Donald Trump proposes a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States“. The shift in rhetoric follows the shootings in San Bernardino, California. His proposed ban would also include Muslim tourists and citizens based abroad. In a press release, Trump cited growing hatred of the United States in Muslim communities. The localities of these communities are not contingent to Trump’s argument – only a perception of truth matters. Recent data from Pew offers added nuance. It found the countries with the most unfavourable views of the United States were Jordan and Russia. Positive ratings in Turkey had increased from 19 per cent to 29 per cent. In Lebanon, 48 per cent of its Sunni Muslim population had expressed favourable views of the United States. Its Shia population, had for the most part, expressed anti-American sentiment. Other polls from Pew point to a broad rejection of terror groups like ISIS and suicide bombing among Muslims across the globe. Pew data also found that many Muslim Americans want to assimilate into American culture. It’s also noteworthy that 81 per cent of Muslim Americans hold U.S. citizenship, including 70 per cent born abroad. Foreign-born Muslims take up a higher rate of [...]
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Facebook briefly banned Britain First’s page on 30 November, sparking momentary cries of celebration on social media. But within an hour, the far right organisation’s page was restored, claiming Facebook’s censorship to be a ‘fascist attack’. Britain First currently has over 1 million likes on its Facebook page—more than Conservatives and Labour combined. Its page on average generates hundreds of likes for posts. Immediately following restoration, likes spiked into the thousands. Despite their inflammatory material, banning social media sites like Britain First is a highly ineffective approach. Research points to the negative consequences that arise from exercising bans. The International Centre for Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) found through in-depth analysis that a systematic blocking of sites with extremist material is both impractical and counterproductive. It found that strategies which include removing websites, filtering content for accessibility, and hiding search engine results, have little to no effect hindering such networks. This is due to the particular challenges of internet regulation. The scale of website traffic makes identifying and monitoring content extremely difficult, as well as resource-intensive. Even when web page takedowns do occur, sites and forums tend to re-emerge rapidly. The far-right website, Gates of Vienna, was taken down twice in [...]
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Relatives of Tashfeen Malik, the woman involved in what has been classified as a terrorist attack in the United States, have said that she became more hardline after her time in Saudi Arabia. Her hardline views, according to them, were developed when she lived in the country. Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik died in a shoot-out after killing 14 people in San Bernardino in California. Within the last 48 hours, the terror group IS has claimed the couple as their followers though investigators have suggested that there were no external links to the couple and that the plot to kill had been concocted by the couple themselves. Malik’s Pakistani relatives have suggested that her father cut off contact with his family in Pakistan due to a feud over inheritance and he moved to Saudi Arabia when his daughter was very young. Reuters has noted that school teacher, Hifza Bibi, the step-sister of Malik’s father who lives in the Punjab said: “From what we have heard, they lived differently, their mindset is different. We are from a land of Sufi saints and this is very shocking for us.” Time in Pakistan Ms Malik, 29, returned from Saudi Arabia to [...]
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For the first time since the end of World War II, a new annotated edition of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf will go on limited sale in Germany. This edition from the The Institute of Contemporary History (IfZ) offers 3,500 scholarly annotations. It seeks to challenge the ‘irresponsible’ earlier editions found in second-hand bookstores. Jewish groups are not with their concerns. German justice ministers, however, have pledged to limit public access to stem neo-Nazi sentiment. Growing anxieties over the refugee crisis have provided extra succour to the populist far-right. Some expressed their far-right views to an actor dressed as Hitler. Neo-Nazis monopolise arson attacks against proposed refugee centres across Germany. At a Pegia rally in October, a guest speaker joked about putting Muslims in concentration camps. Germany recorded 1,596 antisemitic hate crimes last year. A vast majority of perpetrators expressed ‘right-wing’ views. Hitler dictated Mein Kampf (My Struggle) to Rudolf Hess in Lansburg prison, where both resided after the failed beer-hall putsch of 1923. Hitler’s chauffeur, Emil Maurice, had started the ghostwriting process, but his writing skills proved as poor as Hitler’s. Mein Kampf outlined his racist worldview and political outlook. Autobiographical elements contained many inaccuracies to help create a positive [...]
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The latest circular from the extremist far right group, Britain First, can only be described as intimidating and more worryingly, where minors are being used to promote this extremist far right group. The circular which was sent to subscribers makes the usual call for ‘donations’ and openly suggests that far right Britain First sympathisers are
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For Mucahit Bilici, comedy offers the means to invert the distorting power of stereotypes. This is true for anyone who has experienced racism and Islamophobia. This inversion reflects a recent Twitter trend that ridiculed the Sun’s claim that one in five Muslims has ‘sympathy for jihadis’. The hashtag #1in5Muslims also created a wider discussion about Islamophobia. The polling company behind the Sun poll, Survation, faced criticisms for its methodological approach. It told the Guardian that it picked “1,500 Muslim surnames” from its database. Telephone interviews did not proceed until the individuals identified confirmed an Islamic belief. Monday’s edition of the Sun had claimed that this sympathy extended to ISIS. But the poll did specify any group. It rather sought, in a simplistic and vague manner, to gauge ‘sympathy’ with Muslims who had joined fighters in Syria. Fighters could extend to other groups including anti-Assad forces and Kurdish groups. The Sun’s political editor Tom Newton-Dunn wrote “if the poll reflected views across the country it would mean 500,000 have some support for jihadis“. To extend that logic, a Survation poll in March for Sky News asked the same question to non-Muslims. It found that 14 per cent had expressed ‘sympathy’. If that poll reflected national opinion it would mean [...]
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The anti-Muslim backlash following the recent Paris atrocities is creating its own acts of solidarity. In Toronto, Canada, four high profile anti-Muslim incidents have made headline news. A Muslim woman was assaulted as she went to collect her children from school on Monday. According to police, two males pulled at her hijab and stole her mobile phone. The brother of the victim said she was punched in the stomach and face, called a “terrorist” and told to “go back home” during the assault. Metrolinx staff found anti-Muslim graffiti inside a bathroom of a busy train station. On November 19, a Muslim student at the University of Toronto, named Osama Omar, 21, was spat at as he waited for a streetcar in downtown Toronto. Omar wears a topi, or Muslim prayer cap. The perpetrator told Omar to take his “turban” off and attempted to punch him twice. In a Facebook post, he described how an elderly woman who saw the incident from across the street came over to ‘apologise on behalf of the man’. She told Omar not to see him as a ‘generalized representation’ of what society has become. At around 6pm on Wednesday, two Muslim women faced verbal abuse [...]
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Over the last 36 hours we have seen a number of cases come into Tell MAMA and the following incident shows, once again, how street based anti-Muslim hatred is also gender specific, with perpetrators mainly being white males and the victims mainly being visible Muslim females. This was reported in by an Asian female who
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This October marks two years since Tommy Robinson departed from the English Defence League (EDL). The Quilliam Foundation had called it “a huge success for community relations in the United Kingdom” and urged others, within far-right and Islamist circles to follow suit. Their staff “facilitated” both Robinson’s departure, and that of the EDL’s co-founder, Kevin Carroll. Quilliam had also offered both men education on Islam and training in lobbying. Robinson aimed to tackle Islamist ideologies “not with violence but with better, democratic ideas”. He later told BBC Radio 5’s Nicky Campbell “I want to lead the revolution against Islamist ideology, I don’t want to lead the revolution against Muslims“. When asked if he had regrets, he replied “I apologise if what I have said and represented has not resonated individually with Muslims”. Beyond these pristine, mineralised and rehearsed statements, the cracks sat in plain sight. Days before the announcement, Robinson’s Twitter feed continued to pump out anti-Islam content. Two days before Quilliam’s press conference Robinson had tweeted “Muslims created Islamophobia themselves… Go figure!!! They don’t challenge the extremists so we will!!!” Days earlier he tweeted that “Global war/holocaust on Christians… We all know it’s #Islam fueling it…“ Robinson retweeted an [...]
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Some of India’s most prominent scientists have signed a petition and returned awards to draw attention to India’s growing intolerance. The petition accuses the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of curtailing free speech and stoking Hindu nationalism. Signatories include Ashoke Sen, who won the Fundamental Physics Prize, the world’s most lucrative academic award in 2012. Pushpa Bhargava who founded the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad. D Balasubramanian, former president of the Indian Academy of Science. And Dr Vineeta Bal of the National Institute of Immunology in New Delhi. The statement reads: “It is the same climate of intolerance, and rejection of reason that has led to the lynching in Dadri of Mohammad Akhlaq Saifi and the assassinations of Prof Kalburgi, Dr Narendra Dabholkar and Shri Govind Pansare.” Professor Malleshappa Kalburgi’s murder shocked India. Who would murder a “straight-talking, rationalist researcher of ancient Kannada literature”? As local media described him. One theory is that Hindu nationalists murdered him in response to his criticisms of idol worship. The founder of the right-wing Hindu group Sri Rama Sene, Pramod Muthalik, rejected any links to Kalburgi’s murder. He also threatened to cut off the tongues of writers if they continue to [...]
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