Police say motive for killing of Hendricks, who ran a mosque for LGBTQ+ Muslims near Cape Town, is unknown
Muhsin Hendricks, considered the world’s “first openly gay imam”, has been shot dead near the southern city of Gqeberha, South African police have said.
The imam, who ran a mosque intended as a safe haven for gay and other marginalised Muslims, was in a car with another person on Saturday when a vehicle stopped in front of them and blocked their exit, police said.
Continue reading...Five arrested after Salwan Momika reportedly killed during TikTok live stream, hours before trial verdict due
Sweden’s prime minister has said a foreign power may have been involved in the fatal shooting of an anti-Islam campaigner just hours before a trial verdict over his burning of the Qur’an was due.
Police arrested five people over the killing of Salwan Momika, 38, who was shot late on Wednesday in a house in the town of Södertälje, near Stockholm. Authorities did not say whether the shooter was among those detained.
Continue reading...Prime minister told Commons any new inquiry into child abuse would delay progress however spokesperson says he has not ruled one out
Reform UK has also tabled a reasoned amendment to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill motion tonight. It says:
That this house declines to give a second reading to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill because the secretary of state for the Home Department has not launched a UK-wide public inquiry into grooming gangs and has not committed to updating Members of this House every quarter on the progress of the inquiry.
The Conservatives are using the victims of this scandal as a political football.
The Conservatives alongside Reform, goaded along by Elon Musk will be voting for a motion which will not secure a national inquiry for victims of child sexual abuse, but instead it would kill these crucial child protection measures completely.
Continue reading...ASA acts on poster campaign by Wahed, urging people to join a ‘money revolution’, after receiving 75 complaints
The UK’s advertising watchdog has banned a campaign by an online investment company predominantly targeting Muslims that featured images of euros and US dollars and the words “The United States of America” in flames alongside a call to “join the money revolution”.
Wahed Invest Ltd, an online investment platform, ran six posters on various Transport for London (TfL) services, including the London Underground and on buses, last September and October.
Continue reading...Gunmen stormed satirical paper’s Paris offices, killing 11 people, over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad
Ten years on from the Islamist terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, France will ask: “Are we all still Charlie?”
The #JeSuisCharlie hashtag spread around the world in January 2015 after brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi stormed the paper’s offices killing 11 people in retaliation for it printing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
Continue reading...Hegseth’s conspiracy theory- and falsehood-laden book American Crusade depicts Islam as historic enemy of west
Donald Trump’s defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth, who has the crusader motto “deus vult” tattooed on his arm, has put bigoted anti-Muslim rhetoric at the center of several of his published books, according to a Guardian review of the materials.
Hegseth, especially in 2020’s American Crusade, depicts Islam as a natural, historic enemy of the west; presents distorted versions of Muslim doctrine in “great replacement”-style racist conspiracy theories; treats leftists and Muslims as bound together in their efforts to subvert the US; and idolises medieval crusaders.
Continue reading...Michael Anton, national security official in first Trump term, reportedly removed name from contention over feud
A frontrunner to be deputy national security adviser in Donald Trump’s administration reportedly withdrew from the running after learning that he would have to work with Sebastian Gorka, the president-elect’s choice as counter-terrorism adviser.
Michael Anton, a conservative speech writer and national security official in Trump’s first presidency, removed his name from contention over Gorka’s appointment against a backdrop of acrimonious past relations between the pair, the Washington Post reported.
Continue reading...About 300 families relocate after fresh violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims kills 32 people
About 300 families have fled sectarian violence in north-west Pakistan as fresh clashes killed 32 people.
Sporadic fighting between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan has killed about 150 over the past months.
Continue reading...Violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa follows killing of dozens of people in clashes between Sunnis and minority Shias
At least 42 people have been killed and 20 wounded after gunmen opened fire on vehicles carrying Shia Muslims in Pakistan’s restive north-west, in one of the region’s deadliest such attacks in recent years, police said.
The attack happened in Kurram, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where sectarian clashes between majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shias have killed dozens of people in recent months.
Continue reading...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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