Islamophobia
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Anti-Semitic incidents have been rising in the U.S. in the past few years, and many Jews and others fault the Trump administration for only belatedly calling out anti-Semitism, and for failing to explicitly denounce those who have heralded his election as a victory for white people.
And Jewish and Muslim groups have banded together in unprecedented ways, in recent months, as mosques and Jewish institutions have been targeted.
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Judge Watson’s ruling came from a lawsuit filed by Hawaii, according to the Guardian. In the case, the state of Hawaii claimed that the ban hurt Hawaii’s tourism industry and negatively affected businesses and universities’ ability to recruit talented individuals from the banned countries. They continued to point out that the ban hurts families bringing up the example of Ismail Elshikh — an imam of the Muslim Association of Hawaii — whose Syrian mother-in-law’s visa is still on hold and might not denied with the new restrictions of the ban.
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“Language matters. The use of the term ‘honour’ to describe a violent criminal act … can be explained only as a means of self-justification for the perpetrator. It diminishes the victim and provides a convenient excuse for what in our society we should accurately and simply call murder, rape, abuse, or enslavement,” Ghani said when introducing her crime-against-women bill Jan. 31.
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“It is a thinly-veiled reference to stereotypes about Islam and Muslims,” said Daniel Mach, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. “This reference to honor killings is part of a broader effort to smear an entire faith by the extreme acts of a few and its inclusion in this order bolsters the argument that this is simply another attempt at a Muslim ban.”
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The Rev. Leah Daughtry stood in front of fellow black Christian leaders and told them they will need to work harder for social justice.
“If you’ve been feeding them, now clothe them,” said the Pentecostal pastor and 2016 CEO of the Democratic National Convention Committee at a conference last week. “If you’ve been clothing them, now console them. If you’ve been at a march, now lead the march. If you’ve been at a rally, now organize the rally.”
Seeing the parallels between Micah’s time of unease and ours, it would behoove us to lean in for a listen when Micah writes, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. What does God require of you? That you act justly and love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
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Popular films like American Sniper reduce places like Iraq to dusty war zones, devoid of any culture or history. Fears and anxiety manifest themselves in Islamophobic actions such as burning mosques or even attacking people physically.
At the heart of such fear is ignorance. A December 2015 poll found that a majority of Americans (52 percent) do not understand Islam. In this same poll, 36 percent also said that they wanted to know more about the religion. Interestingly, those under 30 years were 46 percent more likely to have a favorable view of Islam.
Imagine receiving this message on your voicemail: “Dear Mr. Gonzalez, we regret to inform you that your heart surgery has been canceled. The medical professionals scheduled to perform it, Doctors Sarna and Latif, have discovered that they have serious disagreements about Middle East politics. Consequently, they are refusing to work together. We will do our best to find you other doctors, before your condition becomes fatal.”
Seem far-fetched? In my mind, it is the logical outcome of the manner in which many Jewish and Muslim groups have chosen to engage each other in recent years. Or, rather, not engage.
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The American Civil Liberties Union collected more than $11 million and 150,000 new members. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Twitter account gained 9,000 followers. And the Anti-Defamation League, which fights anti-Semitism and other bigotries, saw donations increase fiftyfold.
In the days since Donald Trump won the presidency, these spikes, in support for groups that defend religious and other minorities, speak to a fear that the president-elect will trample on their rights — or at least empower those who would.
We know you are fearful. We know you are still feeling the loss — the loss of a hoped for America that valued diversity, or perhaps the loss of your faith community whose white majority voted for an embodiment of our worst natures.
But we also know that you are ready to resist. You are ready to join the millions who will repeat daily that this ugly rhetoric and dangerous policy proposals cannot become normalized. Racism should not continue as normal, misogyny can’t remain normal, and threatening the well being of those God calls us to welcome cannot become normal.
And so we make this commitment to you: We at Sojourners are all in for whatever is required over the next four years and beyond, as a publication, as a resource, as a community, as a network of activists. Here’s how we get started.
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The day after President-elect Donald Trump appointed a man accused of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as his chief strategist, two of the nation’s largest Jewish and Muslim advocacy groups formed an unprecedented partnership to fight bigotry.
The American Jewish Committee and the Islamic Society of North America, on Nov. 14, launched the new national group: The Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council. Though Jewish and Muslim groups have cooperated before, the size and influence of these two particular groups — and the prominence of the people who have joined the council — marks a milestone in Jewish-Muslim relations.
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Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election has few parallels in the history of contemporary politics in the Western world.
But the closest one is familiar to me: Silvio Berlusconi, the media tycoon who was elected prime minister of Italy — my homeland — for the first time on March 27, 1994 and who served four stints as prime minister until 2011.
Image via Moonlight Facebook.
There are some works of art that become landmarks in a person’s life. The person knows who they were before they encountered the art, but not who they are afterward, and among the pieces of themselves that have scattered to the floor they find new elements, new additions to their identity. Moonlight is undoubtedly one of my landmarks. It is my Washington Monument, my Statue of Liberty. It is all of that and more.
Mohammad Rahami surrounded by media outside his home in Elizabeth, N.J. Image via RNS.
Federal law enforcement officials, under fire by civil rights groups, have dropped an effort to create counseling teams to intervene with young people who show signs of drifting toward radical Islamic ideology and terrorism.
The FBI-led program would have tapped teams of mental health workers, clergy and counselors — called “shared responsibility committees” — to meet with troubled individuals, review behaviors, and get them help or get law enforcement involved where needed.
But the program, part of a wide-reaching federal effort known as “countering violent extremism,” was criticized by civil rights groups that claimed it would erode trust in community leaders serving on those teams and raise concerns about privacy and liability.
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During the second U.S. presidential debate on Oct. 9, Donald Trump said, when asked about Islamophobia, that Muslims in the U.S. need to “report when they see something going on.”
“In San Bernardino, many people saw the bombs all over the apartment of the two people that killed 14 and wounded many, many people. Muslims have to report the problems when they see them.”
In response Muslims began to tweet using the hashtag #MuslimsReportStuff:
Footage before Terence Crutcher was shot and killed by police.
The protests that break out on the streets in the aftermaths of killings are not just about the latest individual case, but the lack of trust in a system of policing and criminal justice that justice needs to be put back into. The protests are about accountability in an age where police who use excessive force and act outside the law that they pledge to protect are almost never held accountable.
image via tumblr / MAERIL
A young artist by the name of Maeril created a fantastic comic for anyone witnessing islamophobic harassment in public. It was published on her Tumblr and later on Facebook through her work with The Middle Eastern Feminist.
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Muslim women around the country — lawyers, entrepreneurs, teachers, activists, artists, mothers and students — have joined on social media to address Trump’s comments, as well as the popular notion that Islam oppresses women.
Franklin Graham. Image via Paul Sherar / RNS
Pope Francis is once again making headlines for comments declaring, as he has before, that Islam is not “terroristic” and that all religions, including Catholicism, have “fundamentalist” splinter groups that can commit violence.
The pontiff made his comments during a flight back to Rome on July 31 from Poland, where he was presiding over the church’s triennial World Youth Day festival.
Cardinal Raymond Burke. Image via Alessandro Bianchi / RNS
Amid heightened tensions over ISIS-fueled terror attacks and anti-Muslim rhetoric, a prominent U.S. cardinal says Islam “wants to govern the world” and Americans must decide if they are going to reassert “the Christian origin of our own nation” in order to avoid that fate.
Cardinal Raymond Burke, a Rome-based prelate known as an outspoken conservative and critic of Pope Francis’ reformist approach, said in an interview on July 20 that Islam is “fundamentally a form of government.”