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SearchToday in Islamophobia: Trump administrations adds six more countries to Muslim Ban, as the government of Tanzania says it has not been informed about its inclusion in the Executive Order. Muslims caucus in mosques in Iowa, as Bernie Sanders is endorsed by the state’s sole Muslim lawmaker. Our recommended read today is on the countries included in the expanded Muslim Ban, and the administration’s move to restrict entry of nationals while selling arms to those very countries. This, and more, below:
United States
Trump extends travel ban to 6 countries — but is OK with selling arms to those same places | Recommended Read
But if the administration is correct about the risks posed from the countries on the newly expanded list, why does it continue to allow the U.S. government and companies to sell weapons to more than half of them? During the Trump administration alone, the U.S. has sold Libya, Yemen, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria and Tanzania (the last five of which are new additions to the travel ban) everything from handguns and automatic weapons to light attack aircraft. Even more damning, since 2002 the U.S. has sold roughly $409 million worth of these weapons to 10 of these 13 nations despite their troubled political systems, poor human rights records, high levels of corruption and their participation in a range of conflicts. read the complete article
US election 2020: Some Muslims in Iowa will caucus in their own mosques
But those who attended Friday prayers at the Muslim Community Organization were told that the mosque's green and yellow building, along with four other Muslim houses of worship in the area, will host caucus-goers for the first time in the history of the state. read the complete article
Tanzania Says Has Not Been Officially Notified About U.S. Travel Ban
Of the six new countries slapped with travel restrictions, four are African nations and three have Muslim-majority populations. "We don't have official communication from the U.S. government. We haven't received a formal diplomatic communication, which is the official way of communicating between governments," Emmanuel Buhohela, spokesman for the ministry of foreign affairs, told Reuters. read the complete article
U.S. Tweets Support for Iranian Chess Official, but Ban Wouldn’t Let Her In
The Iranian chess official said she began seeing the messages of support from American government officials soon after she said she was afraid of returning to her country. An image of the official, Shohreh Bayat, appearing not to wear a hijab at a world chess tournament in China had circulated online and in Iranian media and she quickly went public with her fears that she would be arrested if she returned to Iran. It is against Iranian law for a woman to appear in public without a head scarf. read the complete article
Bernie Sanders Endorsed By Muslim Group, Iowa's Sole Muslim State Lawmaker
The national board of the Muslim Caucus of America as well Iowa state Rep. Ako Abdul-Samad announced their endorsements of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for the 2020 presidential election. “What you have here is an individual who stands up for what is just and what is right. Bernie Sanders has shown that he is willing to stand up for everyone and not just because of political expediency or financial expediency, but because it is the right thing to do,” said Abdul-Samad, who is the only Muslim representative in the Iowa House. read the complete article
Trump's expanded travel ban sows fear in communities across US
As of February 21, citizens of Eritrea, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan and Nigeria will no longer be eligible for immigrant visas to the US, the White House announced on Friday afternoon. Citizens from Sudan and Tanzania will also not be eligible to enter a lottery programme to apply for immigrant visas. "It's a lot of fear. It's a lot of trepidation because people just don't know what this means practically for them. There's a lot of disbelief that this administration would go as far as separating families." read the complete article
India
Delhi shooter's classmate: 'He wanted to do things for Hindus'
The incident, captured in dramatic pictures and videos on Thursday, was the first time a civilian had opened fire on protesters in the capital, raising fears that more Indians would take the law into their own hands as sometimes deadly protests rock the country. In social media posts and conversations with some classmates, he spoke of restoring Hindu pride and expressed admiration for a right-wing activist whom police have accused of fomenting violence. read the complete article
'Only Hindus will prevail': Another firing at India protest site
Two days after a teenager shot a protester in the Indian capital, another firing has been reported at an all-women sit-in site in the city against a controversial new citizenship law. Police said no protester was wounded after a man fired a gun at New Delhi's Shaheen Bagh, the epicentre of nationwide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which critics say violates India's secular constitution and is anti-Muslim. read the complete article
I’ll destroy your family’: India’s activists tell of false arrest and torture in custody
But in late December, as he was brought into the police station in Lucknow, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, in the middle of the night, he felt something had shifted. “Police officers abused me badly while I was in their custody and they threatened me in many ways,” he said. “One [senior officer] said to me at the police station: ‘I will f*ck your mother. I am going to throw all your family members in jail where they will rot for life. I will destroy your family’.” read the complete article
Opinion | The hate that inspired Gandhi’s assassin is rising again
Seventy-two years ago, when the Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse, a follower of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological fountainhead of today’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), pulled the trigger, he blamed it on Gandhi’s alleged emasculation of Hindus and generosity toward Muslims. Today, the same rhetoric is in action. A few days ago, Anurag Thakur, a junior minister of finance in the cabinet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was campaigning for the forthcoming Delhi elections chanting “desh ke gaddaron ko goli maaro saalon ko” (“shoot all the traitors of the country”). Also recently, Shah, the second-in-command to Modi, told a crowd during a campaign event to “press the election button with such anger that Shaheen Bagh feels the current,” a reference to the Delhi neighborhood where Muslim women have been sitting in protest. read the complete article
The Garden of Freedom
I surveyed the people who had gathered there. There were women in hijab, students with guitars, feisty grandmothers and neighborhood poets. A slogan inscribed on the tarmac read “Next, is Now.” The men and neighbourhood boys were making tea and arranging food, and together with some women, frisking visitors for security at the barricades set up at the entrance to the site. Groups of women and children kitted out in sweaters, jackets, mufflers, balaclavas and woolen caps carried handmade signs and many of them sat under quilts and blankets to shield themselves from the cold. Energetic chants rang out into the night—“Inqilab Zindabad” (long live the revolution) and “Hum Kya Chahte? Azadi!” (what do we want? Freedom!), the latter borrowed, it seems, on a perpetual loan by Indian patriots, from the voices of insurgent crowds of Kashmir. A makeshift platform, festooned with flags, signs with slogans, and a portrait of BR Ambedkar, became a stage for an autonomous, spontaneous, totally self-organised, leaderless rehearsal of a new vision for citizenship. read the complete article
International
When Racism Goes Viral: The Coronavirus And Modern Muslim Orientalism
Lumping an entire people together for collective punishment, reveling in their suffering, and sniggering at their food choices isn’t an exercise in science, Sunnah, or compassion. It’s good, old-fashioned orientalism. Online, in Muslim as well as non-Muslim spaces, social media feeds are sniggering “Eww, you eat gross things! Of course you’ll get gross diseases!” In the midst of this human tragedy, orientalist tropes about the Chinese are being sloppily repackaged as health concerns over the coronavirus, and served with a side of bat soup. read the complete article
Canada
Legault personally deleted anti-Muslim hate messages on his Facebook page
Premier François Legault says he personally deleted many of the anti-Muslim hate messages posted by internet trolls on his Facebook page following this week’s memorial to the victims of the attack on the Quebec City mosque three years ago. “Wednesday night I started doing it myself,” Legault told reporters Friday. “I didn’t like what I saw, honestly. And then I asked people, because I have to sleep, to continue the work. (I said) We have to manage and erase those messages as soon as possible.” read the complete article