Search
SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the US, a Republican congressional candidate endorsed by Donald Trump has said Muslim Americans should not be allowed in Congress because their belief system is “anti-American”, meanwhile in Myanmar, Muslim communities, with roots spanning more than a millennium in the country, are facing scapegoating, religious suppression, according to reporting by Al Jazeera, and in the UK, according to figures obtained by The Guardian, a record amount of security funding has been issued to mosques via a government scheme to protect places of worship from hate crimes. Our recommended read of the day is by Ahmad Ibsais for Al Jazeera on how a leaked recording of the University of Michigan president reveals just how institutionalized the disregard for the wellbeing of Arab and Muslim students has become. This and more below:
United States
For US universities, Arab and Muslim lives do not matter | Recommended Read
On October 7, the Tahrir Coalition, a union of pro-Palestinian organisations at the University of Michigan, posted on social media what it said was a recording of the university’s president, Santa Ono. In the audio file, a man’s voice can be heard talking about pressure from “powerful groups” and the threat of withholding federal funding if the university administration does not focus almost exclusively on combating anti-Semitism. He states: “The government could call me tomorrow and say, in a very unbalanced way, the university is not doing enough to combat anti-Semitism. And I could say it’s not doing enough to combat Islamophobia, and that’s not what they want to hear.” The problem is that the university is not committed to the safety and support of Muslim and Arab students. Of course, we did not need the leaked recording to know that, but it does provide the general public with an explanation of the university’s utter failure to support marginalised students. For Palestinian and Lebanese students, the pain is acute. We have watched our homelands destroyed, our people slaughtered, tortured and starved. Yet, as we, along with many allies, have tried to process this trauma and advocate for human rights, we have been vilified and silenced on campus. Our existence has been reduced to a problem, our grief weaponised, our calls for justice criminalised. The same cannot be said about students who have actively advocated for Israel’s “right to self-defence” – a right that Israel does not have when it comes to resistance from a population it is occupying. The effect of this “unbalanced” approach is that today Muslim and Arab students face increased harassment and discrimination, and their attackers are only emboldened because they know there will be no consequences for what they do. read the complete article
Republican Says 'Devout' Muslims Shouldn't Be in US Congress
A Republican congressional candidate endorsed by Donald Trump has said "devout" Muslim Americans should not be allowed in Congress because their belief system is "anti-American." Jerrod Sessler, a Navy veteran and former NASCAR driver, is running against incumbent Republican Congressman Dan Newhouse in Washington's 4th District, which Newhouse has represented since 2015. In an interview with the Yakima Herald-Republic, Sessler said: "There is no way that a devout Muslim should be in Congress, because they can't take the oath of office. Their fundamental belief system is anti-American." The congressional candidate also cited passages in the Quran that call for nonbelievers to be killed. Many Muslims say the passages are often misinterpreted. Newsweek has contacted Jerrod Sessler for comment via email. Sessler also said that a majority Muslim Congress would threaten the security of the Constitution. read the complete article
Muslim woman sues police department over posting of mugshot without hijab
In an interview with CNN’s Victor Blackwell, Layla Soliz details why she is suing the Knox County Sheriff’s Office in Tennessee after officers posted her mugshot without her hijab online, which she says violated her religious rights. read the complete article
Trump's outdated 'Barack Hussein Obama' jab shouldn't be offensive, but too many Americans allow it to be
Throwing around Barack Obama’s middle name as a dog whistle is so 2008. Bigotry in America, however, never goes out of style, and so retro xenophobic slights make comebacks. I got flashbacks reading about Donald Trump’s repeated use of the first Black president’s full name when he spoke at the Economic Club of Chicago Tuesday. Trump’s “Barack Hussein Obama” diss hit less hard than the missive delivered by conservative radio talk show host Bill Cunningham 15 years ago when he introduced Obama’s Republican opponent, John McCain, at a rally in Cincinnati. But as someone whose last name is Hussain, it still stung. I am far from ashamed of my last name, and it sickens me that its utterance in reference to Obama has been wielded as a pejorative since he first ran for president. When Cunningham went on his “Hussein” offensive, I felt compelled to speak out because most of the pushback from liberal circles conceded the name as a slur. “Hussein,” Cunningham hissed, like he was beckoning Satan when shouting the Arabic word for “good,” “handsome” or “beautiful,” I wrote at the time, recalling how my “Hussain” surname had drawn wide-eyed stares during the Gulf War before petering back into a more muted signpost of my so-called “otherness.” “Obama’s middle name — my last name — is ‘Hussein.’ So?” the headline to my March 5, 2008, column declared. There were many Obama supporters who felt the same, gleefully adopting “Hussein” on their Facebook profile pages. But most Americans didn’t see it that way. They rendered as liabilities the “Hussein” in Obama’s name and the other traits that made him different than the white men who previously vied for the job in the Oval Office. read the complete article
The 9/11 Defendants Were Captured Two Decades Ago. Why Hasn’t a Trial Started?
The five men who are accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were captured two decades ago, but a trial is still unlikely to start before 2026. Instead, the death penalty case has been delayed repeatedly. An entire generation of Americans has no memory of the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, or the creation of the Pentagon prison and court at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Critical witnesses have died, and others have fading memories. Prosecutors say the defense lawyers are trying to derail the trial or avert the death penalty by exploring every possible avenue in the case. Defense lawyers have accused prosecutors of using national security concerns to prevent turning over evidence. Both are true. But more fundamental decisions and problems stand in the way of a trial. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Ex-Tory chair who called party Islamophobic backs Badenoch and then changes her mind
A former Tory peer who called out her own party for being Islamophobic has in a shock move given her backing to Kemi Badenoch, saying she “hopes and prays” that the candidate will bring sanity to the Conservatives. But then pulled a spectacular U-turn and decided to boycott the contest. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Sayeeda Warsi, who has recently published her book Muslims Don’t Matter, said she might regret voting for Ms Badenoch but sees her as the least bad option. The comment seems to be more of an indictment of Ms Badenoch’s rival in the final two, Robert Jenrick, who has been campaigning on an openly right-wing ticket to withdraw Britain from the European Convention on Human Rights and has taken a strongly pro-Israel, anti-Hamas stance on the war in Gaza. Baroness Warsi has previously been enraged by Mr Jenrick wearing a shirt bearing the words “Hamas are terrorists”. Baroness Warsi recently quit the parliamentary party when an investigation was launched into her language, but still gets a vote as an ordinary party member. But within 24-hours, Baroness Warsi announced she was changing her mind after being lobbied by Tory members on the left of the party. This despite leading One Nation former minister Damian Green backing Ms Badenoch. read the complete article
UK mosques allotted record security funding from hate crime scheme
A record amount of security funding has been issued to mosques in the UK via a government scheme to protect places of worship from hate crime. According to figures obtained by the Guardian via freedom of information requests, almost £3m was issued to mosques and associated sites under the places of worship security scheme from April 2022 to April 2023, a significant increase from the just over £73,000 issued between 2016 and 2017. There has also been a significant increase in the number of eligible security applications made to the Home Office from Muslim community sites, from 36 in 2016 to 304 from April 2023 to April 2024. These figures do not reflect the number of applications approved by the Home Office. The UK’s largest Muslim body, the Muslim Council of Britain, welcomed the increase in the amount of funding issued but said the scheme was “failing to capture the true scale of the challenge”, particularly due to the record rise in incidents of Islamophobia in the UK after the 7 October attacks on Israel. read the complete article
International
Opinion: Ethnic cleansing is happening in Palestine — as it happened in Canada
The longstanding crisis in Palestine and Israel gained worldwide attention on October 7, and has since been protested globally. While we, as Canadians, may feel a geographic disconnect from Palestine, I see the Israeli state’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to be similar to that of Indigenous peoples in Canada’s history. Due to the sheer multitude of crimes Israel has committed, I cannot pay due diligence in commenting on Israel’s actions, but I can try to list a few. Israeli officials have long used animalistic language to describe Palestinians. This includes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referring to Palestinians as “wild beasts” in 2016. I see Netanyahu’s statement paralleling how European colonizers called Indigenous peoples “savages” throughout history and used that belief to justify their cruel treatment of them. At the start of colonization, Europeans used the Doctrine of Discovery as a legal tool to justify seizing Indigenous land on the suggested basis that Christian European ways were superior to Indigenous lifestyles. On the other hand, Israeli officials have also used religious texts to justify their attacks on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In a press conference in Tel Aviv on October 28, 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared Palestinians to Amalek: a nation of enemies against Israelites in the Torah. read the complete article
Myanmar
Muslims join Buddhist, Christian fighters to topple Myanmar’s military
Scattered across the lush, rolling hills of southern Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region, rebel fighters stationed at checkpoints inspect cars and trucks traveling towards a nearby town still under the control of the Myanmar military – their adversary. While this is a familiar sight in the region, where the struggle against the military waged by disparate armed groups has intensified since the 2021 coup, what sets these rebels apart is their faith. These are members of the little-known “Muslim Company”, who have joined the struggle for democracy in Myanmar as part of a Christian- and Buddhist-dominated armed group – the Karen National Union (KNU). Officially named 3rd Company of Brigade 4 in the KNU, the 130 soldiers of the Muslim Company are just a fraction of the tens of thousands fighting to overthrow the country’s military rulers.“As long as the military remains in place, Muslims, and everybody else, will be oppressed,” he said. Successive military-led governments in Myanmar, together with hardline nationalist monks, have portrayed Muslims as a grave threat to Burmese Buddhist culture. That has resulted in Muslim communities, with roots spanning more than a millennium in Myanmar, facing scapegoating, religious suppression and denial of citizenship. “It’s dangerous to generalize, but Muslims in Myanmar are highly vulnerable and have been exposed to significant violence,” Myanmar scholar Ashley South said. read the complete article