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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In India, the Supreme Court has condemned the government’s use of ‘bulldozer justice’, meanwhile in Australia, Atab Malik has been appointed as Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia, amidst growing controversy surrounding the appointment due in large part to delays and Labor party secrecy, and lastly, Saman Javed writes for hyphen on the importance of recognizing the efforts of Muslims and people of colour who served in British armed forces during the first and second world war. Our recommended read of the day is by Imaan Khan for The New Arab on how Israel’s genocide targeting Palestinians is linked to the oppression of Muslims more widely, as it demonstrates how Islamophobia is rooted in spaces of political power. This and more below:
International
Why Gaza’s genocide is central to Islamophobia Awareness Month | Recommended Read
Islamophobia Awareness Month (IAM) is upon us once again. During these weeks, the pervasive and worrying issues of workplace discrimination, street violence, riots and hate crime impacting the Muslim community are all brought to the fore. However, what we often find is that the root causes, that is the structural nature of Islamophobia, tends to regularly receive less attention. Consequently, even less discussion is allocated to exposing how this facilitates and manufactures consent for the ongoing genocide in Gaza. This pervasive issue creates conditions that have allowed many in positions of power to either remain silent or openly commend the killing of thousands in Palestine. Given it is the second IAM that takes place amid the ongoing genocide in Palestine, highlighting what Israel has been doing to Palestinians and how this links to the oppression of Muslims more widely, is all the more important to what the month is supposed to serve. Islamophobia is systemically entrenched and fundamentally rooted in spaces of political power, where policies and narratives are crafted. Limiting the discussions during IAM to hate crime statistics and street-level incidents can distract from its pervasive nature and prominence within the British political landscape. read the complete article
The West buries a genocide – by making victims of Israel's football thugs
The ridiculous framing from western politicians, assisted by mainstream media outlets, was that the visiting Israelis were “hunted down” in what supposedly amounted to a “pogrom” by Dutch street gangs, comprising mainly youths of Arab and Muslim heritage. Dutch politicians with their own ugly, racist agendas, as well as the country’s king, rushed to join Israel in fuelling the hysteria. Geert Wilders, the racist, far-right leader of the largest party in the Dutch parliament, said “multicultural scum” had carried out a “Jew hunt”. Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, gave her country’s official stamp of approval to portray events in Amsterdam as a potential “second Holocaust”, calling the scenes “horrific and deeply shameful”. She added: “The outbreak of such violence against Jews crosses all boundaries. There is no justification whatsoever for such violence. Jews must be safe in Europe.” His is the same Germany where videos daily show Arab and Muslim demonstrators - in fact, anyone waving a Palestinian flag - being brutally assaulted by German police officers for protesting against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Baerbock seems just fine with crossing those kinds of boundaries - whether it be eradicating the right to protest or fostering a political climate that authorises Islamophobic violence, not from random football hooligans but from functionaries of the German state. It is not support for violence, let alone for antisemitism, to point out that this portrayal of events was utterly divorced from reality. Videos on social media showed the visiting Israeli fans wilfully provoking confrontation as soon as they arrived in Amsterdam. The difference here was that the clashes unleashed by the Israeli fans’ provocations had a much larger context than simple antipathy between rival teams. It was fuelled by tensions surrounding horrifying events taking place on the international stage. There is nothing shocking or especially sinister about Dutch fans, especially those with Arab or Muslim heritage, responding with their own violence to Israeli youths - some of them presumably fresh from military service in Gaza - trying to export their own genocidal anti-Arab and anti-Muslim incitement to Amsterdam. All the more so when the Israeli fans were amplifying the bigoted, Islamophobic bile of leading Dutch politicians. It should have been even less surprising given the wider context: that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were celebrating in someone else's city the Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza, among Dutch citizens who don't view Arab life as worthless or Muslims as "human animals". read the complete article
United States
'Disappointed but not surprised': American Arabs react to Donald Trump's 2024 US election win
“I’d be lying if I said I was shocked.” These were the words of Bushra Amiwala, the first Gen Z Muslim elected official in the US, in response to former President Donald Trump pulling off one of the biggest comebacks in modern American political history. However, Bushra is not alone in her views. How was he able to win, given that he is a convicted felon and the first president to be impeached twice? To better understand the reaction to Trump’s win, The New Arab spoke to American Arab Muslims, all of whom shared mixed views. While some expressed concern about the war on Gaza in the lead-up to the election, according to recent surveys, others voiced worries about a second Trump term, while some celebrated the result. More than 90% of American counties shifted to the right compared to the 2020 election, and Trump became the first Republican candidate in two decades to win the popular vote. Ibrahim, a former SJP board member at Emory University involved in the Gaza solidarity encampment last spring, wasn’t shocked by the result, saying he was “disappointed but not surprised.” He added, “The Democratic Party lost its appeal to a lot of people, especially working-class people and minorities. They need to do a lot of internal reflection over the next four years and think about who voters are actually looking for. It’s not just identity politics.” Ibrahim also believes the Democratic Party shifted to the right in an attempt to appeal to centrist and Republican voters, but in doing so, they lost the support of left-leaning voters. read the complete article
No, Trump will not be worse than Biden for Palestine and the Middle East
Since former United States President Donald Trump’s election victory, many observers have predicted that his administration would be far worse for Palestine and the Middle East. His pro-Israel rhetoric and threats to bomb Iran, they say, point to his foreign policy intentions. Yet a closer look at US foreign policy over the past eight years reveals that nothing fundamental will change for the Palestinian people and the region as a whole. This is because President Joe Biden’s administration in effect continued the policies of the first Trump presidency without major changes. Although there may be surprises and unexpected developments, the second Trump administration will continue in the same direction it set back in 2017 and Biden decided to maintain in 2021. There are three main elements of this foreign policy. First is the decision to abandon any remaining pretence about US support for a “two-state solution”, in which Palestine would enjoy full self-determination and sovereignty within 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital. The second element of the Trump-Biden foreign policy is the advancement of Arab normalisation with Israel through the Abraham Accords. The first Trump administration initiated this path with normalisation deals between Israel and Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The third element of the Trump-Biden policy is the containment of Iran. Thus, in essence, the Biden administration, despite its rhetorical pretences and supposed commitment to human rights, has done nothing different from its predecessor. Both administrations have worked over the past eight years to ensure the end of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and full sovereignty and create a new Middle East in which Israel plays an even more prominent economic and military role in defending US imperial interests. read the complete article
How Trump won the biggest Arab American-majority city in America
After a strong show of support for Joe Biden and against Donald Trump in the 2020 election, the Arab and Muslim American communities in the swing state of Michigan, and around the country, swung decisively in the other direction. Despite some early claims to the contrary, this didn’t determine the outcome, either in the popular vote or in the electoral college. However, the shift in Arab and Muslim American sentiment toward Trump and away from Kamala Harris, if not all other Democrats, tells a fascinating part of the 2024 election saga. The swing in Michigan was quite dramatic. In the largest Arab American-majority city in the country, Dearborn, Trump beat Harris 42.5% to 36%. Tellingly, the usually irrelevant Green Party candidate Jill Stein pulled down an impressive 18% of the vote in Dearborn, undoubtedly voters who could not stomach voting for either Trump or Harris. Trump similarly prevailed in Dearborn Heights, and in Michigan generally. Biden had won all of these areas handily in 2020. The turnabout has its origins, obviously, in the Gaza war. Arab and Muslim American sentiment was, from the outset, appalled at the savagery of Israel’s retaliation for the Hamas-led killing spree in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. And these communities were nearly unanimous in outrage at the virtual carte blanche for Israel provided by the Biden administration, especially in the first few months of the war. read the complete article
UMN Muslim community speaks out on Islamophobic climate
Since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Muslim students at the University of Minnesota have reported incidents of Islamophobia against them. On Oct. 17, a man approached a group of pro-Palestinian protesters, calling them terrorists outside of Coffman Union. The incident was caught on video, posted to the Students for Justice for Palestine’s Instagram page and reposted on Al Jazeera’s Instagram page. “All you f—ing Muslim terrorists,” the man in the video said. On Oct. 22, one day after the Morrill Hall takeover, a man in a crowd of a pro-Palestinian protest in front of Coffman Union yelled calling speakers and them terrorists. “Every time a speaker stopped talking, the man yelled terrorists,” Abouhekel said. Abouhekel did not report the incident to the University of Minnesota Police Department but said she sent a direct email to Heather McGinnis, senior assistant to the vice president for Student Affairs, reporting the incident. McGinnis responded to Abouhekel’s email and provided links for reporting bias concerns and additional resources for support. “I told them the rundown of what happened, and they decided to turn a blind eye,” Abouhekel said. Abouhekel said the University’s response raises concerns for the Muslim community. “There has been a rise of Islamophobia in the past year, and especially the past few months,” Abouhekel said. “The University decided to just not bring it to light, and they don’t want to address it, and they’re just ignoring it.” read the complete article
Trump Will Take Unilateral Presidential Powers to a New Level
Even within the context of repeated presidential acts taken without congressional assent (or often even knowledge) and in defiance of the constitutional checks on the powers of the presidency, the 21st century witnessed a major uptick in claims of executive power. In the name of war, this century has seen an astonishing erosion of constraints on that very power, as Yale law professor Harold Hongju Koh details in his illuminating new book, The National Security Constitution in the Twenty-First Century. At the dawn of this century, the attacks of September 11, 2001, led to an instant escalation of presidential power and executive unilateralism. In the name of national security, President George W. Bush issued an order that authorized the indefinite detention of prisoners in what quickly came to be known as the Global War on Terror. He also set up an offshore prison of injustice at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and authorized military commissions instead of federal court trials for terrorism suspects captured abroad. Meanwhile, Congress and the courts consistently deferred to the will of the president when it came to actions taken in the name of that War on Terror. One week after the attacks of 9/11, Congress passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which undermined its own power in Article I of the Constitution to declare war and weakened its powers of restraint on presidential actions carefully articulated in the 1973 War Powers Resolution (WPR), passed to guard against the very kind of secretive engagement in war that Nixon had unilaterally authorized in the Vietnam era. In October 2001, Congress also passed the USA Patriot Act. It included an expansion of presidential power at home in the name of protecting the nation in the War on Terror, including authorizing greatly expanded surveillance policies that would come to include, among other things, secret surveillance and searches that took place without evidence of wrongdoing, notably in Muslim communities in this country that were considered inherently suspect in the name of the War on Terror. A second Trump presidency will undoubtedly take unilateral presidential powers to a new level. After all, he already indicated that he might withdraw the US from NATO and end support for Ukraine. Nor is Trump likely to be deterred by Congress. Reporting on Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s nearly 1,000-page prescription for a second Trump presidency, written primarily by former office holders in the first Trump administration, New York Times reporters Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman reported that Trump “and his associates” plan to “increase the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House.” read the complete article
India
India: Big win for people’s rights as top court condemns ‘bulldozer justice’
Responding to the recent verdict of the Supreme Court of India condemning “bulldozer justice”, Aakar Patel, chair of board at Amnesty International India, said: “The judgement condemning unlawful demolitions as ‘unacceptable’ from the Supreme Court of India is a late but welcome move in upholding the rights of the people. This is a big win in ending the deeply unjust, widespread, unlawful and punitive demolitions, mostly targeting the minority Muslim community, by the Indian authorities which have often been peddled as ‘bulldozer justice’ by ruling party political leaders and media. “Amnesty International welcomes the Supreme Court of India’s judgment and calls on the central and state governments in India to immediately halt the de facto policy of demolishing people’s homes as a form of extra-judicial punishment and ensure nobody is made homeless as a result of forced evictions. In a verdict published yesterday, the Supreme Court of India said that ‘Citizens’ voices cannot be throttled by a threat of destroying their properties’ while urging the government to follow ‘due process’. The apex court delivered its 6 November verdict in a matter related to the demolition of a house in the Maharajganj district of Uttar Pradesh in 2019. read the complete article
Netherlands
Israeli football fans and the violence in Amsterdam: what we know
The first incidents were reported on Wednesday evening, the day before the match. Police say Maccabi fans tore a Palestinian flag down from the facade of a building and burned it, shouted “fuck you, Palestine”, and vandalised a taxi. After a radio callout a number of taxi drivers converged on a casino on the nearby Max Euweplein, where about 400 Israeli supporters had gathered. Police dispersed the taxi drivers and escorted supporters out of the casino. Verified social media videos show Maccabi fans setting off flares and fireworks, chanting in Hebrew “olé, olé, let the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] win, we will fuck the Arabs”, and declaring that there were “no children” left in Gaza. Amsterdam has a large Muslim community and has allowed more than 2,500 protests against the war in Gaza so far this year. There were further clashes on Thursday afternoon on the central Dam Square, where a large crowd of Maccabi supporters had gathered. Police said pro-Palestine demonstrators tried to reach the square. Two arrests were made. Maccabi supporters were filmed chanting anti-Arab slogans on their way to the Johan Cruyff Arena. Police escorted the 2,600 fans to the game and dispersed protesters defying a ban on a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside the stadium. After the match, which Ajax won 5-0, there were numerous attacks, described by Halsema as “hit and run”, on Maccabi supporters across the city centre. Footage showed masked youths on scooters and ebikes seeking out, chasing down and beating victims – mostly in Maccabi colours – until about 4am. read the complete article
Switzerland
Switzerland’s “Burqa Ban” to take effect in January 2025, face coverings forbidden in public places
Starting January 1, 2025, Switzerland’s “burqa ban,” which forbids face coverings in public places, will go into effect. The Federal Council, in a recent announcement, stated that violators could face fines up to 1,000 Swiss francs (about $1,144 or ₹96,525). An initial fine of CHF100 will be imposed administratively on-site to minimize bureaucratic processes, though a contested fine may escalate to CHF1,000. The face-covering prohibition, narrowly approved by Swiss voters in a 2021 referendum, saw 51.2% voting in favor. It was spearheaded by the Swiss People’s Party, which had previously initiated a 2009 ban on constructing new minarets. The law was formally passed by the National Council with a 151-29 vote. The Federal Act on the Prohibition of Covering the Face allows exemptions for health, safety, traditional customs, and weather-related needs. Additionally, the ban won’t apply on aircraft, in diplomatic buildings, or in places of worship. Artistic, advertising, and entertainment purposes may justify face coverings with prior authority approval, and face coverings could also be allowed for personal protection under freedom of expression and assembly, provided public order is maintained. read the complete article
Australia
It’s not hard to see why Australian Muslims are growing suspicious of the government’s special envoy on Islamophobia
The appointment of the “special envoy” to combat Islamophobia in Australia has sparked a wave of controversy. The identity of the envoy, British-born Muslim Aftab Malik, was revealed almost three months after Jillan Segal’s appointment as an envoy to combat antisemitism. The delay of Malik’s appointment and the relative secrecy surrounding Labor’s announcement have stirred anger among Muslims and Muslim advocates. This contrasted sharply with the attention given to the announcement of the antisemitism envoy in the press conference with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, Andrew Giles, and the Member for Macnamara, Josh Burns. These hiccups notwithstanding, Muslim advocates and organisations — like the Australian National Imams Council and the Islamic Sciences and Research Academy — have welcomed Aftab Malik’s appointment. If the federal government is genuinely committed to addressing Islamophobia and antisemitism within its borders, it must actively demonstrate its dedication to the principles of democracy and human rights. And yet recent national and international events have made the appointment of special envoys deeply problematic. read the complete article
United Kingdom
‘Commemorating all those who served brings people together’
Mohammad Hussain was 16 years old when he ran away from his family home in Gujar Khan, now Pakistan, to volunteer for the British Indian Army, against his parents’ wishes. It was 1941 and his older brother Corporal Fazal Hussain was being held as a prisoner of war by Japanese forces. Two years of intense training in Lucknow and Ferozpur followed, during which Hussain specialised as a gunner and wireless communications officer. He was one of an estimated one million Muslims who served in the British Indian Army during the second world war, though their contributions have been largely unrecognised. “People aren’t necessarily aware of what Muslims contributed in the first and second world wars,” says Hussain’s grandson Ejaz. “It’s a failure that this hasn’t been recognised enough.” Over recent years a number of dedicated campaigns have sought to change that. In October, community leaders and politicians stated that the history of Black and Asian soldiers who fought in world wars should be taught in schools, arguing that raising awareness could help tackle racism and anti-Muslim prejudice. Their calls came after towns and cities across the UK were plagued by racist riots at the beginning of August, following the Southport stabbings. read the complete article