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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the United States, three incarcerated Muslim men are suing the Oregon Department of Corrections on the grounds of religious discrimination, elsewhere in the U.S., Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mona Chalabi joined the program Real Talk to unpack how mainstream media coverage has enabled Israel’s war on Gaza, and in the United Kingdom, with only 40 percent of Muslim girls in mainstream schools saying they feel comfortable participating in physical activity, England Football has partnered with Nike to release a new campaign to break down these barriers. Our recommended read of the day is by John Holmwood for Middle East Eye on how the scapegoating of Muslim communities in the UK fuels distrust and hampers integration by framing Muslims as cultural and security threats. This and more below:
United Kingdom
Grooming gangs and Trojan Horse: The poisoned politics of Muslim integration | Recommended Read
There has been a steady drumbeat, in right-wing and liberal media alike, about the failure of British Muslims to integrate. This drumbeat warns of self-segregated lives insulated from mainstream values. This is often fed by official reports that are occasioned by media "scares" and used to align public policy with media-driven concerns highlighting threats to public safety. Among the most potent of such concerns are those involving children and young people. On the one hand, there is the claimed risk of "radicalisation" and involvement in "Islamist" terrorism to which some young people may be vulnerable (because, we are told, of a deficit in "British values"). On the other hand, some Muslim men allegedly pose a threat to white girls through group-based sexual exploitation, or the activities of "grooming gangs" as recently set out in Baroness Casey’s recent rapid review although the available data doesn’t warrant that conclusion. Both issues generate a discourse directed at different responsible authorities – whether local government, social workers, or police – and their failure to act because of what they claim to be “a fear of being thought ‘racist’”. The main social attitude surveys – such as those conducted on an annual basis by the National Centre for Social Research – have consistently shown that British Muslims were the group closest to the average of the nation as a whole in terms of adherence values deemed to be "fundamentally British". Despite this, the surveys show increased suspicion toward Muslims and Islam, especially among middle class and professional respondents responsible for implementing public policy. In the area of child sexual exploitation, fear of being called racist has also become a convenient excuse for past inaction. In the current media focus on "grooming gangs", for example, the focus is upon the ethnicity of the perpetrators (who should, of course, be prosecuted and punished with all the severity the law allows), rather than the victims, and, importantly, the root cause: the failures in care that underlie child sexual exploitation. read the complete article
Muslim girls are Made for this Game
With only 40 per cent of Muslim girls in mainstream schools saying they feel comfortable participating in physical activity, England Football has partnered with Nike to release a new campaign to break down the barriers that prevent Muslim girls from engaging in football. Further insight shows that 40 per cent of Muslim girls in faith schools see football as a male sport, while 61 per cent say that others around them consider football a male sport – a mindset that can discourage them from even giving it a go. To challenge this perception and show Muslim girls that football is a space where they belong, the campaign launched with a powerful video shared across the England Football social media platforms, celebrating the power of inclusion and representation in the sport. read the complete article
United States
Oregon prisons face lawsuit over denial of Muslim inmates’ Halal meals, holiday visits
Three incarcerated Muslim men in late June sued the Oregon Department of Corrections in federal court on the grounds of religious discrimination, teeing up the most forceful effort yet to mandate state prisons ensure accommodations for Islamic holidays and the prevention of pork consumption. The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Oregon chapter announced the suit in early July, representing inmates who say that since the COVID-19 pandemic, the state’s prisons have denied them religious accommodations to pork-free meals and meat slaughtered under Islamic guidelines, called Halal, as well as equal guest visitation rights on holidays such as Eid-al-Fitr. The custom in the Muslim religion marks the ninth month of the holy year for Muslims, known as Ramadan, and is commonly associated with prayer and fasting. Next year’s holiday is set to begin in February. “By misstating Eid dates, denying congregational prayer, withholding family celebration, and reducing the holiday meal to a token portion — while granting comparable or superior accommodations to Native American, Jewish, Christian, and secular groups — Defendants have intentionally subjected incarcerated Muslims to unequal treatment on the basis of religion,” reads the 29-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of Pendleton. read the complete article
How the New York Times enabled genocide 'more than Starbucks' | Mona Chalabi
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mona Chalabi joins Real Talk to unpack how mainstream media coverage has enabled Israel’s war on Gaza, and why she’s calling to boycott outlets aiding that effort. She also reflects on how many of these same patterns were present in the run-up to the Iraq War and its aftermath. Mona shares personal experiences from inside different newsrooms, including moments of racism and Islamophobia, and reflects on what it meant to be asked about her "relation" to Ahmed Chalabi, a controversial Iraqi politician who championed the US invasion of Iraq. We also talk about the political backlash to Zohran Mamdani’s primary win in New York, and Mona’s work as creative director of #1 Happy Family USA, an animated series exploring the Muslim American experience through humour. read the complete article
India
The Lingering Shadow of India’s Painful Partition
For over 1,900 miles, from the shores of the Arabian Sea to the icy mountain peaks of Kashmir, a line intended to divide Hindus from Muslims is visibly etched onto the surface of the globe. The jagged border was hastily drawn by a British judge when the Indian subcontinent won its independence from Britain in August 1947 but was divided into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan. In the weeks that followed, millions of Hindus and Sikhs fled from the regions newly designated as Pakistan into India, while millions of Muslims left their ancestral homes in India and moved in the opposite direction—to what they hoped would be a safe haven in Pakistan. Some 15 million people were rendered refugees, and between one and two million were killed in the violence that accompanied the Partition. The trauma of the Partition continues to define South Asian attitudes toward past, present, and future. Today, layers of fencing, accompanied by 150,000 floodlights, thermal sensors and landmines have turned the border between India and Pakistan into a veritable Iron Curtain. The edgy, militarized border renders Indians and Pakistanis, who had lived together in overlapping communities before the Partition, almost completely inaccessible to one another. read the complete article