Bedugul Coffee: New Zealand and the global crisis of Islamophobia

Friends of a missing man grieve outside a refuge center in Christchurch.

The HuffPost team worked hard to cover the tragic massacre at two New Zealand mosques. But after the breaking news had faded, we wanted to offer readers something deeper, something that could cut to the heart of the problems that led to the murders. Rowaida Abdelaziz, Akbar Shahid Ahmed and Nick Robins-Early produced a piece that does exactly that. We asked Ahmed to tell us more about it.

How did this story come about?

Folks on our team started discussing smart ways to contribute to coverage of the New Zealand tragedy as soon as the first reports came in Thursday night U.S. time ― one of the benefits of having dedicated staff on later shifts. We built on those initial suggestions in the morning and found that many of us kept returning to the idea of Islamophobia taking strikingly similar forms in the U.S. and other nations, including even Muslim-majority ones. Everyone from reporters to Lydia Polgreen, our editor-in-chief, was offering examples from their own experience and knowledge. So we got a small group together and started by thinking strategically: What big manifestations of global Islamophobia did we absolutely need to highlight? That helped us divide responsibility among our three co-authors and get into as many nuances and examples as possible while making a strong, cohesive overall argument. And then editors, as ever, saved our skins by polishing each of these sections and perfecting our lede and ending.

What was the hardest part about reporting, writing or editing the piece?

When you take on an an idea that's driven vast swaths of policy in dozens of countries, you become especially vulnerable to some of our favorite pitfalls as writers: chasing tangents and unnecessary darlings; fearing you'll miss something and thus making the perfect the enemy of the good; falling into self-indulgent phrasing or broad theorizing. I'm still getting messages from folks noting elements of global Islamophobia that we didn't delve into in detail, like its role in the U.S.-led War on Terror or the way it drives China's policy of detaining over a million Muslim citizens. What helps is the confidence that comes from knowing you've had good and deliberate editing ― and that you're far from done writing about these issues, so it's foolish to worry this one article didn't represent the ultimate last word.

What do you want readers to take away?

This story made me think a lot about accountability and the social acceptance many incredibly dangerous expressions of hate continue to have. It's not enough to call out clear fear-mongering or to explain the facts to people who might be misled. What we documented, and talked about from the headline to our ending, is that there just isn't yet a real cost for talking about and treating Muslims in ways it wouldn't be OK to approach atheists, Christians, Jews or anyone else. What I hope our readers can do is imagine how such a standard might operate, and maybe just start applying it in their own lives ― how could things be better if one didn't let that little joke about terrorists slide, or consistently remembered (because we somehow forget) that the president wanted 1.6 billion people to be banned from the U.S.?

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