SYDNEY (Middle East Eye) -- Nearly 86 percent of anti-Muslim posts on social media come from the U.S., the UK and India, a report by the Australian-based Islamic Council of Victoria (ICV) has found.
Over a two-year period, between August 28, 2019 and August 27, 2021, India saw the highest figure, with 871,379 Islamophobic tweets, followed by the U.S. with 289,248, and the UK, with 196,376.
The report, Islamophobia in the Digital Age, states that in India, the rampant Islamophobia is a result of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) normalization of hatred against Muslims. In the U.S., though, Islamophobia has long been a problem, one that “was dramatically exacerbated by the racist, conspiratorial and inflammatory rhetoric employed by Donald Trump”, the report states.
As for the UK, the prevalence of anti-Muslim tweets was attributed to a multitude of factors, including the global reach of Trump’s hatred, the country’s longstanding issues with anti-migrant sentiment, and the casual racism of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the report wrote.
According to the ICV, there were at least 3,759,180 Islamophobic posts made on Twitter between August 28, 2019 and August 27, 2021. After nearly one year, 85 percent of the hateful tweets were still online; only 14.8 percent were eventually removed, either because they had been hidden through privacy settings, taken down by users, or deleted by moderators.
“We conclude from this that Twitter is drastically failing at removing anti-Muslim content,” the report noted. “This is unsurprising given that they do not automatically screen posts for hate, but rather only act once a report has been filed.
“In practice, however, even when Islamophobia is brought to their attention, a mere 3 percent of flagged tweets end up being removed.”
The top three common themes that were observed in the anti-Muslim tweets included: the association of Islam with terrorism, the depiction of Muslim men as perpetrators of sexual violence, and the fear that Muslims wish to impose sharia law on others.
Other types of tweets included conspiracy theories that Muslims are being sent as migrants to out-reproduce non-Muslim communities, the targeted harassment of Muslim public figures, and the characterization of halal slaughter as inhumane.
When there is a terrorist attack in the West, anti-Muslim hate is more likely to be prevalent online than it is following attacks committed elsewhere, the report found. When more than 50 people were beheaded in Mozambique, there were 6,264 recorded anti-Muslim tweets. After the London Bridge stabbing, there were over 10,000.
The report also found that how politicians respond to events connected to Islam can have an impact on Islamophobia. It was found that the third largest spike in anti-Muslim tweets on February 25, 2020, for example, was a result of hateful remarks by the BJP