Search
SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the UK, 80 Muslim organizations and community leaders have called on the government to take “urgent actions” including launching an independent review, engaging with representatives of Muslim communities, and adopting an updated definition of Islamophobia in the wake of the anti-Muslim riots earlier this month, meanwhile in Sweden, two men will go on trial after burning the Quran several times during protests last year, acts which sparked widespread outrage in Muslim countries, and in France, a counterterrorism investigating judge has ordered a trial before the Paris Criminal Court for a group of 16 people suspected of having prepared violent actions against Muslims in the country between 2017 and 2018. Our recommended read of the day is by Melissa Hellmann for The Guardian who writes on the recent resignation of Maryam Hassanein from the U.S. Department of Interior, an American Muslim who has joined the ranks of at least a dozen officials who have resigned from the Biden administration due to the US’s support of Israel’s war on Gaza. This and more below:
United States
‘Enough is enough’: the Muslim American officials who resigned over US’s Israel-Gaza policy | Recommended Read
When Maryam Hassanein joined the US Department of Interior as a Biden administration appointee in January, she hoped that Israel’s war on Gaza would soon come to an end. But when the US authorized a $1bn arms shipment to Israel in the spring, Hassanein decided to use her voice to affect change. She was inspired by the resilience of students involved in the anti-war movement at nearby George Washington University, where she had attended pro-Palestinian rallies. So last month, Hassanein joined the ranks of at least a dozen officials who have resigned from the Biden administration due to the US’s support of Israel’s war on Gaza, where more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October, according to the Gaza health ministry. Hassanein said she saw “value in making your voice heard on a public level when it’s not being heard while working there”. In a Zoom call hosted by the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) on Tuesday, Hassanein and Hala Rharrit, a former US state department diplomat who resigned in April, shared their experiences of witnessing the Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian animus that they say drives the Biden administration’s Middle East policies. Rharrit resigned after nearly two decades of working with the state department because she said she witnessed US officials continuously dehumanize Palestinians following Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Dozens of Muslim organisations demand independent investigation into Islamophobia after violent riots
Dozens of Muslim organisations have called for the government to “take concrete steps” to tackle Islamophobia in the wake of the far-right riots. Community leaders have urged the government to take “urgent actions” including launching an independent review, engaging with “elected representatives of Muslim communities” and adopting an updated definition of Islamophobia. The riots - motivated by anti-immigration sentiment, racism and Islamophobia - swept across England, with mosques targeted with chants of “stop the boats and “we want our country back”. Now, 80 Muslim organisations and community leaders have called on the government to specifically look into the role social media, political narratives and mainstream media played in the incitement of violence through an official investigation. “We want the government to look into why the riots happened. It did not come from nowhere,” Linsay Taylor, head of community Development and engagement at MEND (Muslim Engagement and Development) said. “We want the government to look into themselves, address social media and all the different facets that led to this. “A review has to look at all of this and has to come to a real outcome with practical steps we can take. At the end of the day, the riots have happened. We now have to see how we can work to stop it happening again in the future.” read the complete article
UK: Muslim groups urge government to engage with Muslim Council of Britain after riots
Dozens of British Muslim organisations have issued a joint declaration in response to recent far-right riots, calling on the government to engage with “democratically elected” Muslim representatives, “particularly the Muslim Council of Britain”. Wednesday's announcement comes after Middle East Eye revealed that the government had not been responding to communications from the country’s largest body representing British Muslims, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), throughout the riots in late July and early August. The declaration, issued by the recently formed Islamophobia Action Group on Wednesday, was signed by 80 organisations including the Muslim Engagement and Development Initiative, the Muslim Association of Britain and the Muslim Council of Wales. It called on the government to “engage directly with legitimate, democratically elected representatives of Muslim communities, particularly the Muslim Council of Britain, to ensure that Muslim voices are heard and addressed”. At a press conference in central London on Wednesday morning, Dr Anas Altikriti, who is CEO of the Cordoba Foundation and chaired the event, told MEE that previous British governments had favoured a “childish attitude” that suggested “we will only talk with whomever we like”. read the complete article
UK government wants police to start recording non-criminal hate incidents
The UK government is considering requiring police to record non-criminal hate incidents, in a move designed to tackle antisemitic and Islamophobic abuse, the Times reported on Monday. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is looking into reversing reforms made by the Conservative government, which introduced a new threshold for when police should record the personal information of someone over a hate incident which did not constitute a crime. Suella Braverman, the former Conservative home secretary, issued guidance stating that incidents should only be recorded when "clearly motivated by intentional hostility" and when there was a "real risk of escalation causing significant harm or a criminal offence". According to the report in the Times, Cooper is concerned that the new guidance is making it difficult for the police to monitor and identify tensions and threats to Jewish and Muslim communities which may escalate to violence. read the complete article
Sweden
Sweden charges two men over 2023 Quran burnings
Two men in Sweden will go on trial after burning the Quran several times during protests last year, which sparked widespread outrage in Muslim countries. Swedish prosecutors said on Wednesday that Salwan Momika and Salwan Najem committed “offences of agitation against an ethnic or national group” four separate times. The charges said the two desecrated the Quran, including burning it, while making derogatory remarks about Muslims, in one case outside a mosque in the capital, Stockholm. The events in the summer of 2023 angered Muslim leaders, prompted Sweden to tighten security and strained its relations with countries in the Middle East. “Both men are prosecuted for having on these four occasions made statements and treated the Quran in a manner intended to express contempt for Muslims because of their faith,” Senior Prosecutor Anna Hankkio said in a statement. “In my opinion, the men’s statements and actions fall under the provisions on agitation against an ethnic or national group, and it is important that this matter is tried in court,” she added. read the complete article
India
Northern India's discriminatory order against Muslim restaurant owners illustrates nationalist drift
The Maharaja Bhoj restaurant did everything it could to escape the boycott. It changed ownership and its name and even went so far as to let go of all its Muslim employees, including suppliers. Located in Muzaffarnagar, in Uttar Pradesh, India's biggest state, the establishment is located along the route of the Kanwar Yatra, a Hindu pilgrimage honoring the god Shiva, which takes place every year between the end of July and August. Increasingly popular with young Hindu men, it is constantly marred by violence along its course, which starts in the sacred city of Haridwar, in the neighboring state of Uttarakhand, at the foot of the Himalayas, where devotees draw water from the Ganges to take back with them to their local temple. On July 17 of this year, citing "order and security," Muzaffarnagar police asked restaurant owners to display their names and those of all their employees. The unstated aim is to let customers know whether the business is run by Muslims − who account for 14% of India's population, or over two hundred million people − or Hindus. read the complete article
France
France orders terrorist trial for far-right group planning attacks against Muslims
A counterterrorism investigating judge in France has ordered a trial before the Paris Criminal Court for a group of 16 people suspected of having prepared violent actions against Muslims in the country between 2017 and 2018, the French news agency AFP reported on Wednesday. In the order, released on 21 August, the magistrate described the group, Action des Forces Operationnelles (AFO, "action of operational forces"), as a "hierarchical and structured organisation" whose objective was to carry out "concrete violent action projects in symbolic places such as mosques" or by targeting halal food. The 13 men and three women cited in the court order are mainly suspected of terrorist criminal conspiracy and search for weapons. Among the violent projects planned by the group, which were sometimes merely declarative, were "killing 200 radicalised imams", targeting rapper Medine or preacher Tariq Ramadan, throwing grenades into "Arab cars" and "exploding a couscous maker from a distance". The order, seen by AFP, cites a document in which the particularly active AFO cell in the French capital planned to "explode" the door of a mosque in Clichy-la-Garenne, in the Paris region, and to position "long-range shooters". read the complete article