Category Archives: Islamophobia

Reduced to a four-letter word

Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Immigration Issues, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia 101, Journalism and Media


Tamanna Rahman: Even at home in Manchester, Tamanna is now wary of attacks

Tamanna Rahman spent two months living on a Bristol housing estate for the BBC’s Panorama programme Undercover: Hate on the Doorstep.

Here she explains her reasons for agreeing to take part in the programme and describes how it felt to be a daily target of racist abuse, both physical and verbal. Her report contains details of racial abuse.

by Tamanna Rahman, BBC Panorama, October 19, 2009

In 2000, as a 16-year-old at my culturally and racially diverse Manchester secondary school, I was asked by a local television news team examining the hopes and aspirations of the first class of the new millennium if I felt that racism in Britain was a thing of the past.

Fresh-faced, naïve and optimistic, I answered yes; racism is dead.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2009 and my answer is very different.

What changed? As part of a Panorama programme, I spent two months working undercover on a Bristol housing estate.

Over the course of our investigation I would have glass, a can, a bottle and stones thrown at me. Continue reading Reduced to a four-letter word →

Satanic or Silly: Does Yale Press Censorship of Cartoons Insult Muslims?

Anthropology/Sociology, Contemporary Art, Danish Cartoon Controversy, Humor and Satire, Islam in Europe, Terrorism Issue


The Prophet Muhammad, 17th century Ottoman copy of an early 14th century (Ilkhanate period) manuscript of Northwestern Iran or northern Iraq (the “Edinburgh codex”). Illustration of AbÅ« Rayhān al-BÄ«rÅ«nÄ«’s al-Âthâr al-bâqiyah ( الآثار الباقيةة ; “The Remaining Signs of Past Centuries”). Source: Wikipedia article on Muhammad

Satanic or Silly: Does Yale Press Censorship of Cartoons Insult Muslims?
By Daniel Martin Varisco, Religion Dispatches, September 8, 2009

Two decades ago, the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses caused a tsunami of protest in the Muslim world. The author was forced into hiding for nearly a decade after Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill him and his publishers. Rushdie was accused of blasphemy, both for slandering the prophet Muhammad by subverting his character to Mahound (a medieval English term synonymous with the devil) and for reducing the holy city of Mecca to Jahiliya (a term used by Muslims to refer to the pagan past of Arabia). It was only a novel, but the fact that it was written by an Indian-born Muslim and published in the West was enough to frustrate even moderate Muslims.

Academic books rarely cause riots in the streets, but a forthcoming study on the recent Danish cartoon controversy may come close. Continue reading Satanic or Silly: Does Yale Press Censorship of Cartoons Insult Muslims? →

Muslims after 9/11

Islam in America, Islamophobia 101, Osama Bin Laden

Muslims Widely Seen As Facing Discrimination

Views of Religious Similarities and Differences

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, September 9, 2009

Overview

Eight years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Americans see Muslims as facing more discrimination inside the U.S. than other major religious groups. Nearly six-in-ten adults (58%) say that Muslims are subject to a lot of discrimination, far more than say the same about Jews, evangelical Christians, atheists or Mormons. In fact, of all the groups asked about, only gays and lesbians are seen as facing more discrimination than Muslims, with nearly two-thirds (64%) of the public saying there is a lot of discrimination against homosexuals.

The poll also finds that two-thirds of non-Muslims (65%) say that Islam and their own faith are either very different or somewhat different, while just 17% take the view that Islam and their own religion are somewhat or very similar. But Islam is not the only religion that Americans see as mostly different from their own. When asked about faiths other than their own, six-in-ten adults say Buddhism is mostly different, with similar numbers saying the same about Mormonism (59%) and Hinduism (57%). Continue reading Muslims after 9/11 →

New Book Stokes Fear of a Muslim Europe

Islam in Europe, Islamophobia 101

New Book Stokes Fear of a Muslim Europe
Religion Dispatches, By Bruce B. Lawrence
August 13, 2009

Review of: Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West
By Christopher Caldwell(Doubleday, 2009)

This is a full-throttle polemic, a meanspirited book meant to raise alarms, stoke fears, and tame a danger at once unseen and misunderstood yet pernicious and widespread.

The danger is Islam, the villains are Muslim immigrants, the terrain is the West, and the outcome is certain defeat for European culture—unless the tide of Muslim immigration, which threatens to become a tsunami, can be stemmed.

But how? This book, despite the myriad cases set forth in its 350 pages of rant and rave, offers no explicit steps to stem the Muslim immigrant tide allegedly sweeping Western Europe, ravaging its European culture, and threatening the future of Western civilization. Continue reading New Book Stokes Fear of a Muslim Europe →

On Fascist-Islamophobia

Islamophobia 101, Journalism and Media

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of a Clash of Civilizations

Excerpt from “Fascist-Islamophobia”: A Case Study in Totalitarian Demonization by Dr. Robert Dickson Crane, published in The American Muslim, October, 2007. To read the entire article, click here.

The future of America and of global civilization will depend on whether and when the leaders of each of the world’s nations can join to bring out the best of each civilization in order to build a single civilization of global pluralism. The purpose must be to bring out the best of the past in order to build both for the present and the future a global federation of independent nations in the pursuit of peace through compassionate justice.

The opposite alternative is mutual demonization whereby members of one civilization join the extremists of another in supporting the extremists’ perversion of their own religion. In practice this would bring out the worst of the past to paralyze the present and destroy the future.

The many books by Robert Spencer and a host of lesser professionals in demonization typify a genre of books that have captured the imagination of an entire nation. Amazon’s list of books on Islam and Muslims available for purchase in the Year 2007 exceeds 75,000. Of the first 400 listed, fifty could be classified as Islam-bashing, and half of these are militantly or extremely so. A critique of any one of them could serve as a critique of them all, though Robert Spencer’s book is perhaps the most sophisticated in its virulence. The basic theme is a self-fulfilling prophecy that brands Islam as inherently terrorist and thereby provokes Muslims to become exactly what they are said to be. Continue reading On Fascist-Islamophobia →

What Students are Reading in Dayton

Books You Should Read, Islam in America, Islamophobia, Teaching Resources

Book about Islam required reading for UD freshmen

By Dave Larsen, Dayton Daily News, July 26, 2009

More than 1,700 incoming University of Dayton students are required to read “War on Error: Real Stories of American Muslims” before they arrive on campus Aug. 22 for first-year orientation.

The book, an award-winning collection of essays about young American Muslims, was written by Melody Moezzi, a 1997 graduate of Centerville High School and an American Muslim of Iranian descent.

UD is a Marianist Catholic university.

Moezzi’s book will serve as the basis for a series of student dialogues on the issue of diversity and differences, said Kathleen Webb, UD dean of libraries. Continue reading What Students are Reading in Dayton →

Watch Out for Jihad Watch

Islamophobia 101, Judaism, Muhammad, Teaching Resources, Terrorism Issue

Among the cyber Islamophobes, few are more obsessed than Robert Spencer, a self-styled expert whose The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and The Crusades) should be published in a new version without the word “Politically” in the title. Spencer writes for a specific audience, either those who already hate Muslims or others lacking the knowledge and common sense to see through his rhetorical jihad against Islam. There are numerous rebuttals to Spencer’s work available on the web. Some of the best comes from the pen of Dr. Khaleel Mohammad, whose website is worth looking at.

I attach below an excerpt from Khaleel Mohammad’s “Robert Spencer’s Obsession With Islam: What Would Jesus Do?” published in The American Muslim, September 30, 2008.

Here is something that Spencer might consider next time he chooses to pray to the Creator—while ranting and raving about Islamic radicalism and the threat it presents. Spencer should examine himself and his agenda and motivation closely. The danger to this country presented by radical Islamists is an overt one and is being confronted. Spencer, on the other hand, turns a blind eye to the extremists who are not Muslim who would see this country turned into a theocracy that imprisons people simply because they are Muslim. Continue reading Watch Out for Jihad Watch →

A Stink Bomb in Georgia

Ethics, Islam in America, Islamophobia 101, Scholars

GSU Professor Resigns over “Bomb” Comments to Muslim-American Student

Atlanta, Georgia – July 1, 2009 – The Director of the Middle East Institute at Georgia State University, Dona J. Stewart, has resigned citing the university’s failure to address incidents of anti-Muslim bias.

In August 2008 a Muslim-American doctoral student, Ms. Slma Shelbayah, was repeatedly asked by a senior faculty member, Dr. Mary Stuckey, if she was ‘carrying any bombs’ underneath her Islamic headscarf, or hijab. Ms Shelbayah was also employed as a Visiting Instructor of Arabic in the Middle East Institute. She holds Bachelor and Masters degrees from Georgia State University.

Dr. Stewart’s resignation cited retaliatory actions taken by the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Lauren Adamson, following Ms. Shelbayah’s request that the incidents cease. Continue reading A Stink Bomb in Georgia →