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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the United Kingdom, several prominent British Muslims have launched the British Muslim Network, a new initiative aiming to bridge the gap between policymakers and the realities of Muslim communities’ lived experiences, meanwhile in the U.S., photos of a child’s bloody body, a black knife holder and other crime scene evidence took center stage Wednesday at the murder and hate crime trial for an Illinois landlord accused of fatally stabbing a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in 2023, and in the United Kingdom, a network of Telegram channels with Russian links is encouraging residents to commit violent attacks on mosques and Muslims and offering cryptocurrency in return. Our recommended read of the day is by Joseph Massad for Middle East Eye who writes that Islamophobia and anti-Palestinianism can be traced back to before the 11th century and were used to justify many atrocities including the European Crusades of the Holy Land. This and more below:
International
How Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism were born together | Recommended Read
Islamophobia and anti-Palestinianism were born together, inseparable from the start a millennium ago. Long before these ideologies acquired their contemporary names as masks for conquest, Palestinians had already become a target. In the 11th century, just as they are today, they were marked for elimination because they are the native inhabitants of Palestine, and the majority are Muslim. Palestine has had the misfortune of being the site of both the first European settler-colony and the last, a calamity from which the Palestinian people continue to suffer and against which they continue to resist. Palestinians were certainly not the first Arab Muslims or Christians to be targeted by European armies. But unlike the conquest of Muslim Arab Sicily and southern Italy, the Muslims and Eastern Christians of Palestine were the first to be targeted by Latin Christendom in a "Holy War", subsequently known as the First Crusade. The Crusade also inspired the zealotry of the so-called Reconquista in Iberia, which came to be seen as a "second march to Jerusalem". But unlike Muslim Arab Italy and Spain, Palestine did not border Latin Christendom, even if it was the territory where the events of the faith to which European heathens had converted originated. The sin of the people of Palestine, in the eyes of the Crusaders, was precisely that they were not Latin Christians. Similarly, since the Zionist project for the conquest of Palestine began, the sin of the Palestinian people, in the eyes of the latest Crusaders, is that they are not Jews. In both cases, Palestine was identified as a land that the Lord had bequeathed - first to Latin Christians and, since the turn of the 20th century, to Ashkenazi Jews, both of whom originated from what became Europe. While anti-Islam structured the Latin Crusader wars from the 11th century onwards, by the 19th century, it would be European white Christian supremacy and Orientalism that took on this role. read the complete article
Russia-linked Telegram channels ‘offering to pay for attacks on UK mosques’
A network of Telegram channels with Russian links is encouraging UK residents to commit violent attacks on mosques and Muslims and offering cryptocurrency in return, campaigners have warned. The channels have already been linked to real world events in the form of Islamophobic graffiti sprayed on mosques and schools in east and south London earlier this month, sometimes with the names of the groups mentioned. Those incidents are under investigation by the police. The same groups have also been sharing PDFs containing bomb-making recipes and designs for 3D-printed weapons. Posters with QR codes for the groups and associated TikTok accounts have also appeared on British streets. However, there has been alarm in recent weeks after a switch in the group’s language from encouraging graffiti to explicitly calling on people to carry out knife attacks. A dossier on the channels and their apparent Russian links has been passed to counter-terrorism police and the Home Office by the campaign group Hope Not Hate, which says it is worried that the network poses a much greater threat than the incitement to violence routinely found on other extreme-right Telegram chats. read the complete article
United Kingdom
British Muslim Network holds first discussions on improving Muslims’ lives
Muslim faith leaders, business owners, politicians, civil servants, charity workers and medical professionals from across the UK gathered in London on Tuesday for the launch of the British Muslim Network (BMN). The event at the Hilton London Kensington hotel featured about 60 participants taking part in roundtable discussions on how to improve the lives of British Muslims. The network, a new national body intended to connect Muslim experts in different fields with the government and other policymakers, is chaired by Akeela Ahmed — an equalities campaigner who previously chaired the government’s working group on anti-Muslim hatred — and imam Qari Asim of Makkah Mosque in Leeds. Discussions held by the BMN will be turned into reports and shared with the government. Ahmed said in January that the group was not seeking to rival the Muslim Council of Britain, which recently elected a new secretary general, as a representative body for UK Muslims. “British Muslims are one of the largest faiths in the UK and one of the most discriminated against parts of society,” said Asim. “Yet despite that policymakers have consistently failed to engage with Muslim voices. Our aim is to help change that — for the good of Muslims and everyone in our society.” read the complete article
British Muslims tackle record-high Islamophobia as government fails to act
British Muslims are taking matters into their own hands, as Islamophobia surges across the UK. This week, Akeela Ahmed MBE, former chair of the Government’s Anti-Islam Hatred Working Group, and a number of other prominent British Muslims, have launched the British Muslim Network, a new initiative aiming to bridge the gap between policymakers and the realities of Muslim communities lived experiences. Ahmed tells TRT World, British Muslims are excelling in various fields, yet their voices remain absent from policymaking. This means, the Government has been "missing key insights into positions from British Muslim communities”, she adds. Ahmed, and her co-founders, hope the British Muslim Network will offer a structured platform to engage with the Government on issues such as Islamophobia, which has now reached alarming levels. read the complete article
United States
Bloody crime scene photos play key role in trial of man accused in Palestinian American boy's death
Photos of a child’s bloody body, a black knife holder and other crime scene evidence took center stage Wednesday at the murder and hate crime trial for an Illinois landlord accused of fatally stabbing a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in 2023. Joseph Czuba, 73, faces first-degree murder, attempted murder and hate crime charges in the death of Wadee Alfayoumi and the wounding of his mother, Hanan Shaheen, in October 2023 in suburban Chicago. Authorities allege that Czuba — who was renting rooms to the mother and son in his house — targeted them because of their Islamic faith and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas that erupted days earlier. Police officers, firefighters and medical workers who responded on Oct. 14, 2023, testified on the second day of the trial, including Plainfield firefighter and paramedic Brandon Vainowski. He found Wadee in a bedroom and without a pulse. The child was naked with a knife still lodged in his side. “The amount of blood that was on this child I couldn’t even count how many stab wounds,” Vainowski said, describing how he wrapped the knife with gauze instead of removing it to prevent further injury. read the complete article
It’s regular old racism, not ‘Hinduphobia’
It’s been an awkward few months for Hindu nationalists who have been eagerly awaiting Trump’s return to the White House. There have been a few wins. Yet Trump’s return has also exposed an underbelly of anti-Indian racism in the MAGA-verse. In late December, an apparent “civil war” broke out in the MAGA-verse and Indian Americans were at the centre of it. The trigger was Donald Trump’s appointment of Indian American venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as senior policy adviser to the White House for Artificial Intelligence (AI). Krishnan’s appointment coincided with MAGA debates over the H1B visa scheme that brings skilled foreign workers to the US. Many in Trump’s camp have long insisted that its beneficiaries – mostly Indians – undercut the American workforce. Many Trump loyalists, like “far-right provocateur” Laura Loomer, were outraged at the appointment. Loomer posted on X: “It’s alarming to see the number of career leftists who are now being appointed to serve in Trump’s admin when they share views that are in direct opposition to Trump’s America First agenda.” Rather than calling it racism, Hindu groups are crying “Hinduphobia”! Why? In part, it’s because Trump’s racism and xenophobia are what Hindu groups have long endorsed. In general, they view Trump as “good for business” when it comes to Hindu nationalist politics. Similarly, Trump’s xenophobia wasn’t seen as incompatible with Hindu nationalist talking points. For them, the demonisation of undocumented migrants or the securitisation of Muslim immigrants only reinforced the characterisation of Indian Hindus in the US as the “model migrant” who contribute positively to the US economy and society. But this turning of the tide against the model Indian immigrant was not something they had planned for. They had endorsed Trump’s racism and xenophobia, hoping it would conveniently spare them as the exception. read the complete article
'The confinement is unbearable': Migrants describe being held at Guantanamo
When Jose, a Venezuelan migrant who was seeking asylum in the United States, was awoken by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official at 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 8, he sensed he was being sent to Guantanamo Bay, home of the notorious U.S. prison camp that administration officials said would house the most violent "worst of the worst" migrants apprehended on American soil. "When we got on the [military] plane, they put restraints on our hands, feet, and waist," said Jose, who requested that his last name not be used out of fear of retribution. "They searched us and then sat us in a chair, tying us to it and binding our feet together. We hoped it wouldn't be Guantanamo but in the end, that's where we ended up." Jose is one of the more than 170 migrants who spent two weeks at the naval base before being sent to Venezuela. He told ABC News that while he had a suspicion he was being sent to Guantanamo, he claims U.S. officials never told him and the other migrants where they were being sent. Jose said he and the other detainees were only allowed outside twice in two weeks and were denied phone calls with their relatives and families. "There are four cages outside," Jose said. "That's the yard. You leave one room to go into another cell." read the complete article
Germany
Under Merz's CDU, life will only get worse for Germany's Muslims
The last 18 months have been awful for Germany’s five and a half million Muslims and it looks like they are only going to get worse. Making up around 6.6 percent of the population with three million citizens, negative portrayals of Muslims and Arabs play an outsized role in the media and in politics, particularly since the start of the Israel-Gaza conflict, but with very little representation in either of these spheres. Things were already bad – an EU study on Islam in Europe last year found that Germany was the second worst country in Europe for anti-Muslim racism – but with the most right-wing Parliament in the Federal Republic’s history, many Muslims, Arabs and other minorities are worried. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) scored the best result for the German far-right since World War Two at 20.8 percent, with fifty mentions of “Islam” or “Muslim” in their manifesto, none of them positive. Though the party are going to be kept out of government by Germany’s famed “firewall” against cooperation with the far-right, Chancellor apparent Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democrats has made it clear that he is only going to accelerate Germany’s authoritarian decline, which primarily targets Arabs, Muslims and supporters of Palestine. To Mr Merz, showing the Palestinian flag, which is flown at the UN headquarters, is more scandalous than purposefully voting alongside a far-right party which campaigned on “remigration”. He also recently promised to expand the law on racial incitement to make it illegal to do “deny Israel’s right to exist” – a highly controversial formulation with little basis in actual international law, and which doubtlessly will include Palestinians showing images of historic Palestine. read the complete article