Fox News incited Islamophobic fears in its reporting on a weekly swim class at a YMCA facility that ensures the privacy of Muslim girls learning to swim, framing it as evidence that “Sharia law is now changing everything,” Michelle Leung reports.
Category Archives: Right wing
Italian politician fined for staging anti-burqa protest
A well-known Italian right-wing politician was fined Monday for staging a protest against the wearing of burqas and other Islamic veils for women.
Daniela Santanchè, a leading member of the conservative Forza Italia party of former premier Silvio Berlusconi, organized the action in Milan four years ago, outside a building where Muslims were holding end-of-Ramadan prayers.
Campaign launched against ‘witch-hunt’ of Muslim students by ‘Student Rights’ group
Students have launched a campaign against the pressure group ‘Student Rights’, which appears to have little or no connection to actual students – but does appear to be connected to a right wing think tank.
In the wake of the severe rise in anti-Muslim bigotry this year and with the second annual Islamophobia Awareness Month falling this November, the new counter-campaign, ‘Real Student Rights’, aims to challenge the dog whistle politics of Student Rights, which serves only to fuel the ever-more entrenched Islamophobia in Britain today.
Hilary Aked reports.
Islamophobia in Russia
Nationalist demonstration in Moscow last month
The election in August 2013 of Sergei Sobyanin, an ultranationalist, as mayor of Moscow has given racism in Russia a prominent official face. Then last week, the mayor stunned the world by announcing that Moscow was banning the construction of new mosques. The ban was one of the latest and clearest signs of the growing anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments in Russia.
The four existing mosques in Moscow are overcrowded, but Mayor Sobyanin declared that no new mosques would be built because “they are used by migrant workers,” according to the Christian Science Monitor. A new mosque is currently under construction, but there won’t be any more, the mayor said. He told the Russian daily newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, “No new building permits will be issued. I think that’s enough mosques for Moscow.”
There are an estimated 2 million Muslim residents in the city, but none of Moscow’s four existing mosques can hold more than 10,000 people. Worshippers frequently have to use the streets or wait for hours to enter the existing mosques, especially on Fridays and religious occasions.
Russian Muslim activists say that Russian authorities have long tried to prevent construction of new mosques, but this is the first clear ban in recent memory.
Although most pronounced in Moscow, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant racism is not confined to the capital city. According to the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, surveys show that xenophobia and other racist expressions are prevalent among 50 percent of Russians. Amnesty International has reported that racism in Russia was “out of control” and estimated the number of Russian neo-Nazis in the tens of thousands.
Anti-Islam activist Pam Geller says Pope Francis ‘sanctions savagery’
Anti-Islam activist and blogger Pamela Geller lashed out at Pope Francis on Tuesday, claiming he condoned violence against Christians.
“At a time when Christianity worldwide is under siege by Islamic jihadists, the leader of the Catholic Church claims that the quran teaches non-violence. As Christians across the Muslim world live in abject terror and fear kidnapping, rape and slaughter to the bloodcurdling cries of ‘Allahu akbar,’ the pope gives papal sanction to the savage,” she wrote at her blog.
Study: Muslim job candidates may face discrimination in Republican states
A new study by Carnegie Mellon University found that in the most Republican states in the country, employers may be less likely to interview job candidates whose social networking profiles indicate that the applicants are Muslim.
As part of a social experiment, the researchers created four fictitious job candidates – each with a unique name that most likely points to someone who is male, U.S. born and Caucasian. The candidates had identical resumes. The researchers also created social network profiles for each of the candidates that revealed either his sexual orientation or whether he was a Muslim or Christian. All other information, including the profile photograph used for each candidate, was the same. The resumes, which did not mention the candidates’ online profile, were then sent out to more than 4,000 employers nationwide with job openings.
Q Society’s Islam poll fraud
Q Society president Debbie Robinson with Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer
The Q Society is a small but vicious organisation, aligned with Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s Stop Islamization of Nations, that has dedicated itself to convincing Australia’s non-Muslim population that Islam represents a threat to their country.
The group’s latest stunt has been to commission an opinion poll which is designed to show that a majority of Australians hold a negative view of Islam and those who practise it. The Q Society then issued a press release giving a misleading summary of the poll results that has been uncritically repeated by some mainstream media outlets. ABC News has reported: “The poll included questions asking participants’ opinion about statements such as: ‘Australia is becoming a better place as a result of Islam’ to which 70 per cent responded ‘no’.”
An examination of the full results of the poll, which can found on the Q Society website, shows what a fraudulent exercise this is.
Robert Spencer backs ban on Islam
Reports that the government of Angola has “banned Islam” have been welcomed by Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch.
Ex-UKIP leader Lord Pearson warns of threat from Islam
UK Muslim communities are home to “thousands of potential home-grown terrorists”, former UK Independence Party leader Lord Pearson has warned.
Such people “hate us with frightening religious fervour”, he said during a parliamentary debate on Islam. Sharia law was “running de facto in our land” and calls for violence were not simply coming from a “few extremists”.
But faith minister Baroness Warsi said Lord Pearson was either “ignorant” or attempting to “distort” views of Islam.
Florida school board rejects Islamophobic hysteria over history textbook
Opponents of the call for a ban on the ‘World History’ textbook demonstrate at the school board meeting
A world history textbook that sparked a heated controversy over the way it covers Islam will remain in Volusia County high schools, the School Board decided Monday after hearing four hours of public comments about its merits and shortcomings.
“I’m still confident with this book and its presentation to our students,” School Board Chairwoman Diane Smith said after hearing from nearly 80 speakers with widely differing opinions.
The board didn’t take a formal vote, but only member Linda Costello pushed for a more thorough review. Candace Lankford, Stan Schmidt and Ida Wright sided with Smith to keep the textbook in Volusia classrooms.
“It’s kind of what I would have expected,” said Walter Hanford, a book opponent who stuck around long enough to hear the board discussion. Hanford told the board earlier in the meeting the “World History” textbook published by Prentice Hall “whitewashes” the history of Islam and its Muslim followers, including involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas.