The young men who killed three people outside a San Diego mosque complex this week had expressed hatred for all types of people, inspired by vitriol and conspiracy theories they found online, law enforcement officials said. But it was Muslims they chose to target.<\/p>\n
To some, the killings seemed like an inevitable result of a swell of Islamophobia in the United States and around the globe. Anti-Muslim rhetoric on the right has become louder, with Republican politicians raising concerns about new Muslim schools and growing Muslim communities<\/a>, and at the most extreme, suggesting Muslims don\u2019t belong here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Muslema Purmul, 43, whose children attended school on the mosque campus, said her 12-year-old son was feeling gloomy, angry and sad. \u201cThen he said something that really hurt us,\u201d Ms. Purmul said, her voice breaking. \u201cHe said, \u2018I feel unwanted.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Purmul, a longtime member of the community who knew all three of the shooting victims, said that her son had gone on to observe, \u201cIf this were to happen to anyone else, everyone would make a much bigger deal about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Hatred against Muslims is a longstanding problem. But the escalating conflict between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East, the war in Iran, and the reverberations of both throughout American politics, have ushered in a new phase of overt discrimination and fears of violence. Politicians like Representative Randy Fine of Florida have enthusiastically embraced Islamophobia, saying it is rational and more of it is needed<\/a>.<\/p>\n President Trump himself has a history of criticizing Muslims and Islam<\/a>, and has recently posted about the war in Iran in inflammatory terms, including a message on Easter<\/a> in which he promised that \u201ca whole civilization will die.\u201d In another message he signed off, \u201cpraise be to Allah.\u201d<\/p>\n This week, Laura Loomer, an adviser to President Trump, suggested on social media that all Muslims should be deported and called them an \u201cinvasive species.\u201d<\/p>\n Her remarks showed how mainstream Islamophobia had become, said Nader Hashemi, the director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown. \u201cThese used to be fringe movements, people who were at the margins of society,\u201d he said. \u201cNow Laura Loomer has direct access to the White House.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, \u201cSo no surprise, then, that these things get internalized by people who then commit these acts of violence.\u201d<\/p>\n Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the Trump administration had repeatedly condemned political violence and that Democrats were \u201csmearing their opponents as Nazis, fascists and more.\u201d <\/p>\n Imam Taha Hussane, the director of the mosque, said that it had been steadily adding security features in recent years, including a tall metal fence and cameras. \u201cLooking at what\u2019s happening, the madness of this world and the dehumanization of the Muslim community, you do expect something like this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Council on American-Islamic Relations received more civil rights complaints last year than it had recorded in any year since 1996, according to its most recent report. The Islamophobia Index<\/a>, a measure of the public\u2019s endorsement of negative stereotypes, rose from 2018 to 2025, with a marked increase between 2022 and 2025. The index was created by the Institute for Social Understanding, which provides research and education about American Muslims.<\/p>\n Earlier this month a Congressional subcommittee held a hearing on the dangers of \u201cthe rise of Shariah law in America.\u201d Shariah law is a term for Islamic religious rules.<\/p>\n There has been a corresponding rise in antisemitism and violent episodes targeting Jews. That trend has drawn bipartisan concern, and denouncing antisemitism has become a cause for many on the right, even as others embrace or ignore white nationalists espousing antisemitic view<\/a>s. Some Muslims say that, by contrast, the discrimination they face has been met with complacency or worse.<\/p>\n Even as Muslim Americans have won more visibility and political power in parts of the United States, there has been increased vitriol against them. The campaign and election of Zohran Mamdani, the first Muslim mayor of New York City, was accompanied by millions<\/a> of negative social media posts and commentary from public officials<\/a> that called Mr. Mamdani, among other things, a terrorist, a jihadi, and a supporter of Shariah law. In late January, Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, one of two Muslim women serving in Congress, was attacked by a man with a syringe<\/a>.<\/p>\n On college campuses, Muslims have expressed worries about discrimination and harassment, documented in several extensive reports commissioned in the aftermath of the protests over the war in Gaza. At Harvard, Muslim students told school investigators that physical assaults, online harassment, and the publishing of their photos and personal information had created \u201can atmosphere of intimidation\u201d at the school, according to the 2025 report<\/a> of the university\u2019s task force on anti-Muslim bias.<\/p>\n A similar task force at the University of California, Los Angeles, warned that President Trump\u2019s return to power had \u201cemboldened off-campus vigilantes as well as repressive faculty on our campus to step up their harassment of those speaking about or teaching Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n Many students who spoke to the Harvard task force said the school had not done enough to protect students, while the U.C.L.A. task force accused the school’s chancellor, Julio Frenk, of prioritizing the work of a parallel committee to combat antisemitism.<\/p>\n \u201cThe asymmetry of your response to the two task forces is glaring,\u201d members of the group that focused on anti-Muslim sentiments wrote to Dr. Frenk in March 2025.<\/p>\n