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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the US, the Democratic Party’s Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar – the first two Muslim women to serve in the United States Congress – have won re-election to the US House of Representatives, meanwhile in India, the country’s Supreme Court set aside on Tuesday an order that banned Islamic schools in the country’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, and in Sweden, a far-right Danish-Swedish politician has been sentenced to prison on charges of incitement against an ethnic group for burning copies of the Qur’an and making offensive statements about Muslims. Our recommended read of the day is by Umar A Farooq for Middle East Eye on where President-Elect Donald J. Trump stands on issues relating to the war in Gaza, the Middle East, and foreign policy as the world prepares for a second Trump term. This and more below:
United States
Where does Donald Trump stand on Israel, Palestine and the Middle East? | Recommended Read
On 18 September 2024, former US President Donald Trump made an appearance in the Michigan city of Hamtramck and met with the town's Yemeni Muslim mayor, Amer Ghalib, and other city leaders. The visit, not to mention Ghalib's official endorsement of Trump for the upcoming November presidential election, would have been unheard of in the 2020 or 2016 race for the White House, when the majority of Muslims in the US voted for the Democrat Party. But Israel's war on Gaza and the Biden administration's full support of Israel's war efforts, which have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed most of Gaza's infrastructure, have allowed Trump to paint himself as the better alternative to Muslim and Arab voters outraged over the carnage. And even more recently, Trump has further dug into this argument after Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, received the endorsement of former Congresswoman Liz Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney was an architect of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. "Why would Muslims support Lyin' Kamala Harris when she embraces Muslim hating Liz Cheney, a total loser, whose father brought years of war, and death, to the Middle East???" Trump said on Truth Social. Trump's previous tenure in the Oval Office was full of contentious and sporadic moments, with his foreign policy decisions upending decades of bipartisan approaches to the military and diplomacy. He has already promised to bring back a version of the Muslim ban, and this time would extend the immigration ban to include an "ideological screening" to weed out immigrants who sympathise with the Palestinian group Hamas. The campaign promises he has made for a second term already emulate his previous remarks in 2016, when he said: "Islam hates us". His tenure in office was also centred around an approach that favoured financial interests above all, revealing major concerns about the Trump family's business stakes in the Middle East, which have skyrocketed since his mandate ended. read the complete article
How Muslim American elites weaponised identity to push for Kamala Harris
Over the last year, Israel's genocidal war on Gaza has cast an even darker shadow over the 2024 US presidential election, in which the majority of Americans have expressed dissatisfaction over the main candidates running. Voter frustration with the two-party system has only been exacerbated by the broad bipartisan support for Israel's mass slaughter of Palestinians. For some, glimmers of hope began to emerge with the rise of Arab and Muslim-led movements to "abandon" President Joe Biden and, later, Vice President Kamala Harris - or remain "uncommitted" to endorsing any Democratic incumbents until they force a ceasefire in Gaza. It wasn't long, however, before hope and the seeming commitment to political change gave way to cynicism and political opportunism. Uncommitted movement leaders' pledges to hold politicians accountable over Gaza through votes were replaced with milquetoast demands centred on Palestinian representation. And even when those half-hearted calls were ignored, the narrative began to mirror the standard Democratic Party line on the unique danger that Donald Trump poses. At the Democratic National Convention in August, delegates physically and verbally attacked pro-Palestine protesters while party leaders who invited an Israeli family to the primetime stage denied Palestinian and Muslim community members the same platform. Yet even after this humiliating spectacle, several Muslim organisations and faith leaders declared their support for the Harris campaign without any prior concessions or promises to change course on any Biden administration policies. read the complete article
Split on who to support, Muslim and Arab American leaders give a range of endorsements — or none at all
As the presidential election nears, Rima Mohammad is busy talking to people about the choices they will face on their ballots. As a Muslim Palestinian American school board trustee and one of Michigan’s two “Uncommitted” delegates for this summer’s Democratic National Convention, she has yet to decide how she will vote herself. She is encouraging people to vote their conscience, but with a clear understanding of the risks and benefits of each choice. “I’m still holding on[to] hope,” that Vice President Kamala Harris will change course on how the U.S. responds to the Israel-Hamas war, Mohammad said. “I still don’t know, to be honest, what I’m going to do. I’m holding my ballot until Nov. 5.” A lot of attention is focused on the swing state of Michigan, where former President Donald Trump saw a narrow victory of 10,700 votes in 2016 and President Joe Biden won by about 154,000 votes in 2020. More than 310,000 people of Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) ancestry call Michigan home, according to 2020 census data, and there are more than 200,000 Muslim American voters in the state, according to Emgage, including many Asian, Arab, and Black Americans. For many Muslim and Arab Americans, Israel’s wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and the wider Middle East are personal, and so is this election. These voters have a wide range of views about how Harris and Trump would handle the war, and the past several weeks have brought a flurry of opinions from prominent Muslim and Arab American community leaders about the best choice at the ballot box. read the complete article
He’s an Arab mayor in Michigan. Here’s why he’s unapologetically pro-Trump.
Bill Bazzi, the mayor of Dearborn Heights, was all smiles when we met in his office yesterday, on Election Day eve. He’d just wrapped his finishing touches on a speech he would give in Grand Rapids later in the evening at Trump’s final campaign rally. Bazzi, along with Amer Ghalib, the mayor of nearby Hamtramck, are Muslim and Arab leaders who are stumping for Trump in the critical battleground of Michigan. It’s a state Joe Biden won by roughly 154,000 votes in 2020, leaning heavily on support from areas like Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck, where Arab American voters were pivotal. The mayors’ endorsements came as the former president — with just days to go before the election — swapped his trademark anti-Muslim fearmongering for a softer pitch to Arab and Muslim communities frustrated with the current administration’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict. It’s a key issue here in Michigan. This bloc typically votes for Democrats, but if a sizable portion breaks from Kamala Harris, it may be enough to doom her chances in the state and possibly the White House. read the complete article
Re-election for Tlaib and Omar – first Muslim women to serve in US Congress
The Democratic Party’s Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar – the first two Muslim women to serve in the United States Congress – have won re-election to the US House of Representatives. Tlaib, who is also the first woman of Palestinian descent in the US Congress, was re-elected on Tuesday for a fourth term as a representative for Michigan with support from the large Arab-American community in Dearborn. Omar, a former refugee and Somali American, retook her seat for a third term in Minnesota, where she represents the strongly Democratic 5th District, which includes Minneapolis and a number of suburbs. A leading critic of US military support to Israel in its war on Gaza, Tlaib ran uncontested in her primary and defeated Republican James Hooper to represent the solidly Democratic district in Dearborn and Detroit. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Why Muslims really matter: Baroness Warsi’s powerful message
“So, I’m done with apologising”, begins Sayeeda, Baroness Warsi’s book Muslims Don’t Matter (2024) and that is how she began her Q&A session at the Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival on Friday 25 October. Sayeeda Warsi is probably the most well-known Muslim woman in Britain today. She is a lawyer, and a member of the House of Lords. She was co-chair of the Conservative Party from 2010-2012 and a cabinet member in the Cameron-Clegg coalition. She announced she was resigning the whip of the Conservative Party in the House of Lords in September 2024. Baroness Warsi’s book is a polemic driven by her personal experience of Islamophobia, but also demonstrates through specific examples the insidious creep of racism, not just by white people against people of colour, but by people of other ethnicities or religions against those they perceive as different. The stereotyping of Muslims is an example of this and it was exemplified by a comment from an audience member who said that if someone mentioned Muslims or Islam, she thought of “burqas, Sharia law and terrorism”. Baroness Warsi calmly unpicked this, explaining the stereotyping in the media which led to this misunderstanding. Do we assume that all Muslims think the same? Does every Muslim woman wear a burqa? This is stereotyping. She also mentioned the debate about ‘Muslim grooming gangs’. This issue has been exploited by the far-right. Sexual abuse by white ‘grooming gangs’ is never seen as “an opportunity for a deep reflection” of these activities by males who happen to be white, yet Muslims have their religion highlighted and are “held up as evidence of the savagery of their race”. read the complete article
India
India's top court overturns northern state's ban on Islamic schools
India's Supreme Court set aside on Tuesday an order that banned Islamic schools in the country's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, providing a breather to thousands of students and teachers. In March, the Allahabad High Court had scrapped a 2004 law governing the schools, called madrasas, saying it violated the constitutional tenet of secularism, and directing that all their students be moved to conventional schools. By setting aside the March order, the Supreme Court allowed the 25,000 Muslim schools to operate in the northern state, however, providing relief to 2.7 million students and 10,000 teachers. "The act is consistent with the positive obligation of the state to ensure that the children get adequate education," Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said in court. read the complete article
Sweden
Swedish court jails far-right leader who burned Qur’an
A far-right Danish-Swedish politician has been sentenced to prison on charges of incitement against an ethnic group for burning copies of the Qur’an and making offensive statements about Muslims. Rasmus Paludan was the first person to go on trial in Sweden – and is now the first to be sentenced – for burning the Qur’an during an organised demonstration. The leader of the Danish political party Stram Kurs (Hard Line) was on Tuesday sentenced to four months in prison at Malmö district court for two cases of incitement against an ethnic group and one case of insult in 2022. He was also ordered to pay damages and fees of 80,800 kroner (£5,822). After Paludan’s trial last month, the chair of the court, Nicklas Söderberg, said: “It is permitted to publicly make critical statements about, for example, Islam and also about Muslims, but the disrespect of a group of people must not clearly cross the line for a factual and valid discussion. “In these cases, there was no question of any such discussion. The statements instead only amounted to insulting and smearing Muslims.” Paludan was sentenced to prison because he had been previously convicted of similar crimes by a Danish court, the Swedish court said. read the complete article