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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the U.S., the Defense Department has “lifted the Trump administration’s ban on the release of artwork made by prisoners at Guantánamo Bay,” meaning that departing detainees will be allowed to take their work with them, meanwhile in Canada, Professor of Journalism, Asmaa Malik speaks to the Toronto Star on the treatment and turmoil surrounding the newly appointed Canadian envoy to combat Islamophobia, Amira Elghawaby, and in the UK, the Muslim Council of Britain today gave its response to the controversial Prevent review, with the British Muslim organization finding that the review will make Britain less safe and British Muslims more vulnerable. Our recommended read of the day is by Lydia Polgreen for The New York Times on how under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is experiencing an escalation in violent Islamophobia, along with a systematic crackdown by the authorities on all manner of free speech and dissent. This and more below:
India
The World’s Biggest Democracy Is Jettisoning Freedom and Tolerance | Recommended Read
But now it appears that the time has finally arrived: India is indeed the nation of the moment. It is a critical player in just about every major issue facing the planet. So it is perhaps unsurprising that a new British documentary that chronicles one of the most violent chapters of India’s post-independence history, a chapter in which Modi plays a central role, has been welcomed by India’s government like a skunk at a garden party. Even though the documentary, “India: The Modi Question,” which was made by the BBC, could not easily be watched in India, the government cracked down hard. It used emergency powers to ask that Twitter and YouTube block links to bootlegged clips, and the platforms quickly complied. When groups of students tried to screen illicit copies on campuses, the police roughed up and detained them. On one campus in New Delhi, administrators shut off the electricity to prevent a screening. Under Modi’s government, violence against Muslims in India has risen and is often unpunished. Modi’s government has enacted laws and policies that target Muslims, including changes to citizenship rules that disadvantage Muslims and revocation of the special status of Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region contested by India and Pakistan. But it would be a mistake to think only Muslims are under threat in India. The government has systematically cracked down on all manner of free speech and dissent, increasing its emergency powers to block information it wants to keep from the Indian people and making it easier to hold dissidents under murky antiterrorism laws. An Indian journalist friend of mine, one of many who have left the country in despair over the past few years, put it this way: “It isn’t just an attack on Muslims. It is an attack on all Indians because it deprives us of ideas, thoughts, dreams and a rich life of the mind.” 7) This advocate and law student is making space for the voices of marginalized Quebecers (Canada) Idil Issa fights for the causes that she believes in and works to help others get their voices heard, too. The McGill University law student has spent more than five years lobbying for human rights in Quebec, particularly voicing her opposition to restrictions on the wearing of religious symbols. Issa, who grew up in Winnipeg and Toronto, first came to Montreal for university. After doing international communications work for a decade, she returned in 2016, just as the province was debating whether to bar those who wear face coverings from receiving certain public services. "There's so many religious minorities in Quebec and so many young people who are kind of growing up in this context where their existence in societies is being openly debated," says Issa. "There's so many other things to work on and fix in society, and we're just stuck on these issues." Issa began speaking to the media and writing opinion pieces. As a Muslim woman who sometimes covers her hair, she was worried what could come next. So when in 2019 the Quebec government went further — banning the wearing of hijabs by public servants in positions of authority, including teachers — Issa drew on her network of other Muslim women and allies who shared their views. Through a group she founded, Femmes musulmanes contre le racisme et l'islamophobie (FEMCOR), Issa encouraged others to go public with their experiences as Muslim women in Quebec. "That was really important for me," she says, "to help Muslim women who were affected by the bill to represent themselves and to come into their power and to really take their place." read the complete article
Indian Courts Provide Government a Pathway on Rights
India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government and its prominent supporters have been responding to recent international criticism of widespread discrimination against minority communities by stoking nationalism, even blaming a “colonial mindset.” Two recent court rulings provide BJP leaders an opportunity to reverse the damage that the government’s divisive Hindu majoritarian policies have caused to the rule of law and India’s standing as a rights-respecting democracy. On February 6, the Supreme Court criticized the police in Uttar Pradesh state for failing to investigate allegations in 2021 from a 62-year-old Muslim man who alleges he was beaten and abused because of his faith. The perpetrators of such hate crimes against Muslims and other religious minorities are often BJP supporters who are seldom prosecuted, and in this case the state government filed an affidavit denying that the attack was over religion. But one of the judges, noting the authorities’ failure to investigate, said: “When you create a climate where you foster hate crime, encourage it, do not prevent it, then it becomes a very serious thing.” Two days earlier, a Delhi sessions court dismissed allegations that student protesters had committed violence and upheld their right to dissent. The police had accused 11 students, most of them Muslim, with inciting violence in December 2019 during their protest against a discriminatory citizenship law. The court found that the police charges made “scapegoats” of protesters and that the prosecution should have “abstained from filing such ill-conceived” charges. These cases of police bias are yet another indicator that the BJP ideology of Hindu majoritarianism is finding its way into the ruling party’s governance. read the complete article
United States
Lawyer’s Racist Posts Test Conflict of Interest Standards
Massachusetts’ highest court is being asked to grapple this week with a question that some say could have impact far beyond a single case: Should a court-appointed lawyer’s racist, Islamophobic Facebook posts disqualify him from representing a Black, Muslim client? The issue is at the heart of an appeal from a defendant who said he deserves a new trial after discovering that his public defender made more than 20 bigoted social media posts while representing him. A lower court judge ruled that the appellant, Anthony Dew, hadn’t proven how his former defender’s racism amounted to ineffective representation. But, in a sign of how impactful the decision could be, 10 groups—including national civil rights organizations, criminal justice advocates, and bar associations—are pressing the state’s Supreme Judicial Court to declare that it won’t take a chance on a lawyer’s personal beliefs infecting the criminal justice system. One brief came from a person who is currently incarcerated. read the complete article
Omar hoping Biden speaks ‘about the rise’ in anti-Muslim bigotry in State of the Union address
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Monday said that she hopes President Biden addresses “the rise and the continuation” of anti-Muslim bigotry in the U.S. in his State of the Union address. During an appearance on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes,” Omar told guest host Mehdi Hasan that she thinks bigotry played a large role in her being voted off the House Foreign Affairs Committee by GOP House members last week, noting that fellow Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and former President Trump have made bigoted remarks about Muslim Americans in the past. “It precisely has to do with bigotry,” Omar said. “These are people who certainly don’t believe Muslim immigrants, Somali immigrants, refugees — and certainly someone who carries all those identities together — should be in the United States, let alone in Congress and wield any kind of power.” Omar also told Hasan that she would like to hear Biden address anti-Muslim bigotry in his Tuesday night address to Congress, saying that Black immigrants matter and are a part of American society. read the complete article
Pentagon Lifts Trump-Era Ban on Release of Guantánamo Prisoners’ Art
The Defense Department has lifted the Trump administration’s ban on the release of artwork made by prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, in a recent policy change that allows departing detainees to take their work with them. Under the new policy, detainees are allowed to take “a practicable quantity of their art” when they leave Guantánamo Bay, Lt. Col. Cesar H. Santiago, a Pentagon spokesman, said by email. He declined to define “practicable quantity” but said the Defense Department still considers the artwork to be “the property of the U.S. government.” Colonel Santiago also declined to say when the new policy was adopted. The prison imposed the ban in late 2017, after an art exhibit in New York called “Ode to the Sea” struck a nerve at the Pentagon. It featured seascapes, model ships and other works by current and former Guantánamo detainees, and its website offered an email address for people “interested in purchasing art from these artists.” read the complete article
For 9/11 Families, Plea Deals Are the Only Path Forward
My father, Brian Murphy, worked on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center and was killed when the first plane hit the North Tower on September 11, 2001. I was three years old at the time. Twenty-two years and four presidential administrations later, there has been no accountability for his death, nor the deaths of nearly three thousand others. In May 2012, five men were charged in the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay with having planned and supported the 9/11 attacks. Over ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, the case remains stalled in pre-trial hearings, with no end or even a trial date in sight. The case has been stalled by legal disputes over discovery of information, especially concerning the torture of the five defendants; turnover of key legal personnel; a never-ending rotation of judges; and, most recently, pandemic-related delays. In 2017, I joined Peaceful Tomorrows, an organization of family members of 9/11 victims who seek justice and accountability for the 9/11 attacks and for the torture that was subsequently carried out in its family members’ names. Peaceful Tomorrows has followed the military commissions since their inception and is the only organization of 9/11 family members that has sent a representative to each pre-trial hearing. Throughout the five years that I have been following the case, there has been little to no progress. The parties are no closer to a trial date than when the hearings began in 2012. In the meantime, many family members have died and others have given up hope that the case will come to an end in their lifetimes. All of this seemed on the precipice of change last year when a potential solution finally emerged. In March, prosecutors proposed a deal in which the defendants would plead guilty, and in exchange, the government would take the death penalty off the table. read the complete article
Guantanamo’s prison population continues to slowly shrink
It was about six months ago when The Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration is moving forward with plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, even appointing a senior diplomat to oversee detainee transfers. The New York Times reported that the administration is slowly making some progress. Khan’s resettlement comes on the heels of the U.S. transferring Saifullah Paracha, who was held for nearly two decades without being charged with a crime, to Pakistan. Revisiting our earlier coverage, The response from Republicans hasn’t exactly been constructive. For example, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, displaying the kind of policy seriousness that’s made him famous, last year accused the administration of wanting to “free more terrorists.” Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, the new Republican chair of the House Appropriations Committee, has also argued, “These detainees are the worst of the worst, and we need assurance that they will never be moved to the United States.” That’s still not altogether true. Detainees weren’t sent to Guantanamo because they’re the “worst of the worst”; they were sent there because the Bush/Cheney administration wanted to hold the suspects without trial outside of the American judicial system. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Building Trust into an Effective Counter-Terrorism Strategy
The Muslim Council of Britain today gave its response to the heavily trailed ‘independent’ review on the Prevent strand of the Government’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy. The Muslim Council of Britain believes that the review will make Britain less safe and will make British Muslims feel particularly vulnerable as it attempts to play down the threat of far-right extremism. Zara Mohammed, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain said: “Today, many British Muslims may well feel less protected as they are told that the Government should ignore the evidence and focus less on the threat from extreme right-wing extremism. This is a threat that thrives on Islamophobia, and a threat that has already seen violent attacks on Muslim communities.” Last year, the Home Office said that, for the second year running, the number of referrals for Extreme Right-Wing radicalisation concerns (1,309; 20%) was higher than ‘Islamist’ referrals. STIGMATISING BRITISH MUSLIMS: The so-called independent review and its right-wing supporters instead call for the focus to be placed on Muslim groups and individuals who have not only condemned extremism and terrorism, but who have worked with government to challenge the terrorist threat. read the complete article
Review of UK Prevent strategy to call for more focus on Islamist terrorism
A long-awaited report on the government’s counter-extremism programme is expected to call for its focus to shift more towards Islamist terrorism instead of rightwing terrorism. Wednesday’s publication of William Shawcross’s review into Prevent follows months of delays caused by ministerial tussles over redactions and the language in the report, sources said. Organisations blamed for promoting alleged extremist narratives while taking money from Prevent will be named, while the report will say they have benefited from taxpayers’ money. It is also expected to say the programme focusses too much on the mental health and “vulnerabilities” of those referred to it. Counter-terrorism officials tell the Guardian mental health has been a huge growth factor in those people reported to Prevent. read the complete article
Canada
What Amira Elghawaby’s apology says about Islamophobia
It was Jan. 26 when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Amira Elghawaby, a visibly Muslim woman, as point-person on Islamophobia and just days later, Elghawaby found herself at the centre of a media storm with government officials calling for her resignation. Why? A 2019 opinion piece Elghawaby co-wrote about Quebec’s controversial Bill 21 resurfaced, in which she quoted from a poll that said support for the bill was linked to anti-Muslim sentiment. New reaction saw a dizzying wave of criticism from Quebec and members of the federal government that gave her the job, raising serious questions about Islamophobia in this country. Toronto Star Raisa Patel and Asmaa Malik, an associate professor of journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University, join “This Matters” to discuss. read the complete article
This advocate and law student is making space for the voices of marginalized Quebecers
Idil Issa fights for the causes that she believes in and works to help others get their voices heard, too. The McGill University law student has spent more than five years lobbying for human rights in Quebec, particularly voicing her opposition to restrictions on the wearing of religious symbols. Issa, who grew up in Winnipeg and Toronto, first came to Montreal for university. After doing international communications work for a decade, she returned in 2016, just as the province was debating whether to bar those who wear face coverings from receiving certain public services. "There's so many religious minorities in Quebec and so many young people who are kind of growing up in this context where their existence in societies is being openly debated," says Issa. "There's so many other things to work on and fix in society, and we're just stuck on these issues." Issa began speaking to the media and writing opinion pieces. As a Muslim woman who sometimes covers her hair, she was worried what could come next. So when in 2019 the Quebec government went further — banning the wearing of hijabs by public servants in positions of authority, including teachers — Issa drew on her network of other Muslim women and allies who shared their views. Through a group she founded, Femmes musulmanes contre le racisme et l'islamophobie (FEMCOR), Issa encouraged others to go public with their experiences as Muslim women in Quebec. "That was really important for me," she says, "to help Muslim women who were affected by the bill to represent themselves and to come into their power and to really take their place." read the complete article
International
The banality of evil: Charlie Hebdo mocks Türkiye quake victims
There are some things that are so patently wrong and grotesque that it takes a particular breed of soulless, hateful human to think it acceptable – or even funny. Of course, I am here referring to the tasteless French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s recently published cartoon that made fun of the thousands of Turkish and Syrian victims who perished or were made homeless and destitute in the aftermath of the deadly earthquakes that struck the region, with its epicentre in Türkiye’s southern city of Kahramanmaras. Naturally, and very appropriately, this action has been met with widespread criticism and outrage, as it is obviously understood by all and sundry to be insensitive, inappropriate, and motivated by racist and anti-Muslim tendencies that are deeply ingrained in French society. First, it is important to note the aftermath of French colonialism and the long history of racist attitudes towards Muslims, even French citizens, in France itself. Imperial France once ruled over vast territories in North Africa and the Middle East, and its legacy of racist colonialism has left deep wounds that have yet to heal. This includes entrenched racism and prejudice against Muslims, many of whom still face discrimination in France today – discrimination that is promoted at the very top of the French government by none other than President Emmanuel Macron. read the complete article
A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs by Gulchehra Hoja review – a powerful testament of Uyghur persecution
As a beautiful young TV star at the turn of the millennium, Gulchehra Hoja was highly valued by the Chinese state. She presented popular children’s programmes, was lavishly paid and mingled with influential media figures in Beijing. But by 2017, she had been designated a terrorist and placed on China’s most wanted list. The next year, 24 of her family members disappeared in a single night, into the black hole of state detention. A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs is Hoja’s account of that dizzying journey from local celebrity to exiled activist living in the permanent shadow of a superpower’s revenge. It’s also a first-hand testimony of China’s persecution of its Uyghur Muslim minority, which rights groups have described as constituting “crimes against humanity” and which the US designated a genocide in 2021. read the complete article