The US-Israel war on Iran has triggered a sharp surge in anti-Muslim hate, both online and offline. Within just six days of the start of the war, the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) recorded over 25,000 dehumanizing and inciteful posts targeting Muslim Americans on X alone. The content ranges from dehumanizing language calling Muslims “rats,” “vermin,” and “parasites” to explicit calls for extermination, internment camps, mass deportation, and the destruction of mosques.

This escalation has been compounded by political rhetoric from senior administration officials and members of Congress who have framed the conflict in overtly religious and Christian nationalist terms, creating an environment in which Muslim Americans and those perceived to be Muslim face a heightened risk of suspicion, hostility, and violence.

Join the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) and Muslim Counterpublics Lab (MCL) for a panel discussion examining the intersection of war, political rhetoric, discriminatory social media policies, and the real-world consequences for Muslim communities in the United States and abroad. Panelists will explore how anti-Muslim rhetoric has long served as a tool of US foreign policy and discuss the emerging threat landscape facing Muslims and what policymakers, tech companies, and civil society can do to protect Muslim communities during periods of geopolitical crisis.

Panelists

Azadeh Shahshahani

Azadeh Shahshahani, Legal and Advocacy Director with Project South, advances a practice of movement lawyering, focused on confronting state repression and dismantling systems of surveillance, incarceration, and deportation. Azadeh has organized for two decades to protect and defend migrants and Black and Muslim communities from systemic lslamophobia, xenophobia, and anti-Black racism. She also provides support to social justice movements in the Global South, from Brazil to Palestine.

Azadeh is a past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She currently serves on the Advisory Council of the American Association of Jurists.

She is the author or editor of several groundbreaking human rights reports as well as law review articles and book chapters focused on movement lawyering, immigrants’ rights, surveillance of Muslim-Americans, and using the international human rights framework as a tool for liberation. Her writings have appeared in The Guardian, The Nation, MSNBC, Time Magazine, Boston Review, Slate, and Los Angeles Times, among others.

Azadeh received her JD from the University of Michigan Law School where she was Article Editor for The Michigan Journal of International Law. She also has a Master’s in Modern Middle Eastern and North African Studies from the University of Michigan.

She is the recipient of the Shanara M. Gilbert Human Rights Award from the Society of American Law Teachers, the US Human Rights Network Human Rights Movement Builder Award, the Emory Law School Outstanding Leadership in the Public Interest Award, the University of Georgia Law School Equal Justice Foundation Public Interest Practitioner Award, the Emory University MLK Jr. Community Service Award, and several other recognitions. She has also been recognized as an Abolitionist by the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University & the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives.

Azadeh served as a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School in the Fall of 2025. She also served as the Spring 2025 Daynard Public Interest Law Fellow at the Northeastern University School of Law.

Azadeh gave the keynote speech at the 30th anniversary of the Rebellious Lawyering Conference at Yale Law School in 2024. She also delivered keynote speeches at the 2025 Emory Law School International Law Symposium and at the Spring Student Symposium at Brooklyn Law School in 2024. She also gave the keynote address for Peace and Justice week at Earlham College in 2019.

Dr. Maha Hilal 

Dr. Maha Hilal is the founding Executive Director of Muslim Counterpublics Lab. She is an author, researcher, and organizer dedicated to dismantling the War on Terror. Her first book, Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11, was released in January 2022 to widespread acclaim. Her writings have appeared in Vox, Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, Newsweek, Business Insider,  and The Daily Beast, and The Nation among others. 

Prior to founding MCL, Dr. Hilal was the inaugural Michael Ratner Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies where she produced thought pieces on the targeting of Muslim in the War on Terror. She has worked at a number of human rights/social justice organizations including the Coalition for Civil Freedoms, Government Accountability Project, Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, and Center for Victims of Torture. 

Dr. Hilal earned her doctorate in May 2014 from the Department of Justice, Law and Society at American University in Washington, D.C.  She received her Master’s Degree in Counseling and her Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In her spare time, Dr. Hilal enjoys spending time with her family and practicing Arabic calligraphy.

Petra Alsoofy

Petra Alsoofy is the Senior Outreach and Partnerships Manager at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU). ISPU, a nonprofit applied research organization, provides objective research and education about American Muslims to support well-informed dialogue and decision-making. Petra’s work at ISPU includes strengthening valued partnerships and creating new ones, ensuring ISPU’s research reaches the public and critical stakeholders such as policymakers, community and interfaith leaders, media professionals, and educators. She has developed and conducted various trainings and programs, including briefings on Capitol Hill, researchers’ convenings, major conference and media appearances, and subject area expert meetings on American Muslim communities.

Co-Moderators

Niala Mohammad

Niala Mohammad serves as Program Lead (North America) on Islamophobia and anti-migrant hate at the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH). 

She previously served as Senior Policy Analyst for South Asia at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and as Director of Policy and Strategy at the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Prior to her policy work, Niala spent more than 14 years as a multimedia broadcast journalist with Voice of America, where she covered South Asia and produced in-depth reporting on politics, human rights, and regional affairs.

Sanaa Ansari Khan

Sanaa Ansari Khan is the Director of the Digital Spaces Project at Muslim Counterpublics Lab where she works to ensure digital spaces are equally accessible to Muslims sharing their narratives. She is a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who has worked on Muslim civil rights and digital rights issues at several nonprofit advocacy organizations over the last two decades, including CAIR, Muslim Advocates, and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.