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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the United Kingdom, a leading Muslim peer has called for an inquiry into the Islamophobia monitoring group Tell MAMA over concerns about a “lack of transparency” on how it is spending public money, meanwhile in the United States, the name of a Jewish fraternity was graffitied in a Muslim prayer room that was vandalized at New York University’s library last week, and in Canada, an advocacy group that combats Islamophobia is urging the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) to remove a London, Ont.-area candidate from the federal election ballot over his past comments about marginalized groups including the Muslim community, women and 2SLGBTQ+ groups. Our recommended read of the day is by Leila Fadel, Taylor Haney, Arezou Rezvani, and Kyle Gallego-Mackie for NPR on how free speech advocates are saying that though the Trump Administration is currently only detaining those with temporary status, these arrests are only the beginning of the state’s assault on free expression in the country. This and more below:
United States
'Citizenship won't save you': Free speech advocates say student arrests should worry all | Recommended Read
In recent weeks, several international university students have been taken by immigration agents or had their legal status questioned. Their cases raise concerns that more students could be targeted for their views. That alarm is found among free speech advocates across the political spectrum, including pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel groups that uphold the First Amendment for views they both agree and disagree with. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he has revoked more than 300 visas and has defended the decisions. None of these students has been charged with a crime. Instead, the government is using a rarely invoked immigration act that allows the secretary of state to revoke immigration status if the secretary deems their presence a threat to U.S. foreign policy. "This is what happens in a dictatorship, and these are test cases," said Eric Lee, a lawyer who represents Momodou Taal, a Cornell University Ph.D. student and advocate for Palestinian rights whose visa was revoked. "If the government can get away with doing this to these students, it can do it to everybody in this country. Your citizenship won't save you. ... Your views will be next." read the complete article
Muslim prayer room at NYU vandalized with name of Jewish fraternity
The name of a Jewish fraternity was graffitied in a Muslim prayer room at New York University’s library last week, according to school officials. A student was visiting the prayer room in Bobst Library last Thursday when they discovered that the room had been vandalized. Its prayer mats were soaked in urine, and a phallic image was drawn on its walls, along with the letters “AEPI,” representing the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi. The New York Police Department’s Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the incident along with NYU. The school put out a statement following the incident, writing that those responsible would be “subject to the most serious sanctions.” read the complete article
Ex-Gitmo detainee could air allegations of torture by former Chicago detective
A Cook County Circuit judge is scheduled to hear arguments Wednesday on whether to allow testimony by a former Guantánamo detainee before she rules on a request to throw out a decades-old murder confession allegedly coerced by a Chicago detective. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a terrorism suspect held for 14 years in the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, endured a shocking interrogation allegedly overseen by Richard Zuley, a Chicago detective stationed at the camp while on leave from CPD. An Illinois commission pointed to that history in a 2023 ruling that triggered proceedings on whether Zuley helped torture a confession out of Anthony Garrett. “Slahi is a critical witness in our case,” said Garrett’s attorney, Jennifer Blagg. “So we’re seeking for the judge to create an exception to the normal rule that a person has to testify in person.” Slahi was released to his native Mauritania and, according to Blagg, is not allowed to enter the United States. read the complete article
Trump Appears to Be Targeting Muslim and “Non-White” Students for Deportation
Trump Appears to Be Targeting Muslim and “Non-White” Students for Deportation (United States) The Trump administration is expanding its campaign against international students to target not just those active in pro-Palestine advocacy, but also students entirely uninvolved in protests and campus activism. With little or no justification, the Trump administration is revoking the visas and immigration statuses of hundreds of international students under the Student Exchange and Visitor Program, leaving them vulnerable to detention and deportation, according to attorneys representing international scholars who have filed new lawsuits against the Trump administration. Several immigration attorneys have also told The Intercept that the bulk of their clients are from Muslim-majority countries or other countries in Asia and Africa. And new lawsuits filed in California also allege the government’s deportation attempts appear to be targeting students who are “African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and Asian. “It’s a concerted effort to go after people who are from countries and religions that the Trump administration wants to get out of the country,” said Johnny Sinodis, a San Francisco-based immigration attorney who filed a lawsuit on Monday in California against the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of a targeted student. read the complete article
International
Political Extremism Scholar: "The Hate is There, but the Violence is Absent"
"We distinguish between right-wing radicals and right-wing extremists. Right-wing extremists are those who embrace violence and see it as a legitimate means. Right-wing radicals try to change the system through democratic channels and are semi-loyal to the democratic regime," he says. The overall picture is that the growth is on the right-wing radical side, Berntzen explains. "In Western Europe, the growth has been among anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim actors, either among parties, activist groups, or in the form of alternative news blogs and websites. Many of them have gone through a form of radicalization process, where they embrace more and more extreme and totalitarian solutions, such as deportation, rewriting the Quran, and closing mosques. But they do not advocate the abolition of democracy or direct use of violence," he says. The level of violence has not increased in Western Europe since the 1990s, according to Berntzen. read the complete article
The broken American dream doesn’t hurt me, Indian government’s inaction does
In the following months, I would get a quick education in US race relations and empire. As the US mobilised for a war based on phantom fears and outright lies, the first victim of its vengeful bloodthirst turned out to be Sikhs. My aunt called to advise me not to wear my usual salwar kameez. I learned to expect being pulled aside for extra inspection at every airport, particularly the smaller ones where I was one of the only non-White travellers. Yet, on campus, like all other students, I participated vigorously and freely in the political debate on the war. I marched, alongside my closest friends at university, in the massive rally against the war in Iraq in New York. Penned in by mounted police, their skittish horses loomed far bigger than I could have imagined, for I, an urban Indian, had never seen a horse before. Yet the menace never followed me back to campus: At no point did it occur to me that my activities ran counter either to the educational ethos of Princeton University or the constitutional system of the US. For many Indian parents who send their children to universities in the US, this is still the equation they believe in. In turn, we have given back: NRIs working in the US are the single largest source of remittances, making up over a quarter of the financial cushion the nation abroad provides our country. However, in the last couple of months, this confluence of dreams has become a double-headed nightmare. I have watched in horror as students have had their visas revoked for doing little more than reposting a meme online. I have wondered if my own youthful activities at Princeton University may be grounds for the revocation of my own right to live in the US now. The academic freedom that had been the bedrock of my own education and my teaching clearly exists no more. More importantly, the detention of my colleague Badar Khan Suri and the aftermath of these chilling acts have shown not just how little we matter to the US, but how little we also seem to matter to India. Fellow Indians trolled Ranjani Srinivasan, who fled in fear of a similar abduction, instead of showing sympathy for their plight. Indian students and faculty, regardless of their political stripes, are rightly terrified, across the US, and it seems India has abdicated its responsibility to its citizens. read the complete article
What is the Israel lobby – and why is it so anxious?
Last May, on a trip to the United States, world-renowned Israeli–Jewish historian Ilan Pappe was detained by Homeland Security and held for two hours. Aged 69 at the time, he was, among other things, asked about his views on Hamas and whether Israel’s actions on the Gaza Strip amount to genocide (he said yes). He was then asked to provide phone numbers of his contacts in the Arab–American and Muslim–American communities. In December, months after his interrogation by Homeland Security in the US, Pappe was removed without explanation from the BBC podcast, The Conflict, about the Middle East on the day he was supposed to record his contribution. One of the world’s most prominent scholars of the entwined histories of Israel and Palestine, Pappe is an urgent advocate of Palestinian rights and author of a groundbreaking 2007 book on the formation of the state of Israel, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. His latest book, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, seeks to understand how a pro-Israel lobby has formed, both in his country of residence, the United Kingdom, and in Israel’s most powerful and ardent supporter, the US. Pappe’s book is worth heeding: he is both a scholar of the Israel lobby and a recent victim of its attempt to deplatform pro-Palestinian perspectives. This is the story of an “aggressive” lobby that eagerly seeks to stamp out narratives of Palestinian dispossession and suffering – in case they legitimise Palestinian claims for statehood, or attract sympathy for Palestinians’ lack of political and civil rights in the Occupied Territories. This lobbying force began in the 19th century and took on more concrete forms after 1948. Much of Pappe’s book is devoted to parliamentary lobby groups, such as Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) in the UK, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in the US. The latter spends considerable resources ensuring the US government aligns with Israeli objectives. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Anti-Islamophobia group Tell Mama should face inquiry, says Muslim peer
A leading Muslim peer has called for an inquiry into the Islamophobia monitoring group Tell Mama over concerns about a “lack of transparency” on how it is spending public money. Shaista Gohir, the chief executive of the Muslim Women’s Network UK, has also accused Tell Mama of failing to provide detailed data on anti-Muslim hate crimes, being “silent” when politicians have targeted Muslims, and questioned whether the Tories used it as a vehicle to monitor extremism. Tell Mama denied the claims and described the idea it was secretly being used to tackle Muslim extremism as a “slur”. It said it regularly reports “according to the government’s due processes” and that no issues had been raised with the group by officials. read the complete article
Canada
Muslim group, constituents call for Andrew Lawton's removal as Conservative candidate in southern Ontario
An advocacy group that combats Islamophobia is urging the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) to remove a London, Ont.-area candidate from the federal election ballot over his past comments about marginalized groups including the Muslim community, women and 2SLGBTQ+ groups. Hikma Public Affairs Council, based in London, is calling for an "unequivocal rejection" of Andrew Lawton as a candidate in Elgin–St. Thomas–London South based on his "well-documented pattern of deeply offensive and discriminatory remarks," it said in a statement on Tuesday. "Including Islamophobic, antisemitic, homophobic, misogynistic and anti-Indigenous commentary, Mr. Lawton has consistently demonstrated conduct fundamentally incompatible with the values of a democratic and inclusive society, especially in London." read the complete article