Shabna Begum says racist riots will return if Islamophobia continues to be ‘an acceptable currency’ in politics
Islamophobia has become “brutally divisive” in the UK and failure to challenge its root causes will lead to more racist riots, the head of the UK’s leading race equality thinktank has said.
Shabna Begum, who became the chief executive of the Runnymede Trust earlier this year, said the country was entering a new phase in how it talks about Muslims.
Continue reading...Christian and Muslim groups say medics who refuse to help patients die not protected in England and Wales bill
A significant proportion of NHS medical staff are likely to exercise a conscience clause if assisted dying is legalised by parliament.
Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s private member’s bill stipulates that no doctor would be under any obligation to participate in assisted dying.
Continue reading...The move has been described as ‘chilling’ by activists and rights groups as arrests mount over dress code breaches
The Iranian state has said that it plans to open a treatment clinic for women who defy the mandatory hijab laws that require women to cover their heads in public.
The opening of a “hijab removal treatment clinic” was announced by Mehri Talebi Darestani, the head of the Women and Family Department of the Tehran Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. She said the clinic will offer “scientific and psychological treatment for hijab removal”.
Continue reading...Danish politician Rasmus Paludan sentenced to four months for incitement against ethnic group
A far-right Danish-Swedish politician has been sentenced to prison on charges of incitement against an ethnic group for burning copies of the Qur’an and making offensive statements about Muslims.
Rasmus Paludan was the first person to go on trial in Sweden – and is now the first to be sentenced – for burning the Qur’an during an organised demonstration.
Continue reading...Eight charged in connection with murder of Samuel Paty in Paris suburbs in 2020
It was a killing that started with a lie. In October 2020, an Islamist terrorist tracked down and decapitated professor Samuel Paty as he left school on the last day before half-term holidays.
In the days preceding his murder, Paty, 47, who taught geography and history, had been the subject of an intense campaign of online harassment sparked when a 13-year-old student claimed he had discriminated against his Muslim pupils during a class on moral and civic education.
Continue reading...‘Dehumanising rhetoric’ blamed as almost half of respondents say they recently suffered discrimination
Muslims across Europe are grappling with a “worrying surge” of racism that is being fuelled in part by “dehumanising anti-Muslim rhetoric”, the EU’s leading rights agency has said, as it published a survey in which nearly half of the Muslim respondents said they had recently experienced discrimination.
Published on Thursday by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the survey of 9,600 Muslims across 13 member states found that racism and discrimination threads through most aspects of their lives.
Continue reading...Some question the appointment of an official who has worked on controversial countering violent extremism programs
The Albanese government has announced British Australian public servant Aftab Malik as the special envoy to combat Islamophobia in Australia after months of delays.
But it has also sparked criticism, with some people within the Muslim community calling into question the thinking behind the appointment.
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Continue reading...Zara Mohammed calls for review of Downing Street’s non-engagement policy with Muslim Council of Britain
The head of the Muslim Council of Britain has called for an explanation and a review of the government’s policy of non-engagement with the body after her appeals for contact during the summer riots were ignored.
Zara Mohammed, who was elected more than three years ago as the MCB’s youngest and first female secretary general, said there had been a “quite shocking” lack of contact with the new government at a time when mobs were targeting Muslims and mosques.
Continue reading...Report reveals how US Christians, Catholic schools and Islamists fight sex education, LGBTQ+ and equal rights
Extreme religious groups and political parties are targeting schools around the world as part of a coordinated and well-funded attack on gender equality, according to a new report.
Well-known conservative organisations aim to restrict girls’ access to education, change what is on the curriculum, and influence educational laws and policies, according to Whose Hands on our Education, a report by the Overseas Development Institute.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Documents obtained by Guardian Australia reveal ‘all communications’ will be solely attributed to special envoy
The Australian government is seeking to create some distance from its new special envoys on antisemitism and Islamophobia, suggesting they do not characterise their comments as official government policy.
Documents obtained by Guardian Australia reveal the instructions the government has given its new special envoy to combat antisemitism, Jillian Segal, including the need to highlight “diverse Jewish Australian identities”.
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Continue reading...Wesam Charkawi says Albanese’s party has ‘created this movement through their decisions’ as pro-Palestine communities feel Labor has failed them
A new Muslim political movement backing independent candidates says Labor will have itself to blame if Peter Dutton wins the next election, and that people should not assume the candidates they support will preference Labor.
Sheikh Wesam Charkawi, one of the conveners behind the Muslim Vote movement, said the group would be aiming to support “at least five candidates” in New South Wales and Victoria.
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Continue reading...Critics call Tory leadership candidate’s comments around far-right protests ‘nasty divisive rhetoric’
Robert Jenrick has been criticised by a rival for the Conservative leadership and Muslim parliamentarians for saying police should “immediately arrest” any protesters shouting “Allahu Akbar”, the Arabic phrase that means God is great.
The former immigration minister was speaking on Sky News about the accusations that police have been treating far-right marches and violence more harshly than other protests.
Continue reading...A group of Muslim men put themselves in danger to calm unrest in Harehills over children being taken into care
Nadsy Qurban bent his neck to show how the crown of his head was covered in a number of burns, each the size of coins. “The smell was like I’m burning some goat or something, like I’m cooking some goat. That’s how bad it was,” he said.
Needless to say, it hurt. But a week on, the burns he gained while putting out fires during unrest in the Harehills area of Leeds are starting to heal.
Continue reading...Sounkamba Sylla reportedly reaches compromise after France’s strict laws on secularism threatened to bar her
A French sprinter is expected to swap her headscarf for a cap in order to participate in the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics, in a compromise reportedly struck after the country’s strict laws on secularism threatened to bar her from the event.
Earlier this week Sounkamba Sylla, a Muslim member of France’s 400m women’s and mixed relay teams, said she would not be able to take part in Friday’s ceremony because she wears a hijab.
Continue reading...Itamar Ben-Gvir, who seeks to disrupt ceasefire talks, makes video at contested holy site in Jerusalem
Israel’s extremist national security minister has visited the holiest Muslim site in Jerusalem, recording a video saying he went to pray, in a provocative move as he seeks to disrupt ceasefire talks.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist and champion of the settler movement, recorded footage at al-Aqsa mosque compound, also known as the Temple Mount, a site holy to Muslims and Jews.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Muslim voters are ‘grossly underrepresented at all levels of government’, Ghaith Krayem says
One of the new organisations seeking to mobilise Australian Muslims at the next federal election has hit back at “almost farcical” attempts to discredit the movement, insisting the Labor government is “clearly afraid”.
Ghaith Krayem, a spokesperson for Muslim Votes Matter, said despite criticism from major party politicians and media, the movement was an “inclusive initiative that hopes to uplift representation for minority groups across the country”.
Continue reading...Deputy PM Angela Rayner says she does not recognise Donald Trump running mate’s ‘characterisation’ of Britain
Senior Labour figures have rejected comments by Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, that the UK could become the first “truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon” under the party.
They were reacting to comments that were made by Vance, a junior senator for the state of Ohio who has been announced as Trump’s running mate, at a conference for US conservatives.
Continue reading...Doctors deplore decision and point to country’s high neonatal mortality rate as bank, which opened in June, forced to close without taking a single deposit
When he heard a hospital in Karachi was setting up a milk bank for babies, the news was a “huge relief” to Mohammad Munawwar.
With his wife very sick and their premature son Ayan in hospital, the 52-year-old father had had to collect milk five or six times a day from different female relatives who were breastfeeding their own babies.
Continue reading...Shockat Adam says he is not a single-issue MP, but will fight on NHS and housing as well as Gaza
The man who pulled off a shock victory at the general election by ousting shadow cabinet member Jonathan Ashworth has criticised claims that the wave of strong showings by independent Muslim candidates represents the rise of “sectarian” voting.
Shockat Adam, an optometrist, caused a huge upset by beating Ashworth, the shadow paymaster general and a familiar face in Labour’s election campaign, to become the new MP for Leicester South.
Continue reading...Scores of highly qualified French citizens from Muslim backgrounds have left the country in recent years
Even as she climbed up the corporate ladder in France, Ophélie Rizki’s after-work routine remained unchanged. Each evening as she got into her car to drive home, she would make a beeline for her headscarf, feeling herself slowly becoming whole again as she covered her hair.
She had never been explicitly told that she couldn’t wear her hijab at work, nor had she asked. But as politicians in France continued to spar over headscarves, two decades after parliament voted to ban them in school, she worried about the impact that choosing to keep her hair covered would have on her career. “You don’t ask the question, you know it’s not something you can do,” she said.
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