Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

Springfield: community backs Islamic Center against threats

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Vandalism and threats aimed at a local Muslim community have inspired others in Springfield to stand with the Muslims and in opposition to bigotry. Representatives of faith groups, human rights advocates and city government will join members of the Islamic Center of Springfield on Saturday afternoon to speak against recent incidents at the center and for religious freedom.

Carl Haworth with the Interfaith Alliance, which organized the event, said “everyone who supports religious freedom” is invited to join. “We want to show that we feel everyone has the right to be here as long as they want to contribute to the Springfield community and make this their home,” said Haworth.

City Councilman Bob Stephens said representatives from the city will be on hand. “Because those acts of vandalism were so despicable, we felt there definitely needs to be some representation from the city,” he said. “Springfield is not like this.”

George Davis, president of the city’s Human Rights Commission, said Saturday’s event will “show unity in diversity”. “Our community has people of many faiths and cultures,” he said. “We want to make it clear bigotry will not be tolerated through displays of actions.”

Francine Pratt, president of the local chapter of the NAACP – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – said the civil rights organization will also be represented. “We want to show them that we love them and embrace them,” she said. “We have to stick up for what’s right.”

Members of the Islamic Center will be on hand to greet the community visitors.

“The wide range of response from the community at all levels … is very profound,” said Wafaa Kaf with the center and a member of the Interfaith Alliance. “All, from the ground up and from top down, agreed upon a call to action in response to hate crimes, burning the holy Quran, and the threatening letter against Islam and Muslim community of Springfield.

“The crowd wants to show that they, ‘average citizens,’ are united, and that such hatred actions against Islam are not welcome in our community, which promotes mutual respect and trust between interfaith groups. Every one of us is adding a hand toward shaping a better community.”

News-Leader, 22 April 2011

Attacks on multiculturalism linked to economic crisis, IRR study finds

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) publishes today Understanding the European-wide assault on multiculturalism – a detailed analysis by Executive Director, Liz Fekete, of key speeches made over the past six months by leading centre-right politicians from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.

These speeches attack multiculturalism and immigration and link them to the economic crisis. The IRR finds that:

  • In singling out multiculturalism as a threat to national identity, the leaders of Europe’s centre-right parties are using the same kind of rhetoric and specious arguments as Enoch Powell did forty years ago. Only this time, it is not one rogue European politician carrying the flag, but the leaders of centre-right parties now replacing race and immigration with culture and religion as the watch words.
  • As multiculturalism becomes code for discussing the ‘Muslim problem’, the language, terms and metaphors used by centre-right politicians subtly (and in some cases crudely) convey a sense of national victimhood, of a majority culture under threat from Muslim minorities and new migrants who demand special privileges and group rights and refuse to learn the language.

In Understanding the European-wide assault on multiculturalismthe IRR warns that:

  • The attacks on multiculturalism are taking place at a time of economic crisis and swingeing cuts, when politicians are desperate to deflect public anger and explain societal break down. The centre Right is establishing a narrative, with some centre-left parties following suit, to justify the biggest round of spending cuts since the 1920s, blaming the current economic crisis not on the bankers and global financial crisis, but on immigration, and on Muslims.
  • As the extreme Right increasingly enters national parliaments, sometimes holding the balance of power, there are dangerous signs that the centre Right is preparing for future power-sharing with the extreme Right, as well as nativist anti-immigration parties. The fact that mainstream politicians are now speaking to the fear and hatred promoted by the extremists’ anti-multicultural platform, is giving legitimacy to conspiracy theories about Muslims and to anti-Muslim hatred.

Read the IRR’s research Understanding the European-wide assault on multiculturalism here.

IRR press release, 21 April 2011

The ‘Islamification’ of Tower Hamlets

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Scaremongering about the threat of “Islamification” facing the east London borough of Tower Hamlets has been popular in the right-wing press since Andrew Gilligan’s witch-hunting Channel 4 documentary Britain’s Islamic Republic was broadcast last year. Several papers this week have published articles on that theme.

Continue reading →

CAIR: Georgia mosque targeted by hate vandalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization today called on state and federal law enforcement authorities to investigate two apparently bias-motivated attacks on a Georgia mosque as hate crimes.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says vandals twice this month shattered doors and windows of the Islamic Center of Cartersville with rocks, one of which was reportedly painted with “Muslim murderers”. Local police are investigating the incidents and the FBI has been “asked to determine if the attacks fall under federal hate crime laws”.

“The hate message on a rock used to damage this mosque is a clear indication of a bias motive,” said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. “State law enforcement authorities and the FBI should take whatever actions are necessary to protect the congregation’s right to worship without fear of attack.”

CAIR press release, 19 April 2011

Tennessee Muslims gather at state Capitol for hearing on anti-sharia bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hundreds of Muslims thronged the state Capitol Tuesday morning for a hearing on a bill that once targeted adherents to Islamic law.

Muslims from across the state packed a committee room and corridors to hear testimony a bill that supporters say would help Tennessee law enforcement stop terrorist plots but opponents believe targets Muslims by targeting their beliefs. The bill has since been amended to remove any references to Islam and Shariah, the basic set of Muslim religious laws that covers everything from the rules of warfare to inheritance.

But opponents said in brief testimony that the bill is inherently flawed because it was written by an Arizona organization that has been described as a hate group. They urged the House Judiciary Committee and the measure’s sponsors, House Speaker Pro Tempore Judd Matheny, R-Tullahoma, and state Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, to withdraw the bill.

“If a bill was written by the KKK, would you consider it even if it was amended?” said Sabina Mohyuddin, a youth coordinator at a Nashville mosque, who testified. “The intent of the bill remains the same.”

The Tennessean, 19 April 2011

Koran scholar Chuck Norris warns of creeping sharia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

WALLPAPER - CHUCK NORRISHappy Holy Week! This year, Walker Texas Ranger star and Internet meme Chuck Norris is celebrating things a little differently – by writing a special week-long series at WorldNetDaily on the dangers of creeping Islamic Sharia law in American society.

Norris, who wants to make clear that he is absolutely not an Islamophobe, warns that “where Muslim religion and culture has spread, Shariah law has shortly followed”:

Of course, many Americans watch on video a Middle Eastern woman allegedly caught in adultery, buried in the ground up to her head and being stoned to death, and think, “That could never happen in America.” But they fail to see how Shariah law has already been enabled and subtly invoked in our country, and that any such induction like it is brought about by understated lukewarm changes, like a frog boiled in a kettle by a slow simmer.

As proof of the slow boiling of the American frog, Norris cites three examples: A Florida judge ordering two Muslim parties to settle their dispute through Islamic arbitration, per the terms of their mutually agreed-upon contract; the push by various state legislators to ban Islamic law from state courts; and an Obama adviser telling a British audience that Sharia has been “oversimplified.” And that’s just in the last few months!

Of course, each of these points has its self-refuting flaws. Judges turn cases over to pre-selected religious arbitrators all the time, for instance, and not just for Muslims. None of the state legislators in question have produced a single example of Sharia being forced upon their states. And as for the argument that Sharia has been “oversimplified,” I would just point you to the fact that a quasi-mulleted martial arts actor from the mid 1990s feels qualified to explain to a national audience what Sharia is.

Tim Murphy at Mother Jones, 20 April 2011

Only 3 out of 249 EU terrorist attacks were carried out by Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The number of terrorist attacks recorded in the European Union last year dropped 21.2 percent to 249 compared with the previous year, the Europol police organisation said Tuesday.

“In 2010, 249 terrorist attacks were reported in nine member states,” killing seven people, it said in an annual report on terrorism within the 27-member bloc.

Most of these attacks, 160, were carried out by separatist groups and only three by Islamic groups, it added.

Middle East Online, 20 April 2011

Cf. David Cameron’s speech at the Munich security conference in February, in which he stated:

“… the biggest threat that we face comes from terrorist attacks … we should acknowledge that this threat comes in Europe overwhelmingly from young men who follow a completely perverse, warped interpretation of Islam, and who are prepared to blow themselves up and kill their fellow citizens.”

Scotland and the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

When a gang of youths launched a terrifying attack on a young Scottish Muslim family in broad daylight, the victims were left in no doubt about why they were targeted: the veil. Glasgow-born Samina Ansari and her loved ones were assaulted because she was wearing a traditional Islamic hijab, which covers the hair, but not the face.

It happened last year, when Ansari, her husband and their baby were driving along a main road. The gang, armed with bricks and chains and accompanied by a snarling dog, surrounded the car, shouting “get the Paki bastards” and “go back to your own country”, before attempting to smash the car windows.

Samina locked the doors while her husband frantically dialled 999, fearing for the safety of the baby in the back seat. One man brought the chain down on to the windscreen, while another tried to smash in through the passenger window. Luckily, the young Muslim mother was able to speed off when the men moved away from the front of the car.

“It was racist,” she said. “But it was also Islamophobic. It only lasted a minute-and-a-half, but the trauma lingered for months. I felt too scared to go out walking with my baby in a pram. It was horrible.”

The trauma of the attack pushed Samina into launching a campaign to educate the Scottish public about the veil and Muslim women’s decision to wear it. She accepts she faces an uphill struggle. Across Europe, hostility is growing against this most visible sign of Islamic faith, with many seeing it as provocative and political, or a sign of male oppression and the subservience of women.

Samina Ansari and the charity she works for, Amina Muslim Women’s Resource Centre, have made a documentary, Hijab – The Light Behind the Veil, to promote their reasons for wearing the hijab and describing the prejudice they face for donning a veil on a day-to-day basis.

At the launch of the film, politicians, police officers and community leaders gathered to watch it in the hope of gaining a greater understanding of Muslim women’s faith. The film will be distributed to public bodies to help teach state officials about the veil in the words of Islamic women.

Sunday Herald, 17 April 2011

Unfortunately, presumably in the interest of “balance”, the report finds it necessary to quote mad Maryam Namazie of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran on the veil:

“Is wearing it a choice for women, given you have an Islamic movement gaining political power and making it compulsory wherever they can? … I think the full-face-covering niqab should be banned. We also need to stand up to Islamism’s demands to restrict rights for citizens in society.”