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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In Germany, the UN’s special rapporteur on freedom of expression said hate speech and anti-Muslim hatred were rising in Germany, meanwhile in the United States, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued to stop the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its Texas chapters from operating in the state, and lastly in Israel, Palestinian citizens of the country are expressing widespread anger after 13 middle school children were attacked by Israeli settlers during a school trip near Beit She’an. Our recommended read of the day is an excerpt from Eric Lewis’s new book for The Independent, which looks at Guantanamo Bay and how hundreds of Muslim men were rounded up and wrongly imprisoned as part of the war on terror, which built a system that could not admit its mistakes and abandoned the rule of law. This and more below:
United States
The shocking truth about Guantanamo: they knew they had the wrong people | Recommended Read
The United States and its proxies grabbed anyone they could find on the Afghan-Pakistan frontier, generally men of Arab descent. The vast majority were not captured on an active battlefield but handed over by Afghans or Pakistanis for $5,000 or more in bounties, equivalent to two years’ average earnings in that impoverished border area. The United States Government dropped thousands of leaflets advertising the bounty program. One flyer read: “Get wealth and power beyond your dreams. You can receive millions of dollars helping the anti-Taliban forces catch al-Qaida and Taliban murderers. This is enough to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life.” The United States desperately needed to find terrorists in those panicked post-9/11 days. It had to show it was fighting back. It needed to demonstrate that it was making tangible progress in the “Global War on Terror.” It did not know who it had captured, and it seemed to not much care. The idea seemed to be to torture everybody and see what intelligence could be collected. There was much torture in those days, but very little actionable intelligence. Within the first few weeks, the senior general in charge of the Joint Task Force admitted that “the major portion of his prisoners were not particularly dangerous or hardened terrorists” and a senior Marine intelligence officer concluded that the largest group “had nothing of substance to offer and should not have been there at all.” None of the men who began arriving in early 2002 had anything to do with 9/11, but it did not matter. read the complete article
Victim of Brooklyn anti-Muslim rampage offered suspect seat on bus stop bench
One of the three Muslim victims wearing hijabs targeted by a rampaging woman during a hate-fueled 11-minute spree in Brooklyn said she offered the woman a seat on a bench before she was attacked, the Daily News has learned. The 39-year-old victim was sitting at a bus shelter waiting for a B53 bus with her 11-year-old daughter on Jan. 30 when the suspect, Megan Horne, walked over and plopped down on the ice-covered sidewalk, the victim told The News Friday. “(Horne) came and she sat down on the ground on the ice,” said the victim, who wished not to be named. The victim was heading to the gym when Horne showed up, she said. “I took off my bag and told her, ‘Have a seat.’ She sat next to me and thanks me.” Things took a dark turn a few moments later when the bus arrived. The victim’s child had just gotten on the bus when Horne suddenly shoved the Muslim mom. At about 2:20 p.m. that Friday, Horne allegedly stormed up and kicked a 33-year-old woman in a hijab — a head scarf that religious Muslim women wear — outside a preschool on Fifth Ave. near 89th St., according to officials. She yelled, “Get out of this country!” and fled, Assistant District Attorney Ari Rottenberg said Thursday. Five minutes later, Horne ran up to a 12-year-old Muslim girl near the corner of 92nd St. and Gelston Ave., punching the preteen in the face before storming off to the bus stop, the prosecutor said. read the complete article
Ken Paxton reverses stance on Texas CAIR chapters, sues to shut them down
Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday sued to stop the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its Texas chapters from operating in the state — despite arguing in another case the local chapters were not included in a terrorist declaration issued by Gov. Greg Abbott. The lawsuit — which also lists the Muslim Brotherhood as a defendant despite the group having no formal organization in Texas — seeks to formally name CAIR and its Texas affiliates foreign terrorist organizations and prohibit them from engaging in any activity in the state including raising money and recruiting members. CAIR is a nonprofit Muslim civil rights group, which Abbott argues is a successor organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group founded in the 1980s. CAIR and CAIR-Texas said in a group statement Thursday they look forward to fighting the case. “Ken Paxton’s lawsuit is another frivolous, politically motivated anti-Muslim publicity stunt that wastes more taxpayer dollars,” the groups said. “CAIR has already filed a federal lawsuit to block enforcement of Governor Abbott’s unconstitutional proclamation.” read the complete article
How Guantanamo Bay lit the fuse for authoritarian rule in Trump’s America
I thought of the decision upholding detention of American citizens of Japanese descent as the great shame and betrayal of 20th-century law: the executive ordering and then the Supreme Court permitting a marginalised group of citizens to be taken from their homes and detained indefinitely, not because of what they may have done, but because of who they were. I viewed Guantanamo detention without trial as the Korematsu of our time. I was encouraged to write a book about my experience at Guantanamo to try to tell the stories of these men and think about its legacy nearly a quarter of a century later. I thought as I began to write that it should be categorised as history, not as current events. I had hoped that Korematsu was such a stain on our law and politics that we would have learned some moral lessons in the interim. Guantanamo disabused me of that. Guantanamo was selected to hold detainees precisely because the Bush administration believed that it was a place beyond the rule of law. Panicked politicians could proceed in secrecy, with maximum cruelty and without accountability, to create the political narrative that they were fighting and winning the “global war on terror”. All of this was justified on the amorphous and irrefutable invocation of “national security”, where anything goes. read the complete article
International
Widespread anger after racist attack on Palestinian schoolchildren in Israel
Palestinian citizens of Israel are expressing widespread anger after 13 middle school children were attacked by Israeli settlers during a school trip near Beit She’an. The attack took place on Wednesday when a group of junior high school students from Ibn Khaldoun School in the northern Arab-majority city of Sakhnin went to the Ein Shokek park on a school trip. A group of Jewish students approached them and were reported to have attacked the children, beating and spraying them with tear gas and pepper spray. The attack also injured two of the school officials. A video that circulated on social media following the attack shows young children on the floor, with tears in their eyes. Although all individuals have since been released from hospital after receiving medical treatment, parents and teachers say the children continue to suffer from psychological trauma following the incident. read the complete article
Albanese says Isaac Herzog’s visit will bring unity – but to many Palestinian Australians it’s a ‘slap in the face’
It’s been more than two years since Shamikh Badra last heard from his brother. He presumes his brother, sister-in-law and their four children lie buried under the rubble of their home in Gaza. He fears they were buried alive. Badra told his family’s story at a march in Sydney last Sunday organised by the Palestine Action Group, protesting against Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s upcoming visit. “This is what genocide looks like in real life,” he bellowed into a microphone to the crowd of at least 2,000 people. “This is what incitement produces, this is what dehumanisation does. “And now, we are told the man who defended these policies is welcome in Australia.” Badra is among many Palestinian Australians shocked Herzog will land in Australia on Monday for a four-day visit. In the words of Palestinian Australian Raneem Emad, it’s “a slap in the face”. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Young Muslims have created an inclusive Ramadan that works for everyone. Now that’s in danger
Something quietly profound happened last Ramadan. In a year when the war on Gaza hardened public debate into camps, when half the UK was found to believe that Islam – and therefore Muslims – to be incompatible with British values, when the general volume of Islamophobia was ratcheted several notches higher by Reform UK’s rise in the polls, hundreds of Muslim Londoners gathered every night to build the kind of community and connection we were told had been decimated. Lost to whatever the flavour of blame is at the moment: doomscrolling, the telly streamers, individualism promoted by late-stage capitalism, a society fractured by the cost of living. Communities such as Ramadan Space, grown on WhatsApp, negotiated a venue in Shoreditch and put on sold-out nights all month long. These became regular rituals for some, a wholesome bit of eat-pray-love that, as one hijabi student told me, felt “like oxygen” at a time when it felt difficult to come up for air. The Inclusive Mosque Initiative put on feminist prayers in a south London church. A friend launched Shukr, bringing together London’s Muslim creatives at the top of 180 The Strand. read the complete article
Germany
UN expert warns of surging anti-Muslim hatred in Germany
The UN's special rapporteur on freedom of expression said hate speech and anti-Muslim hatred were rising in Germany while warning that the government response had at times been heavy-handed. Germany had seen a “rise of hate speech, anti-Muslim hatred, anti-migrant and gendered hate speech,” Irene Khan told a press conference in Berlin on Friday. Germany is at a critical juncture for freedom of expression and must prioritise the expansion of safe, inclusive spaces to discuss diverse opinions, Khan said at the end of an official visit to the country. “Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-migrant vitriol have surged, as some political forces rooted in racist, xenophobic and authoritarian ideologies have weaponised freedom of expression to marginalise, intimidate and abuse minorities,” said Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression. read the complete article