A Western leader publicly embraced Islam to repudiate War on Terror rhetoric

Evidence

Exactly one week after fifty-one of her fellow Kiwis were massacred by a foreign terrorist, she did not push Islam to the margins and away from the cameras like so many men before her, but deliberately chose to position it alongside her, and around her, for the whole world to see. … In that moment, as the world watched, Ardern and Islam were entwined as one. Not in the form of spiritual conversion, but in a powerful political statement that defied everything that the War on Terror zealously broadcast, by way of propaganda and policy, for two decades. She embraced Islam during an impasse when the embattled faith needed it most. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1021

Categorization

• XREF: Complements the Iftikhar global-synthesis reading this chapter is paired with — the Christchurch response as a counter-model to state-backed Islamophobia.