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SearchToday in Islamophobia: Reports allege Muslims in Philly face disproportionately more housing disadvantages. In the U.K, amidst turmoil surrounding Brexit, Boris Johnson is asked to apologize for his derogatory comments regarding Muslim women. Our recommended read of the day is by Aysha Khan on the negative portrayal of Muslims on the news. This, and more, below:
United States
News coverage of Muslims is more negative than of other minority groups | Recommended Read
The lab’s report, released Tuesday (Sept. 3), analyzes 26,626 articles mentioning African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Jews and Muslims that were published in 2018 in four national newspapers — The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. About 9,000 of those articles mentioned Islam or Muslims, which constituted more than a third of the total articles analyzed. The second-most-covered minority group were African Americans, who were the subject of about 6,500 articles. Jews were mentioned in nearly 6,000 articles, of which the average tone was neutral. Foreign reporting, which more often involves coverage of violent conflict or Islamist groups, was a major factor of negativity for articles covering Muslims. About 92% of Muslim articles referred to a foreign location. And while an average of 2% of articles on the others groups exclusively discussed foreign locations, about 10% of Muslim articles exclusively included foreign locations. “But it turns out that even if you take all of those articles out of your equation, stories about Muslims are still more negative than stories about any other group,” Bleich explained. read the complete article
A Muslim Marine’s Trauma: I Was Set Up, Arrested and Acquitted
I left for boot camp in 1997, and I stood on the “yellow footprints” on my 21st birthday as an official Marine Corps recruit at Parris Island. There, I was broken down and built back up, and as is the case with a lot of Marine recruits, part of my boot-camp experience included hazing and physical abuse. My drill instructors made me put sand around my bed “to make me feel more at home” and called me a “towel head” and other offensive names. I realized that some of these drill instructors associated me, as a Muslim, with their experiences in the gulf war, so I was singled out more than the others. On Aug. 28, 2002, while stationed at Quantico in Virginia, I arranged to meet a fellow Marine who had offered to sell me a handgun. It is common on military bases for Marines to buy firearms from one another, and the transaction we planned was completely legal. When we met, the Marine didn’t have the handgun. Instead, he pressured me to buy a Kalashnikov-style rifle from him. It wasn’t what I wanted, but he offered me a good price, and he said he really needed the money. As soon as I gave him the money and was placing the gun in my car trunk, I was swarmed and arrested by government agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. read the complete article
Judge Rules Terrorism Watchlist Violates Constitutional Right
A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that a federal government database that compiles people deemed to be “known or suspected terrorists” violates the rights of American citizens who are on the watchlist, calling into question the constitutionality of a major tool the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security use for screening potential terrorism suspects. Being on the watchlist can restrict people from traveling or entering the country, subject them to greater scrutiny at airports and by the police, and deny them government benefits and contracts. In a 32-page opinion, Judge Anthony J. Trenga of United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said the standard for inclusion in the database was too vague. As of 2017, about 1.2 million people were on the watchlist, which is maintained by the F.B.I.’s Terrorist Screening Center. Although a vast majority of them were foreigners abroad, about 4,600 were American citizens who are protected by the Constitution. read the complete article
Muslims in Philadelphia face more housing disadvantages than non-Muslims, report says. Some Philly Muslims don’t see a problem.
“Muslims live in neighborhoods that have significantly lower shares of whites and greater representations of blacks," the study, published last month in the journal Demography, concluded. Furthermore, "among blacks, Muslims are significantly less likely than non-Muslims to reside in suburbs.” However, the study concedes it cannot explain why Muslims — even those with higher incomes — tend to live in majority black or Hispanic neighborhoods. “We don’t know for sure why there’s this disparity," Friedman said. "Could it be because they have faced discrimination and end up living in neighborhoods with more blacks? Or could it be that they prefer to live in a more diverse neighborhood and a less white neighborhood?” read the complete article
Germany
The Rising Far Right in Eastern Germany
The AfD is a political party on the right, which was established in 2013. While it failed the German Bundestag (national parliament) with 4.3 % in 2013, it was able to gain enough votes in the European Parliament elections in 2014. Since June 2019, following the latest elections of the European Parliament, it has been part of the newly created Identity and Democracyheaded by Matteo Salvini of the Italian Lega, which is also home to other famous right-wing parties such as the French Rassemblement National (formerly Front National) and the Austrian Freedom Party. In the last national elections in Bundestag, it received 12.6 % (95 seats). In Sachsen, which was also home to a strong mobilization of the anti-Muslim grass-roots movement Pegida (in the two larger cities Leipzig and Dresden), the AfD was already successful in mobilizing 9.7 % of the votes. In the current polls, it more than doubled its electoral support, following the governing CDU (32 %) with 24.5 % and thus ranging as the second strongest party in this state. The third largest party, the Leftist ‘Linke’ is behind more than 10 %, followed by the traditional SPD with less than 10 %. This is quite similar to the last elections on a federal level in 2017, where 27% in Sachsen voted for the AfD and the European elections, where 25 % voted for the right-wing. read the complete article
United Kingdom
Don't let Boris' Brexit chaos distract from shameful Tory Islamophobia
According to the Institute for Race Relations, Institutional Islamophobia is that which is found "in the policies, procedures, operations and culture" of an organisation. It may, but need not be intentional. This is potentially even more damaging than individually held Islamophobic views, given the power behind some organisations and institutions. In an effort to highlight the issue of Tory Islamophobia, an authoritative, agreed-upon definition of Islamophobia may serve as a useful a metric, and an important step forward in fighting anti-Muslim hatred. read the complete article
Boris Johnson urged to apologise for 'derogatory and racist' letterboxes article
In a damning rebuke from Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, the Commons’ first turbaned Sikh MP, Johnson was forced to address his 2018 Daily Telegraph column in which he said it was absolutely ridiculous that women should go around resembling letterboxes and bank robbers. Addressing the prime minister, Dhesi said: “For those of us who from a young age have had to endure and face up to being called names such as towel-head, or Taliban, or coming from bongo-bongo land, we can fully appreciate the hurt and pain of already vulnerable Muslim women when they are described as looking like bank robbers and letterboxes. He asked when Johnson was going to order an inquiry into Islamophobia within the Conservative party, adding it was “something he and his chancellor promised on national television”. read the complete article
Conservative Revolt Against Boris Johnson Exposes Republicans’ Complicity in the Cult of Trump
Both men came to power after demonizing immigrants. Trump called Mexicans “rapists” and promised to build a wall to keep them out of the United States; Johnson was one of the leaders of the pro-Brexit, anti-immigration “Vote Leave” campaign and repeatedly suggested that the U.K. would be flooded with millions of Turkish migrants if it remained a member of the European Union. Both men are also card-carrying Islamophobes. Trump has his Muslim ban and a long history of anti-Islam rhetoric; Johnson once described “Islam as the problem” and compared veiled Muslim women to bank robbers, which led to a spike in Islamophobic hate crimes. read the complete article
India
How India's police force are 'adopting and mirroring' BJP's racist and prejudice beliefs
Titled The Status of Policing in India Report: Police Adequacy and Working Conditions, the researchers found that 14 percent of members within the country's police services believe Muslims to be "very much likely" to be prone to committing crime, while 36 percent feel Muslims are "somewhat likely" to more prone than other religious identities. Arguably the most shocking finding, however, is that 35 percent of Indian police officers feel that it's "natural for a mob to punish the culprit in the case of cow slaughter," demonstrating that a giant share of those in charge of maintaining peace and security express sympathy with Hindu extremists who carry out acts of mob violence against Muslims and other religious minorities under the guise of protecting cattle. read the complete article