The Islamophobia Thread

Oh, that's why I've never heard of her. Carry on.

She's a very famous American voice actress who has been voicing popular cartoons for decades.

Bubbles from Powerpuff Girls, Raven from Teen Titans, Timmy Turner from The Fairly Oddparents, Ben Tennyson from Ben 10, and lots more.

Pretty much my entire childhood. Very disappointing.

Jumping topics, anyone else notice an upsurge in people using Islamophobia to justify anti-immigrant talking points? I knew the right wing parties were rising in Europe but they ain't even bothering with dog whistles right now.

I've not noticed a sudden up surge but their anti immigration talking points are fairly predicable

I've been seeing this rhetoric for years.

In America, maybe (I've intentionally been avoiding most aspects of that topic for sake of my mental health). For Europe, they've been mask off since the initial refugee crisis. The only real change I noticed is that the German government is now more blatant in cracking down on its Muslim and Arab population.

Edited by HotelCalifornia on Oct 21st 2023 at 6:22:34 AM

https://www.cair.com/press_releases/cair-california-study-finds-muslim-students-are-bullied-at-twice-the-rate-of-national-statistic/

Shit's bleak when my knee-jerk reaction to a study saying Muslim students are bullied at twice the rate is that seems too low to be real.

According to Palestine Legal, an Israeli supporter tried to run down an Arab student at Stanford with his car, shouting "fuck you and your people".

That's technically Arabophobia rather than Islamophobia, isn't it?

... Now that I think about it, there's probably a lot of overlap between the two, right? You know, because a lot of people who are neither Arab nor Muslim assume that either the two words are synonyms or that at least all Arabs are Muslims or All Muslims Are Arab.

Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 5th 2023 at 11:41:50 AM

Various news outlets stated the student was also Muslim

Edited by HotelCalifornia on Nov 5th 2023 at 1:48:36 AM

It will be Islamaphobia if the attack was done because the attacker believed that the victim was a Muslim, even if the victim wasn’t.

Yeah, X-phobia is about the offender's belief, even if they're mistaken about the victim's applicability.

Today was the closing argument in the trial of Nathaniel Veltman a Canadian man who, in 2021, ran with his vehicle over a Muslim family that was taking a walk in Ontario, killing four members of it.

He was charged with four first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder, plus terrorism charges.

The prosecution says that Veltman was radicalized because of white supremacist material he viewed on the Dark Web and that he wanted to send a "message "and make "all Muslims fearful for their safety"

His lawyer argued that his client was having "mental troubles" and that he should be prosecuted for manslaughter and not for first degree murder or terrorrism.

If found guilty, he will face a lifetime in prison.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67409539

Edited by jawal on Nov 16th 2023 at 2:57:59 PM

.....that poor 9 year old boy

Apparently a Muslim cemetary in Magdeburg, Germany has been vandalized with swastikas and Star of Davids.

I'm so f*cking tired...

A Georgia teacher was arrested for threatening to behead a Muslim student who said that she was uncomfortable with the Israeli flag in the classroom.

Georgia the state, not the country. In case anyone is confused as I was.

Edited by Risa123 on Dec 15th 2023 at 8:42:49 PM

Earlier this year (I think) I was walking near Jackson Square when I noticed a Halal store (which hadn't been opened yet) had been vandalized with comments related to genital mutilation. I reported it to a nearby police officer, who I am disappointed to say was rather dismissive of the prospect of it being a Hate-Crime.

(I know this post is almost a half-year old, but)

As someone already said, that has been the case for many years, yes.

A while ago, I started to learn more about fascism and other aspects/manifestations of racism, and I became cautious towards any individual or group that actively promotes anti-immigrants/xenophobic sentiments.

Since Muslims are quite possibly the biggest target of such sentiments, it actually compelled me to learn more about Islam and Arabic countries. I will probably even read Quran in few months or so (I have...a LOT of books in my reading list backlog XP).

This may have already been stated elsewhere, but a lot of that talking points I've seen regarding immigrants from the middle east focused on their supposed inability to integrate, and how their culture was supposedly incompatible with "western values".

When you actually give this any critical thought it seems to be more of a holdover from 19th century imperialism and colonialism. There's the whole "White man's burden", and how European powers claimed they were helping to civilize the people that they colonized.

Many European countries, particularly France, never really confronted this racism after their colonial empires collapsed. Most middle eastern immigrants in France come from Algeria. France's government literally collapsed after they tried to integrate Algeria into the metropole in the 1950s, leading to the Algerian civil war. But you still see the same talking points about people coming to France from Algeria as back then. Just replace the term "christian values" with "western culture" or "liberal democracy".

Just for pedantry, Algeria is in North Africa, not the Middle East, as are Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritania, countries whose citizens also immigrate to France (legally or otherwise)

IIRC, it is forbidden to have statistics on how many French people come from Arab descent, so I am not sure of the percentage of each country.

As for the facility of integration, this is a complicated question, but usually second and third generations manage to integrate quite well in France if given equal opportunities in education and work.

.............

More to this thread: apparently the British government’s anti-Muslim hatred working group (AMHWG) has been “on pause” for more than four years, and its members haven't met since January 2020, and this is despite a 335% increase in UK anti-Muslim hate crimes in the last seven months.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/mar/10/uk-anti-islamophobia-body-has-not-met-for-four-years-despite-hate-rise 

Edited by jawal on Apr 15th 2024 at 7:54:47 PM

You said it, North Africa is not Middle East... but the leader of the Bataclan attack was a Belgian from North African origins (Morocco).

The biggest issue with immigration is that some generations feel resented because the way society treats them, I mean, putting my experience, I am a Mexican, I moved to USA and then to Spain, and I still feel like a foreigner, but I accept that because my Mexican roots are there and I am consent that I will be a foreigner forever outside my country.

But imagine that I have kids here in Spain, they will have my Mexican roots and they will try also to get some Spanish roots because they were born here, but still, they will not be easily accepted because their parents are foreigners.

And I think a Mexican son is an "easy mode", because only the accent and the food will distinguish them from Spaniards..., now imagine a Moroccan parents kid trying to bring all the things that distinguish him from the rest of the kids, normally they are still treated as foreigners, despite the fact they were born in the country, and yet, some conservative people will see them as outsiders, as foreigners... even worse, as terrorists...

Just because they are muslims, without taking in account if they are from Morocco, from Syria or even from Spain...

Isn't North Africa usually included when defining greater middle east or MENA?

Geographiclly the Middle East is: Bahrain - Iran -Iraq - Jordan - Kuwait - Lebanon - Oman - Qatar - Saudi Arabia - Syria - United Arab Emirates - Yemen - Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territorie.

MENA simply stand for Middle East and North Africa

The British courts uphold the Michaela school ban on visible prayer.

This is the school run by the government's famously strict "social mobility" champion Katharine Birbalsingh, who's frequently in the headlines.

It's one of those policies that claims to be fair, consistent and doesn't name any one religion. But in practice it impacts Muslim students due to the faith's regular daily prayers.

It is, as the court says, not legally islamophobic. But was alleged to be (hence the court case) and seems on-topic for this thread.

Not sure if there's scope for an appeal.

Edited by Mrph1 on Apr 16th 2024 at 11:27:40 AM