by Roqayah Chamseddine

Donald Trump has at least 20 Muslims friends. Well, that’s what he says, anyway. The Telegraph’s US editor Ruth Sherlock recently asked the loudmouthed business mogul about Islamophobia and his response, that he has Muslim friends, was nearly as cowardly as his previous statements. Marco Rubio, who doesn’t believe that systematic discrimination against Muslims exists, has denounced the alleged diminishing of intelligence programs that could be used to track Muslim “radicals”. Ted Cruz doesn’t mind Trump’s call to ban Muslim migrants, and claims that there’s a active war “on a political and theocratic ideology that seeks to murder [Americans].” Ben Carson, when he isn’t talking viewers into a coma, has suggested that Muslims who claim to have embraced American values are “schizophrenic”, and has called Islam “a religion of domination”. During every national debate, these men have helped dehumanize Muslims to such a degree that anti-Muslim animus continues to be framed as a mythical non-occurrence.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Year In Hate and Extremism, published on February 17, nationalist hate groups, or ‘Patriot’ groups, have prospered. The SPLC reports that “the number of groups on the American radical right expanded from 784 in 2014 to 892 in 2015 — a 14% increase.” Hatred of Muslim and LGBT groups has led to a rise in what the SPLC calls the “general hate category”,including a surge in nationalist, anti-government groups like John Ritzheimer’s Oath Keepers. In terms of what the SPLC refers to as domestic terrorism, in 2015 there were a number of cases of Americans detained by law enforcement: Robert Doggart, a former congressional candidate from Tennessee, was indicted for planning to set fire to a mosque, school, and a cafeteria in Hancock, New York. Doggart also planned on killing Muslim residents; In St. Louis, David Hagler, who has expressed anti-Black and anti-Muslim sentiment, was found with a stockpile of at least 20 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition; White supremacist Glendon Scott Crawford was given 8 years for a plot to target Muslims with lethal doses of radiation. Yes, Muslims are under attack in America, despite what officeholders and presidential candidates will have you believe.

Armed, anti-Muslim protest have enthusiastically littered the United States—from Irving, Texas to Phoenix, Arizona—these protests are part of the greater influx of violence against Muslims, which includes shootings, and arsons aimed at destroying houses of worship and instilling fear in Muslim communities. While Donald Trump rails against Muslim migrants, a staggering number of individuals, and groups, around the country are wanting to make sure Muslims around them know their place. This place just so happens to exist outside the borders. SPLC’s Year In Hate and Extremism, while highlighting the many layers of hatred that seems to be expanding across the United States, also brings attention to how influential politicians have been in helping provoke this bigotry. “As the new year began, there was little evidence that the hatred was diminishing,” the report states. Anti-Muslim hostility permeates all levels of society, and influences everything from local policy, the swelling encroachment on civil rights, and even declarations of war.

Donald Trump, who just won the South Carolina Republican primary, delivered an arguably key speech on Friday in South Carolina in which he told an enthusiastic crowd an allegorical tale about Gen. John Pershing who “captured 50 Muslim prisoners a century ago and dipped 50 bullets in [pig] blood”. “[Gen. John Pershing] lined up the 50 people and they shot 49 of those 50 people, and he said to the 50th, you go back to your people and you tell them what happened — and in 25 years there wasn’t a problem [with Muslims],” Trump told the crowd. This kind of sensationalist mythology undoubtedly struck a chord with some voters, as they helped push him into a primary win.  Exit polls from South Carolina showed that nearly 3/4 of GOP voters supported Trump’s proposed temporary ban on Muslim immigration.  While Republican candidates scramble for attention, and brag about how muscular they intend to be when facing the Muslim Menace, it’s necessary to examine the impact that this rhetoric has, and what extremists they are possibly influencing.

Roqayah Chamseddine is associate editor at Hate Hurts and former researcher for TeleSUR’s The Empire Files. Follow her on Twitter @roqchams and read her work at roqchams.com