrives, everyone thrives f -- thrives. we know that our muslim community is deeply tied into the fabric of minnesota. you are our neighbors, our brothers, and sisters. the cultural diversity that comes from the muslim community has made minnesota better, has strengthened our economy, and showed us who we can be. but i also know at this time that platitudes are not going to be enough. after the horrific events in christchurch, so many in

this room know that christ church could have been and nearly was in our backyard, and those are our neighbors. that warm summer day in just two years ago, narrowly avoided tragedy on an unbelievable scale that we saw unfold in christchurch. i am here today to deliver a simple message. hate and islamaphobia have no home in minnesota, but you do. [applause] our administration along with our lieutenant governor flanagan and our commissioners are joined maryr commissioner, catherine ricker, so thank you. [applause] >> mary catherine is a lifelong educator and we want to see actions and our administration draws the line. we will not have our muslim dayh bullied on a single

and the commissioners here to make sure that happens. we will call out to baseless attacks on our muslim brothers and sisters at every chance and we will hold accountable those politicians who choose to use this division to further careers that everything will turn. [applause] -- at every single turn. [applause] >> we are also here to understand again what the presenters will tell us. we need to transfer this into concrete actions. but we need to have the ability and the capacity to turn against islamophobia, to talk about it in each of our communities. that is why our administration is preparing to open three new human rights offices. [applause] those will be places where sanctuary is for our citizens, and it is a place of education that will come out of conversations like this and how we can further this message and

magnify across the state. the actions of the governor's office and the message that 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. light walking towards the together. [laughter] >> we support your safety and well-being in every resource will be behind that. we support you and your right to practice your faith. we will in a very short time here, the holy month of ramadan us. be beyond i am learning and we will get out and try to spend our fridays in the communities and in worship.

the one thing we thing we are going to do, my wife and i are going to be honored to host the first iftar at the governor's residence for our neighbors to come and see this. [applause] here.elcome you i wish you the best. insights that come out of this knowing that our team is here to learn and implement this that one minnesota does not mean that we are all the same but it means that we share a common humanity, we share common values, and when we come together as one community to ensure peace and prosperity for all of us, we are better for it. i think you for being here. i -- thank you for being here. minnesota is only beginning and we can be the ones who show the world what exactly it looks like to exist in peace together. thank you all. [applause]

>> thank you, governor. president arthur. at metro work here state university. [applause] i loved every minute i was here and it was one of my difficult decisions to switch to cair minnesota. i worked with jenny when she was the provost. there will always be one office that had its light on at the upper floor here in this building. it was always jenny. soried to beat her many times. president, i think at metro state is so lucky to have you, and for having us here today.

without further ado, we will bring our first panelists. we have been struggling and heidi could not make it today. unfortunately, there is some challenges at her organization, and she sends her apologies and hopefully will be with us and future events. we are, unfortunately, male dominant in this first panel. we definitely apologize for that. we have been trying to fill this first panel all this week and a half, and even until last night, but we really have amazing speakers, people who are really cutting-edge leaders particularly on this topic. the entire program today, you will see that there is a balanced representation of our community. with that, i will bring our moderator from the metro state university, matt filner, the associate professor at the political science department. he will guide us through.

[applause] matt: thanks, everyone. i have to apologize. as a professor, i think about these events and express your rally way,rofessio and you are not having to write any papers. [laughter] couple wanted to set a of ground rules for this session. this will be a moderated discussion so i will be posing questions tomorrow panelists and in the first answer, i would ask them to introduce themselves. end, we will have an opportunity for the audience to ask questions. think iturther ado, i is important to start with this panel on islamaphobia.

we need to never forget that islamaphobia is not natural. it is not inevitable. it is manufactured and it can be changed. i want to post to the panel, your thoughts on islamaphobia industry. 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 jaylani and the cair minnesota team. [applause] >> the united states is a diverse space. really 50 countries and it really has 50 countries and minnesota has been doing amazing work even as it sits at the front lines of the worst islamaphobia in the country, so i really do commend you for

forming an infrastructure of community and solitary to make an event like this possible. . abbas and in my explore capacity, we ways to provide long-term solutions and frameworks for understanding the challenge of islamophobia, and specifically what we might call the islamaphobia industry or network, it is really important to understand the nature of the beast that we are wrestling. if you would indulge me for just a moment in a metaphor, i tend to think about islamaphobia as racism generally, as a kind of climate problem. our climate about challenge, if you think about pollution and, and climate change, you realize that we are in a lot of trouble.

we have an acute crisis like flint, michigan. environmentaln of racism, climate change, and corporate greed and government negligence producing acute problems. and we have a key problems in islamaphobia by way of bullying, attacks, attacks are threaded to our communities. in our office, we receive those complaints and my office tracks and monitors civil rights abuses and acts of discrimination. but if we look at the origins and the source of this like climate change and pollution, we realize that there are bad actors but also, once they pollute the air, and the acid rain comes back down, you have a complex problem on your hand. even if you were to shut down the factories today. if we were to implement all of the best metrics and best practices we know to reverse this course of action, we would

still be dealing with the oil spill that happened decades ago. how is it that we engage this kind of problem? it is possible to overcome it, but you do have to realize that challenging islamaphobia does not come by simply way of challenging a couple of bad actors on media or a couple of politicians here and there. we really do have to understand the that is at play. what are those infrastructures, what are those things that contribute to the long-term pollution of our public space? in our office, we have been tracking to the islamaphobia network. this is a group of individuals that have very powerful pools of funding and political connections that are very, very organized and very deliberate in the way that they are manipulating our institutions around the world. network, you might hear them giving speeches, and you

might see some of their actions. where are they getting their funding from, where are they getting their power from order grassroots connections and things like that? next week, we will release a report that i believe will go further than most reports out there in exposing the funding networks behind the islamaphobia industry. isthe past what we have done to monitor the strength of these organizations by looking at the financial power and may be looking at their connections, looking at the connections the politicians and whatnot. this year, we made a simple declaration and said, let us find out who is funding and who is receiving funding. let's draw that map out and chart what the money flow looks like so we can go from donor based all the way to media appearance or position in the white house.

what we found is what we would already predict. ideologically bad actors that are typically 70% to 80% somehow connected to defense industries associated with aggressive zionist politics and policies. these funding organizations, adelson or sheldon nwald, they may not be average names but they are powerful, powerful actors that align themselves with a far right conservative agenda. they use tax laws and philanthropy and charitable institutions in the u.s. that are the hallmark of our civil society. they use those mechanisms to fund hate speech, conspiracy theories, and lend themselves to violent actions and thought and

incite that type of thinking and they hide under a 501(c)(3). the same tax benefits that a food bank receives, sheldon adelson, a right-wing tycoon who is funding hate speech and hate actors themselves, are benefiting in the same way a food bank does. philanthropic institutions have now been so caught up in all of this, they have become victims to the islamophobia network. so put those people behind. these were founders of american charity. nina rosen volt is the granddaughter of one of the founders of sears. the same fund she administers washington's t. tuskegee institute. it is a disgrace. forget about the ideological actors. we find mainstream institutions have been caught up in this.

fidelity, schwab, have institutions that are charitable vehicles. those institutions are being exploited by these big donors and funding millions of dollars into the islamophobia network. how do we challenge this? i can get into that. i will stop there. think about challenges we face and we will get into the details. thank you. matt: we will want to respond to lots of comments. i will ask the panel to continue to discussing islamophobia industry before we get into the response. >> salaam aleikum. >> it is great to be here. i am an author and i look at the islamophobia network is specifically from a legal lens, abbas mentioned that commercial network. i try to theorize and frame how the law is spirit and much of the islamophobia debate today.

i will provide you with a general framework and frame of concepts that enable us to think about islamophobia from a legal standpoint. first, it is critical to understand the above all, islamophobia is private in nature. i mean it is unleashed by private actors, meaning individuals, hatemongers like the terrorist in new zealand, not acting on behalf of the state directly. these are individuals who are driven to engage in violence, bigotry based on the presumption, the idea that expressions of muslim identity are somehow tied to terrorism, tied to invasion, tied to ideas this element cannot be assimilated. also there are private networks, whether it be organizations, pundits.- find -- these are acting in a private capacity. that is the first thing i frame

in my research in my book. the second is state-sponsored or structural islamophobia. the same way we think about racism being individual in nature, but also institutional -- it is a frame we need to adopt understand islamophobia. when we talk about state-sponsored islamophobia, what am i talking about specifically? i am talking about laws, things like the patriot act which were enacted after 9/11, the muslim ban, first an executive order signed by the president which eventually became a law held by the supreme court. things like state actions, state action that is not manifested in actual law or executive order. items like rhetoric from the president qualify as state-sponsored islamophobia. ideas like provisions being cast -- passed by the house of representatives which restrict omar from wearing the hijab,

that is structural. it is not only unleashed and enacted by the right. we tend to caricature islamophobia as a phenomenon or a form of bigotry from the right, but once we look at it as a state-sponsored enterprise, we see that the left regularly engages in islamophobia as well. classic example in minneapolis, the twin cities, radical islam policing. it was established by a liberal democratic administration, the obama administration. state-sponsored llam -- state-sponsored islamaphobia is critical to understand that in my opinion -- i might be biased as a law professor, but it is a catalyst islamophobia is a dialectic. there is a synergy between the states by virtue of the state

passing these laws, the state engaging in this kind of state action, it is endorsing the negative sentiment held by private individuals, and during times of crisis, it emboldens and authorizes greater violence. there is a synergy and eight dynamic-- and other between what the state does and what private actors do. you can see that vividly in the manifesto of the man from new zealand, the travel ban, the headscarf ban in france, which is critical because it helps us hold the state culpable for the criminal and deviant actions of private islamophobes. it enables us to have a more fruitful conversation. matt: thank you. jeff, your thoughts on the islamophobia industry. todd: >> my name is todd greene. i am south of the minnesota border.

this is kind of my backyard. i am grateful to be here, thank you to all of the cosponsors for participating and sponsoring this event. this is wonderful and that is wonderful to see the amount of people who are here today. i am a religious historian. usually when i say that, people start to fall asleep. [laughter] todd: it is the angle i take. it is my primary area of research. one of my things is islamophobia is not something that is new, or certainly prejudice against muslims, hostility, discrimination -- it is not even post-9/11. there is a longer history to this. i will argue throughout the day that there are a lot of tropes, stereotypes employed against muslims that have been employed against other religious minorities and racial minorities including jews, catholics, and mormons.

it is important to understand that this is a rebranding of an old prejudice against others who have been deemed outsiders, who don't quite fit in, or are perceived as not fitting in or belonging to us. with the think about who "us" is. the islamophobia industry, one of the things i have thought about is all of us could tell personal stories of entanglements with members of the islamophobia industry. this is not an abstract area of study for most of us. it is very personal and we have all received the attention of the industry and experienced what it is like, and very little is good that comes out of that when they focus on you individually. might -- myhis, particular area of interest is the tactics they use. there are people on this panel that are better equipped in terms of the legal aspect or the funding.

the impact locally here, but i am interested in the tactics they have been using, the arguments they use and to what extent these have been succeeding or not. there are four tactics in terms of the types of arguments used by this industry that i have been tracking over the past decade in seeing how they change and where they are putting their energy, and what impact it has had on political discourse in the united states. one has been around for a while, it is the notion of the jihad, theent forms of jihad, requirement by islam to kill anyone who does not submit. that is nothing new in terms of the past decade or so, and it is not particular to the islamophobia industry. more implicit forms of this were at work and the justification for war on terror. the references to islamic terrorism and fascism from the bush administration, those were

trying to draw on stereotypes. that is one that has been out there for a while. what we have seen our three others. one is notion of civilization jihad, which is a favorite of frank gaffney. he has come to have a lot of influence in washington. hearts --gularly harps on this notion of the muslim brotherhood. he says they have infiltrated the government at the highest levels including the white house and department of justice and state department. what is happening is you have seemingly nice muslims who have decided to play along with the united states and constitution and infiltrate the nation. once they are in great positions of power, we will have the horrific violent islamic state presumably they are trying to implement, and they are trying to do this in a stealth way instead of overtly violent way. this was behind the center with

ted cruz and others to label the muslim brotherhood a terrorist organization and any group they can tie to the muslim aotherhood, therefore, it is terrorist organization. civil liberty groups and political groups and other who are trying to shape policy and discourse when it comes to bigotry and racism. the third tactic i've been tracking is this notion of creeping sharia. you are familiar with that that stereotype as well, that muslims are trying to impose some sort of horrific islamic law on the rest of us. we need to be afraid of sharia, it is supposed to conjure up fear, but there is no nuance in terms of this conversation. it has been gaining traction in the last several years. the islamophobia industry's efforts to do so have succeeded to a large degree. even after new zealand i did a number of media interviews, and

in the majority of those, the journalists asked me about sharia after new zealand. that is the effect, the impact. they promoted through various networks, political networks, and sooner or later it sticks in , and i find myself regularly trying to field questions about that even though the news event is different. i will also say on the whole narrative, last year, the republican national committee and the trump reelection website had a questionnaire on both of their websites. one of the questions was about do you fear the spread of sharia. we can anticipate in the upcoming election cycle that will be deployed. it could be deployed with great effect. we need to keep that in mind in terms of countering the strategy. the final tactic i will mention now and move the conversation is to takeea.

no one was talking about this but the idea that muslims are required by islam to deceive the rest of us in terms of their overall political efforts to impose islam on the rest of the country. we saw this gaining traction. ben carson was notable for complaining that muslims are required by islam to deceive us in order to achieve their larger, more insidious ends. this is a talking point that comes right out of the islamophobia industry. repeatedhese now being in explicit and implicit ways by candidate my people in positions of power. people in positions of power, i can think of all sorts of troops -- tropes used in the last election cycle with muslim bands s that are in many ways coming right out of this industry. they have become powerful in a

short time and it is of great concern. . i am glad that we are devoting this to the industry. jaylani, can you give us the minnesota perspective? there should be two mics. jaylani: for minnesota i would say we recently produced a report on the network in minnesota and we have a large number of social justice groups and that report is available online. i would say in addition to the conversation, what we have noticed in minnesota doticularly is that we minnesota nice-hate here. passive aggressive style. there are three things we look for. number one is the militia groups that have focused on the muslim community. there is a 3% militia that have focus on the muslim community

particularly. what we found out from the bloomington, they were part of these groups that are much more militarized and have that type of focus. they are the most dangerous of the groups. then you have the second group, mom and pop shops, very small, demographically older, and these are the groups that stem from religious-based groups or places like veterans vfw's. if you come to the greater minnesota panel, you will hear more about it specifically because in minnesota, we see the activity happening in the central region of the state and also the northern region of the state. we are also seeing that type of these groups becoming much, much more aggressive but mostly well organized and working together. an anti-muslim

speaker, he will go to six towns and in those, there are groups rallying for people. five or six people, they get them together. that level of the mom and pop shop are really the biggest ones that are impacting. there was policies that they have been pushing in st. cloud, here in our neighboring wisconsin, and what we see is these groups then put a lot of information online. they are now attacking obviously my organization and many others. when we put that report that i mentioned, all of the groups that were able to sign on and be a part of that report were all attacked online. names of organizations were put online. what we are seeing is some form of increased hostility.

i know how to engage the people. they would show up and we would try to talk or have a conversation and most recently, we had a conversation at the historical society about the somali culture of all things. there is a group that came and i have seen this group multiple times. for the first time they started to militarily, tactically stop me from leaving the building to a certain extent. when i left, one was stupid enough to personally threaten me and say he will come after me and make it look like it was an accident. so we are now concerned about what is the relationship between the actual militia groups that and thesemilitarized groups that come to events like even here today, who try to pass information out. the industry is growing because of dark money.

it is growing because of people who are extremely wealthy, who are giving funding to these organizations who we will -- it difficult for us to find out who these people are. while there are in the conservative right you see a lot of them, we also see a great deal on the progressive left as well. the issue goes back to what todd mentioned a minute ago about security and fear. that is why the islamophobia, the idea of resurrection of fear, it is really important because easily, people slip into that. we are starting to see a little change and that is some of the hope we can talk of. matt: thank you. when we study industry, we think about industry as having a vertical position from the very top all the way down to the grassroots. we also think about industry as

being horizontal. covering a wide variety of people and institution. can you talk about how the islamophobia industry is both vertical, reaching from the donors to the grassroots or vice versa and also horizontal, groups across states, institutions? abbas? abbas: sure thing. yeah, i think it is an interesting way to think about it. the industry if you will definitely has top donors that are feeling it. you can think about them. i imagine they do sit around and talk about how they will advance a certain agenda or are aware of what they are doing because they are deliberate and effective. when you look at the activities they are engaged in, it seems they are moving in a concrete sort of tandem way where they

are accenting and helping one another. one of the ways this really works out at the vertical and horizontal level is a fellow named david. all of these organizations sound the same, like americans for a better america. [laughter] >> americans for america. abbas: and it is really interesting. even though i studied this stuff, i always get the acronyms turned around, but david is a man who focuses exclusively on what he calls lawfare and the strategy to bring bogus bases to court and advance bogus legislation. if you look at his funding networks and funding capacity, it does come from the major actors which use dark money institutions. this is very important to recognize. i will stop here and explain what this mechanism looks like.

there is an institution in the tax and charity world called a donor advised fund. a daf, a donor advised fund. outside of the conversation of islamophobia, many are concerned about the rise of this institution in disrupting the american tradition of philanthropy. what it does, i want to donate to cair, but i don't want anyone to know that i donated to cair, so i donate to a donor advised fund which could be something as good-natured as the california community foundation or fidelity or schwab. i have my bancwest fidelity -- i have my bank with fidelity so i might as well use that institution. i tell them where i want to donate to. they are donating to tens of thousands. they donate straight to frank gaffney. i get my tax break and my receipt from fidelity or schwab.

sidee other cited -- of it, they see, he only gets the money from fidelity or schwab. it breaks down the transparency, where we want to be patrons of our public sphere. we want to take responsibility, now you have these commercial conglomerates doing that. the funding goes into that space, but someone like this man advances funding in partnership with gaffney across the united states and approach state legislatures in places that are easy to win, and they pass absolutely junk resolutions s orer concrete resolution concrete that are actually just false. they are lies. a southern state recently passed a resolution against us, against cair. it is factually incorrect.

we can document why it is. we are not talking half-truths. the same thing happening congress recently. -- allution attacking resolution attacking -- a resolu tion attacking an american muslim humanitarian organization. it is false. it is wrong. what is amazing is thinking about how this works vertically and horizontally is the resolution cites journalists for its sources that are paid for by the network and the journalists are pumping out the same lies every single week. there is a man for daniel pipe, he is on the same line over and over again. when i see the resolution introduced against this muslim institution, i see language that is in it, i know who wrote it. you can see the coordination. it is extremely sophisticated. think about what it takes to put something like that together and

the opportunity costs to fight something like that together. really, as bad as it is, we do have to spend the time to recognize tactics and the way they operate. matt: seems like some of those resolutions are addressing the tropes todd described, sharia and civilization, and increasingly we will see that in state legislatures across the country. todd. todd: i don't know if i have much to add. that was a great explanation. i was thinking of the vertical reach. in terms of traveling around the country and speaking to different publics on islamophobia, the tropes i mentioned earlier i have seen gain more and more traction. it is not uncommon for someone to start invoking language that could come right out of spencer. i also found they don't know that.

they don't know the source. they can't trace the genealogy of these ideas. they have been reproduced in so many complex ways. frankly we haven't mentioned this yet, but it is almost like the industry is very savvy with social media, far more than most of us are encountering and very good at spreading their message in that way. they have good -- platforms that spread their narratives far and wide, much more than i used to take seriously. i take it very seriously. i have seen in terms of the reach of this industry and places and populations who are repeating these tropes, maybe they read it on the internet, but the language itself is coming out of a frank gaffney or robert spencer. that vertical reach top to bottom is quite pervasive. that is why i have become alarmed. matt: talk about the horizontal legal changes, whether at the

state level or local level where you're seeing changes in law that might help to institute the gaffney perspective. khaled: to kind of launch the statements, there is one take away i want folks to walk away with. to not think about islamophobia as exclusively irrational. it is physically rational from private actors but when it is state, corporations and industry, it is very rational. their objective is to disseminate a specific portrayal of islam and muslims to achieve and obtain certain objectives, whether political, legal, or economic. that is rational. it is the definition of rationalism. i don't like the term islamophobia industry. i think it is far too monolithic a concept and limited of frame. i like the framing of the network because it allows us to

think about how the state actually impacts, what corporations are doing, what the media is doing. it is more interconnected than it is one sort of homogenous actor. when we think about it horizontally speaking, we can think about how big donors are funding pundits, think tanks to construct and conjure up specific narratives, and produce scholarships that are wrong about muslims. scholarship 100 years ago that was analogous to eugenics. specific groups are inferior, some groups are subordinate and can't be assimilated. that body of scholarship is doing the same thing. moslemshings like cannot be conformed with american society because their objective is to take over. that research of beds and andles -- research abeds enables politicians to pass on

legislation. we can look at even before the rise of trump, the rise of the tea party and they were really effective with spearheading this anti sharia movement. there were something like 200 bills across the country being spread that looked at sharia law as being criminally deviant with american law. law, teach first amendment there is no need for such a law because the first amendment establishment clause restricts any religious body. it is idiotic and absurd, political because it mobilizes voters to vote for right-wing politicians and entrench their influence. another law on the books right now in the state which i teach, arkansas. the state of arkansas is looking

to criminalize and outlaw cair, even though cair doesn't have a chapter was in the state of arkansas. which is crazy. like looking to ban, i don't know, the nra in a state where it doesn't exist. it is completely idiotic, completely absurd, but it is an effective political tool because what it does is the politician wielding that bill can raise it when he is running for office next time and say, i looked to criminalize muslims from the state. vote for me. it is effective. that is a horizontal chain in which the private actors and donors fund the pundits, fund the researchers who then provide politicians with intellectual or anti-intellectual ammunition to pass bills that go ahead and entrench their presence in government. matt: can you talk about how you see imports into minnesota with ideas, like gaffney? jaylani: one of the interesting

--ngs is that minnesota minnesota is not really -- trying to get the right words out. minnesota is a good state. [laughter] jaylani: let's say that. >> it is unique. : it is unique. it has wonderful people here. however -- [laughter] jaylani: i think the muslim community in minnesota has become a target for all the islamophobia network. in fact there was a blogger, several bloggers, who came and harassed a mosque a couple of weeks ago. one of those bloggers made a false police report by creating a fake twitter account and then made a threat to himself from the twitter account and raised the money online. all the islamophobia networks are using this community as a

scapegoat and as an example to launch their efforts elsewhere. it is the success in minnesota are fighting. the success of the muslim community, the success that we have the first congressman, keith ellison and now ilhan omar. the success we are seeing in the state is becoming a problem. all of the talking points are look at minnesota or this area has no go zones. i fear that because the folks that attacked our mosque in bloomington came from illinois. the question we keep asking ourselves, and we are still ising the fbi's -- the fbi how did they target this specific mosque? for most people going back to the mom and pop shops type of hate groups who don't know what they are doing but they do know what they are doing, there is a group of friends called smith park.

most of you don't know what it is because it sounds like a nice group to join. friends of smith park. the reality is smith park is adjacent to the islamic center. it is a group which is two people i think, or less, and they have literally created an image of that building and community. they continually document this online. a few years back, the network actually picked it up and it became a huge headline. thatis why we believe -- is the only logical for us to think about that because of these articles from friends of smith park that connected to this larger network, when they decided to target a mosque, they passed a couple hundred mosques on their way to the specific mosque. that is one of the things i that is one of the things i would say in minnesota, outside,

there are challenges obviously, and st. cloud is an area that is struggling. i think there is tremendous progress happening with efforts from the unite club, social justice groups, a lot of good things in st. cloud i don't want you to not understand, but st. cloud is still a difficult place. one of the things we really need , and this this is why we do these conferences, is we need the actual folks in st. cloud, the big stakeholders, the catholic church, the other groups that have prominent roles to take serious leadership. the problem 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 limited basic information. but at the same time, i believe that these groups project themselves to be powerful because we kind of allow that.

matt: i want to go back to the theme abbas raised of pollution and the way in which we are all affected and polluted by islamophobia, and how little information most people know. when you think about climate change, we each are maybe naïve about the ways we contribute to climate change, what role we play. organizing that you are driving a car mate contribute to climate change. can you talk about what people may be unwillingly contribute to the network? it is clear gaffney is a bad actor. the worst actions are -- mostthe medical problematic. but how are people may be unaware they are contributing to the network?

jaylani: the one thing i'm preaching, and one thing that i hope all of you can do, the kind of space that you live in that is toxic is social media. what i keep finding is allies, advocates have fear of saying something. the silence is killing us. the reality is usually islamophobes have very opinionated, laced questions they throw out. our allies are trying to answer intelligently, decipher what it means, how to balance, the right approach. how many of you have in the comment section done type type t ype, then delete delete? then you are like, i will go home. 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, just say something.

let's fill the comment section with something positive, hopeful, a quote, something . nobody reads articles, they go directly to the comments. what happens is when you do a comments section, someone will come after you. you will get emotionally tied to this comment and fight for it. that happens all the time. my biggest thing is if we can get majority of people, when they see racism and bigotry, something, then walk away. don't carry it with you because then you will get emotionally connected and won't do it again. once you do that, you have shown the person what it looks like to oppose hate on social media. 9, channel 4, any local story about the muslim immunity, even the new zealand press conference, you can see

people just literally going off. now, there are people obviously responding, but a lot of times people don't know what is appropriate. i would say the silence is the biggest problem and something every single person can do something about. matt: thank you. todd? todd: thank you, very well said. i would like to pick up on that because i am not muslim. i seek to be an ally. the audiences i try to reach are my people. why is that? islamophobia doesn't emanate from muslims, any more than anti-semitism emanates from jews. non-muslim majority is responsible, but there is silence. we remember dr. king's words, if you are silent, you have taken a side. you have taken the side of the status quo. the status quo of islamophobia is horrific. it is not a legitimate side to take. you can't take sides in islamophobia. that is a difficult thing to do in america now.

on november 9, 2016, i thought a lot about this question. why are things getting worse? by almost every metric islamophobia is getting worse. why? who do we talk to and who do we try to encourage to speak out? it is very important here. a friend of mine, a muslim activist and scholar, wrote a piece about this a couple months ago where she said christians, white christians included, need to speak with other christians. we need to be talking to each other about islamophobia. it is great to talk to muslims. i love talking to muslims. they get it pretty quickly. [laughter] todd: but people of my background don't. particularly the point, and this is a harder to make, what is one islamophobia? is it ignorance? islamophobia is ignorance. there are lots of organizations that do a great job including in the twin cities like the islamic

resource group trying to educate the public on islam, its rituals, teachings, traditions, etc. this is important work. but we have to also understand that to address islamophobia we can't only do 101 talks because justophobia is not ignorance, it is racism. it is antiracism work. that is what makes it difficult to call attention to this because you are asking them, trying to ask them and myself, what are we doing that is complicit in this work that makes islamophobia so effective? through our silence or inability to recognize the everyday practices, voting patterns from everything, that contribute to a political order. i would say in the u.s., imperialism is connected to this. that sustains islamophobia and that sustains this form of racism. just remember, one big takeaway

i want us to have is islamophobia is not just about not knowing stuff about islam. you can know a lot of things about islam and still be a bigot. the name of such a person is robert spencer. he knows the five pillars of islam, he can quote from the koran, he knows information, he is able to pick from different pieces of islam and wield a picture of islam in this forced light come with indicating the narrative. knowing information doesn't -- it is racism, and it emanates from the majority population , and the majority population needs to be addressed. those who speak to the allies need to speak more to these populations and public and raise the bar higher when it comes to how we address islamophobia , which will help in how we push back. the bar cannot get any lower. i fear too many of us, even who are allies, haven't raised the bar enough with other non-muslims, particularly white americans and white christian americans who struggle to come

to terms with their history of racism, white supremacy, white violence, white christian violence, one of my talking points, because of what the islamophobia industry has done is distract us. 20 morrison said this well, the primary function of racism is distraction. islamophobia is a master at distraction, and we need to stop being distracted and start thing attention to the other stuff we are not looking at that we should be. matt: thank you. [applause] khaled: i'm really glad todd brought up the phrase "white supremacy." islamophobia is a tenet of white supremacy. 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 ban signed by trump, there was a muslim band of stood from 1790 that restricted muslims from becoming naturalized citizens. there was this civilizational epistemology narrative that islam was not a bona fide religion but a political ideology that was entirely antithetical to american values. islamophobia,as there was orientalism. who knows what orientalism is? it is this master discourse that effectively seeds these startups that feed the manufacture of anti-muslim tropes today. third most important, it is critical to understand, and todd brought up another point, that knowledge about islam can breed and engender greater islamophobia. we see that especially when we

look at counter radicalization policing. the last administration was about as knowledgeable about islam is any administration before it, and they used the knowledge to further state-sponsor islamophobic ventures. specifically detroit where i come from, they used the knowledge to put specific sects againstuslim community sunni muslim community, to advance surveillance. it is a misnomer, especially when we are talking about more advanced and more intelligent factions of the islamaphobia network. critical to think about islamaphobia as a white supremacist project, really critical, because it helps us understand. part of this white supremacists idea is to minimize brown faces and non-christian believers. especially during this moment of considerable demographic shift. this country is predicted to be

majority minority in 2043, which is intensifying white paranoia. the main reason that the administration has been so effective at popularizing the idea of the mexico wall is and the muslim band and things of that nature is because the objective is to maintain the white majority and integrity of , andountry islamophobia helps deliver that promise and greater objective. >> thank you. i was struck by thinking about white supremacy over american history, and you mentioned that cair -- that there is a lawsuit to keep cair out of arkansas. the naacp versus alabama is a case where alabama outlawed the naacp. the supreme court actually ruled for the naacp. it is the same issue, repeated in a different way. >> absolutely. i will say this before the next

round. i will say that one of the spaces that we fail in is to not allow the debate of the islamaphobic network, we cannot allow them to dominate debates. a lot of the silence you hear coming from our side is not out of fear of a backlash. i believe we are unequipped and often flat-footed to deal with the complexity of issues out there. what ends up happening is we know that something is racist, we hear it racist, but we cannot fight on their terms because the way they framed it. for example, we know the phrase "black on black violence" is a racist framework. that is a way of obfuscating responsibility. civic responsibility to do historic justice to black communities in the united

states. but if someone falls into the trap of talking about black-on-black violence instead of historical discrimination, historical disenfranchisement, if we allow the frame to go forward, we lose and cede the battle. in the same way when we talk about islamaphobia or jihad, sharia, they are often more knowledgeable than people in our own community and even the muslim community to be able to debate those things on those terms. i do believe in addition to mobilizing our solidarity and our positive affection, and being willing to stand up, we do have to equip ourselves to be able to engage these debates in a more sophisticated way, which is why we have to make better use of our scholars and teachers and researchers and professors to really absorb that knowledge, and not be afraid to jump into understanding the complexities of the world out there. it is linked to imperialism, it is linked to white supremacy, it is complex, but we have to create the bandwidth to educate ourselves so we can fight back. [applause] >> thank you.

we have a couple of minutes to entertain some audience questions. is there someone that has a question that would like to ask the panel? over here. i would ask you in the interest of time to keep the question brief. thank you. >> thank you. i am a community organizer and advocate. my question is how you talk -- i don't know if you touched this, but how you talk about the media, specially the local media. i think that one of the driving forces of islamaphobia about the case of 100 million daily go through airport. elaborate that. thank you. >> question about the role of media. we will take one more question and then we will have the panel talk about it. question in the back. hi, in minnesota, "refugee" is often synonymous with muslim, and i'm wondering how that ties

into everything. >> thank you. we have a question about the media and the question about about "refugee" as sort of a proxy term. >> i do not know if any of you remember fox 9 did a story, there was $100 million being defrauded and it was going to somalia, and it started immediately a witchhunt and a bunch of hearings at the capitol. and fox 9 backtracked, and we had multiple conversations with them. a few weeks ago all report came out that said factually, all of those things were incorrect. that story and all similar stories reappear on social media all the time. that is one of the strategies of this network is to project that this community is violent so anything that is close to that will be projected.

as far as the mention around minnesota particularly when it comes to the muslims and immigrants, that is one of the ways to disguise anti-muslim legislation. in minnesota, one of the parties was running on this, we are going to stop immigrants from coming to minnesota. that platform was really about muslims. they were not talking about other immigrants. in rural minnesota, the conversation about immigrants -- a threat to the community are the muslim community. there were articles every single day, op-eds written about this. this is something that many people do not know. in minnesota, we are around 40 or 50 op-eds against the muslim community that appear every year percentage-wise, then one positive op-ed.

most people who hear this say, "i do not see them." they are happening in rural town papers where they are getting pumped out. some of those op-eds, if you do a word search, you will find the same exact op-ed was published in florida somewhere else. even though it is not their words, they just reprinted and reshuffled the same talking points. the language in minnesota, and also somali may mean muslim, too. someone will say "are you somali" for someone wearing a hijab. that is part of the ignorance, but it is also the racialization of islamophobia. >> thank you. >> i can say some thing about the refugee issue. that the only here term "refugee" is synonymous with muslim and somehow disparaging. what i've been confused about is

why that media space is so dominated by the right. in the refugee resettlement work that happens across the country, you find some of the most powerful stories of american civil society coming together. you all know this here. it is in refugee resettlement and the hosting of people that are coming from other parts of this country where we see the best of america. we really do see churches, secular groups, civil society groups, children -- we see people coming together to uplift, contribute, and do amazing work. i do not understand why we don't have greater media capacity around the storytelling that should go there. literally in today's age, i have been encouraging humanitarian organizations and resettlement agencies to outfit themselves as with better storytelling capacity in those regards. that is an easy frame to overcome, and i would encourage those in that work to consider a little bit of investment in that way. >> and pitching those stories to the media. >> absolutely. >> having professionals are working with you. >> absolutely, there are great stories.

great work to be gone. again, local media, that is perfect. >> i will say really briefly, the use of proxies by the media is actually a lesson that has been learned from the law. the reason the media uses proxies like refugees to effectively serve for muslim is it qualifies as spatially neutral. the law has done that for a long time. by use of proxies in legislation and executive orders, it enables the state actor and the maker of the law to effectively avoid the highest form of scrutiny from the court. the media is emulating what the law has been doing for a long time to appear tolerant, nonracist, non-bigoted, and steer away from the highest forms of public scrutiny. it is another highlight in the way in which there is this really interesting dialectic between private actors in

distance in the media with what the courts have been doing for a long time. >> quickly, two things on the conflation of refugees -- the muslim ban coming to mind, and i cannot shake the conviction that the muslim ban was not just about refugees and immigrants from outside of our borders. it is about muslims within our borders. 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 who are sitting in this room. and that is a scary thought that when you are fighting the muslim ban you are fighting real consequences abroad, and you're pushing back against policy that is meant to demonize muslims and muslim americans. >> especially when it is paired with the effort to delegitimize citizenship. >> absolutely. >> and to remove citizenship

rights from people who have been nationalist o -- naturalized. >> the classic, long-standing historical battle. in terms of media, i am trying to say something positive. [laughter] particularly mainstream national media. i have grown very cynical of mainstream media, and maybe i am not the best person to inspire you on this. other than that we should be very careful because the mainstream media is basically corporate media. corporate media interests and state interests are very much intertwined. i have 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, and that is fine if you want to criticize me for that, but if i give an interview to cnn and "the new york times," i also feel like i'm giving an interview to state media as well in terms of the deep-rooted interests. i could mention iraq war and how many media outlets jump over that word very quickly. i have grown suspicious of how we can change that was most critical media studies confirming the same thing with the way that mainstream media frames islam in terms of

violence and terrorism is incredibly disproportionate. in terms of, say, right-wing extremism, as opposed to people background, who are not responsible for a high percentage of terrorist attacks. but it is hard to push back on mainstream media narratives. local media i have more optimism for, particularly if we can build relationships with the journalists that you have access to can make a difference over the long run. it takes time to invest in that. in terms of -- yeah, i -- i am skeptical about the media. we have to push back. but i do not see the media as the primary source of islamaphobia. it is a mechanism. it is a mechanism. i am not losing sleep over it at night. whether jake tapper of cnn or whatever is the cause of islamophobia. but unwittingly, folks like that can serve as a mouthpiece for islamophobia because of the

deeper rooted interest that corporate media has in terms of the u.s. and its own foreign domestic policies and priorities. that is what we need to start calling attention to in terms of the structural nature of islamophobia and its relationship with the media. >> thank you. i think we have time for one more question. anyone in the middle? >> hello. i am a palestinian-american. just wondering, you have not spoken to the role of zionism or evangelical institutions in upholding islamophobia. what are the roles? >> so, if i can broaden that question, what is the role of specifically religious institutions, religious organizations, other religions in contributing to the industry?

it is a complex story, so we do not have time to fully nuance that story, but maybe a couple of comments. >> there are people here that do better work on this. i can speak particularly to evangelical christians of my generation and older who are invested in certain policy when thereforeo israel and certain policies that are against palestinians that feed the islamophobia industry and the broader narratives of islamophobia that we should continue to pay attention to. again, there are exceptions of evangelical christians absolutely, but in a broader sense, this is important. all of you will remember a controversy, couple controversies involving representative omar, when she criticized aipac, you do not have to know much to know that evangelical christians are very much invested in aipac. this is not a jewish organization. there are plenty of jews that are critical of aipac, but in

the media and the larger political narrative including the democratic party, i daresay, all of that conflated with jews, and her comments were interpreted in the worst possible light, as opposed to a nuanced debate about israel and would benefit from this. calling attention to that piece of this larger puzzle, i think it is quite significant to addressing islamophobia, including the islamophobia that drew the controversy over commentsative omar's that were framed as anti-semitic. >> thank you. [applause] >> i think one thing that we should just know is that islamophobia can be found in any group. and in fact, i would say almost every group has islamophobes. even last year's conference, i had to deal with someone who

attended the conference who had a hard time understanding that ayaan hirsi ali, seen on the more progressive left side, is an islamic focus of their believe pamela geller is an islamic photo not ayaa -- is an islamophobe, but not ayaan hirsi ali. they should the platforms and say the same things. when you poll the jewish community in america, they know more about islamophobia than most people. the first quote i get in my office are from the jewish community. at our press conferences last week, we had almost 1/3 of the people who showed up were jewish americans who stood with the muslim community. when we asked are muslims coming under some form of prejudice, muslims themselves says 60%, but the jewish community said 66%. the only way to explain that is that to know with the jewish community, because they are

dealing with anti-semitism, they understand that the issue is not an anomaly issue. we have to quantify and understand the threat from white nationalism, which is a great introduction to the next panel right after this. i think some of us that really need to understand that islamophobia can be found in all communities and we have to be root it out. >> did you want to answer? [applause] >> specifically zionism, that is not necessarily a religious project. many zionists, and often the most prominent and effective are in fact secular. we should not conflate religiosity with zionism. [applause] that's really important, right? important to identify that above all. second, i really want everybody to go to google and look up an article written by a writer who brilliantly deconstructs the

connection between zionism and islamophobia stateside. if there is any work that tackles that question in a transient way, it is that piece. i cannot articulate what he says in that piece, but i highly recommend reading that. >> [indiscernible] oh, he is with us today? >> come to the other panel. [laughter] >> a really great piece. >> i think we need to finish our session. the next session starts at 10:30 , i believe, and there is a break now. so thank you to our panelists. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> congress is on the last week of its spring recess. members returned to capitol hill monday. the house to work on climate

change legislation, the senate continues confirmation of district court judges and confirmation of high-level jobs in the trump administration. watch on c-span and on c-span2. some members of congress are on the campaign trail. the democratic candidate seth moulton of massachusetts spoke at this morning's politics and eggs breakfast in bedford, new hampshire, and said democrats should already be pursuing president trump's impeachment. this a little bit of what you will see tonight at 7:00 p.m. eastern. >> this is another place where i disagree with the party, because i voted with a minority of democrats last year to start moving on impeachment proceedings. the reason is that, even lasted there was ample evidence that the president and his associates committed crimes. the mueller reports through this investigation has already indicted over 30 of the

president's close associates and friends. his campaign chairman is in prison right now while we are eating breakfast. do not tell me there is not enough to discuss about impeachment. i think our party made a mistake by waiting until now, hoping for a smoking cannon or something in the report, before starting this debate. we debate things in congress and we vote on them. the debate is important. and we should have started the debate while ago. i do not think the time is now for a vote, because we do not have all the evidence, we still do not have the full report, for example. but we should have started the debate a while ago and that is why i called for it last year. announcer: democratic presidential candidate seth moulton spoke in bedford, new hampshire this morning. watch the entire speech this evening here on c-span. the, harris, who is running for

the nomination, held a town hall out dartmouth college in new hampshire, we will have that for you at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. you can also find our political coverage online at c-span.org or listen on the pre-c-span radio app. ♪ announcer: c-span's newest book "the presidents" rating the best and worst chief executives, providing insight into the lives of the presidents through stories gathered by interviews with noted historians. shaped the live that our leaders and the legacies of a have left behind. order your copy today. it is now available as a hardcover or e-book at c-span.org/the presidents. ♪ host: coming up, a discussion on presidential rankings, part of c-span's late