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SearchToday in Islamophobia: On Monday, activists and athletes came together for a session entitled “What can wear what? The Hijab ban” to speak out against the global targeting of Muslim women athletes, meanwhile in the United Kingdom, three Muslim schoolgirls (aged 14, 12 and 11), were reportedly threatened with a pair of scissors on their way home from class at their local mosque, and lastly in the United States, Republican Texas Agricultural Commissioner Sid Miller is doubling down on an Islamophobic social media post after being called out by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Our recommended read of the day is by Kai Arzheimer for the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), who writes on a new study he conducted on anti-Muslim racism in Western Europe, which found that Islamophobia has “no link to a person’s religiosity”, but is strongly linked to nativism and authoritarianism. This and more below:
International
Islamophobia in Western Europe is driven by nativism and authoritarianism, not religiosity | Recommended Read
Over the last 25 years or so, the rise of the far right across Western Europe has been accompanied by a striking rhetorical shift: some of these parties now brand themselves as defenders of “Christian values” against an alleged Islamic threat. This development was unexpected. Unlike in the US, where there is an “irreconcilable link between Christian teachings and the… far right”, many far-right actors in the region have secular, anti-clerical or even neo-pagan roots. Western Europe is one of the most rapidly secularising regions in the world, and far-right voters in particular have generally little interest in religion. Therefore, the faith of immigrants and their descendants should not be such a big issue. One prominent explanation for this apparent paradox is that far-right parties use Christianity primarily as a cultural marker that is devoid of genuine religiosity but facilitates the “othering” of Muslims as a cultural out-group. This discursive strategy has been labelled Christianism and is well documented and researched. But surprisingly little is known about the connections between religiosity, Islamophobia and populist far-right ideology at the individual level in Western Europe. Existing studies look only at how religiosity influences voting for far‑right parties, or how it relates to anti‑immigrant/Muslim prejudice, without linking religion to broader far‑right attitudes. In a recent study, I set out to test whether and how anti-Muslim prejudice in Western Europe correlates with Christian religiosity and far-right ideology. The results, based on large‑scale survey data from Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands, show no substantial relationships between personal Christian religiosity on the one hand and both Islamophobia and the broader far‑right mindset on the other. Conversely, Islamophobia in Western Europe is strongly linked to nativism and authoritarianism. read the complete article
Women speak out against hijab bans: "When sport denies the hijab, it denies women themselves"
Forcing women out of clothes is just as dangerous as forcing women into clothes. This was among the main takeaways in Monday’s parallel session titled 'Who can wear what? The Hijab ban and questions of inclusion in sports', where several veiled participants questioned the concept of “neutrality” and the double standards they face as Muslim women and athletes. Khayran Noor, a founding director of Sports Legal and advocate for advancing legal standards in the sports industry across Africa, described the hijab as “more than a piece of fabric.” It is a form of religious expression, a cultural identity, and an ethnic marker. Banning female athletes from wearing the hijab in competition, as is the case in France, only serves to disempower women by denying them the right to choose how to present themselves. “When sport denies a place for [the hijab], it denies a space for women themselves,” Noor concluded. Noor’s remarks were followed by her colleague, Sandra Aanya, who described the implications of the hijab ban, including forced emigration and career displacement, withdrawal of Muslim women from sports, and a loss of a growing and personate demographic. read the complete article
China-linked actors are using ChatGPT to boost surveillance efforts against minority groups, says OpenAI
China-linked actors are using OpenAI’s ChatGPT to boost surveillance of Uyghurs and other ethnic minority groups in China, according to findings released in a report Tuesday by OpenAI. Over the last several months, OpenAI has banned multiple users of its popular AI platform who are suspected of having links to the Chinese government for asking ChatGPT questions about building out surveillance tools. This included one user who asked ChatGPT to build “a High-Risk Uyghur-related inflow warning model,” aimed at tracking individuals' movements. Another user prompted ChatGPT to design a tool to promote a social media listening probe, which would scan for anything related to what the now-banned user defined as “extremist speech,” including religious and political content. read the complete article
United States
Two Years of Genocide: Trump’s war on free speech began with Gaza
Last year Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights published a report on the history of anti-terrorism laws in the United States. The paper revealed how opposition to Palestinian rights helped shape “anti-terror” policies. The first and only time Congress declared a group to be a terrorist organization, lawmakers were targeting the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The first time Congress passed a law allowing private lawsuits against international terrorism, they were targeting the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF). The first time the word “terrorism” appeared in a federal statute was in a 1969 law that attempted to stop the United States from providing UNRWA with funding. “I want to be clear: the argument here is not simply that the United States government used terrorism law to suppress Palestinians,” Darryl Li, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago and principal author of the report told Mondoweiss at the time. “It is that many of the key developments of terrorism law were explicitly written with Palestine in mind.” read the complete article
Texas Ag chief Sid Miller doubles down on Islamophobic rhetoric
Republican Texas Agricultural Commissioner Sid Miller is doubling down on an Islamophobic social media post after being called out by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Last week, Miller posted a meme on his official Facebook account that depicts Islam as a snake squeezing a cowboy’s leg with a knife labeled “solution” being used to kill the serpent. “It’s about that time…” Miller captioned the post, sparking outrage among Texas Muslims. Miller is no stranger to firing off bigoted and outrageous comments on social media. He once faced criticism for calling then-Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton a “cunt” and has shared fake news on his Facebook feed to discredit Islam. CAIR — a top Muslim civil-rights and advocacy nonprofit — issued a statement Sunday blasting Miller for portraying Islam as a threat that needs to be eradicated. “Scapegoating is only used by weak politicians as a tool of distraction from accountability, and is a sign of failure,” CAIR-Texas Operations Manager Shaimaa Zayan said in a statement. “Muslims are not a threat. We are doctors, professors, lawyers, business owners, public servants and an essential part of the Texan and U.S. fabric.” Despite CAIR’s admonishment, Miller doubled down, writing in a Tuesday press release, stating he stands by his “warning about the dangers of radical Islam in Texas.” read the complete article
United Kingdom
Muslim schoolgirls threatened with scissors after leaving mosque
Three schoolgirls were reportedly threatened after leaving a mosque on Saturday. The three girls, understood to be aged 14, 12 and 11, who are Muslims, reportedly left a class at Abdullah Qualiam Mosque in Liverpool on Saturday (October 4) and were threatened with a pair of scissors on their way home. Merseyside Police were called to Boaler Street in Kensington on Saturday (October 4) at around 1.50pm following reports a group of females had been threatened by a woman with a pair of scissors in the area. Earlier that day it was also reported that a woman lunged towards another woman while holding a pair of scissors. The victim was not struck and "made off to safety on foot," after throwing her bag at the attacker, who took an item from it. A 44-year-old woman, from Liverpool, was arrested on suspicion of robbery following the incident. She has now been bailed and detained in hospital under the Mental Health Act, police confirmed. read the complete article
Governments don’t defeat racism. Ordinary people do
The UK is facing a surge in racist violence. On Saturday night, the Peacehaven Mosque in East Sussex was set ablaze in a shocking attack. Speaking to Hyphen, the mosque’s manager described a rise in Islamophobic abuse over the past six months: hijab-wearing mothers harassed as they dropped off their children, Brown and Black pupils bullied in nearby schools and the mosque itself pelted with eggs. The same night as the arson in Peacehaven, a mosque in Watford was vandalised with St George crosses. Reports also came in from Liverpool of a woman armed with scissors attempting to attack a group of young Muslim girls as they walked home from classes at the Abdullah Quilliam Mosque. One day earlier, a 29-year-old man was jailed for wielding a knife during an attack on worshippers at the Jami Mosque in Portsmouth. He punched a man, kicked a prayer mat and shouted racist abuse before returning with a blade. In East Renfrewshire, Scotland, another man was arrested and charged in connection with smashing of a mosque window while children prayed inside. That incident came just weeks after a schoolgirl was assaulted nearby. As I have written for Hyphen, it is often smaller Black and Asian communities like these that find themselves at the sharp end of such crimes. That’s why, this summer, I set up an independent monitoring and support service named Radar — Reporting and Documenting Acts of Racism. Our goal is to produce regular detailed reports mapping where racist attacks have risen, how the media has covered them and whether authorities have taken meaningful action. read the complete article
India
‘Bangladeshi infiltrator’: Indian Muslims in poll-bound Bihar battle hate
Addressing a rally in Kishanganj, Jitanram Manjhi, a former chief minister of Bihar and a prominent ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said the Shershahbadi community of Muslims were “infiltrators” from Bangladesh, India’s neighbour in the east, where more than 91 percent of the population is Muslim and mainly speaks Bangla. “We felt threatened [by Manjhi’s speech],” Alam, a Shershahbadi Muslim and graduate in business administration, told Al Jazeera. Refusing to stay silent, he posted his condemnation on Facebook. Within minutes, a comment in Hindi popped up under his post: “You people are Bangladeshi infiltrators.” It was his best friend. “Reading that comment sent a shiver down my spine,” recalled the 30-year-old Alam, sitting under the thatched roof of a primary school he runs. “The comment created a rift between us. We developed trust issues and lost our brotherhood, our friendship.” As Bihar, India’s third-most populous state, heads towards crucial elections to its legislature that could impact national politics, it is these districts that have emerged as the focus of a high-pitched BJP campaign against supposed “Bangladeshi infiltrators”. Bihar will hold its state assembly election in two phases on November 6 and November 11, with the results to be announced on November 14. read the complete article