Today in Islamophobia

Today in Islamophobia: In the United Kingdom, the Metropolitan police have said organizers of this weekend’s Unite the Kingdom and March for Palestine demonstrations will be “held responsible for any hate speech connected with the events”, meanwhile in the United States, Billionaire George Soros has decided to put $30 Million towards groups fighting antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate over the course of the next three years, and lastly in Ireland, a phone camera captured audio from former Prime Minister Bertie Ahem during door to door campaigning in Dublin in which Ahem expresses anti-immigrant views. Our recommended read of the day is by Junaid Jahangir for Edmonton Journal on how the economics of hate literature show that online platforms facilitate polarizing content by maximizing user engagement and revenues over moderating false or distorted content, creating dangerous echo chambers. This and more below:

Canada

Opinion: What the economics of hate tell us about Islamophobia | Recommended Read

A Black Muslim man was recently assaulted in St. Albert. This incident did not arise out of a vacuum but from a system where a loud minority feels empowered to revel in hateful tropes. It is only the latest in a string of incidents that include threats and assaults against Black Muslim women. So much for “liberating” Muslim women. We need to understand the drivers of this hate and the economics of populism and hate helps shed some light. The online comments on any of the National Council of Canadian Muslims posts on Islamophobic incidents are disturbing. Multiple commenters downplay such incidents, engage in both-sidesism, hide behind freedom of expression, essentialize, stereotype, and dehumanize Muslims, gaslight concerns of racism and Islamophobia, engage in deflection and whataboutery, and repeat Islamophobic tropes ad nauseam. The economics of hate literature show that online platforms facilitate polarizing content. This is because of algorithms that serve to maximize user engagement and revenues. The literature shows that hatred is based on the repetition of false or distorted stories, especially in online bubbles or echo chambers like WhatsApp groups. In economics jargon, this creates malevolent preferences where group identity is expressed, as an in-group is pitted against an out-group. read the complete article

United States

Jayapal To Witness: 'Does Sharia Law Require Muslims Living In The US To Violate American Law?'

At today's House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) accused Republicans of "anti-Muslim" attacks, and spoke to witness Amanda Tyler, Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, about Sharia Law and the U.S. 4) Targeted by Trump, Soros’ foundation answers with a $30 million bet on fighting antisemitism—and Islamophobia (United States) Open Society Foundations, the family philanthropy founded by hedge fund billionaire George Soros, is putting $30 million toward groups fighting antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate over the next three years. The major human rights funder pledged Wednesday to strengthen interfaith partnerships and protect those facing heightened threats in response to the rising levels of hate against both Jewish and Muslim communities, coinciding with the Israel-Hamas war and the current fragile ceasefire. Last year saw the highest level of deadly violence against Jews worldwide in over three decades, according to an annual study released last month by Tel Aviv University, including the December shooting at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia. Meanwhile, anti-Muslim rhetoric has intensified against the backdrop of the Iran war, with one congressional Republican saying Muslims “ don’t belong in American society.” read the complete article

Texas politicos’ Islamophobic rhetoric may win with the base, but it harms us all

Six days after the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil, then-President George W. Bush stood with Muslim clergy at the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., and urged Americans not to blame their Muslim neighbors for the 9/11 attack. Whether the Bush administration’s rounding up of thousands of Muslims after 9/11, or its civilian-decimating invasions of two Muslim-majority countries rose to the ideals described above is worth contesting. Can you ever imagine Donald Trump saying those words if a similar attack were to occur today? “In Texas, candidates running for office during the primaries have made Muslims and what they call ‘the Islamification of Texas’ the center of their campaigns,” PBS Newshour and anchor Amna Nawaz, herself a Muslim, reported last Wednesday. Texans searching Google with the term “Sharia law” spiked higher than ever last summer, when Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill to prohibit neighborhoods from creating so-called “Sharia compounds.” “When I say Sharia to the average American Muslim, they would literally think, ‘OK, I need to be kind to my mother, I need to be a good person’,” Yasir Qadhi, resident theologian at the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC), told PBS. Certain GOP politicians’ “interpretation of Sharia is not one that the Muslims of this country even understand. It’s a personal set of rituals and ethical conduct. That’s literally the association that we have of Sharia.” read the complete article

Ireland

Irish ex-PM caught making anti-African and anti-Muslim comments on election trail

Ireland’s former Prime Minister Bertie Ahern has landed his party in electoral hot water by making unguarded anti-immigrant comments on the campaign trail. Ahern, who was Taoiseach from 1997 to 2008, made the remarks in a surreptitiously recorded video as he canvassed door to door for the centrist Fianna Fáil party’s candidate in an upcoming Dublin parliamentary by-election. The footage shows Ahern, 74, talking to a potential voter, who blames him for “hordes of foreigners coming into our country” — and records his response using a phone concealed from his view. “I think there’s too many coming in. I think we have to take some in,” Ahern tells the unidentified woman. “I agree with you on the Africans. We can’t be taking in people from the Congo and all these places. I think there’s too many from those places.” When the woman expresses fears about Muslims, Ahern responds: “I don’t worry about this generation of Muslims. The next generation of the kids growing up, that’s when I think the problem will be.” read the complete article

India

India's Hindu RSS lobbies groups abroad to counter minority rights criticism

A powerful Hindu group from which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party emerged said on Tuesday it had organised foreign visits, including ‌to the U.S., to counter perceptions it is a paramilitary outfit involved in attacks on minority communities. The outreach by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National Volunteer Organisation, came after the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in a report, in November that it "has been involved in acts of extreme violence and intolerance against members of minority groups for decades". The RSS says it is a "Hindu centric civilisational, cultural movement" whose goal is to "carry the nation to the pinnacle of glory", including by uniting Hindus and protecting the religion. read the complete article

United Kingdom

Met warns about hate speech at Unite the Kingdom and Palestine marches

The Metropolitan police have said organisers of this weekend’s Unite the Kingdom and March for Palestine demonstrations will be held responsible for any hate speech connected with the events, in what they expect to be “one of the busiest days for policing in London in recent years”. Tens of thousands of people are expected to march in the capital for the Unite the Kingdom event in central London and the Nakba: 78 March for Palestine from south Kensington to central London. Live facial recognition will be used in an area of Camden where Unite the Kingdom attenders are expected to gather outside the event itself, “comparing the faces of those walking past, with the faces of those on a specific watchlist”, Harman added. It is not expected that facial recognition will be used on pro-Palestine marchers. read the complete article

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