The White House has launched its first nationwide plan to deal with Islamophobia, itemizing over 100 steps to deal with hate, violence and discrimination towards Muslims and Arab Americans.
This plan comes after the same nationwide technique to fight antisemitism, introduced by President Joe Biden in May 2023, amid rising issues about hatred and discrimination towards Jewish communities within the United States.
Officials spent months making ready the anti-Islamophobia plan, which was launched on Thursday, simply 5 weeks earlier than President Joe Biden’s time period ends. Its implementation will largely rely upon the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
“Over the previous yr, this initiative has turn into much more essential as threats towards American Muslim and Arab communities have spiked,” Biden administration stated in an announcement asserting the technique.
The assertion referred to the October 2023 killing of six-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi, a Palestinian American Muslim boy, who was stabbed to demise in Illinois.
The plan outlines steps the manager department can take, together with over 100 suggestions for numerous sectors of society.
Its priorities embrace elevating consciousness of prejudice towards Muslims and Arabs whereas celebrating their cultural contributions, enhancing their security and safety, addressing discrimination by supporting non secular lodging, and fostering unity amongst communities to counter hate.
Many of these state objectives are just like those the Biden administration specified by its plan to cut back antisemitism — particularly the emphasis on bettering security and safety and constructing cross-community solidarity.
“While people have generally been focused as a result of they’re considered Muslim, it’s also essential to acknowledge that Arabs are routinely focused merely for being who they’re,” the announcement of the technique states, noting that Muslims and Arab Americans have helped construct out the nation since its founding.
It additionally added that new knowledge assortment and schooling efforts are “rising consciousness of those types of hate as effectively of the proud heritages of Muslim and Arab Americans.”
The plan requires spreading profitable strategies of involving Muslim and Arab Americans in reporting hate crimes and for federal businesses to extra explicitly state that “discrimination towards Muslim and Arab Americans in federally funded actions is prohibited.”
The White House plan additionally encourages “state, native, and worldwide companions, together with the nongovernmental sector, to pursue related efforts aimed toward fostering unity by acknowledging our shared humanity, affirming widespread values and historical past, and upholding equal justice, liberty, and safety for all.”
Pro-Palestinian teams, criticising the administration’s sturdy assist for Israel in its conflict with Gaza, typically disrupted marketing campaign occasions for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris after Biden withdrew from the reelection race in July.
Trump, who launched a journey ban on a number of Muslim-majority nations throughout his first time period, gained the most important majority-Muslim metropolis within the US in final month’s elections. However, some Arab Americans who supported him have began elevating issues about sure Cabinet and administration picks for his upcoming time period.