As Hinduphobia peaks in the US, Christian and Islamist groups push new campaign against Hindus: How NY State Council of Churches and IAMC have joined forces to target Hindus

OPINDIA POST

A Christian nationalist church group and the Islamist outfit IAMC have teamed up to host anti-Hindu seminars in the US, accusing Hindus of “weaponizing” their faith even as attacks on the community rise. Hindu groups have slammed the events as an organised effort to vilify Hindu Americans and mainstream Hinduphobia. This collaboration comes amid IAMC’s long record of anti-Hindu propaganda in the US.

Amidst surging Hinduphobia in the United States, a Christian nationalist outfit and the Islamist group, the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), have joined forces to further vilify the Indian American Hindus and their faith. The New York State Council of Churches (NYCOC), through its Religious Nationalisms Project (TRNP), has announced a series of interfaith seminars from 20th to 23rd November, in North Carolina’s Bay Area.

The events titled “The Weaponization of Hinduism in Northern Carolina and India and the Relationships to Global Religious Nationalisms” are being co-organised by the Islamist group IAMC. The additional sponsorship for these anti-Hindu events comes from the White Christian Nationalisms Task Force of the California-Nevada Conference of the United Methodist Church.

As per the promotional material of the scheduled events, the seminars will be held at several locations, including the United Methodist churches in Roseville, Alameda, and Santa Rosa; First Church Berkeley (United Church of Christ). One of the seminars will also be held at a Sikh Gurudwara Sahib in San Jose.

This series of seminars will be on the theme of Religious Nationalisms, with “a special focus on Hindutva as a central case study.” The events will have three presenters: The Reverend Peter Cook, The Reverend Neal Christie, and The Right Reverend Joshua Lickter.

American Hindu rights groups call out Christian-Muslim collaboration to peddle Hinduphobia

The collaboration of a church-linked Christian outfit and a rabid anti-Hindu Islamist IAMC has sparked outrage among American Hindus.

The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) criticised the anti-Hindu tour and highlighted that it comes at a time when hatred against Hindus is increasing in the US. The HAF also questioned the city authorities why such an event is being allowed in California and why public funding is involved in such an anti-Hindu propaganda event.

“A New York based Christian church group joining the Indian American Muslim Council on a “tour” in spewing provocative lies against Hindus when anti-Hindu hate is at its zenith is absolutely unacceptable. Why does your office fund this @GovKathyHochul? Is this ok in California @CAgovernor?” the HAF wrote on X.

Suhag Shukla, the Executive Director of the HAF, said, “The New York State Council of Churches is joining a Muslim group to tour California—not to promote solidarity & peace—but to target peaceful Hindu Californians. This isn’t interfaith solidarity, this is an ambush. @GovKathyHochul, your NY Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is funding NYCOC when anti-Hindu hate is peaking. How is this ok?”

IAMC and its anti-Hindu/anti-India activities and past Hinduphobic collaboration with the New York State Council of Churches

The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) is a Washington-based Islamist outfit which has been involved in anti-India activities and pushing an anti-Hindu agenda for many years. In 2021, IAMC, along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), campaigned to designate India as a “Country of Particular Concern”.

During the India-Pakistan conflict in May this year, when the Indian Armed Forces eliminated Islamic terrorists and their infrastructure deep inside Pakistan, the IAMC and CAIR condemned India’s Operation Sindoor.

The Indian American Muslim Council is reported to have links with the banned Islamic terror outfit, Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Besides, the Indian American Muslim Council has ties with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) through its founder, Shaik Ubaid. The IAMC is a Jamat-e-Islami-backed lobbyist organisation claiming to be a rights advocacy group. The IAMC has also been involved in promoting antisemitism.

The IAMC has also formed the Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR) group, which is an open anti-Hindu and anti-India organisation based in the US.

Not to forget, in 2021, ‘Hindus for Human Rights’ also endorsed the anti-Hindu event ‘Dismantling Global Hindutva’ conference. It also came up with a “special toolkit” to propagate against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his State visit to the US in June 2023.

In June 2023, Congress scion Rahul Gandhi was seen sitting alongside Sunita Vishwanath during an event hosted by the Hudson Institute. In October 2023, the X account of HfHR was withheld in India in response to a legal demand.

In the past, the IAMC had reportedly collaborated with and even paid money to various groups in the USA to get India blacklisted by the USCIRF (United States Commission on International Religious Freedom). IAMC had been caught spreading fake news and misinformation to further the Islamist cause in India. It had also been slapped with the UAPA in 2021. The IAMC often publishes dubious reports and propaganda materials slandering American Hindus and Hindus in India, under the pretext of countering ‘Hindu nationalism’.

From seminars to surveys, reports to speeches, the IAMC has long been vilifying the American Hindus and their faith. In September 2024,  IAMC conducted a ‘survey’ [pdf] with the ulterior motive to brand the religious minority group as ‘racist’, ‘intolerant’ and ‘Islamophobic.’ OpIndia reported how the IAMC survey passed off vague and subjective opinions from its respondents as absolute truth.

Unsurprisingly, the upcoming ‘Weaponization of Hinduism’ seminars are not the first anti-Hindu collaboration of the NYCOC and the IAMC. In August 2024, the Federation of Indian Associations NY-NJ-CT-NE decided to include a Ram Janmabhoomi Temple float in the India Day Parade to mark the 78th Independence Day of India. This, however, did not go well with the IAMC and the New York State Council of Churches, who, along with other Islamists, pro-Khalistan and other anti-Hindu groups, wrote a letter to the New York Governor Kathy Hochul and then Mayor Eric Adams, peddling lies to oppose the inclusion of the Ram Mandir float in the parade.

These organisations have claimed that VHPA, an offshoot of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) “has been designated as a militant religious organisation by the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook”. However, OpIndia reported back then that while it is true that VHP and Bajrang Dal were designated as “militant religious organisations” on 4th June 2018, the names were effectively removed from the list by 25th June 2018. It was a mistake to call these two organisations “militant”, and the CIA itself had rectified it in less than a month.

In June 2025, the NYSCOC and TRNP joined the IAMC in issuing a statement slandering an event hosting several Hindu activists in Dallas. These anti-Hindu groups linked Hindutva with violence and religious hatred. They also hurled sweeping allegations about religious freedom and tolerance in India, insinuating that somehow Christians and Muslims are under threat in the Hindu-majority country.

Amidst rising racism against Hindus and Indians in America, anti-Hindu elements attempting to ride the wave and further their nefarious designs

From the 1907 anti-Indian mob violence in Washington, the 1910 Detroit Times “Hindoos (Hindus) Continue to Flock to the US” article referring to Hindus as ‘Oriental scum’, the discriminatory Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, the Dot Busters group in 1980s which targeted Hindus Americans based on their religious and racial identity and assaulted them, to the individual cases of religiously-motivated hate crimes against Hindus post 2001, attempts at revisingCalifornia’s K-12 history-social science curriculum to include stereotypical representation of Hindus and Hinduism in textbooks, Hindus in the US, have faced hatred, discrimination and violence.

Earlier, these Hinduphobic attitudes found manifestation in anti-Asian racism and labelling of Hindus as ‘caste-ridden savages’ and ‘heathens’, and attacks. It manifests today in temple desecrations, school bullying, media propaganda and online hatred. A 2022 Network Contagion Research Institute report documented a 1,000% increase in anti-Hindu slurs online, blending white supremacist “replacement” fears with Islamist narratives accusing Hindus of “genocide” in India.

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Tags- Hindu phobia, America