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SearchToday in Islamophobia: New study attributes hate crime drop in Liverpool to soccer superstar Mohamed Salah, while YouTube vows to deal more aggressively with hate speech. Myanmar premier Aung San Suu Kyi finds common ground with Hungary’s Orban over Islam, as one million displaced Rohingya face uncertainty in Bangladesh. Our recommended read for today looks at the hijab ban and how it violates women’s rights, and is by Engy Abdelkader. This, and more, below:
International
Opinion | Hijab Bans Undermine Women's Rights, Not Just Religious Freedom | Recommended Read
The international community typically views such restrictive laws, practices, and policies exclusively through the lens of religious freedom. But, each of these legal developments also detrimentally effects a woman’s right to education. Recall, the right to education is a fundamental human right recognized in a myriad international documents and treaties. To fully realize a woman’s right to education, CEDAW requires it to be available, accessible, acceptable, and adaptable. Accessibility requires a prohibition against discrimination and encompasses both a physical and economic component. Acceptability refers to the quality of the curriculum and instruction while adaptability takes into account that education must be responsive to a society’s needs. Taken together, these principles are intended to prevent discrimination and promote gender equality in education. Significantly, official restrictions on Muslim women’s dress don’t satisfy these basic requirements. In certain European contexts, this also demonstrates an inability to adapt to an increasingly multicultural society. Essentially, seemingly neutral laws and policies have a discriminatory effect on female students because of the disproportionate impact on Muslim women who wear a headscarf. Civil society should mount related legal challenges under CEDAW; the offending nations are all state parties. read the complete article
Aung San Suu Kyi finds common ground with Orbán over Islam
In a rare trip to Europe, state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace prize laureate who was once the figurehead of the fight for democracy in Myanmar, met Orbán in Budapest. There, the two leaders found common ground on the subject of immigration and Islam. “The two leaders highlighted that one of the greatest challenges at present for both countries and their respective regions – south-east Asia and Europe – is migration,” read a statement released after their meeting. “They noted that both regions have seen the emergence of the issue of co-existence with continuously growing Muslim populations.” read the complete article
YouTube will remove more white supremacist and hoax videos, a more aggressive stance on hate speech
YouTube said Wednesday it will remove false videos alleging that major events like the Holocaust didn’t happen, as well as a broad array of content by white supremacists and others in a move to more aggressively crack down on hate speech. The policies will specifically ban videos “alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation, or exclusion,” based on those categories. That would include groups that “glorify Nazi ideology,” the company said in its announcement, because such beliefs were “inherently discriminatory.” Previously, the company had drawn a fine line between “hate” and “superiority,” choosing to limit the spread of white supremacy videos by not recommending them and not allowing advertising on them, but not removing them unless they expressly promoted violence. That approach allowed many videos to slip through the cracks. In 2018, The Washington Post reported that users on social media sites popular with hate groups, such as Gab.ai and 4chan, linked to YouTube more often than any other site. read the complete article
Myanmar
For Rohingya Refugees, There’s No Return in Sight
The Rohingya Muslims have faced persecution in Myanmar for decades. And yet no violence in their recent history has compared to that which the Myanmar military inflicted in August 2017. After militants from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked police and army posts in northwestern Rakhine State on August 25, the military responded by killing thousands of Rohingya civilians, raping hundreds of Rohingya women and girls, and burning entire villages to the ground. In the course of a little more than three months, more than 700,000 Rohingya were forced to flee for their lives to Bangladesh. Myanmar authorities claimed they had conducted a “clearance operation” to rid the country of militants. In reality, they were fulfilling a long-standing dream of Myanmar’s Buddhist nationalists: the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims. The refugees joined hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who were already in Bangladesh seeking refuge after previous attacks, bringing the total to 1.2 million. Today, more Rohingya live as refugees than remain in Myanmar. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Hate Crimes In Liverpool Have Dropped Nearly 20% Since Mo Salah Signed
Researchers at Stanford University’s Immigration Policy Lab found a 18.9% drop in hate crimes since the Muslim striker joined the club in June 2017. No other type of offence saw a similar reduction. Anti-Muslim tweets from Liverpool fans dropped by half in the same period. By examining 15 million tweets from football fans and surveying 8,060 Liverpool supporters, the authors wrote: “Taken together, the evidence points to Salah’s rise in prominence causing a decrease in hate crimes in Liverpool FC’s home county.” “Few Muslims in British public life have been as open about their Muslim identity, and are as well-liked, as Salah.” read the complete article
‘Get Out Of My Country’: Woman Launches Photography Exhibition On The Day-To-Day Effects Of Islamophobia
Parveen Ali has been called many things near her home. ‘Paki’, ‘Terrorist’ and ‘Raghead’ are just three examples. This summer, it got so bad she thought she might be forced to move out. Speaking to RightsInfo, Parveen says she “felt like a prisoner in her own home” after far-right supporters started sharing a video of her in April. At the time, she told HuffPost UK that people would often laugh in her face, spit on the floor as she walked past, or even tap on her window chanting “Tommy, Tommy”, and “who’s country?, our country?”. read the complete article
Denmark
Social Democrats appear headed back into power in Denmark
The Social Democrats got about 25.9% of the votes after a campaign in which party leaders vowed a tough stance against immigration. Mette Frederiksen, the party’s leader, said late Wednesday that the Social Democrats will try to govern as a minority rather than form a governing coalition with smaller parties. It will seek support from the right on some issues, such as immigration, and from the left on other matters, such as social welfare, she said. The populist Danish People’s Party, which often voted with the center-right Liberals, was hit with a big drop in support, meaning Loekke Rasmussen can no longer muster a majority in parliament. read the complete article
India
Is India becoming a ‘Hindu state’?
For some analysts, there is concern that this landslide win could signal the end of India as a secular state. After all, Modi’s victory speech on May 23 lambasted “secularists” for what he said was their deceit. The BJP — described in Western media as a “Hindu nationalist” party — ran on a platform of Hindu majoritarianism. One of the candidates the party fielded was Pragya Thakur, who is accused in a 2008 bombing and who recently praised Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. BJP President Amit Shah pledged to remove all immigrants from India except Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains. Likewise, Modi’s speeches were filled with menacing references to disloyal outsiders. read the complete article
China
Opinion | Ottawa’s timid Tiananmen Square messaging fails the Uyghurs in China
On first reading, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland’s statement on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre represents welcome clarity from a government that has struggled with its messaging about China. It calls for the Chinese government to “break the silence” by accounting for those who were killed or went missing, “to uphold all of its human-rights obligations,” and for “the release of those who have been unjustly and arbitrarily detained.” On closer review, however, there is less to the statement than meets the eye. It largely recycles language used by the Conservative government in 2015. read the complete article