Taking on Hate: Muslim Women Build a Community-Driven Hate Watch

In 2017–18 the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition (MMWC) partnered with Marquette University sociologist Louise Cainkar to conduct research on the need for and best practices around the development of a community-driven hate-watch mechanism. The MMWC is a Milwaukee-based nonprofit community organization run by Muslim women that engages in outreach, education, and advocacy. The research project was supported by a grant from Marquette University’s Office of Community Engagement.¹ The idea behind this initiative was to improve reporting of hate incidents experienced by members of the Muslim community. As MMWC director Janan Najeeb noted at the outset of the project, their organization often learned about hate-based experiences suffered by community members by happenstance, as the details circulated through the community mainly by word of mouth. Few instances of hate and harassment are formally reported, because there has been no one to report them to and because many of them do not...