Twenty-five years after 9/11, negative perceptions of Islam persist even as Muslim political representation grows. Al Jazeera’s Noor Wazwaz looks at what has and hasn’t changed for Muslims in the US.
Published On 11 Sep 202611 Sep 2026
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Nquthu, South Africa – When Zwelibi Jack Ngubane died at the age of 105, he had already made one thing clear to his family: he wanted to be buried as a Muslim.
Hundreds of family and community members gathered for his funeral in Nquthu, a rural part of northern KwaZulu-Natal where Christianity and traditional African beliefs are dominant and Muslims are a tiny minority. Ngubane had converted to Islam late in life after observing the faith of his young grandson.
When he died, his family honoured his wishes. His funeral was conducted according to Muslim burial rites before he was laid to rest in the family burial plot in his village. For a community largely unfamiliar with Islamic burial practices, the funeral was a novelty.
But it wasn’t a controversy. That distinction has become increasingly important in South Africa.
In recent months, anti-Muslim rhetoric has become more visible online, intersecting with a heated national debate about immigration and anti-migrant movements. Posts have accused Muslims of attempting to take over South Africa, questioned their belonging in the country and accused Muslim organisations of using charity and poverty to convert Black South Africans to Islam.
One social media post complained that humanitarian organisation Gift of the Givers had been “getting on our nerves with their insistence on pushing their Muslim beliefs in South Africa”. Another claimed: “Most foreigners in South Africa are Muslim and if you look most countries experiencing war are Muslim countries not Christian ones.” Others have accused Muslims of “targeting poverty-stricken communities and converting them to Islam”.
But in the rolling hills and villages of Nquthu, the picture is different.
For Samukelisiwe Ngubane, her first encounters with Muslims came through Indian shopkeepers in a nearby town. “We have never had a problem. Some people are curious about what they [Muslims] do, but there have been no problems,” she told Al Jazeera.
When her brother, Khethukuthula Dlame, converted to Islam in 2012 as a teenager, it was hardly an issue. Dlame, now 26 and one of only a handful of Muslims known in his village, is familiar enough to his neighbours that his Islamic clothing is a source of teasing rather than hostility. One neighbour jokes that he wears a dress.
“In these communities, there’s harmony and respect. People really respect my religion,” he told Al Jazeera, standing alongside his grandfather’s gravesite.
The contrast raises a question: is South Africa experiencing a rise in Islamophobia, or is social media making a marginal phenomenon appear much larger than it is?
Muslims make up a small minority in South Africa. The country’s 2022 census counted less than one million Muslims, or approximately 1.6 percent of the population. South African Muslim leaders give higher estimates, with some putting the country’s Muslim population at between two million and five million people.
But Islam’s presence in South Africa stretches back centuries. Muslims came to the Cape through several routes, including enslavement and political exile, from parts of Asia and the Indian Ocean world under Dutch colonial rule from the 17th century. Muslims were already present at the Cape before the arrival in 1694 of Shaykh Yusuf of Macassar, a Muslim scholar and political exile.
Today, the community includes descendants of enslaved Muslims brought to the Cape centuries ago, South Africans of Indian ancestry whose families have lived in the country for generations, Black African Muslims, converts and more recent migrants.
Dlame believes attempts to mobilise people against Muslims are not primarily emerging from rural communities.
“The move to orchestrated hate towards Muslims is not at a community level. If you’re looking at people when they’re mobilising, it’s not people from the villages. It is people in cities and in hostels.”
“The people behind this understand the flash points. If you really want to cause divisions, you use tribal rhetoric and the people you mobilise and agitate are in hostels because the living conditions are not good.”
South Africa has repeatedly experienced outbreaks of xenophobic violence since the end of apartheid, with migrants from elsewhere on the African continent often bearing the brunt. The question is whether some of that anti-migrant rhetoric is also being directed at Muslims.
Thembisa Fakude, a South African political analyst and journalist who is Muslim, told Al Jazeera that fears of widespread Islamophobia are being overstated.
“I’ll argue that there is no widespread or any orchestrated, well-planned Islamophobia directed towards Muslims. We don’t have that.”
He acknowledges anti-Muslim rhetoric online, but argues that it should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that South African society itself has become Islamophobic.
“It’s true, but it’s not only South Africa. This is global … In South Africa, yes, it’s true. You find that there will always be bigots, you know, and others will be, you know, ultra-Zulu nationalist or ultra-nationalist.”
Fakude also argues that Muslim communities need to confront allegations of racism and exploitative labour practices within their own ranks rather than characterising every criticism as religious prejudice.
“It is a storm in a teacup. And I think what’s concerning me is this othering by Muslims wanting to position themselves as victims and taking this course by themselves. It’s extremely dangerous.”
Muslim religious leader Moulana Sulaiman Ravat told Al Jazeera that, while ordinary South Africans are largely not Islamophobic, he is more cautious about what could happen next.
“At the same time, I think on the ground, South Africans in the main are not Islamophobic, and there’s a variety of indicators to substantiate that.”
But Ravat warns that online rhetoric can influence attitudes over time.
“I don’t think we can go to the other extreme. We must understand that there are certain global political realities, and the Islamophobia project aligns with those global agendas. And therefore, if we become complacent or nonchalant about it, what people are exposed to online could start impacting their psyche and how they think.”
Ravat argues that Muslim identity is sometimes being presented as evidence that a person is somehow less South African. For him, the premise is false.
“I would think I would say they are deeply religious and deeply patriotic, and there is no contradiction between the two.”
His own children, he said, are fifth-generation South African Muslims of Indian heritage.
“They don’t speak the language any more. They are as South African as anyone else.”
Back in Nquthu, Islam does not arrive through a social media algorithm. It arrives through a neighbour, where Dlame’s mother cooks a halal meal for this reporter and other guests. Earlier, at a community meeting, Dlame explained that Muslims, too, believe that Jesus was a prophet of God. Ordinary villagers listened attentively and joined in Zulu melodies in praise of God.
For now, the distance between the online conversation and life in communities such as Nquthu remains significant. But Ravat says that does not mean the possibility of deeper hostility should be dismissed.
“Better be proactive than reactive. It’s a global reality. It has been for the last 20 years. And the fact that it could increase in South Africa and could have serious consequences, you could argue, is unlikely but not impossible.”
Abdul El-Sayed made history this month in Michigan by becoming the first Muslim nominated by the Democratic Party to run for the U.S. Senate. But elation among many of his fellow Muslim Americans was tempered by awareness of persisting and widespread anti-Muslim sentiment across much of the nation.
Some Republicans, including President Trump, swiftly began referring to the nominee by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, while depicting him as a danger to America. “Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic,’’ said U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., in a post on X.
El-Sayed says such attacks betray a weakness in those who launch them.
“We all pray for the same things. … We want what’s good for our kids and our families,” he told MS NOW after his primary victory. “They’re going to use Islamophobia, because their ideas are tired.”
The vitriol extends far beyond the political class. Tensions related to anti-Muslim sentiment have heightened in several communities around the country, where some residents have bitterly opposed proposals to build new mosques.
“American Muslims have made incredible political and societal progress in recent years,” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR. He cited increased visibility in entertainment and sports and the election of Democrat Zohran Mamdani as New York City’s first Muslim mayor.
“But there also is a very concerted backlash to this progress,” Mitchell said. “You’ve seen this in the resurgence of anti-Muslim hate and rhetoric, the targeting of mosques.”
McKinney, Texas, a large suburb in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, is one of the flashpoints. Despite angry anti-Islam remarks at a heated city council meeting on Aug. 4, the council voted unanimously to approve a site plan for the McKinney Islamic Association’s proposed new mosque, classroom building and gym.
Among those urging the council to give the plan fair treatment was George Fuller, a former mayor of McKinney, a nonpartisan position. Opponents of the mosque project booed him, and some shouted “traitor” as he left the council chamber. One woman could be seen on video physically accosting him.
“I have never witnessed so much hate, anger and lack of humanity in our beautiful community gathered in one place as I did today at City Hall,” Fuller later wrote on Facebook.
During the hearing, which lasted more than four hours, the speakers included U.S. Rep. Keith Self, a Republican whose district includes McKinney. To loud applause, he urged the council to reject the mosque proposal.
“I know you’re in the accommodation phase, but the intimidation phase follows quickly,” Self said. “Child marriage. Honor killings. Don’t tell me it can’t happen here.”
Fuller also went to the microphone, evoking the broader phenomenon of divisive political rhetoric.
“Sadly, we live in a time when some have discovered that the easiest way to gain attention or win elections is not by offering solutions but by manufacturing fear, dividing communities, demonizing neighbors and turning misinformation into a political strategy,” he said.
The scenario was similar in Mooresville, North Carolina, when town commissioners held a public comment session on Aug. 3 about a proposed mosque that had already been approved, with early phases of construction underway.
Angry residents at the meeting voiced hostility to Islam and assailed the commissioners for not being more forthcoming about the project as it took shape over previous months. One speaker cited violence in Nigeria by Islamist extremists as a reason for concern in Mooresville. Another depicted Islam as “a political regime with the ultimate goal of takeover in regions and nations.”
CAIR’s regional manager, Al Rieder, issued a statement denouncing “the hateful and conspiratorial anti-Muslim rhetoric” that surfaced at the meeting and expressed concern about the safety of Muslims in the area about 25 miles north of Charlotte.
“Muslims are your neighbors, your doctors, your teachers, your local politicians, your police,” he said.
A few hours after the public meeting, the town commissioners released a summary of the mosque project, which calls for a two-building Islamic center on a parcel acquired in 2019 by a local Muslim organization.
The commissioners said that the parcel is in an area zoned to allow religious assembly and that the mosque proposal was handled the same way as a proposal for a new church.
“All decisions must be based on adopted ordinances, objective standards and legal requirements, which do not allow for different rules for different religious groups,” the commissioners said. “We encourage all members of our community to remain respectful in their discussions and interactions as this project moves through the appropriate processes.”
A mosque controversy has been raging for many months in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Tulsa’s largest suburb.
Back in January, at a stormy meeting attended by hundreds of people, the city council voted 4-1 to reject a rezoning proposal by the region’s Islamic Society to build Broken Arrow’s first mosque. Before the vote, dozens of residents voiced anti-Muslim views while opposing the project.
Council members who rejected the mosque had raised concerns about its potential impact on infrastructure such as roads, sewers and flood plain management.
But the Islamic Society is persisting with its quest. On Aug. 3, it filed a lawsuit against the mayor and four councilors, alleging that the vote reflected “a wave of bigoted opposition from members of the community and local politicians.” The lawsuit contends that the council violated state and federal laws governing religious land use, treating the mosque proposal differently from other comparable rezoning requests.
“They did not want a mosque in their city. They did not want Muslims here,” said Meghan Murphy, an attorney with CAIR’s Legal Defense Fund, at a news conference announcing the lawsuit. ”So they made up a reason, and in doing so they violated the law.”
Opposition to mosque construction isn’t a new phenomenon: In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, an effort launched in 2010 to block a mosque project dragged on for more than three years. The mosque was built anyway as the case moved through the courts, but members of the Muslim community faced public protests, vandalism, arson and a bomb threat during that span.
The latest anti-mosque campaigns coincide with a broad wave of anti-Muslim rhetoric from Republican officeholders over the past year. In Congress, several bills were introduced targeting sharia, the moral and spiritual framework that guides Muslims in prayer and ethical conduct. Some Republicans say they’re concerned about growing Muslim populations in major cities and potential ties to terrorism — fears that CAIR and other civil rights groups say are unfounded and being exploited for political purposes.
Republican governors in Texas and Florida have endorsed efforts to shut down CAIR, saying it has ties to terrorism. CAIR has denied the allegations and filed lawsuits calling the governors’ efforts unconstitutional.
Muslim American leaders view the vitriol as political scaremongering.
“Every election year, we expect a rise in anti-Muslim hate,” said CAIR’s Mitchell. “It’s been worse this year than it has been in years.”
Crary writes for the Associated Press.