The Almontaser campaign success emboldened later mosque and professor attacks

Evidence

The New York Post carried a story that stated that the T-shirt was “apparently a call for a Gaza-style uprising in the Big Apple.” Almontaser’s efforts to explain the meaning and significance of the term intifada were countered by an ADL spokesperson who called AWAAM “an active supporter of the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas.” The usual anti-Palestinian crowd all chimed in and the pressure mounted. After enduring an intense campaign of personal harassment and intimidation, Almontaser was forced to resign when her former supporter, Mayor Bloomberg, caved. However, the Khalil Gibran International Academy was eventually established, and Almontaser sued the city. But the Islamophobia network learned valuable lessons on how to wage a successful campaign and apply pressure on elected officials. It wasn’t long before they found another opportunity, the Cordoba House project, to carry out a similar campaign. Since then, attacks on mosques and community centers across the country have increased. And new McCarthyist-type “lists” have appeared on the internet such as the “Professors Watchlist” that draw from and build on Horowitz’s 101 Most Dangerous professors list mentioned above. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 671

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The mosque-attack escalation and McCarthyist ‘Professors Watchlist’ continuation of Horowitz’s list shows the network’s playbook scaling — connects to the vault’s broader post-9/11 political repression claims.

Related

• Media distortion plus ADL pressure forced Almontaser’s resignation when Bloomberg caved. (similarity 0.82)
• The Almontaser ouster taught the network a reusable playbook against elected officials (similarity 0.82)
• The ADL reframes Islamophobia as intolerance to avoid naming empire-linked racism (similarity 0.81)