This month, I encountered two different types of Islamophobic attacks. One was from a random guy in India and the other one from a foreign journalist in person. Both
experiences made me think why this has become normal now.

On May 7, I received an email from one ‘Arghya Chakraborty’. When I opened the email, I was disgusted with the language. I cannot reproduce the message because it was full of Islamophobic slurs and abuses. After calling me a slut to attacking my family, my country and my religious beliefs, Mr Chakraborty ended with “hut namazi” and told me not to comment on India and worry about Pakistan instead. Odd, since my column was on the US-Israel war against Iran. Then I thought the email had been sent because I had commented on last May’s India-Pakistan conflict on a television programme. But even that didn’t make sense as my remarks had mostly been on Pakistan’s gains — military and diplomatic.

A day or two later, someone tagged me on X under a tweet where ‘Bala’ had posted a one-minute clip of my analysis on the recent state elections in India with the caption: “TMC losing Bengal has sent shockwaves to not just Bangladesh but Pakistan too. Mamata’s core votebank were supplied from here, naturally they are rattled now. [sic]” This was a clip from my five-minute analysis of the elections in which I talked about how those I spoke to in India had said that it was a depressing day, particularly in West Bengal. Most of my analysis had been a critique of the Indian Opposition’s lack of unity and strategy to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party. It obviously didn’t suit Mr Bala’s narrative to put out the entire clip because the latter wasn’t about the BJP but more about the INDIA bloc. The audacity to say that the vote bank in West Bengal was somehow ‘supplied’ from Pakistan and Bangladesh, when these
nations had nothing to do with the elections, made me realise that it suits the army of trolls to suggest the existence of a foreign hand in India's state elections. This is a very Dhurandhar-esque mentality, I must say. Anyway, I dismissed the email and the clip because they weren’t worth responding to.

A few days later, I was at a conference where I gave a speech on protecting journalists and civil society amid an information siege. Before I went on to the Pakistani context, I talked about the genocide in Gaza and how Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israel. I criticised the Western media’s hypocrisy for whitewashing these crimes and also for coming out in large numbers to condemn critics when one of their own was called out for harbouring a pro-Israeli propaganda. Tellingly, we didn’t see the same outrage when the Lebanese journalist, Amal Khalil, was slaughtered in a double-tap strike by Israel.

After I finished my speech, I was asked by a local woman in the audience why I had made a “sweeping statement” on the Western media. Then, a woman foreign journalist also asked me the same thing but in a tone that was much more condescending. Interestingly, she said although it may suit my “agenda and narrative” to say what I did, many Western journalists had, in fact, condemned Khalil’s murder. I responded to the two women that I stand by everything I have said because when we say 'Western media', we talk about the constituents as a whole. Yes, there may have been honourable exceptions in this instance but that doesn’t mean that the Western media has not been complicit in the last two and a half years of war in the Middle East. I also said that my position — agenda — is that Palestinians have a right to live safely and that Zionists should be punished for their war crimes.

However, I was curious to know why she had invoked ‘agenda’ and ‘narrative’. I realised it was because of the way I look: I wear a hijab and I was wearing a kaftan that day. So these comments were more about my appearance than the content of my speech.

Both experiences were different; but the common thread was Islamophobia and stereotyping based on my appearance without knowing the work that I have done as a journalist for two decades.

Mehmal Sarfraz is a journalist based in Lahore; mehmal.s@gmail.com