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SearchToday in Islamophobia: The far-right poster boy who received funds from the Christchurch shooter, and the man who threatened to kill a US Congresswoman. As the Indian elections draw nearer, an op-ed explores the political history of Narendra Modi, while another investigates the impact of delayed justice on inter-religious harmony in the country. Our recommended read of the day is by Erin Kearns and Amaranth Amarasingam titled on media portrayal of terrorism and the evidence that suggests otherwise. This, and more, below:
Global
How News Media Talk About Terrorism: What the Evidence Shows | Recommended Read
After major extremist attacks, public discussion often becomes dominated by the question of whether white attackers are talked about differently and treated differently than non-white attackers. We inevitably see the famous “terrorism or mental illness” chart from a Family Guy episode, frequent references to media hypocrisy, and exhortations from activists to “imagine if this guy was a Muslim.” But, what does the research actually show about how different attackers are discussed in the news media, and what gaps remain in our understanding of how all this plays out? read the complete article
Ex-Murdoch executive says he quit over Fox News's 'relationship with facts'
Joseph Azam, who left News Corp in 2017 after working as a senior vice president under media mogul Rupert Murdoch, detailed his decision to leave to CNN’s Brian Stelter. “I’m a big believer in the marketplace of ideas, right?” Azam said. “And I was fine working with and for people who had very different values and opinions than I did, but I noticed a significant shift in the ferociousness and, frankly, in the relationship with facts." read the complete article
Opinion | How Far-Right Extremists Abroad Have Adopted Trump's Symbols As Their Own
A Canadian, Bissonette hadn’t voted for Donald Trump. He lived in a French-speaking province, far from the U.S. president’s campaign rallies and “America first” appeals. But some of the first photos to emerge of the 27-year-old after he stormed a Quebec City mosque and killed six Muslim men in January 2017 showed him wide-eyed with a slight smirk and a red “Make America Great Again” cap casting a shadow over his pallid face. “Make America Great Again” has become more than a U.S. political slogan. For Bissonette andother white nationalist, radical right and anti-immigrant extremists all over the world, it’s a symbol; a kind of political messaging that transcends the specifics of country and language. read the complete article
India
Opinion | The verdict on India’s strongman, Narendra Modi
Up to 900 million people, an eighth of the world’s population, will vote in India’s gargantuan elections, that start on 11 April and continue for six weeks. Their choice will be driven by local grievances, national issues, their caste or class, and rumours and misinformation shared online. Above all, however, it will be a referendum on Modi, the country’s most powerful and polarising prime minister in generations. read the complete article
India’s leader rallies his base with Hindu mega projects
In the Indian city Hindus consider the center of the world, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has commissioned a grand promenade connecting the sacred Ganges River with the centuries-old Vishwanath temple dedicated to Lord Shiva, the god of destruction. It’s a project dripping with equal parts symbolism — Modi, the devout Hindu, restoring the ancient connection between two religious icons — and political calculation. In his five years as prime minister, Modi has pushed to promote this secular nation of 1.3 billion people and nine major religions — including about 170 million Muslims — as a distinctly Hindu state. read the complete article
WhatsApp: The 'black hole' of fake news in India's election
WhatsApp, India's most popular messaging platform, has become a vehicle for misinformation and propaganda ahead of the upcoming election. The Facebook-owned app has announced new measures to fight this but experts say the scale of the problem is overwhelming. India poses a particularly complex problem for Facebook. It is WhatsApp's largest market - more than 200 million Indians use the app - and a place where users forward more content than anywhere else in the world. The fact that up to 256 people can be part of a group chat makes it incredibly popular with extended families and large groups of friends. read the complete article
[CW: Graphic violence] How delayed justice after hate crimes in India worsens religious divisions
Last fall, 13 people in the state of Bihar were arrested for being part of a mob that burned an elderly Muslim man to death. Within a month, all were released on bail, despite photos that appear to show them participating in the crime. For Akhlak Ansari, the slain man’s son, the suspects’ swift release was a blow. People who get caught for minor crimes, such as violating Bihar’s prohibition on liquor consumption, are detained for at least three months, he said. “But for murder, they have given bail to everyone,” Ansari said. read the complete article
United States
New York man charged with threatening to kill Muslim U.S. lawmaker Ilhan Omar
A 55-year-old New York man has been arrested and charged with threatening to assault and murder Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, a Muslim U.S. Congress member from Minnesota, federal prosecutors said. Patrick Carlineo Jr. of Addison, New York, faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Friday in a statement. Interviewed at his home by investigators, Carlineo “stated that he was a patriot, that he loves the President, and that he hates radical Muslims in our government,” the affidavit said. read the complete article
Trump travel ban: Thousands of 'desperate' families remain separated
The mother and son are among thousands of people who have been kept apart from relatives in the U.S. since Trump introduced the travel ban days after his inauguration, initially targeting only Muslim-majority countries. Out of nearly 38,000 visa applications from the targeted countries that the State Department reviewed in the first 11 months the ban was in effect, only 6 percent received a waiver, according to Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., a critic of the ban, who released the figures to NBC News on Thursday after receiving them from the agency. read the complete article
Europe
Opinion | The far right is the military wing of mainstream Islamophobia
For years, right-wing media and conservative politicians have systematically accused mosques of being incubators of “extremism", fostering beliefs that teach young Muslims to hate the very societies in which they were born and raised. Their more liberal counterparts have not done much to counter these narratives. Indeed, some have kept silent in tacit agreement. But anyone who comes from the Muslim community, especially the young, know that the mosques do nothing of the sort. read the complete article
Muslim Woman Abused By Neighbours Says Lack Of Authorities' Action May Force Her To Move
Parveen Ali moved into a newly refurbished flat in west London last May and says she has endured abuse ever since. Ali, who wears a hijab, says the bullying started when a video of her at a Britain First rally, which was posted on YouTube in 2017, was seen by residents of her estate who identified her as a neighbour. In the footage, Ali is seen filming Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, on her phone. He repeatedly asks her what shethink of sharia law, to which she responds: “I want to live in peace”. In a series of tweets about her treatment on the estate, the 37-year-old said the video was being used by “15-20 people” who have “harrassed me at different times or in groups”. read the complete article
'Where the grievances lie’: New Zealand attack probes explore links with Europe’s anti-Muslim anger
The probes currently concentrate on any money trails leading back to the suspect, 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant, who was charged on Friday in New Zealand with 50 counts of murder and 39 counts of attempted murder in the March 15 bloodshed at two mosques in Christchurch. It also reflects wider examinations into a new crop of far-right groups whose rise has paralleled the increasing use of anti-immigrant fears to buoy right-wing political parties in the West. Among the groups most adept at stitching together the various strands of nativist anger and suspicion is the French-rooted Identitarian Movement, which promotes an alarmist message that Muslim migrants will one day overrun Western culture. read the complete article
The ‘Far-Right Poster Boy’ that received Funds from the New Zealand Terrorist
Martin Sellner, is also a leading figure of the Identitarian Movement in Austria. The Identitarian Movement is characterized by the Austrian intelligence agency BVT as racist and nationalist movement. It rallies to “protect the respective country or ‘whole Europe’ from ‘Islamization’ and mass immigration.” Also, the intelligence agency states in a report from 2014 that “the distancing of neo-Nazism in public statements is to be regarded as a tactical manoeuvre, since there are in the ranks of the movement’s elites officially known neo-Nazis and contacts with other right-wing extremists.” What is characteristic is that it uses a pseudo-intellectual discourse to disguise its own racist and nationalist world view. read the complete article
China
[CW: Graphic violence] New Horrors: China Harvesting Muslim Organs in Concentration Camps.
“I was called by my chief surgeon to go to a room near the Urumqi execution grounds to remove the liver and two kidneys from an executed prisoner,” Enver Tohti, an exiled Uyghur oncology surgeon, told me. “It turned out he wasn’t fully dead because they [Chinese execution squad] shot him through the right chest [intentionally] to knock him out [without killing him], so I would have time to remove his organs,” a surgery his chief surgeon demand he perform without giving the prisoner an anaesthetic. Tohti would see the man’s still beating heart as he removed his kidneys and liver. read the complete article
Are Historic Mosques In Xinjiang Being Destroyed?
The first mosque that came to our attention was the Keriya Aitika Mosque, located here. We already know the exact location as the activist who posted about this mosque helpfully included the coordinates in his images. The two images that the activist posted from Google Earth clearly demonstrate that the building depicted has been razed. A second user on the original thread on this subject asked about the Kargilik Mosque and whether it had been razed or not. Looking at publicly available imagery on Google Earth we see no obvious changes to this mosque. This is because, at the time of writing, the most recent available imagery on Google Earth was from September 1, 2018, when the mosque was still standing. However, using Planet Labs imagery we can see that there was significant change at this location in late 2018. read the complete article