Search
SearchToday in Islamophobia: France’s political left combats Islamophobia as solidarity becomes the new goal. In the United Kingdom, Borris Johnson refuses to tackle the Tory Party’s long history of anti-Muslim racism. Our Recommended read is by Jamelle Bouie on Stephen Miller before he officially joined the Trump Campaign. This and more below:
United States
Recommended Read | Stephen Miller’s Sinister Syllabus
With the emails — supplied by Katie McHugh, a former editor at Breitbart — we now know what Miller was reading and thinking about in the year before he joined the Trump campaign. And there’s no denying the nature of the material. In October 2015, while still an aide to Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Miller sent McHugh a story from VDARE, a white nationalist website named for Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America. VDARE is preoccupied with “white genocide” — the myth that nonwhites are working to destroy white people through immigration and intermarriage — and Miller cited the website in response to McHugh’s concern that the government would grant temporary protected status to Mexican survivors of Hurricane Patricia. McHugh says Miller also directed her to stories from the website American Renaissance, another white nationalist publication, this one focused on eugenics and anti-black racism. Its founder, Jared Taylor, has argued that “When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.” In 2013, he argued for a white ethno-state. “We want a homeland where we are a majority,” he said. In a September 2015 email, Miller encouraged McHugh to show “the parallels” between Pope Francis’s pro-refugee statements and “The Camp of the Saints,” a 1973 novel by the French author Jean Raspail. In the book, an influx of Indian refugees — described as subhuman and led by a feces-eating demagogue — storm France, killing, stealing and rampaging until they’ve completely occupied the country. Other migrants follow and eventually overrun western Europe, turning white Europeans into a subject class. The book is popular with white nationalists and is mentioned frequently on VDARE and the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website. read the complete article
Armed man accused of threatening people at Denver mosque arrested
The encounter was reported to police at around 4:45 p.m., after one of the congregants outside the Masjid Al-Shuhadaa mosque off of 30th and Downing, said a Hispanic man crossed the parking lot of the mosque and leveled what was described as a long gun at four men before uttering anti-Muslim remarks toward them, said Denver Police Department Division Chief Ron Thomas during a news conference Thursday evening. The suspect, who was not identified by name, left the area while continuing to shout anti-Muslim remarks, police said. He did not fire any shots and never made it inside the building. Video from a Denver7 viewer shows the suspect brandishing a long weapon and yelling racial slurs at people in the mosque. We've muted the sound due to its graphic language, but you can see the video in its entirety below. read the complete article
How I became an all-American Muslim girl
It was a watershed moment for American Muslims like me, who had grown up believing that people would judge us for our religion. The sky was blue, water was wet, and other Americans looked down on Islam. These were facts we internalized. It's why for most of my life, I've lived as a white-passing, mixed-raced Muslim: green eyes, blonde hair, fair skin. Despite my father's Middle Eastern and Asian ancestry, I look a lot like my white, Catholic-born mother: the basic girl-next-door. But for me, the day Trump instituted the travel ban and Americans from all walks of life fought back against it was doubly profound: it's the day I stopped hiding. It's the day I re-opened the word document on my computer and started writing the personal story I'd been too afraid to explore for 10 years. It's the day I officially began writing my novel "All-American Muslim Girl" -- about Islamophobia, white privilege, identity and erasure. Because of my appearance, the Islamophobia I've experienced over the years is very different from that of my Muslim cousins, aunts and friends. People don't stare at me at the grocery store or make comments about my appearance or lack of hijab while I'm working out. I don't get told in parking lots to "go back where I came from." I've never had somebody yell "Allahu akbar!" at me in the hallway at school. All of these things have happened to people I love. Unlike them, I almost never feel in danger because of my religion. read the complete article
Muslim student allegedly bullied for fasting
A public school employee in Brooklyn allegedly forced a Muslim child to watch children eat while he fasted during one of the most important religious holidays in the Muslim calendar, according to a civil rights complaint filed on Wednesday. On May 14, while a 9-year-old Muslim student at Public School 264 Bay Ridge Elementary School for the Arts was fasting for Ramadan, an employee at the school allegedly told him that because he was laughing during a lunch break, "you must sit in the cafeteria and watch all the kids eat while you are fasting!" according to the complaint. read the complete article
United Kingdom
General election 2019: Stourbridge resignation over Islamophobia claims
A Conservative association deputy chairman has resigned over what he believes are Islamophobia issues within the party. Politics Live reporter Ellie Price has an exclusive interview with Kyle Pedley from Stourbridge, in the Black Country, with reaction from former Tory deputy vice-chairman Baroness Warsi. read the complete article
Tory official resigns from party after 'seeing Muslim man quizzed over religious practices'
Kyle Pedley resigned as a local party officer and Tory council candidate in Stourbridge after saying he had witnessed a Muslim member face a grilling over his religious practices. He said he had been present during an interview in which the man, who was seeking to be selected as a Tory council candidate, had been asked how many times a day he prayed and how often he went to the mosque. Local Tory officers then discussed between themselves whether "we need an Asian", he said. Mr Pedley said he had complained twice to the Conservative Party about the incident but had received no response. He resigned from the party after deciding that there were a "series of issues, problems and things I've encountered which I can't align with my own personal convictions and my own personal beliefs". read the complete article
Boris Johnson is incapable of dealing with Tory Islamophobia
The problem of Tory Islamophobia goes deep. Horrifying evidence is constantly emerging of the depth and scale of virulence of Tory hatred towards Muslims. To give a very recent example, earlier this week MatesJacob, an anonymous Twitter user who campaigns against racism, produced a devastating dossier showing that 15 sitting Tory councillors (as well as ten former ones) have distributed Islamophobic and racist material on social media. If recent history is anything to go by, the investigation will be a half-hearted process and conducted in the shadows. Once the election is over and the media spotlight goes away, I’d expect the majority of these Tory bigots to be let back into the party. There’s a pattern here. Again and again, Tory MPs get away with racist or Islamophobic comments. Bob Blackman, Tory MP for Harrow East, is one of the worst offenders. He received no punishment after sharing anti-Muslim social media posts by the former leader of the English Defence League, Tommy Robinson. read the complete article
Redcar Tory councillor suspended in Islamophobia probe
Malcolm Griffiths, who represents Hutton on Redcar and Cleveland Council, on Teesside, is alleged to have shared, commented on and liked Islamophobic content on social media. A Conservative Party spokesman said an investigation into the allegations was under way. Mr Griffiths, who is chairman of the South Tees Conservative Association, is said to have posted an article on Facebook in 2017 claiming German Muslims had campaigned to end the Oktoberfest beer festival because it was "un-Islamic". He is then alleged to have liked a comment on the post which said: "They can go back to where they came from. Try going to a Muslim country and ask them to stop Muslim traditions because it offends incoming Christians. How outrageous is sharia behaviour." read the complete article
LBC obtains dossier showing 10 Tory councillors sharing Islamophobic comments
The comments, set out in a dossier obtained by LBC, contain some disturbing far right and racist material. The revelations will fuel an escalating row over Islamophobia, after the Party’s decision not to hold an independent inquiry into the issue. One post shared by a serving councillor back in 2016 said: “Islam: come for the infidel-killing, whore-stoning, religious purity, stay for the terrific falafels” over a picture of blood-soaked Asian men wielding knives. Our findings come in the same week that the Conservatives were forced to suspend several councillors after the Guardian was passed a similar dossier of Islamophobic comments. read the complete article
France
France’s Left Is Finally Fighting Islamophobia
The recent mosque shooting in Bayonne was just the latest violent attack against France’s Muslims. The secularist left has long rejected the idea of “Islamophobia” — but as the far right goes mainstream, Muslims’ calls for solidarity have become impossible to ignore. In recent years, French mosques have been defaced, rammed, and burned down, and their congregations harassed and targeted. Bayonne represented a dangerous new escalation. The response in Paris last Sunday — as 25,000 people took to the streets demanding an end to Islamophobia — offers hope that the anti-Muslim consensus may finally have splintered. Islamophobia is a fixture of “Republicanism,” the supposedly unchanging set of national values that emerged from the 1789 revolution that constitutes the ideology of the French political mainstream. Like hostility to immigration, it is particularly central to French conservatism. On October 8, following the attack in the Paris police headquarters, the president called for a “society of vigilance” against Islamist terror, inviting the public to spot and denounce what he called “the little gestures which indicate distance from the laws and values of the Republic,” whether they occur at work, during religious worship, or at school. read the complete article
China
China runs hundreds more Muslim detention camps than previously thought, rights group claims
Satellite images were analysed to establish the probable locations of more than 460 facilities across Xinjiang province, including prisons, labour camps and what the Chinese government describes as “vocational training centres”. The coordinates of 182 of these centres, which activists described as “concentration camps”, were also published as part of the research by the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement (Etnam), a US-based group advocating for Xinjiang’s independence. An analyst for Etnam said around 40 per cent of the suspected facilities they found had not previously been reported, and that the research supported far greater estimates for the number of Uighur Muslims detained in China than the oft-cited figure of at least one million. Randall Schriver, the top US defence official for Asia, told a briefing in May that the Pentagon estimates the number of Muslims detained in China to be “closer to three million citizens”. read the complete article
Italy
12 detained after arranging to blow up mosque in Italy
12 people have been supposedly arranging an attack on a mosque in the Siena region in Colle Val d'Elsa in Siena, Tuscany, and have been detained in Italy. Police found lots of guns, explosives, and Nazi symbols, after investigations and seeking operations of many houses in Colle Val d'Elsa, neighboring districts, and provinces; as the suspects were preparing to explode a pipeline which went under the mosque. read the complete article