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SearchToday in Islamophobia: Major retail brands investigate Chinese suppliers after evidence of forced labor factories in Xinjiang comes to light, while Indian Muslims fear Assam’s ‘stateless’ status may be replicated country-wide. Writing for NYT, Charles Blow calls Trump “a raging racist” for his comments about progressive Congresswomen. Our recommended watch of the day is an interactive video on families torn apart by China’s cultural genocide campaign against Uighurs. This, and more, below:
China
The Missing: the families torn apart by China's campaign of cultural genocide | Recommended Watch
Lufty is an Australian citizen but he and his mother, Nadila, have been trapped in China's Xinjiang region and banned from leaving ever since he was born. Lufty's father, Sadam, lives in Australia. He has never met his son and he hasn't seen his wife for two years. He's desperate for the Chinese government to let them leave Xinjiang and join him. Sadam and his family are Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority who have been rounded up, detained and forcibly indoctrinated by the Chinese government. It appears to be the largest imprisonment of people on the basis of religion since the Holocaust. read the complete article
China is brainwashing Uighur children. How much longer will the world look away?
New evidence is emerging that the Chinese campaign to exterminate the culture and traditions of Turkic Muslim people, chiefly Uighurs, in the Xinjiang region also includes a generation of children and young people. As their parents are hauled off to concentration camps — euphemistically called “vocational education” by the Chinese authorities — the children are being herded into special boarding schools and orphanages. read the complete article
Cotton On and Target investigate suppliers after forced labour of Uyghurs exposed in China's Xinjiang
She said that in May she was sent from the camp to work against her will in a factory and that she wanted Gulnur to take the dangerous step of telling the world her story. "She wrote this down and showed it to me and I saw it," Gulnur told Four Corners. Gulnur quickly took screenshots of the notes that described what was happening to her sister: "660 people are brought in shackled and handcuffed and it is big," she said. "They have no choice, they will end up in jail, if they say something. read the complete article
China’s Retort Over Its Mass Detentions: Praise From Russia and Saudi Arabia
China fumed this week after 22 mostly Western countries rebuked its mass detention of Muslims in the restive Xinjiang region. On Friday the Chinese delivered their answer: praise from even more countries saying China has made Xinjiang safe and happy. Ambassadors of 37 states from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America jointly signed a letter to the president of the United Nations Human Rights Council praising China’s “contribution to the international human rights cause.” read the complete article
'I don't know if he's alive or not': Windsor Uighur woman fears brother is in a Chinese detention camp
It's been almost two years since Bilkis Muhammad last spoke with her brother. It's a stark contrast to the weekly phone calls she would have with him since moving to Canada in 2005. Last year, she heard through a family friend that her brother was taken to a Chinese detention camp in May 2018. "I don't know if he's alive or not," said Muhammad, wiping tears from her eyes. "He's the only family member I have left back home." She doesn't know any details of his whereabouts, including which camp he's in or when, if ever, he'll be released. read the complete article
Undercover: Inside the Chinese Digital Gulag, ITV — chilling insight
When a ruling ideology concludes that social harmony can only be achieved by making every individual a simulacrum of every other, deviation is intolerable. For Undercover: Inside the Chinese Digital Gulag (Monday, ITV, 10.45pm), a Han Chinese film-maker codenamed “Li” travelled to the region under the guise of a businessman to film the Uyghur’s plight. Despite propaganda films of happy classrooms, reports of beatings and mental torture in the camps abound from those few eventually released. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Two women thrown off flight for complaining about ‘terrorist’ Muslim passengers
Two women were thrown off a Thomas Cook flight from Turkey to Gatwick after they allegedly said three Muslim men in white prayer shawls were “terrorists” and a “threat” to the safety of the plane, other passengers have claimed. Videos of the incident, which took place after 1am on Friday, show one of the women, who are believed to be British, removing her bag from the overhead luggage rack before being escorted off the plane by police. read the complete article
Video | What is the relationship between government counter-extremism policies and the Islamophobic far-right?
Islamophobia is not just about individual prejudices, it's also structural. Islamophobia has effectively been institutionalized by numerous governments. Some in the government claim Prevent can and does counter the far-right, including Islamophobia. However, a new report by Spinwatch draws the opposite conclusion. When you study the interactions between official counter-extremism policies and the Islamophobic far-right, it becomes clear that far from being the solution to Islamophobic violence, policies like Prevent are actually a big part of the problem. read the complete article
Tory Islamophobia is rampant and the party is in denial
A recent poll of party members conducted for the group Hope Not Hate found a remarkable degree of Islamophobia, with 67 percent stating that “there are areas in Britain that operate under Sharia law”, and 45 percent agreeing that “there are areas in Britain in which non-Muslims are not able to enter”. In addition, 39 percent said they believed that “Islamist terrorists reflect a widespread hostility to Britain among the Muslim community”. read the complete article
International
Explainer: what Western civilisation owes to Islamic cultures
This debt to Islamic civilisation contradicts the claim put forward by political scientist Samuel Huntington in his book The Clash of Civilizations some 25 years ago, that Islam and the West have always been diametrically opposed. In 2004, historian Richard Bulliet proposed an alternative perspective. He argued civilisation is a continuing conversation and exchange, rather than a uniquely Western phenomenon. read the complete article
United States
Op-ed | Trump’s Tweets Prove That He Is a Raging Racist
Those progressive congresswomen are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts. First, the facts: The country Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley “originally came from” is this one. They were born in America. Omar was a refugee from Somalia. But, this is the most important fact: They aren’t white, and they are women. They are “other” in the framing of the white nationalists. They are descendants of Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. read the complete article
Who is Behind Islamophobia and Sharia Fear Mongering?
Anti sharia movement is part of a larger Islamophobia network made up of a number of conservative ‘non profit’ foundations, think tanks, grassroots organizations, religious leaders, and conservative media and social media outlets and politicians. As reported by Prof. John Esposito of Georgetown University, this network is heavily funded: "As documented by organizations such as the Center for American Progress and islamophobianetwork.com, this fear was deliberately stoked between 2001 and 2012 by eight donors who contributed more than $57 million to promote fear of Islam, Muslims, and Sharia, claiming that they were working to overthrow the US Constitution and legal system and install a radical Islamic caliphate that will punish and subordinate all non-Muslims." read the complete article
India
Branded as 'infiltrators', Muslims in India's Assam fear for future
The push to render stateless people described as "infiltrators" by Modi's right-hand man has been limited to the north-eastern state of Assam, but his Hindu nationalist party wants to replicate it nationwide, alarming Muslims, who critics say are the real focus. "I have never expected that I would have to prove my citizenship. I am an Indian citizen, we are born here in Assam and living here for generations," Ali, an illiterate farmer, told AFP. read the complete article
Exclusive: India's ruling party to revive plan for Hindu settlements in Kashmir
India’s ruling party will revive a plan to build secured camps to resettle scores of Hindus in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley, a senior leader said, a proposal that would almost certainly heighten tensions in the restive region. Nearly 7 million people live in the Kashmir Valley, 97% of them Muslim, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Indian troops and armed police deployed to quell an uprising against New Delhi’s rule. read the complete article
Germany
Women With Headscarves Need Not Apply in Germany
Syrian asylum-seekers are finding it difficult to integrate into the economy in part because their potential employers and colleagues feel they haven’t integrated into German culture. Women’s headscarves have become the clearest symbol of these tensions—one that’s increasingly legible in the country’s economic data. In the run-up to federal elections in 2017, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, the country’s largest center-right party, indicated its opposition to full-face Islamic veils. read the complete article
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Op-ed | For Serbia the Srebrenica genocide "misunderstanding" paid off
For years the commemoration has been attended by foreign dignitaries from all over the world, and we keep on hearing the same rhetoric: that Srebrenica was a grave crime and that the victims must never be forgotten and that Srebrenica must never happen to anyone anywhere. However, with Darfur, Syria, Myanmar, the Central African Republic, Uyghurs and many other cases, it is evident that Srebrenicas are being repeated again and again throughout the world. read the complete article