Rabbi Wittenberg on at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand

March 17, 2019 Article

“We stand with you in solidarity and sorrow.

Wherever we are in the world, whatever our faith and beliefs, we stand together with you as pilgrims on this earth, as fellow human beings striving to do what is compassionate and just, hoping to share with our loved ones, friends and fellow citizens the privileges and responsibilities of life.

We have no place for racism, hatred and supremacism.

We are appalled and disgusted at the premeditated racist murder of Muslim people, made even more brutal, blasphemous, hurtful and despicable because it was carried out in the sacred precincts of prayer, during the peaceful hour of worship.

We mourn the victims alongside you, children, teenagers, healers and teachers, heroes who tried to save others, people from different parts of the world, contributing to the civic life of Christchurch and New Zealand.

Our hearts are with the bereaved. Our prayers are with the wounded and traumatised, and with all those striving to heal and support them. Our anguished thoughts are with all whose family members are still missing.

We feel for Muslim communities across the world.

The oneness of God and the fellowship of our common humanity unite us. We must stand as surety for each other in times of threat and danger. We must act collectively against all forms of hatred and bigotry. We must foster friendship and understanding between us and all people. We must work together for the safety and good of all life everywhere.”

Written in sorrow

Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg

Senior Rabbi, Masorti Judaism

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Categories: Al-Noor, Jews, Linwood Mosque, Masorti Synagogue, Opinions, Rabbi Wittenberg

Bosnian women struggle to return female relatives, children from Syria

March 11, 2019 Article

A quarter of a century after their own country was devastated by war, three Bosnian women are struggling to bring home loved ones caught up in Syria’s ruinous conflict and the collapse of Islamic State rule.

The Bosnian government, in common with its counterparts across Europe, lacks a clear plan to deal with the families of defeated fighters of the ultra-hardline militant group.

For Bosnia, the predicament has a particular historical resonance: Bosnian Muslims generally practise a mainstream form of Islam, but some adopted radical beliefs from the foreign fighters who came to the country during its 1992-95 war and fought with Muslims against Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats.

When Syria’s war broke out in 2011, some Bosnians joined Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. But the three Bosnian women say the daughters and a sister whose return they seek — plus their nine children — have played no role in militancy.

“Our only goal is to bring our children back home and finish this agony as soon as possible,” said Senija Muhamedagic from the northwestern town of Cazin, who joined forces with two other women to press authorities to help their relatives return.

Their daughters and sister, stuck with their children in a camp in northern Syria since November 2017, are desperate to return, saying they were forced to go to Syria by radicalised husbands and were ready to face charges at court if needed.

Alema Dolamic, whose sister was left widowed with three children after her husband was killed in fighting in 2017, has created a closed Facebook page for families of the people from the Western Balkans who are still in Syria to exchange information.

“It’s been going for five years, I practically don’t have my life anymore,” Dolamic told Reuters in her home near the central town of Tesanj.

“I am trying to imagine reunion with her, with children, but it’s unimaginable,” she said, showing the pictures of the children on her phone.

“THE CHILDREN ARE NOT GUILTY”

Hundreds of people are believed to have left Europe to fight for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. With the Islamist militant group down to its last shred of territory, more and more of them are asking to come home.

According to Bosnian intelligence, 241 adults and 80 children left from 2012-2016 from Bosnia or the Bosnian diaspora for Syria and Iraq, where 150 more children were born.

About 100 adults, including 49 women, remained there while at least 88 have been killed or died. About 50 have returned to Bosnia, including seven children.

“I feel terrible, miserable, because the children are not guilty, they did not have a choice,” said the third woman, from Sarajevo, awaiting a government decision on the repatriation of her 22-year-old daughter and her two children from Syria.

“Every day I think, my God, when will this child of mine come, to see her, to hold her, to feel her, and then anything may happen, it won’t matter anymore.”

The three women have been talking to police, security and intelligence agencies and government ministries for more than a year, supplying them with information and documents in the hope that their children, who they say were not involved in any military activities, would come back.

But as elsewhere in Europe, the Bosnian authorities have been slow to address the families’ pleas, their concern being the security challenges that might arise with the return of people from a war zone and environment of militancy.

REPATRIATION STILL NOT IN SIGHT

Their reunion still seems distant.

The Bosnian central government announced last year it would set up a coordination body to deal with the return of Islamic fighters and their families, but it has yet to be formed. It does not help that a new government has not been established after a general election in October.

“There are certainly security aspects of their return, it cannot be perceived as if just some women and children should be returned to Bosnia from somewhere,” Security Minister Dragan Mektic told Reuters.

Mektic said Bosnia was obliged to accept the women who held its citizenship but not their children who were never registered as Bosnian citizens, adding also that it could not be determined with certainty if their warrior husbands were really killed.

And even if they return, they are set to face a difficult process of re-socialisation and reintegration in a country where programmes to address such problems do not exist, warned Vlado Azinovic, an expert on terrorism and lecturer at the Sarajevo University School for Political Sciences.

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Categories: Bosnian Women, children, Islamic State, News, Syria

Rebel Media: A Platform Promoting Division, White Nationalism and Fear Mongering

March 4, 2019 Article

We are launching this report on Rebel Media and its influence online in a world where click-bait content, conspiracy theories and untruths become fact in the minds of some.

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE

This report, entitled ‘Rebel Media – a platform promoting division, white nationalism and fear mongering‘ highlights the following. Key points include the following:

Ezra Levant has made a career out of using inflammatory language to gain audiences. He is the founder of Rebel Media and he has previously accused Gypsies of being “rapists, drug-dealers, thugs and murderers”.
Former contributors on the payroll of Rebel Media have included Tommy Robinson, Lauren Southern, Katie Hopkins and Paul Joseph Watson. They are notorious for their anti-Muslim, anti-refugee and anti-migrant views as well as promoting views of a clash of cultures between the West and the East.
Central to Rebel Media’s message is the platforming of far right ideology, many would identify as ‘counter-Jihadi’ and with slants that seek to portray a world view of ‘them and us’ – with Muslims in Europe being viewed as ‘them’.
There are three heavily emphasized themes that make up Rebel Media’s output. These include, white nationalism, the rejection of ‘political correctness’ and its criticisms of Islam.
It has 1.156 million subscribers on You Tube and 169,000 plus Facebook followers. It also has 161,000 Twitter followers meaning that it has a substantial online reach that can influence people across national boundaries.
Groups like Rebel Media have successfully tapped into a wellspring of discontent and unease, ramping up fears that white people are facing a rapid decline managed by elitist institutions on the side of minorities and ‘homosexuals’ and by using immigration as a tool against white people.
Rebel Media essentially believe that there is an Islamist infiltration through increased number of Muslim migrants.
Ezra Levant, the founder of Rebel Media, was investigated for possible contempt of court charges for filming inside the Old Bailey in September 2018. The investigation was subsequently discontinued. He was filming Tommy Robinson during his trial for recording a short social media film outside Leeds Crown Court, which was hearing a grooming trial at the time.
Two former ‘Rebel’ staffers have suggested that Rebel Media raises over $1,000,000 dollars in subscriptions per annum. It also received a $2 million payment from the anti-Muslim think tank, the Middle East Forum.
It continues, like Infowars, to promote a view of white victimisation in a global world where liberal elites are conspiring against them.

The author of the report, Rabbil Sikdar said:

“Much more work needs to be done to counter the fake news around Muslims and the insinuation that building mosques or having halal-certified food amounts to a ‘Muslim takeover’. It alludes to a soft power approach by Islamists. People who buy into this false narrative are then likelier to protest against Islamic institutions like mosques and faith schools or call for fewer Muslims, or even support authoritarian measures against them. Rebel Media are essentially existing as a platform for the spread of fear and hate, and all their contributors work on this line. They have essentially globalised hate and we should be really concerned by that”.

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Categories: Canada, Counter-Jihadists, Ezra Levant, Katy Hopkins, News, Rebel Media, Tommy Robinson, white nationalism

Threats to Liberal Democracy

January 9, 2019 Article

Liberal democracy, the foundational principle of western societies, has been increasingly vulnerable. Globalisation and its fast pace has delivered undeniable benefits but brought with it unattended challenges, namely swiftly growing wealth inequalities and a deepening sense of cultural fragmentation. The atomisation of society has increasingly pushed people to the margins to rediscover a sense of belonging and meaning from a politics they feel no longer answers to them but elitist institutions, both economically and culturally.

The threat to liberal democracy today approaches from primarily two wings.

The first is the populist white nationalist right. A tide of authoritarian politics has swept across Europe and America. The political cultures of each nation-state vary meaning drawing a set of common variables, and thus a solution, is too simplistic. But arguably, a mixture of economic disillusionment in the wake of the financial crash in 2008 and imposition of austerity measures combined with cultural anxiety at fast-paced and large-scale immigration has triggered an opening for authoritarian politics to step forward. In the face of their emergence, social democratic parties have simply not been able to provide coherent answers.

Europe has witnessed a march to the populist right across a range of countries including France and Germany. In Hungary and Italy, right-wing governments who pitched their manifestos on anti-migrant and anti-refugee rhetoric swept into power. Orban has chilling consequences possibly for Muslims and Jews living in Hungary. Italy’s various ministers have made repulsive statements around Roma immigrants. Even in France and Germany, the far-right have weakened the mainstream political settlement. In Britain, UKIP made a brief surge before melting away but not before spearing Britain towards Brexit. In America, Donald Trump ran on a campaign of building a wall to keep out Mexicans, to stop outsourcing jobs to China and ban Muslim migrants. It unfortunately worked.

So why are these politicians, who for all their deference to western political traditions and culture are attacking institutions of liberty be it a free media or judiciary as well as adopting thuggish tactics with protesters, gaining such prominence?

Asserting the primacy of economic grievances would be a mistake. Not all populist voters are unemployed or at the bottom end of the labour market. But a bleak forecast of the future and nostalgic yearning for the past exists even amongst more middle-class families. With growing inequality and dwindling resources, many feel locked out of the best opportunities and see a closed off set of elitist interests dominating them. It would be wrong to say that the financial crash created populism, or even the grounds for it, but it certainly fertilized it with the anger and resentment it needed. Desperate material conditions unanswered by politicians paved way for populists to emerge and demand a return to times when the value of nation-states and all from it was respected.

An example of this is Britain. The closing of industries that provided a sense of security, communal solidarity and identity to many towns created an economic rust and power and wealth relocated almost entirely to London. Communities became bogged down in chronic unemployment and poverty, atomised by the dearth of decent jobs and forced relocation of workers travelling south to find economic prosperity. This was before austerity rolled over the country like a black wave, squeezing public services, cutting welfare at a time when wages weren’t above the poverty line and power lay with employers and landlords. Such a climate made people regard the EU and Westminster as distant elitist institutions that did not represent them. They voted Leave to make their voices finally heard. Why after all would they vote for a continuation of the status quo governed by a party ushering in public spending cuts whilst trimming taxes for the wealthy?

Yet it would be too naïve to assume this alone or even primarily explains the flare in support for populist politics. Globalisation has changed communities at a fast pace, with sense of control now lost and a feeling of cultural fragmentation taking place. It doesn’t help that the sort of communal jobs were closed by Thatcher while communal hotspots like pubs and SureStart have increasingly declined either. A place where people can interact with others and feel like they belong in their local communities has been lost. The commodification of migrant workers rather than viewing them as long-term stakeholders in these communities has also weakened these social bonds. We demonised those uncomfortable by their neighbours not knowing English as racist rather than recognising that sharing a common language is the basis upon which you build social bonds in a community, and not knowing it only otherwise isolates migrants and creates loneliness. People look at their towns and feel like something is missing. These are challenges which have been ignored and need to be addressed. That we have not is partially why the far-right have grown in power and authoritarian parties have taken office.

The other side of it is that we have been inconsistent in our defence of tolerance, freedom, equality and pluralism. Migrants and refugees have been portrayed as burdens and threats rather than important facets of any society, both historically and currently, and both economically and culturally. Racism is normalised in political discourse rather than obliterated entirely. It has had corrosive impact on diverse communities and further fractured relations. The portrayal of Muslims as terrorists and extremists rather than ordinary people who are often at the forefront and the first victims of Islamic extremism must also be challenged. From the rhetoric of politicians to newspapers, discourse around Muslims has normalised a climate where it is increasingly fashionable to abuse a Muslim on the streets. Britain remains considerably better off than its European peers where the rights and protections for minorities remain considerably worse. In challenging the white nationalists, we should not let them dominate the narratives on economy and immigration by allowing immigrants and refugees to be cast as threats to national identity and security. Compassion and empathy is ingrained in us and the British society has evidently shown that years of anti-refugee headlines can be made redundant in one second by the powerful image of a dead refugee child washing up on a Turkish beach. But we must be do better in ensuring it does not reach that stage for the sake of refugees. A compassionate and empathetic politics which listens to voters’ concerns and carries out its humanitarian duties is extremely compatible.

A politics reaffirming the value of citizenship, common good, solidarity and mutual obligation can bind people together in mixed communities and ensure that different identities and cultural expressions need not necessarily result in social tensions.

The second threat to liberal democracy is one both leftists and conservatives can agree upon at least as a problem, which is Islamism. The past twenty years has seen western societies repeatedly attacked by Islamist extremists. Politicians and journalists have explored the factors behind extremism but seldom found an argument that makes sense with too much coherence. But, what is unquestionable is that Islamism is causing anxiety within many societies and presents a dangerous threat to basic British values of liberty, tolerance, democracy, human rights and rule of law. A reluctant to criticize a strand of the religion which applies a literalist interpretation of its tenets has allowed the far-right and Islamic extremists to feed off each other. On the left we have regularly made excuses for those radicalized by Islamism and then watched as evidence has repeatedly debunked these claims. Arguments of western imperialism should fall flat given how many young British Muslims were radicalized by both the Syrian conflict but also the appeal of the Caliphate. It would be a fallacy to suggest that religion itself is at fault here or the only reason, but that many young Muslims did not see Britain as their home and community, that they did not feel a sense of attachment but rather exclusion is undoubtedly a factor behind why Islamism is too dangerous to ignore. In the dystopian caliphate, their identity is central to society and their life has purpose and meaning. It is on us to find solutions to stop the few becoming radicalized by Islamist propaganda. This is a battle of integration and values, that requires fighting whether Islamism had a violent edge or not.

By Rabbil Sikdar

The post Threats to Liberal Democracy appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Caliphate, Liberal Democracy, Opinions, Orban, refugees, White Nationalist

India: Hardline Hindus push Modi to allow temple on disputed Indian site

January 5, 2019 Article

Hindu nationalists linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party urged him on Wednesday to push through laws to allow the building of a temple on the ruins of a 16th century mosque, a flashpoint in tensions with minority Muslims.

A long-running dispute over the site in the northern town of Ayodhya has flared back into life in recent months in the build-up to national elections due before May.

The Supreme Court is weighing petitions from both communities on what should be built there and Modi told Reuters partner ANI on Tuesday that the judicial process should take its course.

A day later, Alok Kumar, the international working president of Vishva Hindu Parishad, responded: “The Supreme Court is taking its own sweet time and Hindus can’t wait endlessly to see a temple there.”

“We’ll persuade the government of Prime Minister Modi to issue legislation to start the process of a grand temple in Ayodhya,” he told journalists. He wanted the legislation in place before the government’s term ends, he added.

A Hindu crowd tore down the mosque in 1992, triggering riots that killed about 2,000 people across India, in one of the worst instances of communal violence since the partition of the country in 1947.

Vishva Hindu Parishad, also known as the World Hindu Council, has been spearheading a campaign over the past three decades to build a temple on the site of what Hindus say is the birthplace of Lord Ram, one of their most revered deities.

Over the past few months, the group allied to Modi’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has organised rallies of tens of thousands of activists, monks and other supporters, at a time of growing political and cultural tensions.

At the other end of the country from Ayodhya, in the southern state of Kerala, two women defied a centuries-old ban on entering a Hindu temple on Wednesday, sparking protests and calls for a strike by conservative Hindu groups outraged by their visit.

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Categories: Ayodhya, Hindu nationalists, Narendra Modi, News, Vishva Hindu Parishad

As election nears, religious tensions surge in an Indian village

December 9, 2018 Article

Nayabans isn’t remarkable as northern Indian villages go. Sugar cane grows in surrounding fields, women carry animal feed in bullock carts through narrow lanes, people chatter outside a store, and cows loiter.

But this week, the village in Uttar Pradesh state became a symbol of the deepening communal divide in India as some Hindu men from the area complained they had seen a group of Muslims slaughtering cows in a mango orchard a couple of miles away.

That infuriated Hindus, who regard the cow as a sacred animal. Anger against Muslims turned into outrage that police had not stopped an illegal practise, and a Hindu mob blocked a highway, threw stones, burned vehicles and eventually two people were shot and killed – including a police officer.

The events throw a spotlight on the religious strains in places like Nayabans since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power at the national level in 2014 and in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. Tensions are ratcheting up ahead of the next general election, due to be held by May.

The BJP said it was “bizarre” to assume the party would benefit from any religious disharmony, dismissing suggestions that its supporters were largely responsible for the tensions.

“In a large country like India nobody can ensure that nothing will go wrong, but it’s our responsibility to maintain law and order and we understand that,” party spokesman Gopal Krishna Agarwal said. “But people are trying to politicize these issues.”

Nayabans, just about three hour’s drive from Delhi, has about 400 Muslims out of a population of 4,000, the rest are Hindu. Relations between the communities began deteriorating around the Muslim holy month of Ramadan last year when Hindus in the village demanded that loudspeakers used to call for prayer at a makeshift mosque be removed, local Muslims said.

“For 40 years mikes were used in the mosque, calls for prayer were made five times a day, but no one objected,” said Waseem Khan, a 28-year-old Muslim community leader in Nayabans.

“We resisted initially but then we thought it’s better to live in peace then create a dispute over a mike,” he said. “We don’t want to give them a chance to fan communal tensions.”

Reuters spoke with more than a dozen Muslims from the village but except for Khan, no one else wanted to be named for fear of angering the Hindu population.

Several among a group of Muslim women and girls standing outside the mosque said they have been living in fear since the BJP came to power in the state in 2017.

They said that Hindu groups now hold provocative processions through the village during every Hindu festival, loudspeakers blaring, something that used to happen rarely before. They said they felt “terrorised” by Hindu activists.

“While passing through our areas during their religious rallies, they chant ‘Pakistan murdabad’ (down with Pakistan) as if we have some connection to Pakistan just because we are Muslims,” Khan said.

HINDU PRIEST CHIEF MINISTER

The subcontinent was divided into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu-majority India at the time of independence from British colonial rule in 1947.

During the violence on Monday, many Muslims in Nayabans locked themselves in their homes fearing attacks. Some who had attended a three-day Muslim religious congregation some miles away stayed outside the area that night to avoid making themselves targets for the mob.

Muslim villagers say they are particularly fearful of the top elected official in Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is a Hindu priest and senior BJP figure. Hindu hardliners started asserting themselves more in the village after he was elected, they say.

Uttar Pradesh sends 80 lawmakers to the lower house of parliament, the largest of any state in the country.

Considered the county’s political crucible, it has also been the scene for spiralling Hindu-Muslim tensions.

Adityanath said the lead up to the rioting in Nayabans was a “big conspiracy”, but did not elaborate.

In the only statement from his office on the incident, Adityanath ordered police to arrest those directly or indirectly involved in the slaughter of cows and made no mention of the death of the police inspector. He announced 1 million rupees ($14,110) as compensation for the family of the other dead man, a local who is among those accused by police for the violence.

Both men were Hindus and died of bullet wounds, although police said it was not yet clear who shot whom.

Police say they have arrested up to five people for the cow slaughter but have not given their religion. Locals say all the arrested people are Muslims. Four Hindu men have been arrested for the violence leading to the deaths.

“All invidious elements who may have conspired to vitiate the situation will be exposed through a fair and transparent investigation,” Anand Kumar, the second highest police official in Uttar Pradesh, told Reuters.

Asked if there was any bias against Muslims, Uttar Pradesh government spokesman Sidharth Nath Singh – who is also the state’s health minister – told Reuters: “We believe in equality and our motto is sabka saath, sabka vikas”, using a Hindi phrase often used by Modi that means “collective effort, inclusive growth”.

RELATIVE HARMONY

The two communities in Nayabans have lived in relative harmony for years, residents from both groups said.

But now Hindus in the village, who mostly say they support Yogi, accuse the Muslims of trying to turn themselves into the victims when they weren’t.

“Can’t believe they are raising our processions with journalists!” said Daulat, a Hindu daily wage labourer who goes by one name. “They are making it a Hindu-Muslim issue, we are not. Their people have been accused of killing cows, so they are playing the victim.”

At a middle school, metres from the police outpost near where the two men got killed, two women teachers, sitting on a veranda soaking in the winter sun, said its 66 students stopped coming for classes in the first few days after the violence.

“We worship cows and their slaughter can’t be accepted,” said one of the teachers, Uma Rani. “Two Hindus died here but nothing happened to the cow killers.”

Both teachers were Hindus.

Political analysts say relations between the two communities are likely to stay tense ahead of the national vote, particularly in polarised states such as Uttar Pradesh.

The BJP made a near-clean sweep in Uttar Pradesh in 2014, helping Modi win the country’s biggest parliamentary mandate in three decades, but pollsters predict a tighter contest next year because of a lack of jobs and low farm prices.

“Facing economic headwinds and lacklustre job growth, Modi will rally his conservative base by selectively resorting to Hindu nationalism,” global security consultancy Stratfor said last month.

Muslims say they increasingly feel like second-class citizens in their own country.

“The BJP will definitely benefit from such incidents,” said Tahir Saifi, a Muslim community leader a few miles from the area of violence who supports a regional opposition party in Uttar Pradesh. “They want all Hindus to unite, and when religion comes into the picture, other issues like development take a back seat.”

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Categories: BJP, India, Narendra Modi, Nayabans, News, Uttar Pradesh

UK Council for Internet Safety Disregards Online Anti-Muslim Hate

October 26, 2018 Article

The Government recently set up an Executive Board of the UK Council for Internet Safety (UKCIS).

The work of the Board is to look at online safety issues and have the ability to represent the impact of harms, as well as the ability to mobilise a response to online harms. As part of that process, you would expect that the Board would want representation from organisations working daily to ensure the safety of Black and Minority Ethnic communities, such as Muslim communities. Given the large rise in anti-Muslim hate which Tell MAMA has been documenting over the last 6 years and online risks to Muslim communities, you would assume that this would be an area that the Board would want represented. Instead, it has included a single voice from the Independent Advisory Board on Hate Crime, covering all strands. This is not good enough.

Once again, we are seeing a displacement of the concerns of BAME communities, in this case, Muslim communities, which are being relegated at a time when the far right are actively targeting Muslim communities online. The Department for Media Culture and Sports, much like the Department for Education, has relegated anti-Muslim hate to the bounds of peripheral work, as though the country is still stuck in 2008, when a decade later, fear within Muslim communities and hate crimes specifically against this set of communities has risen sharply.

Muslim communities frankly deserve better and the Department for Culture, Media and Sports and the UKCIS in particular, need an urgent rethink on this , if not a wake up call. It is, frankly, a disgrace.

The post UK Council for Internet Safety Disregards Online Anti-Muslim Hate appeared first on TELL MAMA.

Categories: anti-Muslim hate, hate crime, IAG, Independent Advisory Group, News, Opinions, UKCIS

Opinion: Conspiracy Theories and the Pied Pipers of Hate

September 3, 2018 Article

The slide into a bizarre world of believing conspiracy theories and voicing openly toxic and bigoted views took place slowly over the last decade whilst many of us were not able to fathom how quickly and extensively social media had taken charge of our lives. As the Founder and previous Director of Tell MAMA, which supports victims of anti-Muslim hate, the world that I know of today, as someone reaching his fifties, is virtually unrecognisable to the one in which I worked just a decade ago and where there was real hope that levels of racism, prejudice and intolerance were finally on a downward slope.

Today’s world is also a far cry from that in which I grew up. As a refugee from Amin’s Uganda in 1972, and having fled a second time from Africa in 1983 because of military instability in Kenya, I suffered at first hand the openly racist abuse meted out to Asians and African-Caribbean communities in Kent where I was schooled. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, that open racism existed, flourished and led to the murder of young black men such as Stephen Lawrence. Such open hatred impacted on many young men and women from BME communities, though the economic boom of that period helped to also temper some of the racist anger and bigotry. Anti-racism work, equality marches and work-based equal opportunity schemes seem to have turned the tide against division that many of us assumed would mean a country more at ease with its diversity.

Whilst the UK is in a far better place than the ’80s, the reality is that, as a country, we have slid backwards towards openly aggressive far-right marches rallying thousands of people, national political instability and a rising sense of mistrust which is acutely felt between BME communities and the two main parties. This, mixed with a recent economic crisis, has created the perfect storm for social insecurity and it is this insecurity that some have played upon in fomenting divisive and openly hostile views toward groups of people in our society. It is also within this environment of insecurity that people have sought comfort within narratives of division that blame others and which provide a sense of meaning to them, however twisted that may be.

For such individuals, conspiracy theories become reality since the world around them is unstable and frightening. Grasping onto something almost tangible, that explains the complexity of life in a simplistic fashion, fills the void that many of us currently feel in an increasingly frightening world. This is why, for example, conspiracy merchants who peddle views of an ‘Islamic takeover’ or of hordes of Muslims outbreeding other communities, manage to find a receptive audience. With less money in people’s pockets, communities aggressively vying for resources in austerity, and a sense of confusion as to where we are heading as a nation, you can see how easy it is for people to believe that there are hidden factors at play. The culprits, in their opinion, are more than likely Muslims, Jews or migrants.

Both Muslims and Jews have felt a sharp rise in hostility towards them and hate crime figures show such a rise over the last five years. Much of this is due to hate online and, furthermore, since 2012, when I founded Tell MAMA, it was clear to me that social media companies would not remove hateful and criminal material, nor would they take down far-right, neo-Nazi or Islamist extremist accounts. Their business model was based on getting traction for their technological revolutions through more accounts opening up. In doing so, they helped create the fog and smoke of disinformation and gave an amplified voice to extremist groups masquerading as ‘free speech’ martyrs. These companies, whilst levelling the playing field for more voices to be heard, also exposed people to views and opinions that would have been marginalised for a reason. Yet their platforms also legitimised toxic views by placing those views into a worldwide market of ideas where extremist groups were better equipped to promote them.

Let me explain. Marginalised, divisive and racist groups by their very nature had to be far more energetic and driven to try to win supporters. Before the advent of social media these people had to host events, print leaflets and remain active at a street level. That all took time and money and, to make it worse, they also looked pretty scary. However, such groups were always driven; they had to be to survive.

Now post their divisive messages on social media with a ‘friendly face’, remove the racist insignia and blame migrants, Muslims and foreigners, and strangely there was a more receptive audience as people’s fears and insecurities rose over the last decade. Additionally, as many of us played catch-up to try to challenge extremist and divisive views, these individuals and groups already had a head start since they were naturally driven and could see the power of the new platforms. It was a toxic, heady mix that was to have a severe impact on our society, as we are now seeing today.

This is why we must mobilise and defend the social values we enjoy in our country, and which are under threat. It is not just those, as this paper has highlighted, who try and divide local communities, who we must challenge; it is also those beyond our shores, who support extremist groups and seek to destabilise our democracy by fomenting instability, whom we must remain vigilant against. If we take our eye off the ball in these crucial years, it is not only our values which may change – it could be our very understanding of reality. Now that truly is frightening.

The post Opinion: Conspiracy Theories and the Pied Pipers of Hate appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: anti-Muslim hate, conspiracy theories, democracy, division, hate, hatred, hostility, incitement to violence, instability, integration, intolerance, Islamism, marginalisation, News, offline, online, Opinions, prejudice

Tell MAMA Annual Report 2017: ‘Beyond the Incident’

August 31, 2018 Article

Beyond the Incident: Highest Number of Annual Reports Logged by Tell MAMA Since Launch in 2012

Director of Tell MAMA, Iman Atta OBE says, “We are in deeply worrying times where people are looking for certainty and what they are getting is instability at a political and societal level. This means that at times like this, minority groups are the ones who suffer the anger of those looking to vent their fears, insecurities and concerns.

“We are seeing more aggressive street-based incidents, younger perpetrators, between the ages of 13-18, increased vandalism and international interference by well organised social media accounts playing groups off in the UK. More than ever, we need to come together and redouble our efforts against those who seek to divide and play communities off against each other”.

Key Points

In 2017 Tell MAMA recorded a total of 1,330 reports. Of these reports, 1,201 were verified as being anti-Muslim or Islamophobic in nature and as having occurred in the UK between January and December 2017. More than two-thirds of verified incidents occurred offline, or on a street-level (70%, n=839), which represents a 30% rise in offline reports when compared to the previous reporting period (n=643). An offline, or street-level, incident means that the incident occurred in-person between a victim (or property) and a perpetrator. There were therefore more street incidents of anti-Muslim hatred reported into Tell MAMA.
Crimes or incidents that are classified as ‘online’ occurred on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, or on other Internet-based platforms, were verified as having happened within the UK, and account for a third of reports in 2017 (n=362), which represents a 16.3% rise in reports when compared with the previous year (n=311). This small rise can be partially attributed to the way in which ideologically-motivated accounts felt emboldened by major trigger events, (such as terrorist attacks) and broader Islamophobic discourses in the public sphere.
The ‘online hate’ figure, however, should be viewed as part of a wider trend in our data sets where there has been a marked shift towards more serious offline incidents such as physical attacks, threatening behaviour and abuse more generally, along with a growing awareness of Tell MAMA in Muslim communities, among key stakeholders, and partners, resulting in a greater willingness amongst victims and witnesses to report.
Tell MAMA has listed in its Annual Report examples of ‘Twitter bots’ that have sought to cause disruption and division in community perceptions and which have actively promoted anti-Muslim hatred. One such Twitter account was @DavidJo52951945 . Responses to the rhetoric on this account, called for violent action against Islamic institutions and on August 30^th 2017, the Times reported that this bot originated from Russia. Furthermore, a Twitter account called @SouthLoneStar, which had amassed some 16,500 followers, was responsible in starting a global trend after the Westminster terrorist attack.

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Categories: Annual Report, anti-Muslim hate, anti-Muslim hatred, far right extremism, hate crime, hate crime incidents, Islamism, Muslim women, Publications / Reports, Tell MAMA Annual Report 2017, Terrorist Attacks, veil

Pakistan: Critics fear Islamism rise as new minister bans ‘vulgar’ billboards

August 31, 2018 Article

Punjab’s new information minister, Islamist politician Fayaz-ul-Hasan Chohan, has announced a ban on “vulgar” movie billboards in the Pakistani province, angering those who fear the growing influence of hardliners under new Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Since Khan’s party appointed him last week, Chohan has caused a number of rows, including with his visit to the grave of a man sentenced to death for killing the governor of Punjab in 2011, and with critical remarks about Nargis, a popular Pakistani singer and actress.

“If any vulgar billboard is found at any cinema in Punjab after three days, there will be a fine in first place, and if any one didn’t comply, that cinema will be shut down,” Chohan told a public meeting in the eastern city of Lahore.

“Is there any humanity that you print half-naked women and put them on big billboards?” he said.

Khan’s election victory in July was helped by strong support from Islamist parties. Chohan joined Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Justice Movement from the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan.

“It’s pure moral policing,” the left-leaning politician and rights activist Ammar Rashid said on Twitter.

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Categories: Ammar Rashid, Billboards, Blasphemy, Fayaz-ul-Hasan Chohan, freedom of speech, hardliners, human rights, Imran Khan, Islamabad, Islamism, Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, moral policing, morality, Mumtaz Qadri, Nargis, News, Punjab, Punjabi, Salmaan Ahmed, shutdown, Tehreek-e-Insaf Justice Movement