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SearchToday in Islamophobia: New coronavirus restrictions might halt India’s anti-Muslim legislation protests. In Canada, a man is filmed screaming Islamophobic abuse at a woman, as an op-ed by Malia Bouattia argues pushing Trevor Phillips out of the Labour party won’t solve the deep seated Islamophobia in the country . Our recommended read today is on Muslim despair after the Delhi pogroms, as evidence emerges of the police’s complicity in the crimes. This, and more, below:
India
Delhi's Muslims despair of justice after police implicated in riots | Recommended Read
As the mob attacks came once, then twice and then a third time in this north-east Delhi neighbourhood, desperate stallholders repeatedly ran to Gokalpuri and Dayalpur police stations crying out for help. But each time they found the gates locked from the inside. For three days, no help came. “How could they set fire to our market in such a horrific way, while it is so close to two police stations, and not be stopped?” said a shopkeeper, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. “But if I make any complaint against the police and if they know my identity, I will face very serious trouble.” Since the riots broke out in Delhi at the end of February, the worst religious conflict to engulf the capital in decades, questions have persisted about the role that the Delhi police played in enabling the violence, which was predominately Hindu mobs attacking Muslims. Of the 51 people who died, at least three-quarters were Muslim, and many Muslims are still missing. “During the recent riots in Delhi the role of the police has been very reprehensible,” said SR Darapuri, a retired senior police officer from Uttar Pradesh. “They not only openly sided with the Hindu mobs attacking Muslims but also used brutal force against them. They purposely failed to respond to the SOS calls from the Muslims trapped in many violence-hit areas. Evidently, the role of the police has been communal, unethical and unprofessional.” Delhi’s police are under the direct control of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party government, specifically the home minister and party president, Amit Shah, who is one of the most fervent advocates of the BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda, which aims to establish India as a Hindu, rather than secular, nation. As a result, the political agenda of the BJP government of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, which is widely seen as vehemently anti-Muslim, appears to have become firmly entrenched in the mindset of the Delhi police, which is already an overwhelmingly Hindu force. In the weeks that have followed the riots, the alleged bias of the police has extended to accusations of a cover-up to protect the Hindu rioters and a widespread refusal to file or investigate complaints made by Muslim victims. read the complete article
In Indian capital, riots deepen a Hindu-Muslim divide
For years, Hindus and Muslims lived and worked peacefully together in Yamuna Vihar, a densely populated Delhi district. But the riots that raged through the district last month appear to have cleaved lasting divisions in the community, reflecting a nationwide trend as tensions over the Hindu nationalist agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modi boil over. Many Hindus in Yamuna Vihar, a sprawl of residential blocks and shops dotted with mosques and Hindu temples, and in other riot-hit districts of northeast Delhi, say they are boycotting merchants and refusing to hire workers from the Muslim community. Muslims say they are scrambling to find jobs at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has heightened pressure on India's economy. "I have decided to never work with Muslims," said Yash Dhingra, who has a shop selling paint and bathroom fittings in Yamuna Vihar. "I have identified new workers, they are Hindus," he said, standing in a narrow lane that was the scene of violent clashes in the riots that erupted on Feb 23. The trigger for the riots, the worst sectarian violence in the Indian capital in decades, was a citizenship law introduced last year that critics say marginalises India's Muslim minority. Police records show at least 53 people, mostly Muslims, were killed and more than 200 were injured. read the complete article
Shaheen Bagh: New coronavirus restrictions may halt India citizenship protests
The state government in India's capital Delhi has halted large gatherings as part of a measure to halt the spread of the coronavirus in the city. The move is expected to affect a long-running protest against a controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Thousands of protesters, mostly Muslim women, have been demonstrating for months against the law in the Shaheen Bagh neighbourhood. India has 114 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and two related deaths. Shaheen Bagh has captured the imagination of many Indians and was most recently the target of a vitriolic state election campaign by the country's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). read the complete article
International
'Somewhere Like Home': Uighur Kids Find A Haven At Boarding School In Turkey
Nurzat hasn't talked to his family in three years, ever since Chinese police arrested his father in western China's Xinjiang region. As Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group, Nurzat's family has faced abuse, imprisonment and discrimination in China for years. More than 1 million Uighurs have been forced into so-called reeducation camps since 2017. Human rights groups say they're targeted for their religion. At these camps, Uighurs are pressured to renounce Islam and pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party. In the past six years, thousands have sought refuge and settled in Turkey, according to Uighur leaders there. Among them are hundreds of children — estimates vary between 350 and 700 — whose parents have disappeared in China. Most of the children arrived in Turkey with at least one parent but have ended up on their own. The parents were arrested after returning to China to try to get the rest of the family out or to close up businesses. A handful of children, like Nurzat, were sent out of China with family acquaintances. Without their parents, many of the children ended up living with other Uighur families or distant relatives, who struggled to support them. Some of the children, including Nurzat, were moved in late 2017 by Uighur community leaders in Turkey to a sand-colored boarding school called Oku Uygur (Read Uighur) in the sunny seaside town of Selimpasa, west of Istanbul. read the complete article
Far-right terrorists relying on conspiracy theories to justify anti-Muslim hate, research finds
Anti-Muslim extremists often rely on “genocidal notions of population control” and false conspiracy theories to justify their hate, new research has found. Tell MAMA, a UK-based watchdog which tracks racist incidents, also revealed it had received reports of 705 Islamophobic incidents between January 1 and June 30 2019 while police recorded 1,213 similar allegations over the same time period. The monitoring group reported a 692 per cent increase in anti-Muslim attacks in the UK in the week after the Christchurch mosque shootings in which 51 worshippers were murdered by an avowed white supremacist in New Zealand. The terror attacks on the two mosques “had a significant effect in the UK, resulting in a rapid but long-lasting increase in anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia,” Tell MAMA said. Anti-Muslim extremists often rely on “genocidal notions of population control” and false conspiracy theories to justify their hate, new research has found. Tell MAMA, a UK-based watchdog which tracks racist incidents, also revealed it had received reports of 705 Islamophobic incidents between January 1 and June 30 2019 while police recorded 1,213 similar allegations over the same time period. The monitoring group reported a 692 per cent increase in anti-Muslim attacks in the UK in the week after the Christchurch mosque shootings in which 51 worshippers were murdered by an avowed white supremacist in New Zealand. The terror attacks on the two mosques “had a significant effect in the UK, resulting in a rapid but long-lasting increase in anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia,” Tell MAMA said. Brenton Tarrant, the perpetrator, has since been found to have been immersed in ‘eco-fascism’ in common with many other far-right supporters. The highly racialised theory relies on “genocidal notions” of population control and saving the environment. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Pushing Trevor Phillips out of Labour won't fix anything
Trevor Phillips has been suspended from the Labour party over allegations of Islamophobia, after the former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) was investigated by the organisation over racism targeted at the Muslim community. A quick skim through the comments made by Phillips would point to the fact that the accusations made against him are completely justified. Yet, because it's targeted at Muslims - that exceptional group the British state doesn't believe is entitled to the same human rights and civil liberties as everyone else – it remains up for discussion. The mainstream debate has only loosely touched on the hate experienced by Muslims. It has also largely been politically empty, especially on the question of effective, sustainable anti-racism. It may be controversial to say at a time of unhelpful binaries which force you to choose between condemning or condoning, but the suspension and potential expulsion of Trevor Phillips is not the answer, and will do little to address the problems we face. Our response should involve work, organising, and mobilising. It requires us to organise, to lead campaigns, lobby, to fight on a policy level as well as out on the streets, and build strong coalitions that bury all forms of hate into inexistence. The political space in which Phillips can build a career based on Islamophobia should be shut down through shifting the balance of power on the question of racism, or the so-called War on Terror, to name just a couple. The ideas in Phillips' head are not the issue, the problem is that we live in a society in which there are no consequences to him publishing them, expressing them in public, and making documentaries about them. read the complete article
Canada
Man filmed screaming Islamophobic abuse at woman on Canadian subway
A horrifying video has emerged of a man yelling Islamophobic abuse at a woman wearing a niqab on a Canadian subway. The footage was captured by a Twitter user who goes by the name Aima Niqabae. She posted it to both Instagram and Twitter. We do not see Aima in the video, but the suggestion is that she's wearing a niqab. The man appears to get more and more irate, mocking her speech and saying it's "f***ing amazing" that she was born in Canada, that she doesn't deserve his respect, and that she's "bizarre" (before going off on a rant about how racism was "invented" in 1924 in Russia). read the complete article