Author Archives: Eddie Truman

Taxi knife attacker jailed

Posted on by Eddie Truman

A man who slashed a Muslim taxi driver across the neck after calling him a terrorist has been jailed for four years. Steven Jack was found guilty at the High Court in Glasgow of permanently disfiguring Mohammed Yusuf in a racially aggravated attack.

Jack and two companions were travelling in Mr Yusuf’s private hire taxi in Glasgow city centre in November 2001. During the journey 27-year-old Jack called Mr Yusuf a Taleban terrorist and said “you want to bomb our country”.

Mr Yusuf said he asked the passengers to leave the car. But Jack was carrying a knife and he slashed the driver across the neck, inflicting a wound which needed 11 stitches.

Mr Yusuf said that he was a practising Muslim and he became a target because of his beard and Afghan hat.

BBC News, 17 February 2003

US Muslims sue over mass arrests

Posted on by Eddie Truman

US Muslim groups have launched a class action lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft and federal immigration officials over the detention of hundreds of Muslim men.

Four groups said they had filed the suit to protest against last week’s controversial round-up of men from Arab and Muslim nations without permanent residency status in the Los Angeles area.

BBC News, 24 December 2002

Men charged after racist attack

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Two men have been charged with racially aggravated assault and violent disorder following an attack on a Muslim man outside a mosque in west Wales.

The 30-year-old victim was punched, spat at and hit by a bottle in the attack at the Station Road Mosque in Llanelli on Sunday evening.

The two men charged appeared at Llanelli magistrates court on Thursday and were released on bail.

Eleven other people arrested and questioned by Dyfed-Powys Police in connection with the incident were released on bail pending further inquiries.

Detectives said men aged between 20 and 25 had hurled racist abuse as worshippers arrived for a gathering on Sunday evening.

A Muslim cleric, 60, who was inside the building, later died from a heart attack.

The worshippers and a group of clerics were reportedly abused as they arrived for the Islamic “family celebration” meeting inside the mosque.

One reportedly tried to pull a headscarf from a senior cleric outside the building on Station Road at around 1730 BST.

BBC News, 6 June 2002

Call this monster by its name

Posted on by Eddie Truman

The history of contemporary European Islamophobia starts with the fall of the iron curtain and the appearance of a new challenger to western capitalist hegemony. In a still self-consciously Christian Europe, this ideological competition has been grafted on to the legacies of the Crusades and Ottoman-Christian rivalries, and the perceived demographic and cultural threat posed by a growing Muslim population.

Intoxicated by this poisonous brew, Austrians swept Jörg Haider’s Freedom party into power in 1999. The party had campaigned on an anti-Muslim platform, drafting a political catch-all for its hate politics, Uberfremdung (“foreigner-swamping”) into the electoral vocabulary. But despite symbolic sanctions, no EU state took concrete steps to combat Islamophobia.

Faisal Bodi in the Guardian, 14 May 2002

Islamophobia ‘explosion’ in UK

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Muslim groups have agreed with a report by the EU race watchdog that anti-Islamic feeling has “detonated” in the UK since 11 September.

The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) said there had been a big rise in attacks – including physical assaults – on Muslims in Britain since the US terror attacks.

It monitored a period from 11 September until the end of December last year, and found numerous reports of attacks on Muslim people and institutions such as mosques.

They included women and children being harassed in the street, and one taxi-driver who was paralysed from the neck down in an attack in which 11 September was mentioned.

Muslim groups said anti-Islamic feeling was still running high in the UK even now – more than eight months after the attacks thought to have been masterminded by Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden.

BBC News, 24 May 2002 report

Scottish Muslims describe fears

Posted on by Eddie Truman

The leaders of Scotland’s Muslim community have been meeting to assess the extent of racist threats and attacks suffered since terrorists struck at the heart of the US.

Around the world many followers of Islam have reported heightened hostility since hijacked airliners were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The American authorities have named Osama Bin Laden, who is a Muslim, as their prime suspect and that has triggered a backlash against followers of Islamic religions.

World leaders, including the US President George W Bush, have condemned violence against Muslims and have appealed for calm.

However, Muslim leaders met in Glasgow on Wednesday evening to discuss the situation in Scotland where some abuse has been reported.

They also drew up an action plan to help change the attitudes of those who hold them responsible for the terrorism.

BBC News, 19 September 2001

Muslims targets in terror backlash

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Graffiti on a wall near a mosque in South Shields, northeast England, confirms a chilling reaction to last week’s terrorist atrocities in New York and Washington. “Avenge U.S.A.” is the scrawled message in red paint. “Kill a Muslim now.”

Terrorism in the United States has prompted an upsurge in anti-Muslim attacks all over Europe. Mosques and Muslims have been targeted in The Netherlands, Britain, Denmark and Poland in apparent retaliation for last week’s mass murders by suicide teams.

CNN, 19 September 2001

Old hatred, new style

Posted on by Eddie Truman

“English exams are a red herring. But more worryingly, Cryer’s comments are an illustration of how nakedly some liberals are prepared to exploit mainstream anti-Islamic sentiments, especially at a time when they are converging with those of the far right as it tries to convince the country that it does indeed have a ‘Muslim problem’.

“Not that the far right needs any encouragement. Its rediscovered swagger partly owes itself to a new strategy that is soft on race and hard on Islam. If you missed hearing BNP leader Nick Griffin saying so on BBC’s Newsnight, take a moment to visit the National Front website.

“It was only a matter of time before the far right tapped into the western world’s latent, if largely unfounded, fear of Islam. Its problem with Islam stretches back at least 1,000 years to the time of Pope Urban’s first crusade, finding expression in art, literature, popular culture and, most perniciously today, in the mass media.”

Faisal Bodi in the Guardian, 27 July 2001

In defence of Islamophobia: religion and the state

Posted on by Eddie Truman

In defence of Islamophobia: religion and the state

By Polly Toynbee

The Independent, 23 October 1997

I am an Islamophobe. I judge Islam not by its words – the teachings of the Koran as interpreted by those Thought-for-the-Day moderate Islamic theologians. I judge Islam by the religion’s deeds in the societies where it dominates. Does that make me a racist?

For I am also a Christophobe. If Christianity were not such a spent force in this country, if it were powerful and dominant as it once was, it would still be every bit as damaging as Islam is in those theocratic states in its thrall. Christianity remains a lethal weapon in Northern Ireland.

If I lived in Israel, I’d feel the same way about Judaism. Everywhere in the world where religion dominates over the state, that is a bad place to live. Religiophobia is highly rational.

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