KURUMSAL AYRIMCILIKTAN DİJİTAL NEFRET SÖYLEMİNE: CAIR RAPORU VE X PLATFORMU ÜZERİNDEN ABD’DE İSLAMOFOBİ
FROM INSTITUTIONAL DISCRIMINATION TO DIGITAL HATE SPEECH: ISLAMOPHOBIA IN THE UNITED STATES ACROSS THE CAIR REPORT AND X PLATFORM REACTIONS

Summary/Abstract: This study aims to analyze the current state of rising Islamophobia in the United States within a comprehensive framework, drawing on both institutional data and reactions in the digital public sphere. The CAIR 2025 Civil Rights Report, which forms the basis of the study, contains 8,658 discrimination complaints filed by Muslim individuals and reveals patterns of discrimination against Muslims, particularly through complaints concentrated in the categories of workplace discrimination, contact with security agencies, and hate crimes. These data are institutional records reflecting complaints of civil rights violations rather than official national statistics. These institutional data, rarely examined together in the literature, are linked in this study to 17 user comments under CAIR's report announcement on the X platform. Qualitative discourse analysis reveals that a significant portion of the comments criminalize Muslims along the axes of “threat,” “violence,” and “terrorism”; derogatory statements about religious values and discourse delegitimizing CAIR are prominent. Although the data set is limited in number, the content density and thematic distribution of the comments reveal patterns of Islamophobic discourse reproduced in the digital environment. The findings show that patterns of discrimination observed in institutional reports are reproduced in the digital environment through explicit Islamophobic hate speech, thus revealing the intersection between structural Islamophobia and digital verbal violence. In this respect, the study offers a unique contribution to the simultaneous functioning of Islamophobia at both the institutional and digital levels in the US.

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