By Sahar Aziz
Emotionally draining is how best to describe the past six months for many Muslim Americans. Oscillating between outrage, hopelessness and determination, our diverse communities have spent the past six months doing whatever we can to end the senseless murder of over 33,000 Palestinians, including 13,000 children, by the Israeli military.
The celebratory mood of Eid, therefore, could not come soon enough.
But for Muslim students at Rutgers University, a joyous religious holiday quickly turned terrifying.
Every year at the end of Ramadan, Muslims across the country gather at their mosques for the Eid al-Fitr prayer alongside fellow congregants. Like other religions’ holidays, Eid is a time of celebration with friends and family.
But when Rutgers Muslim students arrived for Eid prayer on the morning of April 10, they were horrified to discover the Center for Islamic Life at Rutgers University (CILRU) had been vandalized that night. Islamic art with Quranic scripture lay shattered on the ground in every room. Windows were broken, televisions were destroyed, and the Palestinian flag on display at the Islamic center was stolen.
The criminals’ message was clear: Muslims are not safe or welcome here at Rutgers University.
I wish I could admit surprise that this hate crime occurred at Rutgers University. To the contrary, it is the predictable outcome of six months of pro-Israeli groups engendering anti-Muslim hate on college campuses under the guise of combating antisemitism.
Universities have become ground zero for the weaponization of antisemitism to legitimize infringing on free speech rights. Either higher education institutions quash campus protests, prohibit lectures by Palestinians, fire Muslims and professors, and shut down academic centers that criticize Israel constitutes antisemitism, or they are condemned as antisemitic by these special interest groups.
The logic could not be more perverse: combating antisemitism requires perpetuating Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism.
Pro-Israeli organizations orchestrate smear campaigns intended to threaten Muslims and Arabs’ jobs, safety, and reputations. These special interest groups have sent tens of thousands of hateful emails alleging Muslim and Palestinian students and faculty are terrorism supporters, anti-American, and antisemitic. They demand that Rutgers University fire Muslim and Palestinian professors, shut down Palestinian student groups, and expel Arab and Muslim students for their advocacy in defense of Palestinian human rights.
With no regard for American fundamental principles of free speech and academic freedom, pro-Israeli politicians make the specious claim that inviting Palestinian academics to present their research is antisemitic.
Likewise, the mainstream media distorts the motivations of the mass protests criticizing U.S. military support for Israel as antisemitic, when the clearly stated objective is a ceasefire in Gaza. As tens of thousands of Palestinians are being killed, severely injured, and starved by Israel, college activism by Muslim and Palestinian students is erroneously portrayed as anti-Jewish.
These racial tropes that Muslims are presumptively antisemitic and terrorists only serve to justify hate crimes against Muslims and Palestinians (incorrectly presumed to all be Muslim).
Indeed, we cannot disconnect such a hostile Islamophobic environment from the murder of a six-year-old Palestinian boy in Chicago, the attempted murder of three Palestinian college students in Vermont, and now the vandalization of the Center for Islamic Life at Rutgers.
After six months of vilification for defending human rights in Gaza, Eid should have been a celebratory reprieve from the emotionally taxing double burden of defending Palestinian human rights abroad while simultaneously being targets of anti-Palestinian racism at home.
A safe community gathering during at Rutgers University would have reminded our students that they too belong in our Rutgers Beloved Community. Instead, Muslim students became victims of hate in the one place on campus that must be a safe space for all students — a house of worship.
The vandalization of the Islamic Center leaves no doubt that the safety of Muslim students is a serious problem at Rutgers University. At a time when universities and politicians are committing to protecting Jewish students, they must be equally committed to combatting Islamophobia.
Sahar Aziz is a Distinguished Professor of Law at Rutgers University and author of “The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom.”
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