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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In Austria, conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer has said he would step down in the “coming days” after breaking off coalition talks with the Social Democrats over disagreements, meanwhile in India, many Indians are feeling the strain of how Hindu nationalism under PM Narendra Modi’s government is impacting their day to day lives, and in the UK, Britain’s opposition Conservative Party is leading calls for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to scrap government plans for an official definition of Islamophobia over fears it would “restrict free speech”. Our recommended read of the day is by Eric Deggans for NPR on how Muslim Americans in Houston, Texas, are worried about the possibility of backlash after Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar (a Houston native) set off a car bomb on New Year’s Day in New Orleans’s French Quarter. This and more below:
United States
Muslims in Houston are worried about backlash from the New Orleans attack | Recommended Read
The FBI says the man responsible for the New Year's Day attack in New Orleans pledged allegiance to the terrorist group, ISIS. Shamsud-Din Jabbar was a 42-year-old Army veteran from Houston. He died in an exchange of gunfire with police following the attack. The Islamic Society of Greater Houston tells NPR that Jabbar was not an official member at any of its 21 mosques in Houston. But as member station KERA's Stella Chavez reports, some Muslims in the city are worried about a backlash against their community. CHAVEZ: Hamid and other imams in Houston say they've been talking to each other about how to combat this problem. Houston has the largest and most diverse Muslim population in Texas, which includes immigrants, as well as Native-born U.S. citizens. Umme Kulsum is originally from India but has lived in Texas for a number of years. She's married and is raising four children. She follows the news closely and said she had two fears when she heard about the attack in New Orleans. UMME KULSUM: The first fear in my mind was, I hope it's not someone from our community. That was the first fear. Then it's like, now, what will happen? What next? What will be the Islamophobic reactions we might face in our community? read the complete article
New Orleans attacker: How false claims about the suspect spread
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the 42-year-old suspected driver in the New Year’s truck attack in New Orleans, was a United States citizen and US Army veteran. But within hours of the attack – which killed 15 people and is being investigated as an act of terrorism – President-elect Donald Trump, Republican leaders and social media influencers speculated that Jabbar entered the US illegally. Citing Fox News, social media accounts on January 1 said Jabbar “crossed the US-Mexico border at the Eagle Pass crossing just two days ago” and that there was “blood on the hands of the Biden administration”. US Representative for Georgia Marjorie Taylor Greene shared a 38-second Fox News clip and wrote on X that Jabbar “is said to have come across the border in Eagle Pass TWO DAYS AGO!!! Shut the border down!!!” At about 3am in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, law enforcement officials say that Jabbar rammed Bourbon Street crowds with a rented Ford F-150 pick-up truck before he died in a police shootout. At least one Fox News broadcast on January 1 reported that the truck had crossed the US southern border two days earlier and was driven by Jabbar, citing “federal sources”. Reporters walked this back within minutes on air. The network issued a correction within an hour saying that the truck entered the country in mid-November and it wasn’t driven by Jabbar. But it was too late to contain false claims that Jabbar was in the US illegally. PolitiFact contacted Fox News but did not hear back by publication. read the complete article
Trump response to recent attacks offers ominous outlook for terror in next term
Even by Donald Trump’s standards, the message was darkly apocalyptic – evoking memories of the infamous “American carnage” image he conjured at his first inaugural address eight years ago. “The USA is breaking down,” the president-elect intoned grimly in a message posted on his Truth Social platform at six minutes past midnight on 2 January. “A violent erosion of Safety, National Security, and Democracy is taking place all across our Nation. Only strength and powerful leadership will stop it,” he wrote. Delivered just 18 days before his return to the White House, Trump’s bleak prognosis seemed an ominous harbinger of counter-violence – especially when combined with his false accompanying message that the episodes confirmed his frequent warnings against open borders and illegal immigrants. Both perpetrators were American-born US citizens. “It’s about the most extreme language you can get when it comes to anti-immigrant comments,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, a group dedicated to tracking far-right movements. “The attacks on immigrants, coming from Trump for a long time now, and inflamed by the situation where the person who did the [New Orleans] attack is not even an immigrant, are certainly going to raise the level of violence and attacks on immigrants in the country.” Brian Levin, a professor emeritus at California State University and founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, said Trump’s comments following previous violent events had consistently fuelled an upsurge in hate crimes. Anti-Muslim hate offences following an attack by a radicalised Islamist husband-and-wife team that killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, in December 2015 increased by 20% after Trump waded in on social media and in a speech in North Carolina five days afterwards, Levin said. The attack happened at a time when Trump was already proposing a ban on Muslims entering the US as a response to what he termed “radical, Islamist terrorism”. read the complete article
United Kingdom
MCB: ‘We Need Truth and Action Against Child Sexual Abuse Gangs, Not a Racist Witch-hunt’
The Muslim Council of Britain today gave a qualified support for any properly constituted national inquiry into child sexual exploitation, provided it follows evidence rather than prejudice. Given that the recommendations of previous inquiries have not been implemented, the rationale for a fresh new inquiry would have to be robust. Previous inquiries include the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) led by Alexis Jay and the Casey report into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham. Zara Mohammed, Secretary General of the MCB said: “Sexual predators, particularly those who target vulnerable children and commit heinous crimes should face the full force of the law without fear or favour. No perpetrator should hide behind false notions that this behaviour is condoned in our community or our faith. The targets of these disgusting people have been white and non-white, Muslim and non-Muslim. Yet the victims have been ill-served by incompetent authorities and exploited by those pursuing a racist agenda .” read the complete article
UK Opposition wants PM Keir Starmer to scrap plans for Islamophobia definition
Britain’s Opposition Conservative Party is leading calls for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to scrap government plans for an official definition of Islamophobia over fears it would restrict free speech and action against wrongdoing. Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said this weekend that a "false label" of Islamophobia had hampered investigations into the child abuse grooming gang scandal involving men of Pakistani heritage. It comes as The Daily Telegraph newspaper claims that the Labour Party government is considering a formal definition of anti-Muslim discrimination. "The government should drop its plans for such a deeply flawed definition of Islamophobia,” Jenrick told the newspaper. “Throughout the grooming gang scandal the false label of Islamophobia was used to silence people. It appears that the government has learnt nothing and is determined to press ahead with a definition that will have a chilling effect on freedom of speech,” he said. read the complete article
Austria
Austria's chancellor to step down after coalition talks collapse
Austria's conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer has said he would step down in the "coming days" after breaking off coalition talks with the Social Democrats over disagreements on key issues. Nehammer made the announcements late on Saturday in a video message and accompanying statement posted on the X platform. The development comes just one day after Austria's liberal party withdrew from three-party coalition talks to form a centrist government. The aim had been to sideline the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) that topped the vote. The FPOe won 28.8 percent of the vote but has been unable to find partners to form a national government in the Alpine EU member state. The remaining two parties had vowed to continue their work, but after just one day Nehammer announced on X that "agreement with the SPO is not possible on key issues." read the complete article
India
Narendra Modi’s Populist Facade Is Cracking
A winter afternoon in January 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood before a podium, gazing out at a handpicked audience of the Indian elite: billionaires, Bollywood actors, cricket stars, nationalist politicians. Modi had come to the north-central city of Ayodhya, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, to consecrate the still-unfinished temple behind him, with its seven shrines, 160-foot-high dome, and baby-faced statue of the Hindu god Ram, carved in black stone and covered in jewels. He did not mention the fact that the temple was being built on a contested site where Hindu radicals had torn down a 16th-century mosque three decades earlier, setting off years of protests and legal struggle. Instead, Modi described the temple as an emblem of India’s present and future greatness—its rising economic might, its growing navy, its moon missions, and, most of all, its immense human energy and potential. The temple signified India’s historic triumph over the “mentality of slavery,” he said. This nation of nearly 1.5 billion was shedding its old secular creed and, despite the fact that 200 million of its citizens are Muslim, being reborn as a land of Hindu-nationalist ideals. “The generations after a thousand years will remember our nation-building efforts today,” he told the crowd. I asked Shukla why he had lost faith in Modi. One reason, he said, was “animals.” When I looked confused, he pointed helpfully to the street, where a huge cow was meandering down the middle of the road. “Look, here’s an animal coming now.” It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about. The BJP’s preoccupation with protecting cows—for Hindus, a symbol of divine beneficence—was driving people crazy. No one was allowed to touch them anymore, Shukla said. They wandered at will, eating crops and fodder. Cows had even become a source of corruption, he claimed; funds have been set up to protect cows, Shukla said, but “the money disappears.” This is what Modi’s rhetoric about building a Hindu nation often amounts to at the local level, especially in villages that have no Muslims to blame. read the complete article