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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In India, at least five people have been killed in clashes between police and protesters over the survey of a mosque, which the local Muslim community accuse Hindu nationalists of attempting to take over the land, and Shirin Tejani writes in Religion & Ethics on how they as an Indian Muslim are choosing not to celebrate the festival of Diwali this year due in part to the surge of Islamophobia worldwide, and in the United States, two scholars from Harvard University publicly speak out against the silencing of pro-Palestinian voices and the systemic equation of antisemitism with criticism of Israeli policies and military decisions in higher education. Our recommended read of the day is by Umar A Farooq for Middle East Eye on incoming Trump administration appointee Sebastian Gorka who has a history of making Islamophobic statements. This and more below:
United States
Who is Sebastian Gorka, the Trump-appointee former US officials call an 'Islamophobic huckster?' | Recommended Read
US President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump official and media commentator, to return to the White House and serve in a senior national security role in the new administration. Gorka's nomination to be deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism has drawn controversy over past comments he made and his views on Islam and Muslims. The role does not require Senate approval to be confirmed and was announced on Friday. The son of Hungarian parents who fled to the UK after the failed uprising against the Soviet Union in 1956, Gorka immigrated to the US and became a naturalized US citizen in 2012. His political and media career eventually led him to serve a brief stint in the first Trump administration. He has previously implied that 98 percent of "terrorists" in the United States are Muslim, and in a Breitbart column in 2016 demonized Muslim immigrants coming to the United States, saying that Muslims are, in the best case, opposed to American values and in the worst case, "want to kill us". Former US officials Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, who served in national security and counterterrorism roles in the US government, previously said that Gorka believes that violence in the Middle East is inextricably linked to the "martial language" of the Quran. "Mr Gorka sees Islam as the problem, rather than the uses to which Islam has been put by violent extremists," Simon and Benjamin said in an opinion article published in The New York Times in 2017, in which they referred to Gorka as an "Islamophobic huckster". read the complete article
Harvard Cannot Treat Palestine as an Afterthought
When we read an advertisement for a Harvard-sponsored training on antisemitism and Islamophobia last month, we each felt a familiar unease. As a visibly Muslim woman in post-9/11 America, I, Alisa, was uncomfortable with the tokenism inherent in a panel featuring one “Muslim/Arab” speaker and the implication that the two identities are interchangeable. As an Israeli-American, I, Eben, was concerned about the potential for criticism of Israel to be conflated with antisemitism. I have experienced antisemitism, and I have witnessed Israeli forces raze olive trees, bomb archaeological sites, and exert disproportionate force on Palestinian civilians. Against the backdrop of a year in which the University has routinely opposed and suppressed protest about Palestine, we were both skeptical of any sort of training on antisemitism — a concern some Harvard groups have weaponized to silence discussion of Palestine — and Islamophobia, which the University has failed to properly address. Project Shema, one of the workshop’s hosts, has worked extensively with the Anti-Defamation League, which has a history of maligning social justice movements and aligning itself with police and right-wing leaders under the guise of civil rights. In past trainings, Project Shema has deemed claims like “Zionism is racism” and “Israel is a genocidal state” as examples of “anti-Jewish harm.” These concerns prompted petitions across Massachusetts against Shema trainings. We followed suit at Harvard, launching a petition that garnered nearly 500 signatures from students, faculty, staff, and alumni. The most striking aspect of last month’s training was learning the two of us represented the silent majority of attendees. The Israel-Palestine conflict was presented as an afterthought in advertising for the training, and it certainly felt like the elephant in the room. read the complete article
Trump appoints anti-Palestinian, darling of the European far-right Sebastian Gorka to 'counterterrorism' role
US President-Elect Donald Trump has tapped a controversial right-wing figure, known for his anti-Islam and anti-Palestinian views, to serve as his deputy assistant and director of counter-terrorism. Sebastian Gorka, who was born in the UK to Hungarian parents, has strong links to European far-right groups and was a key supporter of Trump’s 2017 ban on refugees from predominantly Muslim countries. He also said there is "no such thing as Palestine" and said Israel should respond to Hamas’s October 7 surprise attack, which began the Gaza war, by "killing every single one of them". He has also said that Islam is "not a religion of peace" and claimed that terrorism is rooted in the teachings of the Quran, dismissing the idea that political and social problems in the Muslim world were a cause. His appointment doesn’t require confirmation by the US Senate and will allow Gorka to influence policy on immigration as well as militant groups, according to The Washington Post. read the complete article
India
Deadly clashes over India mosque survey
At least five people have been killed in clashes between police and protesters over the survey of a mosque in India, where the local Muslim community accuse Hindu nationalists of attempting to take over the land. read the complete article
Arrests after Muslims killed in mosque survey violence in India’s Sambhal
Police have arrested dozens of people, shut down the internet, closed schools, and tightened security in Sambhal district of India’s Uttar Pradesh state after deadly violence erupted over a survey of a Mughal-era mosque. At least three Muslim men – Naeem, Bilal, and Noman – were killed on Sunday as people opposed to the court-ordered survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal clashed with police, according to local media reports. The death toll rose to four after a 19-year-old man succumbed to his injuries. “All schools and colleges have been closed and public gatherings have been prohibited” in Sambhal, said a senior police officer, Aunjaneya Kumar Singh. Authorities also banned outsiders, social organisations and public representatives from entering the city without official permission until November 30, Singh said, as the government scrambled to contain the unrest. At least 25 people have been arrested and police complaints have been filed against some 2,500 people, including local Member of Parliament Zia-ur-Rehman Barq from the regional Samajwadi Party (SP), according to Sambhal police chief Krishan Kumar Bishnoi. Burq has been accused of inciting the mob, a charge he denied. Earlier, a local court allowed the survey on the back of a petition filed by eight plaintiffs led by pro-Hindutva lawyer Hari Shankar Jain that claimed the 16th-century mosque was built on the site of a Hindu temple, officials said. read the complete article
Mosque-temple spat: Why has India’s Sambhal exploded into violent clashes?
When Nayeem Ahmad, 35, left his sweets shop on Sunday morning to buy cooking oil, his younger brother, Tasleem, did not know that interreligious tensions were boiling over in Sambhal, their hometown in northern India’s Uttar Pradesh state. Within a few minutes, Tasleem received a phone call he will never forget: “My elder brother was shot dead by the police in daylight.” Protests had broken out in Sambhal on Sunday morning after a local court ordered an archaeological survey of a 16th-century mosque, the Shahi Jama Masjid, acting on a petition claiming that a Hindu temple once stood in its place. Amid clashes with the police, at least five people have died from bullet injuries. The families of the victims and other protesters accuse the police of shooting them dead. The police, in turn, say “miscreants opened fire” and they “are investigating the source of the gunfire”. So, what triggered the protests in Uttar Pradesh, India’s biggest state; how unique is the claim of a mosque being built over a temple, and why do some senior lawyers blame the country’s top court for all of this? Over the past three years, Hindu nationalist groups and activists have flooded the Indian judiciary with petitions across several states, alleging that Muslim religious sites are built on razed Hindu temples. On November 19, a local court in Sambhal heard one such petition, which claimed that a Harihar Temple was converted into a mosque in 1529, pleading that the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) ought “to manage and to have complete control” over the site. read the complete article
International
As an Indian Muslim, I couldn’t bring myself to celebrate Diwali this year — here’s why
Diwali was always a cultural, not a religious, festival for my family. To be honest, I celebrated it more enthusiastically than I did Eid. I have fond memories of making rangoli outside our house, and once even at my landlord’s house in Gurugram. I’m not saying I was good at making rangoli, but I enjoyed it all the same. Celebrating Diwali is not an uncommon practice among Indian Muslims, though to varying degrees. I was raised with pluralistic values, going to friends’ houses for Holi, Ganesh Puja, and Christmas. In turn, they came to ours for Eid, where we served both vegetarian and non-vegetarian biryani. This year, however, I couldn’t bring myself to celebrate Diwali for two reasons: the surge of Islamophobia worldwide, including among Indians, and the workplace discrimination I experienced last year, which still deeply affects me. The treatment of Indian Muslims that I read about in the news and online forums has fractured my pluralistic identity. A festival in a culture to which I once belonged now feels like the rituals of a religion that tells me I’m not one of them. This shift left me questioning: if I am not one of you and you are not mine, then why should I celebrate with you? This time, celebrating Diwali felt like a test of my “Indianness”, paradoxically widening the distance — after all, those who truly belong don’t need to prove it. Moreover, if I were one of them, wouldn’t there be reciprocity? This one-sided expectation felt like a test of my allegiance. My experience has not been dissimilar. A couple of years ago, I was invited for lunch to an Indian friend’s house while her mother was visiting Melbourne. During a conversation about life back in India, her mother shared that she had prayed for Narendra Modi to win the national elections, and even cried with joy when he did. Then she added, “Ab woh sikhayega in logo ko” — which, loosely translated from Hindi, means, “Now he will teach these people.” She never explicitly mentioned Muslims, but it was clear who she meant. I didn’t mention that I was Muslim, but she may have guessed it from my name. I also didn’t ask about the lesson that she wanted us Indian Muslims to learn, and for what reason? It’s been my experience that people who want to say something negative about Muslims often use implicit references like “they”, “them” or “these people”, rather than explicitly mention “Muslims” or “Islam”. Is this how people are othered? read the complete article