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SearchToday in Islamophobia: China invokes Christchurch to defend its treatment of Muslims, Democrats introduce a bill to repeal Trump’s Muslim ban. A Trump supporter hurls anti-Muslim abuse outside the NZ mosque where 50 were killed, and an article from Bridge links the massacre to larger discourse around immigration. Our recommended read for today is by Darren Byler titled “China’s hi-tech war on its Muslim minority”. This, and more, below:
China
China’s hi-tech war on its Muslim minority | Recommended Read
The police administered what they call a “health check”, which involved collecting several types of biometric data, including DNA, blood type, fingerprints, voice recordings and face scans – a process that all adults in the Uighur autonomous region of Xinjiang, in north-west China, are expected to undergo. After his “health check”, Alim was transported to one of the hundreds of detention centres that dot north-west China. These centres have become an important part of what Xi Jinping’s government calls the “people’s war on terror”, a campaign launched in 2014, which focuses on Xinjiang. As part of this campaign, the Chinese government has come to treat almost all expressions of Uighur Islamic faith as signs of potential religious extremism and ethnic separatism. At the detention centre, Alim was deprived of sleep and food, and subjected to hours of interrogation and verbal abuse. Other detainees report being placed in stress positions, tortured with electric shocks, and kept in isolation for long periods. When he wasn’t being interrogated, Alim was kept in a tiny cell with 20 other Uighur men. read the complete article
China Stresses Investment, Invokes New Zealand Massacre in Defending Treatment of Muslims
Chinese authorities defended the razing of Muslim neighborhoods and the mass use of digital surveillance in the capital of China’s Xinjiang region, saying the measures are designed to promote development and security for locals.The Xinjiang government’s information office, in written comments to The Wall Street Journal, denied that the government is using redevelopment of neighborhoods in Urumqi inhabited by ethnic Uighurs to impose new controls. It justified the installation of digital cameras at Urumqi’s more than 300 mosques by evoking last month’s mass shootings in New Zealand, saying the killings were a reminder of the need for more security at religious venues. read the complete article
Global
Christchurch, Immigration & the fear mongering that incites hate
The Christchurch gunman’s manifesto is a reflection of the broader public discourse on immigration and white identity. Tarrant’s claim that an “invasion” of “millions of people pouring across our borders, legally” is not an aberration; it is reflected in today’s public discourse and in immigration policies in Europe. In 2015, the United Nations announced the world was experiencing the largest refugee crisis since World War II. Millions of men, women, and children seeking to escape war, poverty, and violence in Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere looked towards Europe for safety and security. European media in turn covered the humanitarian crisis through a victim-villain binary, framing the refugee/migrant as a ‘foreign threat.’ Mainstream media outlets have covered immigration and the refugee ‘crisis’ as an invasion by people from Africa and the Middle East (often emphasizing Muslim identities), an assault on the national identity and way of life, and as sexual threats to white women and girls. read the complete article
United States
Dems introduce bill to repeal Trump 'Muslim ban'
Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.) and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) on Wednesday introduced legislation to end President Trump's ban on travelers to the United States from five Muslim-majority countries. The legislation, known as the National Origin-Based Antidiscrimination for Nonimmigrants (NO BAN) Act, "repeals the three versions of President Trump’s Muslim ban, strengthens the Immigration and Nationality Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion, and restores the separation of powers by limiting overly broad executive authority to issue future travel bans," its sponsors said in a statement. read the complete article
Ilhan Omar Calls Out Fox News and GOP for ‘Dangerous Incitement’ Over Her 9/11 Comments
Rep. Ilhan Omar on Wednesday called the conservative attacks lobbed against her “dangerous incitement” after Republicans and Fox News insinuated she was downplaying the 9/11 terror attack. Omar, a Democrat and Somali-American from Minnesota, is under fire by the right for comments she made last month. At a fundraiser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Los Angeles, Omar said, in part, that “CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.” The comments circulated in right-wing media this week, with conservatives interpreting them as minimizing the terrorist attack. read the complete article
Department Of Defense Employee Can't Reunite With Wife Because Of Muslim Ban
Abbas, a 33-year-old Muslim American and Department of Defense employee, has yet to receive that email. He has no choice but to break the same old news to his wife, a Syrian native stranded in Turkey, that his own employer has not yet allowed for her to join him in his home country. “I wake up in the morning and I’m just ready to serve the country and serve the people who protect us, yet they tell me, ’Your wife is not allowed to come here’” Abbas told HuffPost. “It is very ironic that I work in the U.S. government to help protect our national security, yet this very same national security is used as a pretext to keep me away from my wife.” read the complete article
Congress Learns A Lesson About Internet Hate In Real Time
YouTube moderators were forced to disable comments on the House Judiciary Committee’s livestreamed congressional hearing on online hate. The hearing itself had turned into an object lesson in online hate. Before the session had even begun, hateful comments began pouring in, including white nationalist memes, anti-Semitic slurs, misogynist asides, pro-Trump rhetoric, complaints about “white genocide,” and other rhetoric. read the complete article
China hawks call on America to fight a new Cold War
They are calling for a national movement to encourage the Chinese Communist Party’s destruction, root out sympathetic forces at home and combat Chinese aggression across their world. Their effort is controversial both due to the message and the messengers. A concerted pushback against Beijing is long overdue. But their effort runs the risk of politicizing what should be a unified national effort. The leaders of Committee on the Present Danger: China include Reagan administration official Frank Gaffney and former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, and its members include several former defense and intelligence officials. They are sounding an alarm about the China threat and framing the U.S.-China relationship as an existential struggle between two civilizations that have irreconcilably opposed plans for the world order. read the complete article
New Zealand
Man in Trump 2020 t-shirt shouts anti- Muslim abuse outside NZ mosque where 50 were killed
A man wearing a Donald Trump T-shirt allegedly shouted abuse outside the mosque that was the scene of New Zealand’s deadliest mass killing. The incident was detailed on the Facebook page “Muslims in Christchurch and Canterbury,” where an image was posted of a man in a black T-shirt with the words “Trump 2020” on it, next to two police officers outside the Masjid Al Noor mosque in Deans Avenue, Christchurch. That was the mosque where the majority of the people were killed by a self-avowed white supremacist on March 15. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Government sacks Roger Scruton after remarks about Soros and Islamophobia
The government has sacked its housing adviser Roger Scruton after he appeared to repeat antisemitic statements and denied Islamophobia was a problem. In an interview with the New Statesman, the rightwing philosopher was unrepentant about his views on George Soros, the Hungarian-American philanthropist, who is frequently cited in antisemitic conspiracy theories and attacked by Hungary’s rightwing prime minister, Viktor Orbán. “Anybody who doesn’t think that there’s a Soros empire in Hungary has not observed the facts,” Scruton told the magazine. read the complete article
Opinion | Muslims and LGBTQ people should stand together, not fight each other
In 2019, picketers – mostly, but not exclusively, from a Muslim background – are demanding that schools cease their LGBTQ-inclusive education. If you listen to the protesters, you’d think that the No Outsiders programme – designed by Andrew Moffat, assistant headteacher at Parkfield community school – was teaching young children about gay sex. In truth, it’s about simply letting them know that gay people exist, that people are different, and that’s OK: one of the books in the programme features a chameleon who’s only happy when he’s finally himself; another shows different types of families – some have two parents, some have one, some are white, some are black, some have two mothers; another is a picturebook about a child with two mums doing all the normal things families do together. As Moffat emphasises, it’s about preparing children to live in modern Britain, with all its diversity. Taking away this basic education will inflict the same harm that previous generations of young LGBTQ people endured. read the complete article