Anti-Muslim racism is a global system used to normalise mass killing

Hospitals, schools and residential buildings have been bombed. Water and sanitation infrastructure have been destroyed, amid warnings of mass malnutrition and starvation.

No, these are not headlines from Gaza - although they could be. They are from Iran and Lebanon, two countries that have been systematically targeted by the Israeli military over the past three years.

Yet the destruction of civilian life in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran is not an isolated phenomenon. Across different political contexts, Muslim and Muslim-adjacent populations have long been subjected to violence, abandonment and containment.

Well before 2023, hundreds of civilians were killed by US drone warfare in Yemen; refugees attempting to reach Europe were abandoned to death in the Mediterranean by the EU; and millions of displaced Syrians were warehoused in camps enclosed with barbed…