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SearchToday in Islamophobia: Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), is set to form a civilian government in Myanmar following an election that excluded 2.6 million ethnic minority voters, including Rohingya Muslims, from participating. Peter Oborne provides a historical overview of Tory MP’s, Michael Fabricant, history of anti-Muslim rhetoric, and Bangladeshi authorities plan to relocate more than 100 Rohingya families to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal which has not been declared safe for human habitation. Our recommended read of the day is by Emily Feng of NPR on China’s increased targeting and imprisonment of Chinese Muslim authors and scholars due to a continuous state push for “cultural assimilation”. This and more below:
China
China Targets Muslim Scholars And Writers With Increasingly Harsh Restrictions
This spring, 14 men were brought into police offices, where, one by one, they were subjected to weeks of questioning about their online correspondence and political views. Their offense? Buying Islamic books. The men were detained in Yiwu, China, an international commercial hub on the country's wealthy east coast and home to a growing community of Muslims. The detentions are emblematic of increasingly harsh restrictions targeting spiritual and educational life for Muslims in China. read the complete article
China Disappeared My Professor. It Can’t Silence His Poetry
It was a memorable evening, one I’ve thought about many times since learning in early 2018 that Jalalidin had been sent, along with more than a million other Uighurs, to China’s internment camps. As with my other friends and colleagues who have disappeared into this vast, secretive gulag, months stretched into years with no word from Jalalidin. And then, late this summer, the silence broke. Even in the camps, I learned, my old professor had continued writing poetry. Other inmates had committed his new poems to memory and had managed to transmit one of them beyond the camp gates. read the complete article
United States
Opinion: What election of Harris means to a Muslim American
Many of my peers from a South Asian background take such pride in the classic immigrant success story. Rightfully so, as our parents came to this country with a few pennies to their name, worked hard, and rose to success. They offered us a life so different from the ones we would have had if they had stayed in their respective countries. read the complete article
Refugee advocates urge Biden to ‘rebuild’ US asylum system
Rebuilding the US refugee programme may take time, said Becca Heller, executive director of the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) advocacy group, but it is critical for thousands of asylum seekers waiting for their claims to be heard. The US Refugee Admissions Program was severely limited under the Trump administration, which has enacted increasingly restrictive refugee admission quotas and slashed refugee acceptance by more than 80 percent from the last year of former President Barack Obama’s administration. read the complete article
'White' Without The Privilege: An Arab American's Quest To Be Counted
The way Americans identified themselves as far as race and ethnic categories sounded really bizarre to me at the time. I am a Saudi-born American of Palestinian and Armenian origin. I didn't find a box I could identify with, so the next thing that made sense was "Asian" since Saudi Arabia, Palestine, and Armenia are all geographically located on the Asian continent. But people like me are told to identify as "white." read the complete article
Biden Has Promised to Undo Trump's Immigration Policies. How Much Is He Really Likely to Reform?
President-elect Joe Biden has promised to undo most — if not all — of President Trump’s immigration reforms. He’s pledged, for instance, to immediately end the ban restricting foreigners from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. and reinstate protections from deportation for the roughly 650,000 people who arrived in the U.S. illegally as minors, known as Dreamers. read the complete article
Inside Parler, the social media platform by and for Trump supporters
The first post I saw on Parler after joining would turn out to be exemplary of the culture of this relatively new social media platform. Republican Congresswoman-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia posted that she was giving away a gun. Not any gun, but the gun that (in her words) she had "featured" in a "warning to ANTIFA terrorists." Greene was referring to a photo she posted on Facebook in early September. In the photo, she was holding an AR-15 standing next to three progressive members of Congress known as "The Squad"—Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). Along with the photo, she attached a message stating that Americans must "take our country back" and "DEFEAT THE DEMOCRATS." read the complete article
International
"A devastating betrayal": Muslim Pro's data-sharing highlights the constant surveillance of Muslims
According to its website, Muslim Pro has been downloaded over 95 million times around the world. But earlier this week, Motherboard reported that Muslim Pro is connected to a United States military data supply chain. While surveillance is nothing new to Muslims, hearing that a prayer app was somehow transmitting information to the U.S. military has left many feeling unsettled. read the complete article
Apple is lobbying against a bill aimed at stopping forced labor in China
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act would require U.S. companies to guarantee they do not use imprisoned or coerced workers from the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang, where academic researchers estimate the Chinese government has placed more than 1 million people into internment camps. Apple is heavily dependent on Chinese manufacturing, and human rights reports have identified instances in which alleged forced Uighur labor has been used in Apple’s supply chain. read the complete article
UK PM raises Rohingya concerns in call with Myanmar leader
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson raised the UK’s ongoing concerns over the Rohingya crisis and the conflict in Rakhine when he spoke by phone to Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi on Friday, his office said in a statement. read the complete article
'The French government has no right': CAIR slams Macron's 'ultimatum' to Muslims
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned French President Emmanuel Macron's "attempt to dictate the principles of the Islamic faith" to French Muslim leaders, and his demand they "falsely state that Islam is an 'apolitical religion'". Macron on Wednesday gave the French Council of Muslim Worship (CFCM) two weeks to draw up a charter of "republican values" with which its member organisations and affiliates would be expected to comply, amid a row over Islam's place in the country. Macron warned that "if some do not sign this charter, we will draw the consequences from that". read the complete article
France demands Pakistan rectify ‘blatant lies’ on Macron’s treatment of Muslims
France has called on Pakistani authorities “to rectify” the “blatant lies” of a Pakistani minister who compared President Emmanuel Macron’s treatment of Muslims to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews in World War II. Pakistan’s minister for human rights, Shireen Mazari, tweeted Saturday that Macron “is doing to Muslims what the Nazis did to the Jews — Muslim children will get ID numbers (other children won’t) just as Jews were forced to wear the yellow star on their clothing for identification,” linking to an article by the media organization The Muslim Vibe. read the complete article
China’s Surveillance State Sucks Up Data. U.S. Tech Is Key to Sorting It.
At the end of a desolate road rimmed by prisons, deep within a complex bristling with cameras, American technology is powering one of the most invasive parts of China’s surveillance state. The computers inside the complex, known as the Urumqi Cloud Computing Center, are among the world’s most powerful. They can watch more surveillance footage in a day than one person could in a year. They look for faces and patterns of human behavior. They track cars. They monitor phones. read the complete article
Myanmar
The Rohingya crisis and Myanmar's dark road to democracy
Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), is set to form a civilian government for the second time in a row following the end of Myanmar's 50-year military rule. With 2.6 million ethnic minority voters, including Rohingya Muslims, excluded from participating, groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) have called the elections "fundamentally flawed". The mass exclusion of minorities is also a dangerous harbinger for the future of Myanmar's democracy. read the complete article
Myanmar: How a disgruntled Rohingya politician sees the election
Myanmar's recently held general election once again saw widescale disenfranchisement of ethnic minority communities. DW spoke to a Rohingya politician who was disqualified from contesting due to his ethnic identity. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Tory Islamophobia: The trouble with Michael Fabricant
Six years ago, Fabricant launched a hideous, unprovoked attack on Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, at that time pretty well Britain’s only Muslim newspaper columnist. After she appeared on Channel 4 News with columnist Rod Liddle, Fabricant announced that he could never appear on a programme with her, as he would “either end up with a brain hemorrhage or by punching her in the throat”. read the complete article
France
France: shutting down anti-racist organisation risks freedoms
Responding to the announcement by Gérald Darmanin, the French Minister of Interior, that the French government will dissolve the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), an NGO that combats discrimination against Muslims, Nils Muižnieks, Europe Director at Amnesty International said: "The proposed dissolution of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France would be a shocking move from the French government. This move could have a chilling effect on all people and organisations engaged in combating racism and discrimination in France. Amnesty International is extremely concerned about the signal that this sends to NGOs and the fight against discrimination in France. We call on the French authorities to immediately reverse this decision.” read the complete article
Germany
Is Germany's targeting of Turkish groups motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry?
In recent weeks, the German Parliament discussed a controversial proposal to ban a movement it calls the Grey Wolves, which appears to be inspired by France’s ban of Muslim associations across the country. The only problem for banning such a group is that there is no such organisation called the Grey Wolves in either Germany or France. In European usage, apparently, the Grey Wolves refer to a Turkish nationalist movement with connections to Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), but that movement has never described itself as the Grey Wolves. read the complete article
India
Arnab Goswami: India's most loved and loathed TV anchor
"In a country where 80% of the population is Hindu, it's become a crime to be Hindu," Arnab Goswami declared on the prime time show of his Hindi language TV station Republic Bharat in April. "I ask today that if a Muslim cleric or Catholic priest had been killed, would people be quiet?" He was speaking about an incident where two Hindu "godmen" traveling in a car, and their driver, were lynched by a mob. Police said the men had been mistaken for child kidnappers. The attackers and victims were all Hindu. But for nearly a week, the Republic network ran programmes claiming the victims' Hindu identity was a motive for the crime, echoing an unfounded theory floated by some members of India's governing Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). read the complete article
Bangladesh
Bangladesh: Plan to relocate hundreds of Rohingya to remote island must be dropped
The Bangladeshi authorities must abandon plans to relocate more than 100 Rohingya families to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal which has not been declared safe for human habitation, Amnesty International said today. According to local media reports, Bangladesh has completed preparations to relocate up to 400 Rohingya refugees to the silt island of Bhashan Char this month on a “voluntary basis”. But Rohingya refugees, interviewed by Amnesty this month, say that government officials in charge of refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar have coerced them into registering for relocation. read the complete article