Anindya Bhattacharyya analyses the rise of racist hysteria against Muslims and the need to organise resistance.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
Unsubstantiated allegations of cultural links to sexual abuse whip up Islamophobia
In the wake of recent convictions for sexual grooming and rape in Derby three myths have been fostered by sections of the media and some politicians.
Firstly, that young Muslim men have a tendency to be paedophiles, sexual groomers and rapists due to their cultural background; secondly, that citing ethnicity as a causal factor for sex crimes stops racism, and finally, that there has been a ‘conspiracy of silence ‘on the issue of grooming by Pakistani heritage men, which some politicians and newspapers are now bravely trying to break.
These myths must be exposed and challenged. They do nothing to protect the victims of sexual violence; they only serve to give legitimacy to racist views and organisations.
Sexual predators and paedophiles exist in all communities, as do their victims. And sexual abuse and violence is a crime irrespective of who is the perpetrator. Everyone has a responsibility and a duty to challenge such crimes and support the victims.
Convictions of individuals do not show any link between background or religion and these crimes. Moreover, those responsible for research – that has been widely cited as demonstrating such a link – have themselves refuted this claim, saying there is nothing in their research to prove this.
Sabby Dhalu at One Society Many Cultures
Toronto: protests against Jewish Defense League solidarity meeting with EDL
On January 11, 2011, the alliance of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) and the English Defence League (EDL) was challenged by counter-protests from anti-racist and human rights activists.
The JDL and EDL alliance was supposed to be cemented in Toronto at an event held by the JDL in support of Tommy Robinson of the EDL, who addressed the Zionist group about his recent arrest.
In response to this JDL/EDL alliance, two separate counter-protests gathered, but organizers from both publicly expressed their solidarity with the other. One was an explicitly peaceful vigil outside Lawrence Square with candles and music, organized by the CUPE 3903 First Nations Solidarity Working Group and Christian Peacemakers Team and was also attended by several other groups. Another protest, more militant in dress and slogans but still simply a demonstration, was organized mainly by a new incarnation of Anti-Racist Action Toronto.
Swedish government minister takes stand against Islamophobia
Sweden’s integration minister Erik Ullenhag is meeting on Thursday with representatives from the Swedish Muslim community to develop a strategy for combating Islamophobia in the wake of the Stockholm suicide bombing.
The suicide bombing in Stockholm risks resulting in suspicions being cast against hundreds of thousands of Swedish Muslims, Ullenhag writes in a debate article in the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper. He argues that it is unacceptable to blame an entire group for one person’s actions.
“We who believe in the Swedish values of openness and tolerance have a responsibility to fight the Islamophobia and prejudice which can follow in the wake of terror,” writes Ullenhag. “We should never allow one individual’s act to result in an entire religion being seen as suspect or having a group saddled with collective guilt.”
What makes Arizona’s killer just a loner, not a terrorist?
If the shooting had been carried out by a Muslim, we’d be deep in Islamist conspiracies now. So why the double standards?
Mehdi Hasan poses the question in the Guardian, 13 January 2011
The not-so-great Islamist menace
Terrorist plots against Europe are on the decline, statistics show, and the majority are not coming from Muslims, Don Gardner argues.
Luton Council asks home secretary to ban EDL march
Luton Borough Council has written to the home secretary asking her to ban a proposed march by the English Defence League (EDL) in the town next month. In a statement the council said there was a real risk of disorder. “We recognise that a banning order on the EDL and counter demonstrators would not prohibit them from holding a static demonstration,” the statement said. “However a march is, in our opinion, provocative and not conducive to the public good at this time and would risk serious disorder.”
The council said that any march proposed by the EDL would need to travel through residential areas from the railway station and other access points into the town. “The presence of high numbers of demonstrators supporting rival and diametrically opposing views is not conducive to the wellbeing of our community and has the potential to spark tensions and community impacts which as a council we have worked so hard to avoid in recent years,” the statement went on to say.
A closer look at reports about the growth of Islam in the UK
Stephen Tomkins crunches the numbers.
The myth of Muslim grooming
The British National party’s website, its logo still sporting a seasonal sprig of holly, is understandably triumphalist as it proclaims that the “controlled media” has admitted this week that “Nick Griffin has been right all along about Muslim paedophile gangs”.
The particular branch of the controlled media the BNP refers to is the Times, which has been running the results of a lengthy investigation into the sexual exploitation and internal trafficking of girls in the north of England. Specifically, the Times has marshalled evidence suggesting that these organised crimes are carried out almost exclusively by gangs of Pakistani Muslim origin who target white youngsters; and it quotes both police and agency sources who refer to a “conspiracy of silence” around the open investigation of such cases, amid fears of being branded racist or inflaming ethnic tensions in already precarious local environments.
This is not the first time that anxieties about the ethnic dimension of child sexual exploitation have been aired by the media. In 2004 the Channel 4 documentary Edge of the City, which explored claims that Asian men in Bradford were grooming white girls as young as 11, sexually abusing them and passing them on to their friends, was initially withdrawn from the schedules after the BNP described it as “a party political broadcast”, and the chief constable of West Yorkshire police warned that it could spark disorder.
Anecdotally, as far back as the mid-90s, local agencies have been aware of the participation of ethnic minority men in some cases of serial abuse. But what has not emerged is any consistent evidence to suggest that Pakistani Muslim men are uniquely and disproportionately involved in these crimes, nor that they are preying on white girls because they believe them to be legitimate sexual quarry, as is now being suggested.
Libby Brooks in the Guardian, 7 January 2011
See also ENGAGE, 7 January 2011
Netherlands: Catholic school discriminates with headscarf ban
A Catholic high school in Volendam is guilty of discrimination on religious grounds for banning a Muslim pupil from wearing a headscarf, the equal opportunities commission said on Friday.
The girl started wearing a headscarf this school year and was banned from attending lessons, prompting her father to make a complaint.
The commission said school pupils should, in principle, be free to wear a headscarf, Jewish skullcap or Christian cross.