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.

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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.

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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 30th 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.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT HERE.

For further information about Tell MAMA please click here.

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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

Pakistan: Islamists call for Dutch envoy’s expulsion over cartoons

August 30, 2018 Article

An Islamist party in Pakistan called for the expulsion of the Dutch ambassador on Wednesday as it launched a protest against a far-right Dutch politician’s plan for a cartoon competition featuring caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed.

Several thousand activists gathered in the eastern city of Lahore for the demonstration organised by Tehreek-e-Labbaik, a party that amassed the fifth largest number of votes in a general election last month having campaigned as a defender of the laws and punishments for crimes of blasphemy.

Party leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi set out from Lahore’s historic centre at the head of a protest he aims to take through the towns of Punjab province to the capital Islamabad, where protesters will stage a sit-in to pressure Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Imran Khan to cut diplomatic ties with the Netherlands.

“The Dutch ambassador should be immediately deported,” Labbaik spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi told Reuters. “We will only stop when the government meets this demand.”

Pakistan has already complained to the Dutch government about far-right parliamentarian Geert Wilders’ plans for a cartoon contest that will upset and provoke Muslims.

Wilders intends to display the cartoons on the walls of his political party’s room in parliament. He says he’s had “hundreds” of entries.

“The Foreign Office called the chargé d’affaires of the Netherlands and issued him a Demarche’ to record a protest,” the Pakistani prime minister’s office said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte said last week that the cartoon competition “was not something I would do” and his government was not associated with it.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said he planned to take up the issue with the United Nations and several world leaders.

“They don’t understand how much they hurt us when they do such acts,” Khan, a cricketer-turned-politician, said on Tuesday, a day after the upper house of parliament condemned the proposed cartoon competition.

Officials from the Punjab provincial government met with Labbaik leaders in Lahore in a vain attempt to persuade them to call off their protest.

“We told them to stop the protests because the Pakistan government is taking up the issue effectively,” an official involved on the talks told Reuters, adding that Labbaik representatives insisted the protest would only end once the Dutch envoy was expelled.

Last year, in a stand-off with the previous government, Labbaik shut down a main highway leading into Islamabad for nearly three weeks over a small change in wording to an electoral law changing a religious oath to a simple declaration. Labbaik said the change amounted to blasphemy.

The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz was forced to accept the resignation of law minister Zahid Hamid, who Labbaik held responsible for the change, after seven people were killed and nearly 200 wounded in a failed attempt by police to disperse protesters.

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Categories: Cartoons, chargé d'affaires, Ejaz Ashrafi, Geert Wilders, Holland, Imran Khan, Islamism, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, Lahore, Mark Rutte, Muslim League-Nawaz, Netherlands, News, Pakistan, Prophet Mohammed, Punjab, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Tehreek-e-Labbaik, Zahid Hamid

Saudi Arabia: Repentant Muslims gather on Mount Arafat for haj climax

August 20, 2018 Article

More than two million Muslims gathered at Mount Arafat on Monday for a vigil to atone for their sins and ask God’s forgiveness as the annual haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia reached its climax.

Pilgrims clad in white robes signifying a state of purity spent the night in an encampment around the hill where Islam holds that God tested Abraham’s faith by commanding him to sacrifice his son Ismail and Prophet Mohammad gave his last sermon.

Other worshippers praying in the nearby Mina area ascended in buses or on foot from before dawn as security forces directed traffic and helicopters and surveillance drones hovered overhead.

Some pilgrims carried umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun as temperatures surpassed 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) after an evening of thunderstorms and high winds. Men and women from 165 countries gathered side by side, while soldiers handed out bottled water and some people snapped selfies.

Pakistani pilgrim Mohamed Forqan, 30, said it was a great day to be a Muslim. “Here in Arafat we feel that we are born today asking Allah to forgive our sins,” he said.

Hilal Issa, 70, from Algeria, said he was praying for God to pardon all Muslims and save the Arab world from its afflictions.

Saudi Arabia has said more than 2.3 million pilgrims, mostly from outside Saudi Arabia, have arrived for the five-day ritual, a religious duty once in a lifetime for every able-bodied Muslim who can afford the journey.

The pilgrims will spend the day on Mount Arafat. By sunset they will move to the rocky plain of Muzdalifa to gather pebbles to throw at stone columns symbolising the devil at another location called Jamarat on Tuesday, which marks the first day of Eid al-Adha, or the feast of sacrifice.

A new kiswa, the cloth embroidered with verses from the Koran, was placed over the Kaaba in Mecca’s Grand Mosque late on Sunday. Pilgrims will return to pray there at the end of haj.

CALLS FOR UNITY

In a haj message, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, leader of Saudi-rival Iran, called for unity among Muslims as a defence against foreign enemies.

“Muslims should be vigilant about America’s malicious war-mongering policy aimed at Muslims killing Muslims,” he said in comments read by a representative on Iranian television.

The United States reimposed economic sanctions on Iran this month after pulling out of a 2015 international deal aimed at curbing its nuclear programme in return for easing sanctions.

Washington has said Tehran’s only chance of avoiding the sanctions would be to accept President Donald Trump’s offer to negotiate for a tougher nuclear deal, which Iranian officials have rejected.

In a midday sermon, senior Saudi cleric Sheikh Hussein bin Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh also urged pilgrims to come together with their co-religionists but cautioned: “Haj is not a place for slogans and parties.”

Saudi Arabia stakes its reputation on its guardianship of Islam’s holiest sites – Mecca and Medina – and organising the pilgrimage.

The world’s largest annual gathering of Muslims has in the past seen stampedes, fires and riots, with authorities sometimes struggling to respond. A crush in 2015 killed nearly 800 pilgrims, according to Riyadh, although counts by countries of repatriated bodies showed over 2,000 may have died, more than 400 of them Iranians.

Officials say they have taken all necessary precautions this year, with tens of thousands of security forces and health workers on hand to maintain safety and provide first aid.

Pilgrimage is also the backbone of a plan to expand tourism under a drive to diversify the kingdom’s economy away from oil. The haj and year-round umrah generate billions of dollars in revenue from worshippers’ lodging, transport, fees and gifts.

Officials aim to increase the number of umrah and haj pilgrims to 15 million and 5 million respectively by 2020, and hope to double the umrah number again to 30 million by 2030.

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Categories: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Haj, Mecca, Medina, Mina, Mount Arafat, News, Pilgrimage, pilgrims, Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Hussein bin Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh, umrah

Myanmar: ‘Hijab is like a key’ – beauty blogger battles bias

August 14, 2018 Article

Muslims in Buddhist-majority Myanmar usually keep a low profile for fear of intimidation, but Win Lae Phyu Sin, one of the community’s rare bloggers on beauty care, has gone the other way.

The 19-year-old was the centre of attraction at a recent launch of beauty products in Yangon, her striking multi-coloured make-up offset by a long-sleeved green-and-white gown and matching hijab, a headscarf worn by some Muslim women.

“I don’t regret my decision to wear the hijab,” the blogger said. “Our God opens many ways for me. Hijab is like a key for me. I can use it to go where I want to go, and do what I want.”

Muslims, who make up about 5 per cent of the nation of around 50 million, say they have not been able to open new mosques in decades and struggle to rent apartments from Buddhist landlords.

Systematic persecution of Muslims is growing in Myanmar, rights groups say, though world attention has focussed on its stateless Rohingya Muslims, with the United Nations and aid groups saying more than 700,000 were driven into neighbouring Bangladesh after an army crackdown last year.

But many Muslims of all ethnicities had been refused national identity documents, and denied access to some places of worship, Burma Human Rights Network said in a report last year.

For some of Win Lae Phyu Sin’s students, her tutorials are not merely about applying eyeshadow and highlighter, but also about building confidence and pride in an identity constantly questioned by Buddhist fellow citizens.

“I saw her applying make-up while wearing the hijab and it’s amazingly beautiful,” said Hay Mann Aung, 20.

“I wanted to be as beautiful as her.”

Win Lae Phyu Sin’s effort to impart a cool, chic vibe to the image of Myanmar Muslims, deploying stylish clothes that match her hijabs, elaborate mascara, and eyeshadow layered in bold colours, has drawn admirers.

She has 6,000 followers on social media site Facebook and 600 students have attended more than 150 classes on the use of cosmetics run in a makeshift studio.

CRITICISM

But her high profile has drawn criticism and even discrimination: a Buddhist woman who enrolled in her class backed out on discovering Win Lae Phyu Sin was Muslim.

Some Facebook commenters have attacked her for being too flamboyant and using make-up, which conservative Muslims regard as taboo, but the blogger refuses to let critics waste her time.

“When people attack or criticise me outside and online, I choose to ignore them,” she said. “I have a lot of work to do.”

Her growing fame, fed by dozens of online make-up tutorials and events at shopping malls, has prompted trips to Myanmar’s second largest city, Mandalay, and she plans to visit Kuala Lumpur, the capital of neighbouring Malaysia.

Win Lae Phyu Sin started with tutorials on make-up filmed in a bedroom shared with her sister, posting them on Facebook before offering classes.

“After I graduated from high school, my boyfriend gave me make-up palettes as a present,” she said. “I didn’t know how to use them so I Googled it and learned.”

But acquiring professional expertise proved too expensive, so Win Lae Phyu Sin came up with the idea of six-hour sessions, aimed at regular “girls like me”, that cost less than $25.

A year on, she brings to every lesson two bags packed with eyeliners, brushes and small mirrors for every student. At one recent session, she discussed skin types before handing out bottles of foundation and eyeshadow for students to try.

Win Lae Phyu Sin is undeterred by those who denigrate her for being a Muslim and wearing a hijab that exposes the face.

“‘Don’t you know you will go to hell if you do that? Why don’t you take off the hijab during shooting?’” she quoted some Facebook critics as asking.

But she added, “I will keep on doing this, because this is my passion.”

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Categories: beauty blogger, blogger, blogging, Burma, Burma Human Rights Network, Hijab, human rights, Myanmar, News, Win Lae Phyu Sin

Sri Lanka: Buddhist monk jailed for inciting violence against Muslims

August 8, 2018 Article

A Sri Lankan court on Wednesday handed a six-year jail term to a Buddhist monk accused of inciting violence against Muslims, holding him guilty of contempt just months after he was convicted of intimidating the wife of a missing journalist.

The monk, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, leads the hardline Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) or “Buddhist Power Force”, which government ministers and Muslims have accused of stirring up violence against Muslims and Christians, allegations he has denied.

The court sentenced him to six years’ rigorous imprisonment over a 2016 incident when Gnanasara interrupted a court hearing on the abduction of the journalist, Prageeth Eknaligoda, in which military intelligence officials were accused.

He shouted at the judge and lawyers because the military officials had not been given bail, and threatened Eknaligoda’s wife.

“The convict intentionally committed the offence to undermine the judiciary,” Preethi Padman Surasena, the president of the court of appeal, said in delivering Wednesday’s judgment, adding, “Found guilty of all charges beyond reasonable doubt.”

The monk was convicted on four counts of contempt of court, receiving terms of four years each on the first and the second counts, six years on the third and five for the fourth, all to run concurrently.

A BBS official told Reuters the group would appeal against Wednesday’s ruling.

“We feel there is an attempt by interested parties to have judicial process targeting Gnanasara, therefore, though we do not agree with the judgment, we accept the sentence, and we will appeal,” said Dilantha Vithanage, the group’s chief executive.

Gnanasara, who is being treated in hospital for an ailment, was not in court for the ruling. He has been on bail since filing an appeal against a conviction in a separate case on June 14.

In that case, he received two concurrent jail terms of six months, a fine of 1,500 rupees ($9.39), and a compensation payment of 50,000 rupees ($313) for having threatened the journalist’s wife, Sandhya Eknaligoda.

Since 2014, the monk has faced accusations in cases regarding anti-Muslim violence, hate speech, and defaming the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

That year Gnanasara signed a pact with Myanmar’s Ashin Wirathu, who once described himself as “the Burmese bin Laden”, in what the duo called a bid to counter regional conversion efforts by Islamists.

($1=159.7000 Sri Lankan rupees)

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Categories: anti-Muslim hatred, anti-Muslim violence, Buddhism, Buddhist monk, hate crime, inciting violence, News, Sri Lanka

Muslim survivors of Indian massacre shaken by citizenship test

July 31, 2018 Article

NELLIE, India (Reuters) – Thirty-six years after losing his parents, sister and a four-year-old daughter in one of India’s worst sectarian massacres, Abdul Suban says he is still trying to prove he’s a citizen of the Hindu-majority nation.

Suban is one of hundreds of thousands of Bengali-speaking Muslims categorised as “doubtful voters”, who will not find their names in a National Register of Citizens (NRC) the northeastern border state of Assam will release on Monday.

“If the government has decided to brand us foreigners what can we do?” said the 60-year-old. “NRC is trying to finish us off. Our people have died here, but we will not leave this place.”

Suban was seated with his wife at their house a few hundred metres from a vast paddy field where, in 1983, scores of people were chased down and killed by machete-armed mobs intent on hounding out Muslim immigrants. He survived by running as hard as he could and hiding behind a bush for days.

Work on the citizens’ register has accelerated under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

With an eye on the 2019 national election, the BJP’s Hindu-first campaign has become more strident, critics say, playing to its core base with divisive programmes such as the citizenship test in Assam, already a tinderbox of ethnic and religious tensions.

Elsewhere in the country’s northern heartland, lynchings of Muslim cattle traders have risen under Modi in the country where many Hindus consider cows sacred, further deepening social divides.

The BJP has denied the lynchings have any connection with it being in power. Modi has at least twice publicly spoken out against cow vigilantes.

MASS GRAVE

Several other survivors of the “Nellie Massacre”, which killed around 2,000 people from more than a dozen villages, gave accounts of burying bodies in a mass grave now partly under water.

They said they hoped the release of the NCR list on Monday would not spark further violence. Security has been tightened across Assam.

The citizenship test is the culmination of years of often violent agitations by Assamese demanding the removal of outsiders they accuse of taking jobs and cornering resources in the state of 33 million, known for its tea estates and oil fields.

“The NRC is extremely important to make the Assamese people feel protected,” said Santanu Bharali, the legal adviser to the BJP chief minister of Assam.

“It’s a moral victory. The ethnic Assamese always maintained the presence of foreigners and this will prove that.”

But the opposition Congress party and rights activists say the government is misusing the register to target even legal Indian Muslim citizens who have traditionally voted for non-BJP parties. The BJP and NRC authorities have repeatedly denied the allegations.

“COMMUNAL POLITICS”

To be recognised as Indian citizens, all residents of Assam had to produce documents proving that they or their families lived in the country before March 24, 1971.

Suban said both he and his father were born in Assam, and showed Reuters a soiled yellow document that showed his father’s name in the list of voters in Assam for 1965, before the cut-off date. The local border police declined to discuss individual cases, but said not all documents furnished by suspected illegal immigrants were valid.

Hundreds of thousands of people fled to India from Bangladesh during its New Delhi-backed war of independence from Pakistan in the early 1970s. Most of them settled in Assam, which has a near-270 km (165-mile) border with Bangladesh.

The migrants included many Hindus, but Modi has issued orders stating that no Hindu or members of other minorities from Pakistan or Bangladesh would be considered an illegal immigrant even if they entered the country without valid documents before 2014.

“BJP’s only aim is to do communal politics, including through the NRC,” Congress lawmaker Ripun Bora said.

The BJP said the NRC was monitored by the country’s top court and there was no question of discriminating on the basis of religion.

Following an outcry from rights groups over possible harassment of Muslims in Assam, Interior Minister Rajnath Singh said that the NRC exercise was being carried out in an impartial and transparent manner.

Singh also reiterated that people finding their names missing from the list could raise objections and appeals, and said that they would not be thrown into detention centres.

Rivals say that as Modi’s government faces disillusionment for failing to deliver on jobs and prosperity, it will step up religious mobilisation across the country.

FEAR IN THE COUNTRYSIDE

The first draft of the NRC, released on Dec. 31, confirmed the citizenship of 19 million people, leading to jubilation for some and heartbreak among others.

The NRC office, however, told the Supreme Court this month that 150,000 people from the first list, a third of them married women, would be dropped from the next one, mainly because they provided false information or gave inadmissible documents.

Political activists in Assam say most of those are Bengali-speaking Muslims. NRC chief Prateek Hajela, whose office has processed 66 million documents and spent nearly $180 million in the whole NRC process, declined comment on the religion of people who would be removed from the register.

“We are doing an exercise that is unprecedented and if there are course corrections which are required to be done, we will need to do that,” said Hajela, who is guarded round-the-clock by a team of police.

Hajela said that most of Assam’s 126,000 so-called doubtful voters, and an estimated 150,000 of their descendants, would be excluded from the NRC in accordance with a court order.

One of them is Nellie farmer Suban’s son Nabi Hussain, 28, who said he has voted in two Indian elections but now fears arrests.

“We are scared,” said Hussain, his wife looking on from their mud-coated bamboo house, their nine-month-old daughter in her arms. “Terrible things happened to our family once, we don’t want a repeat.”

By Krishna N. Das

(Reporting by Krishna N. Das; Additional reporting by Zarir Hussain; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Alex Richardson)

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Categories: Citizenship, citizenship test, India, massacre, Muslim survivors, News

Christians want marriages recognised in Morocco

June 11, 2018 Article

Christian convert Loubna and her husband Kamal marry in a small ceremony in a meeting room of a human rights group in the Moroccan capital, ignoring threats from people in their conservative hometown in the north of the Muslim kingdom.

The couple are part of a tiny minority who have converted to Christianity and are demanding legal recognition of their marriage. Islam is the religion of state in predominantly Sunni Muslim Morocco where only Muslim and Jewish marriages are deemed legal.

“From now on I have to wear niqab (face veil) if I want to walk in the streets of my hometown,” Loubna said after the ceremony.

The centuries-old tiny Jewish community is recognised in the constitution as part of the Moroccan identity. The roughly 3,000 Jews have their courts governing personal status matters as well as inheritance and burial.

“We want to be treated on an equal footing with Moroccan Jews,” said Chouaib El Fatihi, coordinator of the Christian committee at the Moroccan association for religious rights and freedoms.

“We want to be recognised as Moroccan Christian citizens and to enjoy the right to legal marriages and burial ceremonies according to our religion,” he said.

By law, only foreign Christians are allowed to collectively worship in churches, many set up during the French colonial era, and proselytism is punishable by up to three years in prison.

FAITH

Adam Rabati and his wife Farah Tarneem, a Christian couple, refuse to get married according to the Moroccan family code based on sharia.

In a Rabat suburb, the couple live in an apartment-turned-church receiving converts.

“We are running the risk of being accused of fornication punishable under the penal code,” said Adam, who does not have a legal marriage certificate.

Farah, who embraced Christianity two years ago, said obtaining the certificate includes traditions that contradict her faith.

“We suffer from discrimination by authorities which do not recognise us as Moroccan Christians coupled with social pressure and harassment because of our choice of faith,” she said.

The native Christian community is estimated by local leaders at more than 50,000 but no official statistics exist.

In the wake of 2011 “Arab Spring” protests, Morocco adopted a new constitution guaranteeing freedom of expression and belief. The country has also marketed itself as an oasis of religious tolerance, offering training to preachers from Africa and Europe on moderate Islam to counter extremism.

“Authorities should not continue their double speak on religious rights,” said Mohamed Nouhi, head of Moroccan rights organisation IMDH.

The U.S. State Department’s annual International Religious Freedom Report criticises Morocco for restrictions on native Christians, Shi’ite Muslims and members of the Bahai faith.

Responding to a Reuters request for comment at a regular news briefing, government spokesperson Mustapha El Khalfi said Morocco is a country of religious tolerance and freedoms.

“The U.S. State Department report contains erroneous allegations and judgments that are not based on scientific data,” he said.

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