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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In Canada, a Toronto man has been arrested in connection with multiple hate-motivated assaults throughout the city, which according to police include a Saturday morning attack on worshippers outside a mosque, meanwhile in France, an antisemitic graffiti incident in Paris by two foreign residents has city officials pointing fingers at Parisian Muslims for the rise in antisemitism, despite evidence showing its the far-right to blame, and in the U.S., Huffington Post investigates the sense of grief and betrayal felt by numerous Arab and Muslim Congressional Staffers as Congress and the President reject calls for a ceasefire in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Our recommended read of the day is by Christina Zdanowicz for CNN on how Muslim and Arab Americans across the country are dealing with the drastic rise in hate-based attacks against their communities. This and more below:
United States
‘Every move I make, I second guess’: These Muslim and Arab Americans say the surge in hate has made them more vigilant | Recommended Read
Nicole was walking through an affluent part of Alexandria, Virginia, with a friend last month, when a man approached her and began screaming. He railed about the hijab she wore, saying she looked Muslim, and made comments about Hamas raping Israeli women, she said. Her friend corroborated the account. Nicole, who is in her 40s, said she’s been wearing a hijab for more than half of her life. And while she’s grown used to stares and occasional comments about her headscarf, Nicole said she fears the growing anti-Muslim sentiment in the US could escalate into violence. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the US is experiencing an “unprecedented” increase in reported anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias incidents in the weeks since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. A week after the Hamas attack, a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy was stabbed to death outside of Chicago. His family’s landlord was charged in what police are calling a hate crime. He’s pleaded not guilty to charges including murder. A Muslim postal worker was attacked while wearing a hijab, and many Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian Americans leaders have told CNN they are experiencing post-9/11 levels Islamophobia – or worse. They’ve called on the Biden administration to do more to combat anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias. read the complete article
Students voice worries over Islamophobia on UCLA campus
The keffiyeh – an Arab headscarf – has historically been a symbol of Palestinian liberation, but since Oct. 7, some students said it has made them and others a target for rising Islamophobia. “I’ve been spit in the face. I’ve been directly pushed. I’ve been called a terrorist on multiple occasions,” said Mohammad, a student who was granted partial anonymity for safety reasons. “I’m constantly looking over my shoulder, I’m getting mean looks and people looking at me, just eyeing me down. I know they have the intention to make it some kind of form of harassment if they have a chance.” Mohammad, who is also a media representative for Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA, is one of many students who have expressed concerns about rising Islamophobia over the past month. Afnan Khawaja, a fourth-year computer science student and a member of the Muslim Students Association, said he has heard of many instances of harassment, such as one instance when a girl wearing a keffiyeh was pepper-sprayed in Westwood. He said he was called a terrorist when he attempted to tell people to stop harassing girls protesting in support of Palestine. While they said they have only heard accounts of physical violence perpetrated by non-students, they added that they have seen students spreading hate speech on campus about Arab students – such as calling them terrorists and Nazis and saying they deserve to be raped and killed. read the complete article
Palestinian Americans face fear, violence amid Israel’s war in Gaza
Mirvette Judeh knew she was going to a safe place: the falafel shop with a Palestinian flag on its wall in a neighborhood once known as “Little Gaza” — about as close as one can get to the Middle East in this exceedingly diverse part of Southern California. So she felt comfortable wrapping her black and white keffiyeh scarf around her neck, an instantly recognizable symbol of support for Palestinians. Still, when she put it on, she wondered: Could someone use this to strangle me? “I will never be ashamed to be Palestinian,” she said. “But I feel unsafe being Palestinian.” This tension — between showing solidarity and staying safe — reminds Judeh of 2016, when Donald Trump was elected president after promoting a ban on Muslims entering the United States. “Why do they hate us?” Salma, then 4, asked her mother at the time. As it did during Trump’s political rise, fear has spread among Arab and Muslim Americans, who suddenly find themselves making constant calculations about even the most quotidian parts of their days, glancing over their shoulders as they walk to the car and thinking twice about leaving a Quran visible on the passenger seat. This anxiety — borne out in alarming trends of bias-motivated attacks — has compounded the pain for Judeh and other Palestinian Americans, who have spent sleepless weeks frantically trying to communicate with family in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, demanding American leaders call for a cease-fire and watching videos of civilians killed on the war’s increasingly bloody front lines. read the complete article
Group says slur was directed at Muslim student during an attack. SFUSD officials investigating
San Francisco Unified School District officials are investigating what they said was an off-campus altercation that may have been motivated by hate between Francisco Middle School students. The incident occurred on Oct. 25 after school hours and away from the campus, district officials said. The Bay Area Council on American Islamic Relations said the incident was an assault on a Muslim student and that the district was not doing enough in response to the violence. A statement from CAIR Bay Area said the student, a seventh-grade girl, was attacked by two other students while walking home from school. The organization said the girl suffered a concussion as a result of the attack after she was punched in the back of the head, causing her to fall to the ground. Her attackers then allegedly got on top of her and struck her chest and ribs multiple times. As the attackers left, one of them directed a slur at her, allegedly saying “f—ing” Muslims,” CAIR Bay Area said. The victim’s mother reported the attack to the school’s principal the next day and provided the alleged attackers’ names to the school on Oct. 30, the group said. read the complete article
Muslim And Arab Congressional Staffers Say They Feel ‘Betrayed’ By Democratic Bosses
As the death toll climbs from Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the U.S. makes few moves to rein in its closest military ally, one group is saying that it has never felt so invisible. Muslim and Arab staffers and those whose family come from the region say they are struggling with a gnawing belief that their lives don’t matter to their colleagues. They describe the agony of watching the institution to which they’ve dedicated their career sending military aid amid the killing of thousands of civilians who look like them. “They have the same faith as us, have the same names as us, a lot of our families live in the region,” one staffer said. “So when we hear that dehumanizing language, it’s dehumanizing us.” Every day brings some new confirmation that “my life would not matter to this place if I had been born somewhere else,” said another. One aide, who broke down in front of their boss, said the congressperson resolved that night to call for a cease-fire. Another described to their boss how frightening it was for their family to visit relatives in the Palestinian territories because of the arbitrariness of the violence there. “I did it in the hopes it would humanize the issue for him. And I know it reinforced what he was feeling,” the staffer said. Their boss also called for a cease-fire. read the complete article
Man selling ‘Islamic goods’ shot and wounded outside Rhode Island mosque
A man reportedly selling Muslim goods outside a mosque in Rhode Island’s capital city was shot and wounded late on Friday morning, the local police chief said, prompting authorities to increase patrols in the area as they look for a suspect and a motive in the attack. The shooting at the Islamic Center of Rhode Island in Providence occurred amid reported increases in Islamophobia and antisemitism across the US after war between Israel and Hamas erupted last month. But police would not immediately discuss whether they were focusing on any specific, possible reasons for the shooting. Providence’s police chief, Oscar Perez, said the victim of the shooting was associated with the mosque and had set up a table from which to sell “Islamic goods” when he was shot in the lower half of his body, according to the local news station WPRI. read the complete article
Muslim woman threatened on Washington public transit; advocates call for response
A video captured on Oct. 18, now resurfacing on news sites, on a Washington, D.C. metro train shows a Muslim woman being threatened by a man. In the video, a man is heard asking the woman, “How would you like to have your head beheaded?" The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, which shared the video, claims the date for the incident was Oct. 18. According to CAIR, the woman behind the camera was riding the train on her way to a protest in late October. The woman also claims the man flashed a gun at her, but that is not seen on the video. Afify said the woman immediately went to the police--but that was almost one month ago. WJLA reached out to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), asking about its knowledge of this incident. read the complete article
'It’s very scary': Jewish and Muslim students at this large state university say they don't always feel safe
As the country grapples with a surge in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents, federal agencies and university administrators are struggling to walk a fine line between providing security on college campuses and protecting free speech. In many cases, schools have been reluctant to intervene to stop speech that could be perceived as threatening to one group but an expression of free speech to another. At the main campus of the University of Connecticut in rural Storrs, students from the Muslim Student Association, Students for Justice in Palestine and the Hillel center for Jewish students all said they have received calls from parents who are worried about their safety. Muslim students are also worried about being identified. Muslim Student Association President Muneeb Syed said many women wearing hijabs now wear hoodies if they are walking by themselves across campus. Recently, he said, a Muslim woman was leaving a pro-Palestinian rally on campus when she was harassed by a car of men who pulled over to yell at her. For recent graduate Lena Maarouf, the threat came seemingly out of nowhere. She received a voicemail from an Oklahoma number one morning. She believes it is because her number is still listed on the website for UConn’s Students for Justice in Palestine organization. In the message, which was played for NBC News, a man with a Southern accent said, “Yeah, I belong to the students for the death of all Hamas. You’re supporting baby killers, people who rape grandmas. You’re just another sand n***** terrorist, that’s all you are. So you guys get together so the Mossad can get pictures of you because I can’t wait to see you dead.” read the complete article
Canada
Mosque attack victims shaken after hate-motivated assaults lead to Toronto man's arrest
A Toronto man has been arrested in connection with multiple hate-motivated assaults throughout the city, according to police — including a Saturday morning attack on worshippers outside a mosque. At about 6:40 a.m. ET, police responded to reports of an assault with a weapon outside the Toronto Islamic Centre near Yonge Street and Davenport Road. Officials said in a news release that a man allegedly confronted several people, threw a rock at them and yelled slurs, then attacked them with a bike chain. One person is believed to have sustained minor injuries. This follows two other incidents police said took place earlier this week. Police said a cab driver approached a man near Front Street and Yonge Street to ask whether they needed a ride early Wednesday morning. The man asked the driver if he was Muslim and sprayed him in the face with an unknown substance, police say. Later that same morning, police say a woman wearing a hijab near Fort York Boulevard and Spadina Avenue was approached by a man who made derogatory statements toward her, then sprayed her in the face with an unknown substance. The woman was taken to hospital and treated for minor injuries. Police have laid charges against a 28-year-old man in connection with the incidents, including four counts of assault with a weapon, two counts of assault and two counts carrying a concealed weapon. read the complete article
Canada Convicts White Supremacist in Killing of Four Muslims
For four seconds, Nathaniel Veltman floored the gas pedal, hurtling his pickup truck toward a Muslim family of five out for an evening walk in London, Ontario, killing four of them. The lone survivor was a 9-year-old boy. The jury, after less than a day of deliberating, found Mr. Veltman, 22, guilty of four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder involving the young boy in the June 2021 attack. Mr. Veltman was also charged with terrorism and jurors heard extensive evidence about his fixation with white supremacist ideologies. The case represents the first time in Canada that terrorism charges have been applied to a far-right extremism case, according to the government agency that prosecutes federal crimes. Mr. Veltman confessed to the police that he believed the victims he ran over were Muslim because of the clothing they wore and that’s why he aimed his truck at them, prosecutors said during the 10-week trial. Mr. Veltman had become obsessed with white supremacist ideology, prosecutors said, even writing his own manifesto called “A White Awakening,” which he completed five days before he mowed down the pedestrians. Mr. Veltman had also searched online for information about a white supremacist shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, who killed 51 people in an attack on two mosques in 2019, prosecutors said. read the complete article
France
Israel-Palestine war: Anti-Muslim racism in France surges with 'full impunity'
Nicole was walking through an affluent part of Alexandria, Virginia, with a friend last month, when a man approached her and began screaming. He railed about the hijab she wore, saying she looked Muslim, and made comments about Hamas raping Israeli women, she said. Her friend corroborated the account.Nicole, who is in her 40s, said she’s been wearing a hijab for more than half of her life. And while she’s grown used to stares and occasional comments about her headscarf, Nicole said she fears the growing anti-Muslim sentiment in the US could escalate into violence. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the US is experiencing an “unprecedented” increase in reported anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias incidents in the weeks since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. A week after the Hamas attack, a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy was stabbed to death outside of Chicago. His family’s landlord was charged in what police are calling a hate crime. He’s pleaded not guilty to charges including murder. A Muslim postal worker was attacked while wearing a hijab, and many Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian Americans leaders have told CNN they are experiencing post-9/11 levels Islamophobia – or worse. They’ve called on the Biden administration to do more to combat anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias. read the complete article
United Kingdom
From migration to the MENA: David Cameron’s policies won’t be an improvement from Braverman’s
David Cameron is back in government, bet you didn’t see that coming. Somehow it’s only been seven years since he resigned as Prime Minister following the referendum to leave the European Union, an event seemingly from a different era at this point. Him replacing Suella Braverman in the Cabinet might feel like a move towards moderation for the Sunak government, but that would be wishful thinking. A remarkable example of how far British politics has lurched to the right in the last decade is the fact that when David Cameron was Prime Minister, then regarded as a firmly right-of-centre politician, he was quoted as saying in the House of Commons: "Everybody knows that we are not going to sort out the problem of the Middle East peace process while there is, effectively, a giant open prison in Gaza." He later confirmed his position in a trip to Turkey where he stated “the situation in Gaza has to change… Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.” Today, instead of Cameron being asked by the mainstream media whether he still stands by these statements, it seems the preference is to not draw attention to the reality that the British political class have collectively radicalised themselves so severely that what was a perfectly mainstream conservative position a decade ago appears fringe now. Furthermore, we shouldn’t lose sight that the Cameron government is chiefly responsible for many ruinous policies that paved the way to extreme ideologues like Braverman entering government in the first place. read the complete article
International
When it comes to the Israeli-led ‘war on terror’, follow the money
US President Joe Biden, in remarks in Israel on October 18, said, “After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.” Calling some US actions after 9/11 “mistakes” is the height of imperial arrogance. During the Bush administration and beyond, inarguably the most destructive US presidency in the 21st century, there was a worldwide torture campaign, the creation and expansion of the detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, the illegal invasion of Iraq, the use of black sites for extraordinary rendition and the death of nearly five million people, according to Brown University’s Cost of War Project. Today, Israel is also filled with anger and vengeance and does not care one iota about the death of Palestinian civilians. Many in the Netanyahu-led government have expressed genocidal intent towards the entire Palestinian population. Most in the Israeli military and public are celebrating the physical abuse of Palestinians. Amid an atmosphere that is remarkably similar to the US after 9/11, the Israeli “war on terror” is taking shape. With resounding approval from the general public, the Israeli army has undertaken systematic carpet bombing of the Gaza Strip, dropping in a month more than 25,000 tonnes of explosives, the equivalent of two nuclear bombs. The bombardment of the small enclave mirrors the US air campaigns that used an extraordinary amount of ordnance on Iraq and Afghanistan over two decades, leaving behind immense devastation. Israel’s “war on terror” will not be only about revenge, just as the US’s was not. The Israeli arms industry has been thriving in recent years, with a record $12.5bn in sales in 2022, double the figure from one decade ago. In the last year, 24 percent of arms went to Arab states, including Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. According to the Israeli Defence Ministry’s own figures, the number of countries buying Israeli drones has jumped 40 percent in the last three years, munitions have grown by 45 percent and spyware and related cyber-equipment soared from 67 to 83 countries in 2022. As I write in my book, The Palestine Laboratory, Israel has used both the endless occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with the siege on Gaza, to “battle-test” ever-evolving new forms of repression and surveillance. These offensive tools are then marketed and sold to the majority of nations on the planet. read the complete article