Sightings Articles

Midnight Mass image

Islamophobia | fundamentalism | Christian Right | Muslims | 9/11

Midnight Mass and the Spectre of Terror

A generation has grown up under the shadow of post-9/11 preoccupation with Islam and Muslims: Midnight Mass presents something far more interesting

January 21, 2022

Islam | Islamophobia | China | Muslims

Save Uighur, Save China

Six Uighur sisters were each robbed of their husbands when Chinese authorities placed the men in concentration camps. They also forcefully took their children to communist-run orphanages and placed Chinese men in each of the sisters’ homes. This stor...

February 28, 2019

Catholics | Islamophobia | Muslim ban | Muslims | Roman Catholicism | sexual abuse | terrorism

Catholic versus Muslim "Terrorism" in the U.S.: A Double Standard

I am a practicing, albeit far from exemplary, Roman Catholic. Like so many of my fellow Catholics, it’s impossible to overstate my sense of outrage, shame, and frustration with the leadership of the church over its unconscionable decades-long cons...

September 13, 2018

education | Islam | Islamic Studies | Muslim ban | Muslims

Of Islam and the Public Square: The Role of the Classroom

An opinion poll showing 31% of Americans feel safer because of the travel ban placed on seven Muslim-majority countries (since reduced to six)—with another 41% expressing no particular opinion—is reflective of the obscure, if not fearsome, image of I...

March 16, 2017

2016 | discrimination | hate | Islam | Muslims | Pew Research Center | religiocification

The Religiocification of Hate

Sightings was born as an endeavor to discover and comment on the traces of “religion” which supposedly survive in a “secular” society. However, instead of sighting only such presumed distant, obscure, or minuscule traces, our authors have often had t...

December 12, 2016

burkini | France | Muslims | secularism | women

A Crisis of Faith in Laïcité

A few weeks ago in late August, a woman was napping on a crowded beach in Nice when a group of police officers approached and ordered her to remove her shirt. In a striking sequence of photos, a photographer for AFP captured the scene (see Gillman, e...

September 15, 2016

Ahmed Mohamed | Islamophobia | Muslims

Muslims in the South

A citizen can look in any direction on almost any day and find confirmation of two observations which have informed many of us who chronicle and comment on inter-group conflicts. One is Else Frenkel-Brunswick’s comment on the ethnocentric hater: “...

October 5, 2015