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Mahmoud Khalil\u2019s arrest is the latest flashpoint in the global culture war\u2013and it\u2019s likely to have frightening implications.<\/p>\n
by <\/strong>Nyki Duda<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>March 14, 2025 12:31 PM<\/p>\n Last Saturday, federal agents made the first arrest in the Trump Administration\u2019s promised campaign to deport international students who participated in protests against Israel\u2019s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza on their college campuses. Syrian-born Palestinian Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. permanent resident married to a U.S. citizen, was taken from his home by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in front of his wife, who is eight months pregnant.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In a statement following the arrest, the Department of Homeland Security <\/span>claimed<\/span><\/a> that Khalil\u2014who has not been charged with a crime\u2014had \u201cled activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,\u201d and that other such activists risked having their visas and green cards cancelled under the authority of a January executive order that many analysts have compared to Trump\u2019s 2017 Muslim travel ban. Since Khalil\u2019s arrest, The Atlantic<\/em> has <\/span>reported<\/span><\/a> the administration has another green card holder in its sights. A judge has since halted Khalil\u2019s deportation, and he remains in detention in Louisiana. Following his arrest, the White House <\/span>shared a photo<\/span><\/a> of Khalil to its social media accounts with the text: \u201cSHALOM, MAHMOUD.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The Trump Administration\u2019s targeting of Khalil and other Palestine solidarity activists is the latest flashpoint in a cascade of global anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiment. But analysts say it\u2019s also an attack on freedom of speech and the right to protest. And while xenophobia and Islamophobia have long histories in the United States, their convergence in the context of U.S. support for Israel\u2019s war on Gaza has left many in the United States and abroad fearful for the future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Since taking office, the Trump Administration <\/span>has wielded<\/span><\/a> the Palestinian <\/span>solidarity movement<\/span><\/a> on college campuses as a tool to <\/span>crack down on dissent<\/span><\/a>. The administration is <\/span>reportedly<\/span><\/a> using artificial intelligence technologies to scan the social media accounts of international students for evidence they are \u201cpro-Hamas,\u201dwhich Middle East analyst Yousef Munayyer <\/span>called<\/span><\/a> proof that \u201cPalestine is the canary in the coal mine of authoritarianism and repression.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Officials have also promised to halt federal funding for schools that allow \u201cillegal\u201d demonstrations on campus, later announcing the administration would <\/span>cancel $400 million<\/span><\/a> in funding to Columbia University, where Khalil was a student, due to its \u201cinaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.\u201d That accusation comes as student activists are <\/span>suing<\/span><\/a> Columbia over its harsh response to Palestine solidarity protests, after the university brought in police officers armed with guns and sledgehammers to evict a student encampment and carry out mass arrests.<\/span><\/p>\n Elia Ayoub, the United Kingdom-based Lebanese writer of <\/span>Hauntologies<\/span><\/a> and co-founder of the <\/span>From the Periphery<\/span><\/a> media collective, sees parallels between the anti-Jewish propaganda and policies of Nazi Germany and other Western powers during the rise of global fascism in the 1930s, and the types of racist and Islamophobic rhetoric common today. In each case, he says, religious minorities have been cast as alien, foreign, and fundamentally incompatible with Western civilization.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIf democracy is understood as equality under the law, and this is diminished by a \u2018lesser than\u2019 rhetoric, that doesn\u2019t just victimize the specific groups it\u2019s targeting, it erodes the fundamental principle that the state is supposedly built on.\u201d Ayoub says, adding that Western support for Israel has shifted how Islamophobia takes shape. \u201cToday, it\u2019s less a matter of fighting the Taliban or ISIS or whatever, but of supporting Israel\u2019s project, the genocide in Gaza, more explicitly and unconditionally.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n For Ayoub, the character of today\u2019s anti-Muslim sentiment parallels the Islamophobic rhetoric that abounded in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and throughout the\u00a0 \u201cwar on terror,\u201d\u00a0 during which former President George W. Bush made some effort to deny that his policies broadly targeted Islam, but also presented the war to the public as part of a <\/span>Christian crusade<\/span><\/a>. \u201cAnd today, you have in power people who are messianic crusaders,\u201d says Ayoub. \u201cThey\u2019re thinking about these issues, vis-\u00e0-vis Israel-Palestine.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n U.S. support for Israel\u2019s war on Gaza has only emboldened those who embrace the \u201ccrusade\u201d rhetoric against Arabs and Muslims at home. Anti-Muslim hate speech has <\/span>spiked<\/span><\/a> online in the months since Hamas\u2019s October 7, 2023 attacks and Israel\u2019s subsequent genocide in Gaza. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) <\/span>reported<\/span><\/a> that it received more than 8,000 complaints in 2023\u2014the highest number it\u2019s recorded\u2014with almost half of all complaints filed in the final three months of that year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Ahmed Rehab, the Executive Director of Chicago CAIR,<\/strong> tells The Progressive<\/em> that the \u201cnotion that America is more American with white, Christian, English-speaking populations\u2014versus those who might be brown or Muslim or Hindu or Spanish-speaking, or something else\u201d<\/em> is just one of the factors fueling anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment. Rehab<\/strong> sees growing challenges for the community under the administration of President Donald Trump, including changes to asylum procedures, raids by immigration authorities, and the White House\u2019s unflagging support for Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza. These challenges are especially present in Chicago, which is home to the largest Palestinian community in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhen there\u2019s a demonization and dehumanization of Palestinians and Arabs in the administration, and a belittling of their experiences and suffering, and chest-beating in support of the aggressors. . . .the attacks on freedoms of students, on protesters and those who bear different opinions and political views from the administration, all of that feeds into Islamophobia,\u201d<\/em> Rehab<\/strong> says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The attacks on the Muslim and Arab communities go beyond official policy. In February, Elon Musk <\/span>posted<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on X a list of Arab- and Muslim-American charities that he called \u201cterrorist organizations.\u201d Among them were the Islamic Relief Agency, which <\/span>focuses<\/span><\/a> on disaster and emergency aid, Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, which <\/span>promotes<\/span><\/a> gender equity and civil rights, and the Palestinian Children\u2019s Relief Fund, which <\/span>provides<\/span><\/a> free medical treatment to Palestinian children.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe Orwellian attacks on civic life and civil organizations are concerning,\u201d<\/em> Rehab<\/strong> says, because it raises the possibility \u201cthat they would come after any organization whose politics they don\u2019t like.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Some of the groups on the list Musk shared have been previously targeted with similar accusations: In 2014, Israel <\/span>accused<\/span><\/a> Islamic Relief of funding Hamas, though an <\/span>audit<\/span><\/a> by the British professional services company KPMG found no evidence to support this claim. And in 2023, reporting by The<\/em> New Yorker<\/em> <\/span>found evidence<\/span><\/a> of a <\/span>smear campaign by<\/span><\/a> the United Arab Emirates against Islamic Relief, trying to link it to the Muslim Brotherhood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The United States is far from the only country dealing with a growing crisis of Islamophobia. Anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric is also on the rise\u00a0 in Europe, where there is <\/span>significant overlap<\/span><\/a> between Muslim and migrant communities. Analyzing survey data from 2022, an <\/span>October study<\/span><\/a> by the E.U. Agency for Fundamental Rights found that nearly half of Muslims in the European Union said they experienced racism, compared to 39 percent in 2016, with those in Austria, Germany and Finland reporting the worst levels of discrimination. In December 2023, Human Rights Watch\u2019s Almaz Teferra <\/span>said<\/span><\/a> in an interview that anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim incidents had surged in the European Union since October 7. But rather than taking stock, E.U. countries \u201cspecifically called on Muslims to distance themselves publicly from antisemitism\u2014as if antisemitism in Europe could be attributed solely to an entire ethnic or religious minority.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Last month, <\/span>a report<\/span><\/a> from the corporate accountability group Ek\u014d found that the social media companies Meta and X approved ads in German, for their German markets promoting violent hate speech against migrants, including calls for their murder and imprisonment. The ads were pulled before their scheduled run in the days leading up to the German federal election in February.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In the end, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party took second place in the federal polls, with the active backing of Musk\u2014who the E.U. Commission <\/span>accused<\/span><\/a> in January of interfering in foreign elections. And while the other major parties have said they won\u2019t form a coalition with the AfD, they have <\/span>adopted<\/span><\/a> many of its anti-migrant policies. Meanwhile, in December, one day after the regime of Syria\u2019s Bashar al-Assad was ousted\u2014after nearly fourteen years of war and more than fifty of dictatorship\u2014Germany\u2019s current center-left government <\/span>announced<\/span><\/a> it would freeze any pending asylum applications from Syrians, as did France, the United Kingdom, and several other European powers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Still, despite the rise of far-right, nativist elements globally, Ayoub sees reason for hope. \u201cThe guise of the far right is very chaotic and messy,\u201d he says, noting that the early days of the Trump Administration have been marked by infighting. \u201cSo you can identify the fault line and work to make it worse for them . . . . [The far right] is not this force of nature\u2014like \u2018hey, we see this tsunami coming, and we have to run away.\u2019 It\u2019s not. These are people, and people can be defeated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n