A new report from the Center for American Progress and NYU’s Brennan School for Justice says that the anti-foreign law campaigns being waged in state legislatures throughout the United States are actually meant to target Muslims and may actually have an unintended effect of complicating legitimate legal disputes involving foreign countries and nationals.

“Although packaged as an effort to protect American values and democracy, the bans spring from a movement whose goal is the demonization of the Islamic faith,” write CAP’s Matt Duss and the Brennan Center’s Fazia Patel and Amos Toh. “Beyond that, however, many foreign law bans are so broadly phrased as to cast doubt on the validity of a whole host of personal and business arrangements.” The authors explain how the campaign originally began as an “anti-Sharia” movement and then evolved into a more focused push to ban foreign law:

On Election Day 2010 Oklahoma voters overwhelmingly approved the Save Our State referendum, a ballot initiative that banned the use of Sharia in the state’s courts. While the Oklahoma measure was immediately challenged in court, and ultimately struck down as unconstitutionally discriminatory toward American Muslims, its proponents launched a nationwide movement to recast anti-Sharia measures as bans on foreign and international law. This involved removing specific references to Islam in order to help the measures pass legal muster and successfully tapping into deep-rooted suspicions about the influence of foreign laws over the American legal system. While the intent of foreign law bans is clear, proponents of these bans hope that the foreign law veneer will save the measures from being invalidated on constitutional grounds.

The report maps out where the bans have been enacted and are being considered:

The report recommends that these states considering foreign law bans should reject them and those that have passed foreign law bans should repeal them. “The bans set out to cure an illusory problem but could create a myriad of unintended real ones,” the report says, adding that they “send a message that a state is unreceptive to foreign businesses and minority groups, particularly Muslims” and “sow confusion about a variety of personal and business arrangements.”

“The issues raised by foreign law bans,” the author note, “may lead to decades of litigation as state courts examine their consequences and struggle to interpret them in ways that avoid constitutional concerns and discrimination against all minority faiths.”

A Tennessee County Commissioner doesn’t see anything wrong with a Facebook post he put up that led to Muslims feeling threatened.

The photo was posted to Coffee County commissioner Barry West‘s Facebook page, drawing consternation from Muslim groups who came across the image. In the photo, seen at the right, a double-barreled shotgun is pointed at the viewer with the caption “HOW TO WINK AT A MUSLIM.” The image soon went viral, causing West to take down the original post from his page.

The Tennessean reached out to West and the commissioner not only isn’t sorry about posting the picture, he doesn’t believe he deserves to be singled out:

West, who lives in Manchester, removed it about an hour later. He did not apologize, instead questioning how his tweet had become the focus of attention.

West responded with this email: “No I did not Twitter this … no I did not create this picture … yes I shared it … so why am I being singled out?”

“I’m prejudiced against anyone who’s trying to tear down this country, Muslims, Mexicans, anybody,” he said in an interview with the local Tullahoma News, adding, “If you come into this country illegally or harm us or take away benefits, I’m against it.” West also claimed in that the post was meant to be funny, and that he doesn’t hold anything against Muslims “per se, but if you’re trying to tear down this country, find somewhere else to go.”

West’s post was taken quite seriously among the Muslims who viewed it, particularly those in Tennessee who have faced down Islamophobia over the past several years. A mosque in Murfreesboro, TN, gained widespread attention when residents attempted to block its construction, going so far as to set the site on fire. The mosque only managed to complete construction and opened after a federal judge ordered residents to stand aside. The Murfreesburo site was just one of several Islamic centers in Tennessee subjected to arson and vandalism over the past five years.

In the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombings, Islamophobia has seen a resurgence in the United States. A Northern Virginia cab driver was allegedly assaulted on Friday because he shared the same religion as the suspects in the Boston attack. At least two other Muslims have been the targets of such violence in recent weeks.

During an appearance on Meet The Press Sunday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) repeated his call for profiling Muslims in the name of public safety, stating that although most Muslims are “outstanding people,” the threat of terrorism still stems from “the Muslim community.” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), America’s first Muslim congressman, quickly shot down that line of thinking, arguing that blanket profiling doesn’t serve the needs of law enforcement and actually undermines effective investigations by unnecessarily straining public resources.

Ellison detailed the shortcomings of King’s approach, stressing that individual behavior and actionable evidence should form the basis of terrorism investigations. He also compared King’s strategy to the similarly misguided policies that the American government adopted towards Japanese Americans during World War II.

Watch it:

King also asked why law enforcement hadn’t made interrogations of the Boston bombers’ mosque a higher priority, prompting host David Gregory to ask what, exactly, investigators could have asked before the bombings had occurred. King responded by repeating that such interrogations had not occurred due to “political correctness” concerning the treatment of Muslims in America.

King’s calls for profiling against Muslims is certainly nothing new. The New York congressman has been using the Boston bombings as justification for increasing surveillance of American Muslim communities, and he previously led a series of infamous congressional hearings into the potential radicalization of Muslims in America. The NYPD’s enhanced surveillance of Muslim communities, made public by an Associated Press investigative series in 2012, found that the department’s actions had “a severe chilling effect on speech, religious activity, and community life” while failing to yield a single piece of actionable intelligence.

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly chose on Tuesday night to slam President Obama for failing to condemn Islam in the immediate aftermath of the Boston bombings and claimed that American Muslims aren’t doing enough to stand up against jihad.

During his “Talking Point Commentary” segment, O’Reilly called the President “seriously wrong” for urging the country on Friday to not to jump to conclusions about the bombing suspects’ motivations.

“It’s all about motivation and it’s all about a specific group of people,” O’Reilly declared, referring to Muslims. He then went on to say that suspected Dzhokar Tsarnaev and his deceased brother Tamerlan were definitively jihadists, stating that “only radical Islam allows terror murder.”

What O’Reilly failed to mention is that Obama’s Friday statement was made before anything was known about the brothers or what led them to place explosives at the Boston Marathon. The FBI didn’t release the two suspects’ pictures until Thursday afternoon, kicking off a massive manhunt. While on Friday morning the media learned that the two were ethnic Chechens, that information alone provided no further knowledge of the motivation behind the attack. Only after questioning alleged bomber Dzohkar Tsarnaev in custody did authorities learn that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan provided at least part of the impetus for the bombing.

While attacking Obama for not speaking out against radical Islam, O’Reilly begrudgingly acknowledged that there are Muslim countries that are our allies, particularly those that utilize “secret police” to combat terrorism. He was disappointed, however, that more Muslims — including Muslim-Americans — aren’t doing their part to help combat radicalism. “Most Muslims on this Earth are good people, but they are not helping to neutralize the jihad,” he said. “They are not standing up against it in any numbers. And that includes American Muslims. They largely remain silent.”

Watch O’Reilly’s statements here:

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, who appeared on the program, shared O’Reilly’s views that Obama isn’t doing enough to speak out about the threat that Muslims pose. Despite their worries, it was Muslim-Americans who found themselves the targets during the media’s excessively flawed coverage of the attacks. At least one Muslim woman was attacked based on the media’s shoddy reporting.

Counter to O’Reilly’s claims, there are many instances of Muslim communities standing up against radicalism in their ranks. Just this week, a Toronto imam was lauded for reporting suspicious behavior to the Canadian authorities, leading to a possible major terrorist plot being foiled. Leaders of the Muslim-American community also reiterated their opposition to terrorism at a press conference held on Friday.

A new report out this week warns of an “ethnic cleansing” taking place in Myanmar as the majority Buddhist population forces the nation’s Muslim communities from their homes.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report — titled “‘All You Can Do is Pray’: Crimes Against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s Arakan State” — documents the clash between two ethnic groups in Myanmar’s Arakan State. The majority ethnic Arakanese population, according to the report, sought to remove the disenfranchised Rohingya group living within the Arakan state from their communities. The Arakanese are majority Buddhist, while the Rohingya are Muslim.

Further, the report accuses the Myanmar government and local authorities of not only complicity with efforts to forcibly evict the Rohingya from their homes, but also overt support for the campaign:

“The Burmese government engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya that continues today through the denial of aid and restrictions on movement,” said Phil Robertson, [Human Rights Watch's] deputy Asia director. “The government needs to put an immediate stop to the abuses and hold the perpetrators accountable or it will be responsible for further violence against ethnic and religious minorities in the country.”

The majority of the violence Human Rights Watch documented took place during a surge in violence in Oct. 2012. HRW says at least 70 Rohingya were killed in one day and that police assisted by disarming the Rohingya of the sticks and other weapons carried to defend themselves. The group also claims to have found evidence of at least four mass graves dug in the aftermath of the massacre throughout Arakan. Currently at least 125,000 Rohingya and non-Rohingya Muslims reside in a displacement camp, while the Myanmar government drags its feet on following through on its pledges for reconstruction aid.

Clashes between ethnic and religious communities have not quieted in Myanmar, however, nor are they limited to Arakan state. Rakhine state just last month was home to a renewed spate of the majority targeting Muslim communities, spurred on by hardline Buddhist monks. According the United Nations, more than 12,000 Muslims were forced from their homes during the most recent fighting. The BBC on Tuesday released newly obtained video showing Myanmar police officers standing idle while Muslim shops and houses were set ablaze, lending further credence to the Human Rights Watch reporting.

Despite the ongoing violence, the European Union on Monday lifted most of its sanctions on Myanmar, citing the country’s “remarkable process of reform.” Asked about the Human Rights Watch Report on Monday, U.S. State Department acting spokesperson Patrick Ventrell said, “We continue our engagement with Burmese authorities and we also continue to urge the government to bring justice to affected communities, to address the root causes of this violence, and put in place mechanisms to prevent future outbreaks so that ethnic groups in Burma can coexist.”

Bob Beckel, the supposedly left-leaning voice on Fox News’ afternoon show The Five, said that the United States ought to bar foreign students from entering the country if they’re Muslim.

“We’re going to have to cut off Muslim students from coming to this country for some period of time,” Beckel said on Monday’s broadcast, discussing the bombings in Boston. The former campaign manager for Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign went on to say we should vet all Muslim students currently in the country “and decide whether some of the people here should be sent back home or sent to prison.”

BECKEL: We know now, there’s been enough research done, we know that one bottom line: in the Muslim communities around the world, they do not like us. They recruit people from poor areas and they turn them into terrorists. [...] It’s not hard to recruit though because the hatred for the United States runs deep. That’s why I get back to my point. I think we really have to consider, given the fact that so many people hate us, that we’re going to have to cut off Muslim students from coming to this country for some period of time so that we can at least absorb what we’ve got, look at what we’ve got, and decide whether some of the people here should be sent back home or sent to prison.

Watch it:

Beckel isn’t the only Fox News figure blaming all Muslims in the world for the actions of a few. Frequent guest host (and radio personality) Laura Ingraham argued on Monday as well that the United States shouldn’t allow any immigrants from majority-Muslim countries to enter the United States. “I would submit that people shouldn’t be coming here as tourists from Chechnya after 9/11,” Ingraham said. “Dagistan, Checnya, Kyrgyzstan, uh-uh. As George Bush would say, ‘None of them stans.’”

A terror plot originating in Canada may not have been prevented, were it not for the intervention of Toronto’s Muslim community flagging a suspect to law enforcement officials.

News broke on Monday that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) — in conjunction with U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials — had foiled a plot targeting a railway between Toronto and New York. According to the RCMP, there was never an imminent danger from the plot, but the alleged perpetrators did have the desire and ability to follow through with their plans, which would target a passenger line between the two cities.

That plot, however, was only discovered thanks to a timely intervention from an imam based in Toronto. Worried that one of the suspects, Raed Jaser, was promoting extremist propaganda in his community, the imam — who remains anonymous — sounded an alarm with the Canadian Canadian Security Intelligence Service and RCMP over a year ago. That support did not go without thanks from Canadian law enforcement, the Globe and Mail reports:

The nation’s top counterterrorism police officials briefed reporters about the arrest Monday, but not before they made a point of summoning about 20 leaders of Toronto’s Islamic community to a meeting.

The message from authorities to the Muslim community? Thank you for a helping hand.

“The first comment they made, and they encouraged us to make it a talking point, is that, but for the Muslim community’s intervention, we may not have had the success we’ve had,” said Hussein Hamdani, a lawyer who was invited to the pre-briefing.

The two suspects are in custody in what is being called the first Canadian breakup of an allegedly al-Qaeda-connected terror plot. According to Canadian authorities, the two were receiving “support and guidance” from elements of Al Qaeda based in Iran. The Iranian government has denied any ties to the group and Canadian officials made clear there was no evidence of state-support for the plot.

Canadian law enforcement’s relationship with the Muslim community is markedly different from the relationship seen in the United States. The ACLU accused the FBI of using Muslim outreach as a cover for illegal information gathering, a charge that the civil liberties group say continues today. The New York Police Department hasn’t fared much better, with distrust arising out of its program to spy on Muslim communities including college student group.

Compounding the problem in the United States is the right wing’s ongoing suggestion that all Muslims as terrorists. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) in particular has a long history of focusing on Muslim communities as sources of terrorism, including once falsely claiming Muslims were responsible for 90 percent of all terrorism. King’s anti-Muslim hearings as chair of the House Homeland Security Committee were widely criticized as being discriminatory and drove a wedge between law enforcement and the Muslim communitiy.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) smacked down Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) attempt to link Boston bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to Islamic extremists based in the American Muslim community with no evidence, an allegation that emerged as part of a theme among House Republicans on Sunday morning.

The exchange between Feinstein and King took place on Fox News Sunday, when host Chris Wallace asked whether he agreed with the idea that “political correctness be damned, we have to do more effective surveillance inside the Muslim community.” King tried to link “Muslim communities” to the attack, a claim which Feinstein demolished:

KING: Listen, the threat is coming from within the Muslim community in these cases. In New York. that’s why Commissioner Kelly has 1,000 police officers out in the community. Unfortunately, he gets smeared by the New York Times and the Associated Press, but the fact is we’ve stopped 16 plots in New York because we know that al-Qaeda is shifting its tactics…If you know a certain threat is coming from a certain community, that’s where you have to look.

WALLACE: Senator Feinstein, your reaction to this?

FEINSTEIN: That’s exactly where they will look. I don’t think all of this is very helpful. I think the important thing is to get the facts. Let the investigation proceed. The FBI has very good interrogators. They know what they are doing. I believe that they will put a case together that will be very strong. With respect to whether we are doing enough in the Muslim community, I think we should take a look at that, but I don’t think we need to go and develop some real disdain and hatred on television about it.

Watch it:

As Feinstein implies, King’s speculation about the Muslim community playing some role in the Boston bombing is entirely unconnected to the available facts. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) has written that “I am not aware of any evidence so far that the Boston suspect is part of any organized group, let alone al Qaeda, the Taliban, or one of their affiliates.” Nor does there exist any evidence that Tamerlan or Dzhokhar were radicalized as a consequence of contact with person or persons in the American Muslim community.

While King suggested that stepped-up NYPD surveillance of Muslims should be a model for the nation, the program terrified the Muslim community while failing to produce a single actionable lead or investigation.

King was not the only House Republican to speculate without evidence about a connection between the Tsarnaevs and jihadists. On CNN’s State of the Union, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) speculated that Tamerlan was trained by al-Qaeda during a 2012 visit to Chechnya, once again lacking any direct evidence for the charge. Though Islamist terrorist groups are often quick to take responsibility for attacks, the Caucusus Emirate, the main Islamist terrorist group in the region, denied any connection to the bombers and said “we are not fighting against the United States of America.”