Interesting article by Matt Duss at the Wonk Room with some useful links.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
‘Say no to burqas’ mural is not anti-Islam says Sydney artist
Security has been called in after tensions threatened to boil over a provocative mural to ban burqas at a Newtown workshop.
Following artist Sergio Redegalli’s painting opposing the Islamic face covering veils with the slogan “Say no to burqas”, security outside the premises has been called in after tensions threatened to boil over.
Christian Democrat rift widening over anti-Islam PVV
Concerns among Dutch Christian Democrat leaders about cooperation with the anti-Islam PVV party are growing by the day. Today, caretaker Christian Democrat Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin voiced grave apprehension at the rift that is emerging in his party over a possible cooperation with the far-right PVV.
In recent weeks, several former Christian Democrat leaders, among them a number of former prime ministers and former cabinet ministers, expressed similar concerns. But now they are being joined by a growing number of current CDA politicians. Health Minister Ab Klink, who recently resigned as coalition negotiator, had so far been the only active CDA minister to voice criticism at cooperation with the PVV.
Abba to sue Danish People’s Party
Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, the Abba stars behind the hit musical Mamma Mia have instructed their lawyers to contact the Danish People’s Party after the far-right party used and changed one of their songs to honour its leader.
Andersson, who last year donated a million kronor ($145,694) to aid the EU election campaign of Sweden’s Feminist Initiative, has reacted angrily to the Danish anti-immigrant party taking liberties with his copyrighted material, reported news agency TT Spectra. “They can bugger off,” Andersson told the agency.
Björn and Benny’s hit song Mamma Mia is the source of their anger after it given a revamp by the Danish People’s Party youth league in honour of the party leader, Pia Kjærsgaard. The young nationalists amended the text to “Mamma Pia” and gave the leader a rousing rendition at the party congress, but declined to seek the permission of the Swedes first.
“Firstly, you can not just re-write songs as you like and secondly we want them to understand that we have absolutely no interest in supporting their party,” said Benny Andersson.
US Muslims face increased discrimination at work
At a time of growing tensions involving Muslims in the United States, a record number of Muslim workers are complaining of employment discrimination, from co-workers calling them “terrorist” or “Osama” to employers barring them from wearing head scarves or taking prayer breaks.
Such complaints were increasing even before frictions erupted over the planned Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, with Muslim workers filing a record 803 such claims in the year ended Sept. 30, 2009. That was up 20 percent from the previous year and up nearly 60 percent from 2005, according to federal data.
The number of complaints filed since then will not be announced until January, but Islamic groups say they have received a surge in complaints recently, suggesting that 2010’s figure will set another record.
The federal has found enough merit in some of the complaints that it has filed several prominent lawsuits on behalf of Muslim workers.
“There’s a level of hatred and animosity that is shocking,” said Mary Jo O’Neill, regional attorney of the E.E.O.C.’s Phoenix office. “I’ve been doing this for 31 years, and I’ve never seen such antipathy toward Muslim workers.”
A reply to George Readings on Qaradawi
Crossposted from Socialist Unity
The Quilliam Foundation claims to be a think-tank combating extremism, particularly within the Muslim community. However, as the recently leaked briefing document “Preventing terrorism: where next for Britain?” has demonstrated, Quilliam’s real objective is to misrepresent and smear those mainstream Muslim organisations and individuals who are the leading forces in countering extremist interpretations of their faith.
An article at Left Foot Forward (“Livingstone: Al-Qaradawi is a ‘leading progressive voice’ in Muslim world”) by George Readings, who holds the post of Communications Officer and Research Fellow at the Quilliam Foundation, is exactly the sort of dishonest hatchet-job against a leading Muslim figure we have come to expect from the organisation that employs Readings. Predictably, he completely ignores the actual role played by Yusuf al-Qaradawi across the Muslim world and in the Arabic-speaking Middle East in particular.
Demonstration against Sweden Democrats in Stockholm
This is the protest that took place on Monday evening in response to the far-right Sweden Democrats gaining 20 seats in parliament.
That’s right, it was all a Muslim plot
Mark Steel on the plot to kill the pope that wasn’t.
SPD leader compares migrants who reject ‘integration programmes’ to hate preachers, says they have no right to live in Germany
Sigmar Gabriel, the head of Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party, is calling for tougher integration policies in his country.
In an interview with Spiegel Online on Monday, he said that immigrants who refuse to participate in programs offered by the government to help foreigners integrate are as unwelcome as hate preachers who have found homes in some of the country’s mosques and receive their funding from abroad.
The SPD leader’s comments attracted criticism from the Green Party. Veteran Green politician Volker Beck described his words as the “beating of the drum against immigrants with cheap populist politics.”
Harvard faces protests over honour for Martin Peretz
Harvard academics and students are demanding that the university rescind a plan to honour the editor-in-chief of a leading Washington political magazine this week after he wrote that Muslims are unfit for the protections of the US constitution and said that “Muslim life is cheap”.
Martin Peretz has partially apologised for the comments but critics say they are only the most recent of a long line of bigotted columns in theNew Republic by the former Harvard professor that have drawn accusations of double standards in how the American media confronts prejudice.
Peretz caused a stir when he wrote in a column earlier this month that Muslims in the US should not be entitled to constitutional guarantees of free speech. “Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims … So, yes, I wonder whether I need honour these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse,” he said.
The comments provoked criticism from bloggers and academics but were initially ignored by mainstream newspapers despite Peretz’s prominence – among other things he is a close friend of the former vice-president Al Gore – and the influence of his magazine.
Some of the strongest criticism has come from Harvard, where some students and academics are demanding that the university cancel a ceremony on Friday to name a $500,000 (£322,000) social studies chair after Peretz.
“Such an invitation lends legitimacy and respectability to views that can only be described as abhorrent and racist in their implication that the rights guaranteed by the US constitution should be withheld from certain citizens based on their religious affiliation,” student organisations said in a letter to the university that has been signed by more than 400 people.
Among the critics is Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard, who described Peretz’s views as hateful. “If you had said this about blacks, Jews or Catholics, it would be a scandal,” he told the Boston Globe.
See also the Daily Beast, 19 September 2010