Islam in Media Roundup | 29 June – 5 July 2020

After Floyd, Raw Talk, Racial Reckoning Among US Muslims

As a young student, Hind Makki recalls, she would call out others at the Islamic school she attended when some casually used an Arabic word meaning “slaves” to refer to Black people.
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Muslim Groups Decry 'Excessive' Prosecution of Lawyers Charged With Torching Police Car

In a statement, a coalition of 35 Muslim, South Asian and Arab civil rights and advocacy groups argue the treatment is disproportionately harsh and likely linked in part to the lawyers’ racial and ethnic backgrounds. Rahman, 31, is a Pakistani American Muslim woman. Mattis, 32, is the son of Jamaican immigrants.
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U.S. Latino Muslims Speak the Language of Shared Cultures

Miami – The smell of freshly made croquetas lingers in the air. The staff rush to complete orders while keeping cases stocked with hot pastries and desserts like the café’s famous tres leches (milk cakes). Most of the workers are Cuban, and nearly everyone is speaking Spanish.
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US Seizes Items Thought to Be Made From Hair of Muslims in Chinese Labor Camps

Border officials say shipment contained 13 tons of weaves and other hair products worth $800,000.
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Border officials say shipment contained 13 tons of weaves and other hair products worth $800,000.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said this week that two recent Trump administration appointees to the Pentagon and US Agency for International Development “have no business serving in high positions in our government” because of past Islamophobic and offensive comments on social media.
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Ilhan Omar, Joaquin Castro Demand Removal of USAID Religious Freedom Adviser for Social Media Posts

Democratic Reps. Joaquin Castro and Ilhan Omar called for the “immediate removal” of a religious freedom adviser at the U.S. Agency for International Development for his past comments they said demonstrate a “historical pattern of prejudice against the Islamic faith and the Muslim population.”
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Ms Marvel: Trailblazing Muslim Superhero Goes Gaming

“It’s the representation in gaming I’ve waited for my whole life.”

Marvel’s Avengers are assembling once again, not on the big screen, but for a blockbuster video game.
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Muntaas Farah and Yezi Gugsa: Teenagers Lead the Charge in Rochester

Muntaas Farah has been thinking a lot lately about a moment from her childhood. She was 14 and wearing her hijab. “My first instance with Islamophobia and racism happened with my mom, in the car,” she said. ”People were yelling, ‘Go back to your country. You don’t belong here.’”
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Muslim Americans Assert Solidarity With Black Lives Matter, Finding Unity Within a Diverse Faith Group

 The killing of George Floyd took place at the doorstep of Muslim America. He was killed in front of Cup Foods, a store owned by an Arab American Muslim, whose teenage employee – also a Muslim – had earlier reported to police that Floyd tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes.
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Arab and Muslim Communities Need To Talk About Anti-Blackness

 The murder of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer forced many communities to reckon with their role in anti-Black racism. The conversation became more real for members of the Arab and non-Black Muslim communities in the U.S. when they learned that it was an employee at Cup Foods — a convenience store owned by a Palestinian American Muslim man — who called Minneapolis police on Floyd over a suspected counterfeit $20 bill.
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‘I Am Here to Prove You Wrong’

 Last year, on a Thursday in June, long before live events and large gatherings bore the threat of contagion, the ballroom of the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn, Mich., was in full pageant form.
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Dearborn Mosque: Woodmere Cemetery Shutting Out Muslims From Graves They Already Purchased

More than two dozen religious, political and community leaders gathered Friday morning, before noon prayer at the American Moslem Society mosque in Dearborn, to call attention to a legal fight with nearby Woodmere Cemetery.
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From India, Islamophobia Goes Global

Hindu nationalism has helped spread a distinct brand of anti-Islam around the world, and famously multicultural Canada may have a problem on its hands.
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How Racism Works During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified public attention to the unequal vulnerability of Indigenous and Black people and amplified other racialized inequalities inherent in society: from exposing exploitable labour in the front lines to inadequate care and resources.
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Covid-19 Hasn't Stopped the Drumbeat of Islamophobia in India

In the last week of February 2020, mobs of Hindu nationalists went on a rampage targeting Muslim-majority neighbourhoods in New Delhi, resulting in the worst communal violence the city had experienced since the 1984 Sikh massacre.
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Coronavirus: The Human Cost of Fake News in India

Fake or misleading news can have a real impact on those who find themselves the targets. This has been a particular problem in India during the coronavirus pandemic, where reliable sources of news are frequently drowned out by unverified information online.
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Modi Skips Eid in the Line-up of Indian festivals. Act of Omission or Commission?

The Prime Minister of a nation with 172 million Muslims citizens did not mention the festival of Eid, which is in August, in his address to the nation Tuesday.
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‘We Are Moving Towards a Human Rights Apocalypse in Kashmir’

Sardar Masood Khan, the President of Pakistan-Administered Kashmir, this week proposed a ‘Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions’ movement against India over its human rights and international law violations in Indian-Administered Kashmir.
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Myanmar Finds Troops Guilty in Rohingya Atrocities Court-Martial

Three Myanmar military officers have been found guilty by a court-martial investigating atrocities against the Rohingya in conflict-ridden Rakhine state, the army announced.
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China Forces Birth Control on Muslim Uighurs to Suppress Population

4-year campaign in Xinjiang region is form of ‘demographic genocide,’ say some experts.
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Calls for UN to Investigate China’s Crimes Against the Uyghurs Continue to Mount

World politicians have called for a United Nations probe into a Chinese government birth control campaign targeting Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, an autonomous region in China that borders the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
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Chinese Android Spyware Targets Minority Muslim Group

Chinese state-sponsored hackers have been using Android malware to spy on Uyghur and Tibetan ethnic minority people for seven years, according to new research from security firm Lookout.
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The Imprisonment of the ‘Model Villagers’: Two Uyghur Sisters on What it Means toLlose Their Family and Way of Life

For the family of sisters Nursiman and Nur’iman, a local work brigade placed a small red plaque with five stars on it to the front gate of their house. The stars stood for “patriotism, honesty, education, hygiene, and harmony.” But in the end, that didn’t stop the sisters’ parents and brother from being sent to jail for reasons that remain murky to this day.
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Russian Orthodox Church Says 'Unacceptable' to Turn Hagia Sophia Into a Mosque

Converting Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia from a museum back to a mosque would be “unacceptable”, a senior official in the Russian Orthodox Church said on Saturday.
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Battle Over Whether Turkey's Hagia Sophia Should be a Mosque or Museum Goes to Court

Now the more than 1,500-year-old former cathedral and then mosque is at the center of a modern struggle between Turkey’ssecular roots and its president’s Islamist aspirations. The battle over who, if anybody, can pray in the UNESCO World Heritage site reflects a larger one playing out across a society split between secularism and religious conservatism.
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The Largest Mosque in Germany.

THIS MOSQUE, WHICH CONTAINS ELEMENTS of Ottoman architectural style, has a concrete and glass dome with two minarets. The mosque houses a commercial area and an entrance on the ground floor. On the upper floors of the building, there is a space for prayer and a Muslim library. Gottfried Böhm and his son Paul Böhm, who specialized in building churches, were responsible for the mosque’s construction and design.
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Veiled Racism: How the Law Change on Covid-19 Face Coverings Makes Muslim Women Feel

Yasmin Bakkar, 26, is a cover teacher in secondary schools across Leicester, but is currently on maternity leave as her newborn daughter became part of “Generation C” – the babies born during Covid-19.
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Mental Health May Be 'Significant Factor' in NHS Referrals to Prevent

Mental health appears to be a significant factor behind referrals from the NHS to Prevent, the government’s controversial anti-radicalisation programme, a UK-based medical charity says.
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Hard-Hit and Fighting Back: How British Muslim Charities Took the Lead in the Covid-19 Response

In June, data released by the Office for National Statistics showed that from the start of March until May the mortality rate from Covid-19 was highest among Muslims compared to any other religious group.
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COVID-19: Egypt Closes Key Mosque Over Worshippers’ Non-Compliance

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