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SearchToday in Islamophobia: Meet the women documenting sexual violence against the Rohingya, along with stories of families torn apart by Trump’s travel ban. From the U.S, an op-ed on Ilhan Omar and the three reasons she gets singled out for her views; from Canada, a call to address Islamophobia in classrooms. Our recommended read for today is by Omar Suleiman who writes on burying the dead in Christchurch. This, and more, below:
New Zealand
Opinion | Islamophobia kills. I watched this with my own eyes when I helped bury New Zealand victims | Recommended Read
In the eyes of the terrorist, he was disposable and despicable. A threat to white civilization. A worthless Muslim. Islamophobia kills. It renders every single one of us suspicious and the entirety of our religion precarious. When the president of the most powerful nation in the world says, “I think Islam hates us” and repeats a fake story of a general executing 49 Muslims with bullets dipped in pig blood to send them to hell, is anyone really surprised that a terrorist acted on his words and executed 50 Muslims in a mosque in New Zealand citing his name? The story about the general isn’t real. But the one about our commander in chief is. Ask the terrorists in Quebec and Christchurch who both murdered Muslims in prayer citing Donald Trump’s words and example. To both 28-year old white supremacist terrorists, Trump is the symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose. So Mucaad at the age of 3 or Haji Daoud Nabi at the age of 71 were both part of the common enemy in Christchurch. Haji Daoud greeted the terrorist with “Hello brother” but in the eyes of the terrorist he was no brother. He wasn’t even human. A worthless Muslim. read the complete article
A 95-year-old Kiwi WWII veteran caught four buses to protest against racism
Arm-in-arm with a police officer and a stranger, 95-year-old WWII veteran John Sato was determined to show his support for the Muslim community by protesting against racism at an Auckland rally. The New Zealand Army veteran told Radio New Zealand he couldn't sleep the night of the Christchurch terror attacks, when a sole gunman killed fifty Muslims during afternoon prays at two different mosques. "I think it's such a tragedy, and yet it has the other side," he told Radio New Zealand. "It has brought people together, no matter what their race or anything. People suddenly realised we're all one. We care for each other." read the complete article
Europe
Link between Christchurch attacker, Identitarian Movement
Hansjoerg Bacher, spokesman for prosecutors in Graz, said Martin Sellner, head of the Identitarian Movement - which says it wants to preserve Europe’s identity - received 1,500 euros ($1,690) in early 2018 from a donor with the same name as the man charged with murder following the Christchurch attack. “We can now confirm that there was financial support and so a link between the New Zealand attacker and the Identitarian Movement in Austria,” Kurz said. read the complete article
Hate crimes against Muslims top 320 in Belfast
That is one of the findings of detailed research into the experiences of people from the Muslim community in the city. However, the researchers said that most hate incidents involving Muslims were not reported to the PSNI. The report said that most hate crime incidents were not reported to the PSNI, "in part due to a lack of trust, a belief that nothing can or will be done or a sense that such incidents were normal." There are thought to be around 6,000 Muslims in NI - less than half a per cent of the population. The researchers found that many people from a Muslim background had suffered verbal abuse. "Women, particularly those wearing forms of dress that identified them as Muslim, were often an easy target for expressions of verbal hostility," the report said. read the complete article
Myanmar
[CW: Sexual Violence] Meet the Woman Documenting Sexual Violence Against Myanmar's Rohingya
When Rohingya refugees began fleeing into Bangladesh in 2016 and 2017, lawyer and activist Razia Sultana found herself on the frontline of a sexual violence epidemic. After interviewing hundreds of rape survivors, she established the Rohingya Women’s Welfare Society to provide counseling and respond to issues of domestic violence, child marriage and women’s health. Last year, she testified before the U.N. Security Council, and on March 7, the State Department honored her with a prestigious International Women of Courage Award. read the complete article
United States
Opinion | The Three Intersecting Reasons Ilhan Omar Gets Singled Out
The brazen public condemnations of Omar were made with such ease not because the Minnesota representative had said anything new since the last flagellation, but thanks to her uniquely threatening triple identity as a black Muslim woman. While analyzing the vitriol directed at Omar, a hijab-wearing Somali refugee, it’s tempting to single out either her blackness or her Muslim identity as the cause, but the two are inseparable. The conventional, contemporary understanding of Islamophobia tends to revolve around Muslims as a newly racialized group. The Muslim in the popular imagination is a brown, immigrant subject, and attempts to understand anti-Muslim hate are constrained to that context. Reducing Islamophobia to just another form of racism that peaked in the age of the war on terror, however, ignores anti-black Islamophobia dating back to the slave trade. read the complete article
Graffiti Citing New Zealand Attack Is Found After Mosque Fire in California
Shortly before dawn prayers on Sunday, someone noticed a fire outside the building, the police said. One person called 911. Someone rushed to put out the flames using a fire extinguisher. An outside wall was scorched but not badly damaged, and no one was injured. Still, harm was done: There was anti-Muslim graffiti referring to the New Zealand attack. On Tuesday, an Escondido Police Department official, Lt. Chris Lick, said in a phone interview that the fire had been set with an accelerant. The department, which announced in a statement on Sunday that the fire was being investigated as arson and a hate crime, is working with the F.B.I., the San Diego Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on the case. read the complete article
Opinion | More stories of hearts broken by Trump’s travel ban
When we released our first short documentary about two married couples separated by President Trump’s travel ban, we asked viewers to let us know whether they had similar stories. Nearly 800 letters of heartbreak poured in. Americans from across the country, and the world, said they were struggling to keep their families intact because of the executive order blocking immigration from Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen — countries Trump says are security threats. We can’t publish them all, but this is a sampling of the hardship Americans and their foreign-born loved ones say they are experiencing because of the travel ban. read the complete article
US Muslims fund African wells to honor New Zealand shooting victims
Since launching their crowdfunding effort on March 23, Sajjad Shah, founder of the Indiana nonprofit Muslims of the World, and “American Islamophobia” author Khaled Beydoun have raised over $73,000 for the project. “We wanted to make sure their stories are remembered,” Shah said. “We wanted to leave a legacy for these victims. People have been raising money for their families and their mosques, but nobody has done anything for the actual victims.” After the shooting, which targeted two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch and left at least 50 people dead and another 50 wounded, Shah raised about $20,000 for the families in his own GoFundMe effort. Another prominent campaign led by U.S. Muslims raised more than $1.8 million for the victims’ families and mosques. read the complete article
Opinion | America’s Islamophobia Is Forged at the Pulpit
The first time I remember hearing Islam equated with terrorism from the pulpit, I was a 17-year-old junior at Heritage Christian School in Indianapolis. “A good Muslim,” our head pastor, Marcus Warner, intoned that Sunday morning, “should want to kill Christians and Jews.” He insisted that this was the only conclusion possible from a serious reading of the Quran. As a doubting young evangelical who would later become an agnostic, this extreme statement made me uncomfortable even then. Today, in the wake of the shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, it should be considered every bit as offensive as the worst anti-Semitic tropes. The religiously inspired Islamophobia I grew up with continues to shape Washington’s foreign policy—and Islamophobic statements too often pass without criticism in the public sphere. The most damaging impact of religious Islamophobia may be in foreign policy. Islamophobes like former CIA head and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo loom large in the Trump administration. Under Trump more than under previous presidents, U.S. foreign policy has been shaped by an anti-pluralist, fundamentalist form of Christianity whose adherents exhibit a particularly virulent animosity toward Muslims. White evangelicals make up not only Trump’s base but the single most nativist demographic in the United States today. read the complete article
Canada
Opinion | To humanize Muslims, let’s start in the classroom
For the past 13 years, I have similarly been asking my first- and second-year university students what histories they are taught in school. The majority give this sequence: Greco-Roman world with a bit of Ancient Egypt, medieval and Renaissance Europe, Europe and the Industrial Revolution, the World Wars and Canadian history. I also ask students if they see or hear about their own backgrounds in this curriculum. Most times, the answer is no. I ask if they have ever been taught about Muslim histories, art, architecture or literature? Without exception, the answer is no. Most Canadian students seemingly go through the education system without ever hearing about the plurality of the world’s histories, cultures, faiths and traditions, including Islam and Muslims. read the complete article
China
Xinjiang crackdown must continue, top China leader says
Xinjiang needs to “perfect” stability maintenance measures and crack down on religious extremism, the ruling Communist party’s fourth-ranked leader has said on a tour of the region where China is running a controversial deradicalisation programme. During a visit on 20-25 March to Xinjiang, including Kashgar and Tumxuk in the strongly Uighur southern part of the region, Wang Yang said the situation in Xinjiang was “continuing to develop well”, the official Xinjiang Daily said on Tuesday. Authorities “must perfect stability-maintenance measures, and maintain high pressure on the ‘three forces’,” the paper cited Wang as saying, referring to terrorism, extremismand separatism. read the complete article