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SearchToday in Islamophobia: The Muslim Council of Britain is calling for an inquiry into Islamophobia within British Politics, as 20 U.S. Democratic Senators call for Stephen Miller’s resignation. Our recommended read today is on the newly obtained guidelines and algorithms used to imprison Muslim Uighurs and run the detention camps. This and more below:
China
Recommended Read: Exposed: China’s Operating Manuals For Mass Internment And Arrest By Algorithm
The China Cables, obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, include a classified list of guidelines, personally approved by the region’s top security chief, that effectively serves as a manual for operating the camps now holding hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uighurs and other minorities. The leak also features previously undisclosed intelligence briefings that reveal, in the government’s own words, how Chinese police are guided by a massive data collection and analysis system that uses artificial intelligence to select entire categories of Xinjiang residents for detention. The manual, called a “telegram,” instructs camp personnel on such matters as how to prevent escapes, how to maintain total secrecy about the camps’ existence, methods of forced indoctrination, how to control disease outbreaks, and when to let detainees see relatives or even use the toilet. The document, dating to 2017, lays bare a behavior-modification “points” system to mete out punishments and rewards to inmates. The classified intelligence briefings reveal the scope and ambition of the government’s artificial-intelligence-powered policing platform, which purports to predict crimes based on these computer-generated findings alone. Experts say the platform, which is used in both policing and military contexts, demonstrates the power of technology to help drive industrial-scale human rights abuses. read the complete article
“Wash Brains, Cleanse Hearts”: Evidence from Chinese Government Documents about the Nature and Extent of Xinjiang’s Extrajudicial Internment Campaign
Overall, the author analyzed three types of data sources, all of which are mutually consistent and confirm the growing body of first-hand witness accounts. The first type consisted of official government documents and related media reports that are publicly accessible but not designed for international audiences. The second source consists of local government data in the form of detailed tables and spreadsheets that list the fates of thousands of minority individuals. The third source is a confidential, classified Chinese policy document issued by the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’s Party Political and Legal Affairs Committee. This highly significant document details how Xinjiang’s so-called “vocational training centers” are supposed to be run. In combination, these three sources provide us with unprecedented insights into the region’s re-education internment campaign. Together, they decisively refute Beijing’s propaganda claims. read the complete article
The man behind China’s detention of 1 million Muslims
Now, newly revealed, confidential documents show that the official, Zhu Hailun, played a key role in planning and executing a campaign that has swept up a million or more Uighurs into detention camps. Published in 2017, the documents were signed by Zhu, as then-head of the powerful Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Communist Party in the Xinjiang region. Long before the crackdown and despite his intimate familiarity with local culture, Zhu was more hated than loved among the Uighurs he ruled. He was born in 1958 in rural Jiangsu on China’s coast. In his teens, during China’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution, Zhu was sent to Kargilik county, deep in the Uighur heartland in Xinjiang. He never left. Zhu joined the Party in 1980 and moved up Xinjiang’s bureaucracy, helming hotspot cities. By the 90s, he was so fluent in Uighur that he corrected his own translators during meetings. “If you didn’t see him, you’d never imagine he’s Han Chinese. When he spoke Uighur, he really spoke just like a Uighur, since he grew up with them,” said a Uighur businessman living in exile in Turkey, who declined to be named out of fear of retribution. read the complete article
China's brainwashing of Uighur Muslims revealed by leaked documents
Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities are targeted by the Chinese government using predictive technology and locked up in camps under strict rules covering everything down to using the toilet, according to leaked Communist Party documents. Suspects are identified – often before they have committed a crime – by a digital mass surveillance programme which even flags the users of some mobile phone apps for arrest, the papers reveal. Once interrogated and detained they are subjected to systematic brainwashing at a network of what the government claimed were “vocational education and training centres” in Xinjiang province. The indoctrination programme involves awarding points for “ideological education”, “compliance with discipline” and “study and training”, as well as “manner education” such as ”timely haircuts and shaves”. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Tory candidate retweets Tommy Robinson ‘Muslim paedophiles’ post
A Conservative Party candidate retweeted a post that claimed far-right activist Tommy Robinson had been jailed for ‘reporting on Muslim paedophiles’. Karl McCartney is the Conservative Party candidate for Lincoln. He also appeared to endorse a post which said the government had ‘made it illegal’ to expose Asian grooming gangs after Robinson was jailed for contempt of court, the Mirror reported. It comes just days after Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson said the party had a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to Islamophobia. read the complete article
Fresh calls for equalities watchdog to launch Islamophobia inquiry into Tory party
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) is renewing its call for the UK’s human rights watchdog to launch an inquiry into Islamophobia in the Conservative Party. The MCB had initially submitted a complaint of more than 20 pages to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) back in May, and are still waiting a response from the organisation. It comes after new allegations of Islamophobia in the party emerged among councillors and parliamentary candidates since then. In September, the BBC submitted evidence of more than 20 new cases to the party, which included one party member calling Muslims ‘scum’ and another writing ‘I don’t want Muslims in this country’. A poll by YouGov in June, carried out on behalf of the anti-racism charity Hope not Hate, also found that more than two-thirds of Tory members believe the myth that parts of the UK are under Sharia law, and nearly half would not want a Muslim as prime minister. read the complete article
Candidate for Brexit Party ‘stoked hostility to immigrants’ online
Rosamund Beattie has been accused of stoking “hostility to immigrants” with the posts on social media. The former Cheltenham Ladies’ College pupil standing in Ealing Southall, which has a big Muslim population, posted comments from Dutch far-Right leader Geert Wilders urging some Muslims to move from the West to “Islamic nations”. Ms Beattie, 45, advocated the “internment” of Muslim terror suspects and spoke of “halal-style slaughter” of Britons in the London Bridge terror attack. She wrote that the UK should “remove citizenship” and “intern & deport the threats to our lives and lifestyle”. Ms Beattie, who backed banning the burka, made the posts while campaigning in West Ham for Ukip in the 2017 general election. She posted a message from an apparent Brexit supporter, David Jones, who said: “Pointless speech by [Theresa] May — nothing on stopping jihadis returning, closing down radical mosques or banning muslim migration.” read the complete article
United States
Supreme Court to take up Trump appeal over Muslims put on 'no fly list' for refusing to spy
The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear the Trump administration’s appeal in a case involving three Muslim U.S. residents who say FBI agents placed their names on the federal government’s “no fly list” because they refused to spy on their fellow Muslims. The men sued the FBI agents over what they say was an unlawful abuse of a federal watchlist that prohibits suspected terrorists from air travel from, to or over the United States. Their refusal to become government informants in terrorism-related investigations was based at least in part on their religious beliefs. The justices agreed to hear the Trump administration’s appeal of a ruling by a New York–based federal appeals court. That court ruled in 2018 that the men could sue under a 1993 statute called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. read the complete article
Opinion | Why I Couldn’t See My Dying Father One Last Time
A few weeks earlier, he had been operated on for gallstones. Because he was a cancer survivor, the doctors moved him into an intensive care unit after the surgery. For some reason, he succumbed to delirium and was reliving a period of imprisonment after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. I last saw him in 2007, when he was still able to visit us in the United States. I had tried to bring my father to the United States in the winter of 2017. Applicants who are 80 and older do not need to be interviewed in person. Yet he was instructed to go to Ankara, Turkey, for an interview in March 2018, where he was told he would get a tourist visa in a few weeks. Six months later, I got an email saying his visa application was denied because of the Trump travel ban. read the complete article
Over 20 Democratic Senators Call On Stephen Miller To Resign White House Post
HuffPost contacted the offices of all 100 senators to ask whether Miller, a major force in shaping the Trump administration’s controversial immigration policies, should step down. In response, 24 senators said he should ― all Democrats. “On the long list of people that work in the Trump administration who we believe should not be there, Stephen Miller is at the top of that list,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told HuffPost. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said Miller has overseen some of President Donald Trump’s “most inhumane policies, including family separation (among undocumented immigrants). He pushes conspiracy theories to divide the American people and to distract from this administration’s failures. He should resign.” Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) said Miller has “used his role to impose his extreme views on policy,” especially on immigration issues. read the complete article
Domestic Violence In Muslim Communities
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What are some of the things that you uncovered about why Muslim women don't report their assaults? ABDELAZIZ: Well, I think it's important to understand that when we're talking about domestic violence and gender-based violence, that this is an issue that doesn't discriminate. It is something that spans faith and ethnicity and race and ages and that DV isn't more or less prevalent in the Muslim community. But what most people don't understand is when people assume that because, say, Islam is violent, men tend to be more violent and their women tend to be more oppressed, that this is an issue that is common in the faith. And unfortunately, a lot of these survivors and abusers have talked about being perpetually revictimized when they are going out to shelters. I spoke to one woman who owns a shelter out in Baltimore that specifically caters to Muslim women. And she tells me her clients have gone to other agencies, have gone to other shelters where they face discrimination and harassment, such as shelter residents harassing Muslim women if they choose to pray, some cooks putting in pork in Muslim women's meals who traditionally don't consume pork. And so oftentimes, these are some obstacles that they face. read the complete article
Far-right group warning of Islamist infiltration to hold banquet at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club
The group, the Center for Security Policy, has also spread the false idea that former president Barack Obama is a Muslim and alleged that mainstream Muslim organizations in the United States are secretly agents of anti-American jihad. The group has rented a ballroom for Saturday at Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla., for its annual Freedom Flame Award Dinner. The 200-person event, named after the group’s flaming-torch symbol, previously was held in New York City and Washington. read the complete article
International
Pakistan Summons Norway’s Ambassador Over Burning of Quran
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry says it has summoned Norway’s ambassador to convey the deep concern of the government and Pakistani people over the recent burning of Islam’s holy book by a Norwegian man that was caught on video. In Saturday’s statement, the ministry said: “Such actions hurt the sentiments of 1.3 billion Muslims around the world.” read the complete article
Australia
Attacked pregnant Muslim woman calls for solidarity against racism, intolerance
A heavily-pregnant Sydney woman who was the victim of an alleged racially-motivated attack has called on all Australians to protect innocent people from racial and religious attacks. 38-weeks pregnant Rana Elasmar, who is a Muslim, was wearing a hijab and police are looking at Islamophobia as a potential motive. It's been reported the man-made anti-Muslim comments to Ms Elasmar. In a post to Facebook, Ms Elasmar identifies herself as a Muslim and points out that she was “born and raised in Sydney, Australia". She goes on to say aid she has experienced verbal abuse and hate in the past but never thought "physical abuse of this nature could happen to me". read the complete article