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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the UK, British Health Secretary Wes Streeting has warned that inflammatory language around “grooming gangs” who abuse children in the UK could “demonise entire communities” and “lead to atrocities against Muslims”, meanwhile in Europe, a new book out by historian Diana Darke shines a light on the influence of Islamic architecture in early European construction and how Muslim migrants may have helped build some of medieval Europe’s most beloved structures, and in the United States, a federal judge has temporarily prevented the U.S. government from transferring a disabled prisoner to Iraq from the prison at Guantánamo in order to weigh if the transfer was “humane” given the prisoner’s health. Our recommended read of the day is by Sam Knight for The New Yorker on how the world’s richest man, Trump cabinet appointee and X CEO Elon Musk, has become fixated on the right-wing British “grooming gang” conspiracy theory. This and more below:
International
Elon Musk’s Latest Terrifying Foray Into British Politics | Recommended Read
For the past week, British public life has reverberated with the impact of Elon Musk’s tweets—percussive, repetitive, basically vile—calling for the overthrow of the elected government and weaponizing a national scandal relating to the rape of young girls in impoverished English towns. It’s been hard to keep your head, and not everyone has. The onslaught began on January 1st, when Musk responded to a report by GB News, a right-wing cable-news channel, which said that the country’s Labour government had rejected a national inquiry into non-recent sexual abuse in Oldham, a town just outside Manchester, in northern England. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the actual story is more complicated than that. For years, local politicians in Oldham have been divided about how best to address catastrophic failings among the town’s police and local officials in their handling of rape and abuse cases of girls in the town in the two-thousands and early twenty-tens. (By way of example: in 2012, a social worker named Shabir Ahmed, who worked for Oldham Council for eighteen years, was convicted of thirty child-rape charges and sentenced to twenty-two years’ imprisonment.) The scandal is distressingly familiar. A number of towns and cities across England, including Rochdale, Rotherham, Telford, and Oxford, have experienced comparable episodes, often characterized by the politically charged fact that most of the perpetrators have been men of South Asian descent, with Muslim backgrounds, and that most of the victims have been young white girls. Musk didn’t buy Twitter, now X, for its nuance. “Jess Philips [sic] is a rape genocide apologist,” he posted at 6:40 A.M. Eastern Time on January 3rd, to his two hundred and eleven million followers. Twenty minutes later, he lit into Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, who was the chief prosecutor for England and Wales from 2008 to 2013 and oversaw some of the first successful prosecutions of British Asian “grooming gangs” during his tenure. “Starmer was complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN,” Musk wrote, in a tweet that, as of this writing, has received fifty-nine million views. Since then, Musk has tweeted dozens of times on the subject—mostly amplifying anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim tropes, which British right-wing activists have attached to the abuse scandals for many years. Like them, Musk has suggested that a mighty woke coverup has been at work, rather than acknowledging the truth, which is sadder and harder to bear: that these crimes took place in plain sight, that many of the girls—poor, desperately vulnerable, often young teens and even pre-teens—were regarded as sex workers or sluts, rather than children, and that almost no one cared. The hard graft of protecting vulnerable children, or prosecuting rapists, or enacting legislative change, is not what Musk is after. “The truth is a concept that Elon Musk clearly has very little interest in,” Andrew Norfolk, a recently retired investigative reporter for the Times of London, who covered the grooming-gang cases for years, told his old newspaper this week. What Musk craves is disorder and proof of his power. read the complete article
How medieval Muslim migrants helped build Europe's castles, churches and monasteries
In twelfth century Wales, a knight returning from the Crusades came home accompanied by a Palestinian mason. Called Lalys by locals, a mispronunciation of "al-Aziz", he is credited with building a number of monasteries, castles, and churches, including Neath Abbey in south Wales, today the country’s most impressive monastic ruin. Earlier, in the eleventh century, another Palestinian mason, known as "Ulmar", helped build the magnificent West Front at Castle Acre Priory in south England’s Norfolk. These cases of men from the Levant helping to construct monuments that would become integral parts of British architectural heritage are not exceptional, according to author Diana Darke. She argues in her monumental new book Islamesque (2024) that in early medieval Europe the world of construction and decorative crafts was “dominated by Muslims”. The claim might sound absurd and implausible given the ongoing vilification of Muslims in Europe as an alien implant, but she makes a sound argument. Darke’s earlier book Stealing from the Saracens (2020) revealed that many of Europe’s architectural masterpieces were heavily influenced by Islamic architecture, in which "Islamic" refers to the “culture of countries governed by Muslim rulers”. Her new work is even more explosive in its claims. Dark provides forensic detail to make her case that the medieval architectural style known as Romanesque had Islamic inspiration. She shows that many Romanesque masterpieces across the continent were in fact built by Arabs and Muslims. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Four councils back motion to classify ‘Asian grooming gangs’ as an Islamophobic term
Four local councils have reportedly endorsed a national motion to classify the term “Asian grooming gangs” as Islamophobic. Oxford, Newcastle, Manchester, and Calderdale councils are expected to back a report claiming the phrase perpetuates harmful stereotypes about Islam. The report, produced by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for British Muslims, states: “The term ‘Asian grooming gangs’ [promotes] age-old stereotypes and tropes about Islam [of] sexual profligacy and paedophilia, or Islam and violence… [they] heighten the vulnerability of Muslims to hate crimes.” According to The Times, the government has put the report forward for further discussion. Earlier this week, MPs rejected a Conservative bid to push for another national inquiry into grooming gangs. The controversy reignited after Elon Musk accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of being "complicit in the crimes" of child sex offenders during his time as chief prosecutor. Musk also targeted Home Office Minister Jess Phillips, labelling her a "rape genocide apologist." Sir Keir shot back that the Twitter boss was “spreading lies and misinformation”and other European leaders criticised Mr Musk attempting to “intervene directly in elections”. read the complete article
UK minister warns of violence against Muslims after inflammatory coverage of ‘grooming gangs’
Inflammatory language around grooming gangs who abuse children in the UK could demonise entire communities and lead to atrocities against Muslims, similar to the New Zealand mosque massacre which killed over 50 people, UK health secretary Wes Streeting warned in an interview with The Guardian. In 2011, media and police investigations revealed that girls had been abused and raped after being “groomed” by men who were of predominantly Asian background in several towns in northern England, including Rotherham and Huddersfield. However, UK media have been accused of covering the issue in an inflammatory way, with excessive focus and fearmongering about the Muslim and Pakistani perpetrators of the criminals. Researchers have pointed out that similar crimes by gangs of non-Asian and non-Muslim paedophiles do not receive the same amount of coverage in the media. Streeting, who represents east London’s Ilford North constituency in the UK parliament told The Guardian, “there are people in my community who have either Pakistani heritage or look different, who are now more fearful today than they were before.” read the complete article
Elon Musk is 'one of most dangerous men on planet,' claims former Scottish leader
Former Scottish leader Humza Yousaf has issued a stark warning about Elon Musk, labeling him “one of the most dangerous men on the planet” and calling for decisive action against his divisive rhetoric. Musk’s attacks on the British government and politicians have ranged from grave accusations of covering up grooming gang crimes to straight-out calls for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s sacking. His inflammatory comments, including anti-migrant and Islamophobic rhetoric, as well as his open support for far-right figures in the UK and across Europe, have drawn widespread condemnation, fueling debate over foreign influence, free speech, and the role of social media in modern politics. In a post on the social media platform X on Thursday, Yousaf accused Musk of amplifying harmful ideologies, spreading disinformation, and using his influence to undermine democracy. Yousaf’s statement follows a pattern of increasingly controversial actions and comments from Musk, who has faced criticism for aligning with far-right figures and promoting anti-Muslim sentiments. According to Yousaf, Musk’s behavior reflects a global trend of powerful individuals leveraging their platforms to normalize prejudice and create division. “This isn’t just about one tweet or one individual,” Yousaf wrote. “It’s about a pattern we are seeing globally, where powerful individuals with massive platforms are amplifying harmful rhetoric. They’re normalizing prejudice and spreading disinformation to create division.” read the complete article
The right is trying to rewrite history with its toxic rhetoric on Britain’s rape gangs
Long before Musk started lobbing X-shaped bricks across the Atlantic, journalists and campaigners, often women on the left such as Julie Bindel, Anna Hall, Suzanne Moore and Samira Ahmed , had turned the spotlight on “grooming gangs” – better described as rape gangs and sex traffickers – and called out the failures of the authorities. In 2004, Hall made Edge of the City, an investigation into Bradford grooming gangs, for Channel 4. The broadcast was delayed for three months after the BNP tried to exploit it as party propaganda and West Yorkshire’s chief constable warned of community disorder. Hall subsequently made two more films on the issue. Bindel, a campaigner since the 1980s on violence against women, conducted the first major newspaper investigation of the issue. Published by the Sunday Times in 2007, the story told of how parents were forced to investigate grooming cases themselves because the authorities refused to do so because of racial sensitivities. Moore and Ahmed both challenged the idea that it was racist to report on these cases. It is important, too, because the women who exposed the grooming gangs held far more nuanced views about where race fits into the picture than many who came later, and certainly those who have scrambled on to the Musk bandwagon, for whom the issue is significant primarily as a means of demonising Muslims and justifying hostility to multiculturalism and mass immigration. As Bindel observed last week, many on the right have “suddenly become laser-focused on the sexual abuse of girls – so long as they are white and their perpetrators are Pakistani Muslim”. Those “focused exclusively on the ethnic origin and religious affiliation of a particular set of abusers”, she added, are “not really interested in the girls at all”. read the complete article
United States
After 23 years, Guantanamo remains an omnipresent threat to Muslims
After 23 years, the prison now holds its lowest population of incarcerated Muslim men, with 15 remaining, including the so-called "9/11 Five". While few men remain incarcerated, this chapter of the "war on terror" is hardly over - not only because the fate of the men who are still incarcerated is precarious but because of the lasting and haunting damage Guantanamo has done to former and current detainees. Moreover, Guantanamo's legacy of imperialism, exclusion and brutality serves as a reminder of the lengths to which the US will go to criminalise different communities, all while continuing to exercise hegemonic power over Cuban territory. The violence that has come to define Guantanamo is not just a feature of the physical site. For over two decades, it has long been a symbol in the American imagination of who deserves what kind of punishment and who can be and should be excluded altogether from any semblance of justice. As long as Guantanamo remains open, it will continue to be a site of exclusion for those whose lives have been condemned as inconsequential, disposable and legally sanctioned as sacrificial targets of the state as a means to its national security ends. That is why calls to close the prison and the base are incomplete: Guantanamo must not just be closed; it must be abolished. read the complete article
Federal Court Blocks Transfer of Guantánamo Convict to Prison in Iraq
A federal judge on Saturday temporarily prevented the U.S. government from transferring a disabled prisoner to Iraq from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, while the judge considered the prisoner’s claim that he would be at risk for abuse and inadequate health care there. The prisoner, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, 63, is the oldest of the 15 detainees at Guantánamo and has a paralyzing spine disease that has required six surgeries at the base. He is serving a sentence on a war crimes conviction, and the United States had negotiated an agreement for him to finish it in Iraqi custody at a prison in Baghdad. On Jan. 3, Mr. Hadi filed a lawsuit to stop the transfer, invoking his rights to humane treatment. He used his birth name, Nashwan al-Tamir, not the alias under which the United States has held him, Hadi the Iraqi. In a three-sentence order Saturday night, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the Federal District Court in Washington wrote that the government was “hereby enjoined from transferring Mr. al-Tamir to Iraq without his consent until the pending claims are resolved.” It was accompanied by a 61-page memorandum, which was under seal and therefore not publicly accessible. read the complete article
Germany
DW's unapologetic pro-Israel and anti-Palestine bias
Speaking to TRT World, former Deutsche Welle journalist Martin Gak blows the whistle on the broadcaster’s pro-Israel and anti-Palestine bias that created a hostile work environment for staff covering Gaza. 8) Wrong to say group-based child abuse is predominantly committed by Pakistani men - police chiefs (United Kingdom) It is wrong to say group-based child abuse is predominantly committed group-based child abuse, the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) has said. Figures from the police database show where ethnicity is recorded, that in the first three quarters of 2024 - 85% of group-based child abusers were white, while 3.9% were of Pakistani origin. The figure increases for Pakistani offenders to 13.7% if you remove institutional groups, such as sports groups, schools and church-based group offenders, and group child abuse committed in a family setting. The same calculation for 2023 showed 70% of offenders were white, and 6.9% were Pakistani. So, in this specific category, there is a disproportionate representation to the number of Pakistanis in the population. However, this only relates to a very defined, and small section of the overall child abuse data. read the complete article