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SearchToday in Islamophobia: In the UK, the new UKIP leader is condemned for Islamophobia. An op-ed by Maha Hilal writes “Leave Muslims Out of This. Let’s Discuss White Violence on Its Own Terms.” Our recommended read of the day is by Markha Valenta who explains how the Netherlands’ new ‘burqa ban’ bans nonexistent burqas and only fuels Islamophobia. This, and more, below:
Netherlands
Banning a burqa that doesn't exist – the cowardice of Dutch politics and the courage of those who resist | Recommended Read
It took the Dutch government fourteen years to implement the ‘Burqa Ban.’ First passed in 2005 by a majority in the Lower House, it then failed to pass constitutional muster. Multiple revisions and multiple governing coalitions later, it finally was confirmed by both houses of parliament. Now it has come into force. The Dutch ban applies to some public spaces but not others: government buildings, schools, hospitals and public transportation. Many Dutch, however, have the mistaken impression that the law applies to all public space. This repression is part of a European-wide surge in Islamophobic symbolic politics with brutally real effects. read the complete article
United States
Op-ed | Leave Muslims Out of This. Let’s Discuss White Violence on Its Own Terms.
Over and over again, despite the fact that this violence was rooted in white supremacy, pundits and news articles have repeatedly invoked violence committed by Muslims when discussing these attacks. These invocations divert attention from white supremacy as its own unique form of violence, spreading the damaging idea that white supremacist violence can only be understood in comparison to violence committed by Muslims. read the complete article
23 bizarre conspiracy theories Trump has elevated
Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States: This is Trump’s most-widely trafficked conspiracy and is arguably the one that launched his political career. Obama eventually produced his long-form birth certificate, though not even that stopped Trump from again broaching the topic in 2016. He was eventually convinced to drop it. Muslims are attempting to install sharia law in the United States: “Anyone who believes sharia law supplants American law will not be given an immigrant visa,” Trump said in August 2016. read the complete article
It’s Not Just Fox Pumping Out the Racist “Replacement” Conspiracy. Here Are 15 Republicans Fanning the Flames.
As the Paris-based writer Thomas Chatterton Williams explained to the New York Times, the theory found a voice in French writer Renaud Camus, who took “a familiar concept and rebrand[ed] it in a catchy way” in his 2012 book Le Grand Remplacement. Camus argued that it was not racist to be concerned about replacement; it was simply a concern of preservation. The theory allows self-described identitarians to “cynically proclaim their ‘whiteness’ as just another form of diversity that is in danger of erasure,” Chatterton Williams said. Such replacement begins, of course, with an invasion. read the complete article
Op-ed | Hate Crimes Are Slipping Through the Cracks
August 12 is a date forever ingrained in both of our memories. It’s when our children, Khalid Jabara and Heather Heyer, were murdered in hate crimes — one year apart from each other: Khalid in 2016, on the doorsteps of his family home in Tulsa, Okla.; and Heather in 2017, on a crowded street in Charlottesville, Va. The fates of our children were linked in an additional way. While their murders were prosecuted as hate crimes in court — neither was reported as a hate crime in official government statistics. In the eyes of the government, they were not even data points. read the complete article
China
China’s sickening acts on female prisoners at ‘re-education’ camps
China is forcibly sterilising women held in its vast network of “re-education” camps which house political and religious prisoners, survivors have claimed. One woman, who was held for more than a year, has told French television that she was repeatedly injected with a substance by doctors in a prison in the far-west region of Xinjiang. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Corner of world's largest refugee camp recreated in British mall
The interactive installation by the British Red Cross allows shoppers to see what life is like for the refugees, who fled Myanmar in their hundreds of thousands during a brutal military crackdown in 2017. Nearly two years after the crackdown, the Red Cross said it wanted to ensure the public did not forget the Rohingya and raise awareness of their plight as the monsoon rains lash their flimsy shelters. “We want people to emerge from the installation with a sense of understanding that this humanitarian crisis on an epic scale is still continuing, two years on,” spokesman Paul Amadi told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. read the complete article
New Ukip leader condemned for 'virulent Islamophobia'
The newly-elected leader of Ukip has been condemned for “virulent Islamophobia” after footage emerged of him arguing it should be illegal to publicly distribute the Qur’an in the UK and that some British towns are no-go areas for non-Muslims. Speaking to Ukip members at hustings, Richard Braine also claimed that British Islam has particular problems with bigamy and welfare abuse, and referred to the jailed far-right anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson as a “political prisoner”. read the complete article
UKIP’s New Leader Richard Braine Said He Often Confuses Sadiq Khan With A London Bomber
Richard Braine, who replaced Gerard Batten as the leader of the anti-immigration party at the weekend, made the remark just seven weeks ago. On June 27, Braine misspelled the London mayor’s name on Twitter as “Siddique Khan”. After being corrected by another Twitter user, Braine replied: “Apologies, I often confuse him with the leader of the 7/7 bombers.” Braine has previously defended the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, saying in a interview in May: “Tommy Robinson is not a racist or an extremist, that’s the media smearing him because he spoke about grooming gangs.” read the complete article
International
This filmmaker wanted to help people get over their Islamophobia. So he offered them a free trip to Egypt
When filmmaker Tarek Mounib became worried about the demonization of Muslims in the U.S., he says he found reassurance at an unlikely source: a pro-Trump rally in Kentucky. "When … you follow a Trump rally on television it's quite scary, but when you're actually there and you start speaking to people face-to-face, human-to-human, you have a totally different experience of it," said Mounib, a Canadian-Egyptian based in Switzerland. Mounib went to a 2017 rally to meet people who feared Muslims, and to offer them a chance to take part in a film where they explored that prejudice. He wanted to approach them with "something kind," so he offered them a free trip to Egypt. read the complete article
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka's Muslims 'demonised' after Easter bombings
Minority Muslims live among the majority Sinahalese community in this area. For decades, Mr Iliyas, who is a Muslim, spent his days serving people from all religious communities. But that has changed since Sri Lanka's Easter Sunday bombings in April. "Since the Easter Sunday bombings, almost 90% of my Sinhalese customers have stopped buying from my shop. My business has gone down significantly and I have lost hundreds of thousands of rupees," Mr Iliyas said. "Though some customers have started coming back in recent weeks it is not enough. If this trend continues then I am in big trouble," Mr Iliyas said. read the complete article