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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the UK, speaking at an event in Birmingham, former Conservative party chairwoman Baroness Sayeeda Warsi argued Islamophobia could rise if action is not taken to counter it, meanwhile, a cafe worker who was sacked from her long-term job over WhatsApp partly because she was a Muslim of Pakistani heritage has told how she fought her case “for her children”, and in the US, the first-of-its-kind report shows more than 80% of Muslim residents in Washington state have experienced discrimination in the past year. Our recommended read of the day is by Yasmine El-Sabawi on how a new study by the research organization, Civicus, finds that ten percent of all civic repression worldwide relates in some way to Palestine. This and more below:
International
Ten percent of all civic repression worldwide related to Palestine, study finds | Recommended Read
A Johannesburg-based civic freedom monitor has pinpointed the Palestinian cause as the reason behind 10 percent of all global repression of free speech in 2024. The civil society alliance Civicus, which monitors the state of civic freedom globally, said the violations it documented either took place in occupied Palestinian territories or were “perpetrated against those expressing solidarity with Palestine” elsewhere, according to its 2024 report. “The lack of open civic space is rooted in a number of issues,” the report says. Major conflicts, it explains, such as Israel’s war on Gaza, "have affected millions of people and their livelihoods and created the conditions for state and non-state sources to implement authoritarian policies”. The report says that this is most notable in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena), which “continues to be home to some of the most repressive governments in the world”. All of the 18 countries assessed in the Mena region - including occupied Palestine - were found to be "obstructed", "repressed" or "closed", according to the study. There are five categories, with the top two being "open" and "narrowed". Israel, Lebanon, and Morocco are the region's highest-ranked countries under the “obstructed” classification. Most of the Gulf countries, as well as Egypt and Iran, are considered “closed”. In Israel as well as Jordan, authorities have “instrumentalised laws to target and prosecute people expressing solidarity with Palestinians through anti-war protests and social media”, the report reads. read the complete article
Orban and Netanyahu: the transnational Right’s pervasive Islamophobia
Viktor Orbán’s obsequious letter to Benjamin Netanyahu offering him sanctuary from the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Hungary is not a surprise. It is another red flag in the Islamophobic world of the transnational Right. The mass and prolonged slaughter of Palestinian Muslims (and Christians) cannot be seen as a crime committed against other humans in this worldview. The bloodshed must be revered as a form of “moral courage” in defence of the West. At the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Conference (ARC) in London last year, one attendee told Rod Dreher that Hungary is our “Israel.” Rightwing circles were depicting protests on British streets against the Western-aided Israeli violence as an existential threat. Soon, Dreher’s interlocutor meant, “Christians” would need to seek sanctuary in a state that repelled Muslims and other non-White people. Rod Dreher is an American ultra-reactionary who converted to Catholicism, and then to Orthodox Christianity when Rad Trad Catholicism proved too soft. He has moved to Budapest. There he interacts with a circle of Westerners around Orbán-funded think tanks. Another of the intellectuals in the circle is John O’Sullivan who has been instrumental to funnelling Orbánism into Australia through the Quadrant Journal where he remains International Editor. Nick Cater, The Australian columnist and Atlas Network junktank apparatchik, has just spent the northern summer in Budapest as a guest of the Orbánist organs, following Tony Abbott and Greg Sheridan. Both Dreher and O’Sullivan were drafters of the National Conservative (NatCon) Statement of Principles alongside Israeli Jewish Nationalist Yoram Hazony. They incorporate Hindu Nationalists into this movement, and the three religions are made to stand in for “race.” This coalition targets Muslims as the eternal Other that cannot be incorporated into the broadly “Western” world. Ethnic cleansing statements and actions accompany the civilisation clash propaganda. read the complete article
Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territory: ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza
This report documents Israel’s actions during its offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip from 7 October 2023. It examines the killing of civilians, damage to and destruction of civilian infrastructure, forcible displacement, the obstruction or denial of life-saving goods and humanitarian aid, and the restriction of power supplies. It analyses Israel’s intent through this pattern of conduct and statements by Israeli decision-makers. It concludes that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. A stand-alone executive summary is available in English and other languages: ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza: Executive Summary. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Baroness Sayeeda Warsi 'unsurprised' by far right riots and claims Islamophobia rising
An ex-Tory Party grandee said she was 'unsurprised' by far-right riots last summer, claiming she had predicted them for many years. Speaking at a Birmingham event, former party chairwoman Baroness Sayeeda Warsi argued Islamophobia could rise if action was not taken. Britain's first Muslim cabinet minister, Baroness Warsi blamed people in power for 'poisoning' social narratives that drove anti-Islamic sentiment. She shared her experiences of discrimination and the wider rise of Islamophobia in British society at an event called Birmingham Voices. In an interview with Channel 4 News at Muath Trust in Sparkbrook, she said: "I wasn't surprised but like a lot of people, when you see it so brutally, it's shocking. But it's something I've been predicting for many years, saying that if you carry on in the public space poisoning the public narrative; when those in power use the kind of language which is divisive and incendiary, are we surprised we see this playing out on our streets?" read the complete article
'I was sacked by my new bosses for being Muslim'
A cafe worker who was sacked from her long-term job over WhatsApp partly because she was a Muslim of Pakistani heritage has told how she fought her case "for her children". Ayshea Malik, 35, took the owners of Food 4 Thought Café in Warrington, Cheshire, to an employment tribunal after losing her job in April 2023. Ms Malik had worked at the Great Sankey cafe since 2013, before it was taken over by new owners Przemyslaw Paliga and Zbigniew Szary in February of 2023. The tribunal found that Ms Malik had been unfairly dismissed and discriminated against on the grounds of her race and religion. In a written ruling, external, employment judge Jane Aspinall stated: "She is a single mother of two and was trying to provide for a family. "She was immediately afraid as to how she would pay her bills, how she would cope without a job. "She experienced feelings of anxiety and felt overwhelmed by fear about how she could manage." Things became even more upsetting for Ms Malik when it dawned on her that another staff member who had complained, a white British woman, had not been sacked. read the complete article
United States
For The New York Times, antisemitism has a name but genocide does not
I read The New York Times daily as a barometer - as a farmer would heed a bellwether, or an old-fashioned European anthropologist would stare at the behaviour of a faraway tribe - to see which way the liberal Zionist wind is blowing. As soon as news of the Israeli thuggery in Amsterdam broke, the Times went into high gear to distort, deviate, manoeuvre, meander and rush to place the word "antisemitism" in headlines. "What to Know About the Attacks on Israeli Soccer Fans in Amsterdam," read one headline of an 8 November article, explaining that "Dutch and Israeli officials described the clashes after a soccer match as antisemitic". Bret Stephens, one of the two chief pro-Israel columnists gainfully employed at the Times, was immediately called into action that same day to decry: "The Age of the Pogrom Returns". Initially, the narrative of "antisemitism" and "pogroms" in Europe had only been promoted by Israeli and Dutch officials and the Times's ardent Zionist columnist. But by the following day, the Times had joined officials in Israel and Amsterdam to declare the incident as antisemitic: "Amsterdam Bars Protests After Antisemitic Attacks on Soccer Fans." Not only did the Times publish dozens of articles about the alleged "antisemitic attack" in Amsterdam, but a damning Electronic Intifada report also showed an internal email exchange with a Times senior manager who killed a Dutch reporter's investigation into the Israeli hooligans. The Times is very generously serving a plateful of false "antisemitism" charges, but it is not so accommodating when it comes to calling Israel's war on Palestinians what it is: a genocide, as was most recently confirmed in an Amnesty International report. Earlier this year, investigative and responsible journalists miles away from midtown Manhattan exposed how the selfsame Times had "instructed journalists covering Israel's war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms' genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing' and to 'avoid' using the phrase 'occupied territory' when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept." read the complete article
Report: Most Muslims have experienced discrimination, hate crimes
The first-of-its-kind report shows more than 80% of Muslim residents in Washington state have experienced discrimination in the past year. read the complete article