Qur’an burning in Sweden underscores importance of combating Islamophobia from Europe to Latin America

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Muslim women in Colombia raise awareness about Islam in South America, where cases of harassment, particularly targeting female adherents of the faith in Brazil, are on the rise. (Supplied)
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Maria Jose Acevedo is seen talking to groups of students about Islam and islamophobia. (Supplied)
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Maria Jose Acevedo doing Dawah in a school. Many girls were interested in Islam and asked to try on a hijab. (Supplied)
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Maria José Acevedo is seen talking to groups of boy scouts about Islam in Colombia with the goal of raising awareness on religious diversity. (Supplied)
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Updated 06 July 2023
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Qur’an burning in Sweden underscores importance of combating Islamophobia from Europe to Latin America

  • Act of desecration on June 28 draws attention to hatred and prejudice believed to lie just beneath the surface
  • A recent survey of Muslims in Brazil found that women suffer higher rates of Islamophobia than men

SAO PAULO: As the number of Muslims in Latin America increases and Islamic communities gain visibility, more and more cases of Islamophobia are being reported in the region. Community leaders, most of them women, are striving to tackle the issue.

With a Muslim population estimated at between 800,000 and 1.5 million, Brazil is the only nation in Latin America where a comprehensive study on Islamophobia has been conducted.

The issue has been in the spotlight after a copy of the holy Qur’an was burned on June 28 outside Stockholm’s central mosque in an offensive act tolerated by the authorities in Sweden. Although South America has not witnessed such crude display of intolerance, Islamophia is believed to exist just under the surface in many countries.




Swedish police watch as Salwan Momika, who fled from Iraq to Sweden several years ago, prepares to deface the Muslim holy book outside a mosque in Stockholm on June 28, 2023, during the Eid al-Adha holiday. (JAFP)

Led by anthropologist Francirosy Barbosa, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo and herself a Muslim convert, the research involved a survey of 653 Muslims that showed most of them having already suffered some kind of Islamophobia. 

“Women were the majority of the respondents, something that already demonstrates that they’re the ones who suffer the most,” Barbosa told Arab News.

About 54 percent of the men who took part in the study — both those born to Islam and converts — said they have faced some sort of embarrassment due to their religion. Most cases happened on the street, in the workplace or at school.

The proportions are higher among women, with 66 percent of those born to Islam reporting that they have been offended or attacked due to their faith, and 83 percent of converts reporting the same.

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Many incidents involve subtle comments and jokes, like a work colleague who discovers that somebody in the office is Muslim and begins to call him or her a “suicide bomber,” or a person who insists that her friend should not wear a headscarf because it is a symbol of male domination.

But the study also reports serious cases of physical violence, such as an unknown attacker spraying insecticide in the eyes of a woman wearing a hijab, and a girl who left her mosque and was hit by a man on the street.

Female converts “are the major victims of Islamophobia because they’re more vulnerable. Many of them come from poor neighborhoods and have to use public transportation,” Barbosa said.

Female converts also have to deal with pressures from their own families. The result is that many of them give up wearing a headscarf after being attacked, something “that brings suffering because they feel they’re failing to attend a divine commandment,” Barbosa said.




Cases of harassment particularly targeting female adherents of the faith in Brazil are on the rise. (Supplied photo)

She added that Islamophobia grew in Brazil under former President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), when different anti-Muslim groups became more powerful.

“In that period, there was a boom in pro-Zionist evangelical churches, for instance,” she said. The survey’s respondents said evangelical Christians are the religious segment that discriminates against them the most.

Barbosa was invited earlier this year to take part in a workshop organized by the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship to discuss hate speech.

Her study on Islamophobia was presented to the group and will be part of its final report, which will orientate the government’s policies to combat intolerance.

“In our research, we included some guidelines for the struggle against Islamophobia, like the need to invest in education about religions and Islam. Now, those suggestions may finally come to light with the new government (of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva),” Barbosa said.

In Argentina, activists against Islamophobia have been counting on partnerships with governmental institutions as well.

FASTFACTS

Recent survey found women suffer higher rate of Islamophobia than men.

Majority of incidents occurred on the street, in the workplace or at school.

Female respondents said they are often targeted for wearing the hijab.

In 2022, Islam para la Paz (Islam for Peace) celebrated a deal with the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism — known by the Spanish acronym INADI — with the goal of promoting cooperation against religious discrimination.

Melody Amal Khalil Kabalan, who heads Islam para la Paz, said many press outlets were spreading misinformation about Qatar when it hosted the FIFA World Cup last year, so her organization and INADI promoted a workshop on the country for journalists.

“This year, we’ll organize a program called School without Discrimination, which will include workshops about Islamic habits for students,” she told Arab News.

While Islamophobia in Argentina is not comparable to what happens in European nations, there has been a growing number of cases lately, she said. Most cases involve women, like in Brazil.




In Argentina, even the modest burkini swimwear in public places could elicit hate as it is associated with being Muslim. (Supplied

“In a notorious incident, a woman was forbidden to get into a swimming pool in (the city of) Mendoza wearing her burkini,” Khalil said.

“In other cases, women were impeded by government officials to take pictures for documents wearing a hijab, which is their right.”

Victims of Islamophobia can report incidents to INADI, but many fail to do so “because they think the authorities won’t defend Muslims as they defend other groups,” Khalil said.

“We realized that this perception is connected to the fact that our communities aren’t so organized to resist discrimination as other communities in Argentina.”

She said it is up to Muslims to inform and educate Argentinian society about their needs and specificities.

“We have a responsibility to tell people about our way of life. It’s not only a problem for the government,” she added.

Islam para la Paz recently created an observatory of Muslim issues and is gathering information on the communities’ problems.

In Colombia, a group of women led by Maria Jose Acevedo Garcia established five years ago the Islamic Foundation Assalam of Colombian Muslim Women, whose goal is to protect Muslim women and prevent Islamophobia.




Maria Jose Acevedo during an event on religious freedom in Colombia. (Supplied)

She said the most common incidents involve discrimination at school, the workplace and in government agencies.

“Women at times are discriminated against for wearing a hijab at work. In those cases, I send a letter to the person in charge and schedule a visit to the company in order to inform people about Islam,” Acevedo told Arab News.

Raised in a Catholic family, she converted to Islam 20 years ago. At first, she would commonly hear offensive comments and get angry, but over time she “learned how to react calmly and educate people.”

She said: “Assalam frequently visits schools and universities to offer workshops against discrimination. That’s the only way to change things.”

Acevedo added that during crises in Muslim nations — such as the war in Syria and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan — Islamophobia usually increases.

“We still haven’t experienced a great number of physical attacks, but incidents in which people tried to take off the hijab of a woman on public transportation have already been reported,” she said.




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Assalam recently met with governmental authorities in order to present to them the needs of Muslim women in Colombia.

Problems commonly arise at the airport, for instance, when women coming from Muslim nations are told to take off the headscarf during inspection.

Acevedo expressed hope that more government employees will understand the nature of Islam in the future.

In Mexico, where the Muslim community has been growing over the past years, Islamophobia is noticeable in the arts, books and the news, where “negative expressions are commonly employed when it comes to Islam,” anthropologist Samantha Leyva Cortes told Arab News.

In her studies about Muslim communities in Mexico City and San Cristobal de las Casas, Leyva was told by many women that they are treated as foreigners due to their hijab.

“Shopkeepers frequently assume they aren’t from Mexico and charge them more than they should for a product,” she said.




Sonia Garcia, a Mexican convert to Islam, has partnered with Mayte Gutierrez, another Latina convert to Islam, to help build and operate an entirely new center to help Muslims feel more at home while in Tijuana. (Photo: The Latina Muslim Foundation)

Women wearing headscarves have to face all kinds of sexist remarks on the street and on public transportation, Leyva said.

“People generally think they’re passive, disenfranchised women. They don’t consider that wearing a hijab is their choice,” she added.

But the younger generations have been opening new paths lately. Many Muslim women are expanding their presence on social media and making themselves visible in the public arena.

“Many conversions have been happening online, so the internet is an important space for them,” Leyva said.

Barbosa said most Muslim leaders have been dealing with Islamophobia inadequately. “In general, they’re concerned only about spreading the religion and think that talking about discrimination and violence is something negative that can raise more problems,” she added.

Her goal now is to apply the same survey in other Latin American countries so the problem of Islamophobia in the whole region will be known, and communities and governments will be able to act.

 


A tiny village in India where Kamala Harris has ancestral roots is praying for her victory

Updated 9 sec ago
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A tiny village in India where Kamala Harris has ancestral roots is praying for her victory

THULASENDRAPURAM: The temple reverberated with rhythmic Sanskrit and Tamil hymns, as a Hindu priest held a flame before the god. As this tiny South Indian village gathered to pray for Kamala Harris, a gaggle of reporters jostled for space and camera angles.
There's little to distinguish the village of Thulasendrapuram from any other rural community in Tamil Nadu, except its connection to a woman who could become America's first leader with South Asian roots.
As millions of Americans vote, Harris has people rooting for her from thousands of miles away in a village surrounded by rice paddies and coconut trees, where her mother's family has ancestral ties. They talk about her at the local tea shop. Banners and billboards bearing her face are seen throughout the community.
“Our deity is a very powerful God. If we pray well to him, he will make her victorious,” said M. Natarajan, the temple priest that led the prayers in front of the image of Hindu deity Ayyanar, a form of Lord Shiva.
Harris’ maternal grandfather was born in the village, about 350 kilometers (215 miles) from the southern coastal city of Chennai, more than 100 years ago. As an adult, he moved to Chennai, where he worked as a high-ranking government official until his retirement.
Harris has never visited Thulasendrapuram and she has no living relatives in the village, but people here still venerate the family that made it big in the U.S.
“Our village ancestors' granddaughter is running as a U.S. presidential candidate. Her victory will be happy news for every one of us,” Natarajan said.
The village's sudden fame has helped bring money into the village. Recently, construction began on a water storage tank with funds donated by a local bank. Village residents say it will carry a plaque with Harris’ name.
Harris’ late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India. After moving to the U.S. to study, she married a Jamaican man, and they named their daughter Kamala, a Sanskrit word for “lotus flower.”
Other than trips during her childhood, Harris hasn’t visited India much — particularly not since becoming vice president — but she has often spoken emotionally about her ties to her late mother’s country of birth. On Tuesday, she released a campaign video highlighting her mother, who arrived in the U.S. at age 19 and became a cancer researcher.
Titled “Mother,” the video ends with a narrator saying: “This daughter of Shyamala, this daughter of the American story, is ready to lead us forward.”
Harris has often talked about how she was guided by the values of her Indian-born grandfather and mother. She has also spoken of her love of south Indian food, especially a type of steamed rice cake called idli.
Harris’ name is engraved in a list of donors — her aunt Sarala Gopalan gave money to the temple in her name — along with that of her grandfather. Outside, a large banner wishes “the daughter of the land” success in the election.
On Tuesday, the village temple also received rare international visitors: two American tourists and one from the U.K., all wearing black t-shirts that said “Kamala Freakin Harris.”
Manikandan Ganesan, a villager who runs a small store near the temple, said Harris’ bid for the presidency has made the village famous. He hopes Harris will eventually visit them.
“Even if she mentioned that she would visit our village, it would make us very happy,” Ganesan said. “Her victory itself will be a big source of happiness for us.”
Village residents also prayed for Harris’ victory in 2020, and set off firecrackers when she became the U.S. Vice President.
For women of the village, the candidate's journey is a source of inspiration.
Local politician Arulmozhi Sudhakar said Harris embodies a significant step toward female empowerment in places like Thulasendrapuram, where a majority of women continue to face discrimination and gender inequality.
“From the time when women were not even allowed to step out of their house, to now a woman from our village contesting in the U.S. presidential election — this brings happiness for us,” Sudhakar said. “The coming generations will see her as a role model to succeed in life.”

Ukraine’s military says it shot down 48 drones and two missiles overnight

Updated 15 min 24 sec ago
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Ukraine’s military says it shot down 48 drones and two missiles overnight

KYIV: The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday it shot down 48 out of 79 drones and two missiles launched by Russia overnight.
The air force said the location of 30 other drones had been lost, while another had returned to Russia.


India foreign minister says vandalism of Hindu temples deeply concerning

Updated 05 November 2024
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India foreign minister says vandalism of Hindu temples deeply concerning

  • Vandalism incident happened weeks after Ottawa expelled six Indian diplomats, linking them to killing of Sikh separatist leader in 2023 
  • Canada has accused India of conducting a broad campaign against South Asian dissidents in Canada, which New Delhi denies 

SYDNEY: India foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Tuesday the vandalism of a Hindu temple in Canada on Monday was deeply concerning.
“What happened yesterday at the Hindu temple in Canada was obviously deeply concerning,” he told reporters in the Australian capital Canberra while on an official visit.
The incident happened weeks after Ottawa expelled six Indian diplomats, linking them to the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in 2023 in Canada. Canada has accused the Indian government of conducting a broad campaign against South Asian dissidents in Canada, which New Delhi denies.
The incident has increased tensions between Canada and India, and between Sikh separatists and Indian diplomats.
Two Hindu temples were also vandalized in Canberra last month, which Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said was upsetting for members of the Indian community.
“People across Australia have a right to be safe and respected, people also have a right to peaceful protest, people have a right to express their views peacefully,” she told reporters.
“We draw a line between that and violence, incitement of hatred or vandalism,” she added.
Wong said Australia had expressed its views to India about Canada’s allegations over the targeting of Sikh separatists, and Canberra respected Canada’s judicial process. Jaishankar said it was unacceptable that Indian diplomats had been placed under surveillance by Canada.
“Canada has developed a pattern of making allegations without providing specifics,” he said.


India foreign minister says vandalism of Hindu temples deeply concerning

Updated 05 November 2024
Follow

India foreign minister says vandalism of Hindu temples deeply concerning

  • Canada has accused the Indian government of conducting a broad campaign against South Asian dissidents in Canada, which New Delhi denies

SYDNEY: India foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Tuesday the vandalism of a Hindu temple in Canada on Monday was deeply concerning.
“What happened yesterday at the Hindu temple in Canada was obviously deeply concerning,” he told reporters in the Australian capital Canberra while on an official visit.
The incident happened weeks after Ottawa expelled six Indian diplomats, linking them to the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in 2023 in Canada. Canada has accused the Indian government of conducting a broad campaign against South Asian dissidents in Canada, which New Delhi denies.
The incident has increased tensions between Canada and India, and between Sikh separatists and Indian diplomats.
Two Hindu temples were also vandalized in Canberra last month, which Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said was upsetting for members of the Indian community.
“People across Australia have a right to be safe and respected, people also have a right to peaceful protest, people have a right to express their views peacefully,” she told reporters.
“We draw a line between that and violence, incitement of hatred or vandalism,” she added.
Wong said Australia had expressed its views to India about Canada’s allegations over the targeting of Sikh separatists, and Canberra respected Canada’s judicial process. Jaishankar said it was unacceptable that Indian diplomats had been placed under surveillance by Canada.
“Canada has developed a pattern of making allegations without providing specifics,” he said.


Trump wants the presidential winner to be declared on election night. Why that’s unlikely

Updated 05 November 2024
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Trump wants the presidential winner to be declared on election night. Why that’s unlikely

Former President Donald Trump is stepping up his demands that the winner of the presidential race be declared shortly after polls close Tuesday, well before all the votes are counted.
Trump set the pattern in 2020, when he declared that he had won during the early morning hours after Election Day. That led his allies to demand that officials “stop the count!” He and many other conservatives have spent the past four years falsely claiming that fraud cost him that election and bemoaning how long it takes to count ballots in the US
But one of many reasons we are unlikely to know the winner quickly on election night is that Republican lawmakers in two key swing states have refused to change laws that delay the count. Another is that most indications are this will be a very close election, and it takes longer to determine who won close elections than blowouts.
In the end, election experts note, the priority in vote-counting is to make sure it’s an accurate and secure tally, not to end the suspense moments after polls close.
“There’s nothing nefarious about it,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The time delay is to protect the integrity of the process.”
Trump’s demand also doesn’t seem to account for the six time zones from the East Coast to Hawaii.
David Becker, an elections expert and co-author of “The Big Truth,” debunking Trump’s 2020 election lies, said it’s not realistic for election officials in thousands of jurisdictions to “instantly snap their fingers and count 160 million multi-page ballots with dozens of races on them.”
Trump wants the race decided Tuesday night
During a Sunday rally in Pennsylvania, Trump demanded that the race be decided soon after some polls begin closing.
“They have to be decided by 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock on Tuesday night,” Trump said. “Bunch of crooked people. These are crooked people.”
It was not clear who he was targeting with the “crooked people” remark.
Timing is one example of why Trump’s demands don’t match the reality of conducting elections in the US By 11 p.m. Eastern time, polls will just be closing in the two Western swing states of Arizona and Nevada.
Trump has led conservatives to bemoan that the US doesn’t count elections as swiftly as France or Argentina, where results for recent races have been announced within hours of polls closing. But that’s because those countries tabulate only a single election at a time. The decentralized US system prevents the federal government from controlling elections.
Instead, votes are counted in nearly 10,000 separate jurisdictions, each of which has its own races for the state legislature, city council, school boards and ballot measures to tabulate at the same time. That’s why it takes longer for the US to count votes.
Declaring a winner can take time
The Associated Press calls races when there is no possibility that the trailing candidate can make up the gap. Sometimes, if one candidate is significantly behind, a winner can be called quickly. But if the margin is narrow, then every last vote could matter. It takes a while before every vote is counted even in the most efficient jurisdictions in the country.
In 2018, for example, Republican Rick Scott won the US Senate race in Florida, a state conservatives regularly praise for its quick tally. But the AP didn’t call Scott’s victory until after the conclusion of a recount on Nov. 20 because Scott’s margin was so slim.
It also takes time to count every one of the millions of votes because election officials have to process disputed, or “provisional,” ballots, and to see if they were legitimately cast. Overseas ballots from military members or other US citizens abroad can trickle in at the last minute. Mail ballots usually land early, but there’s a lengthy process to make sure they’re not cast fraudulently. If that process doesn’t start before Election Day, it can back up the count.
Some states, such as Arizona, also give voters whose mail ballots were rejected because the signatures didn’t match up to five days to prove they actually cast the ballot. That means final numbers simply cannot be available Tuesday night.
Election rules are to blame in some states
Some of the sluggishness is due to state-specific election rules. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two of the most important swing states, election officials for years have pleaded with Republican lawmakers to change the law that prevents them from processing their mail ballots before Election Day. That means mail ballots get tallied late, and frequently the results don’t start to get reported until after Election Day.
Democrats have traditionally dominated mail voting, which has made it seem like Republicans are in the lead until the early hours of the next morning, when Democratic mail votes finally get added to the tally. Experts even have names for this from past elections — the “red mirage” or the “blue shift.” Trump exploited that dynamic in 2020 when he had his supporters demand an abrupt end to vote counts — the ballots that remained untallied were largely mail ones that were for Joe Biden. It’s not clear how that will play out this year, since Republicans have shifted and voted in big numbers during early voting.
Michigan used to have similar restrictions, but after Democrats won control of the state Legislature in 2022 they removed the prohibition on early processing of mail ballots. That state’s Democratic Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, said she hopes to have most results available by Wednesday.
“At the end of the day, chief election officials are the folks who have the ability to provide those accurate results. Americans should focus on what they say and not what any specific candidate or folks who are part of the campaign say,” said Jen Easterly, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Trump allies urge him to declare victory swiftly
Some of Trump’s allies say he should be even more aggressive about declaring victory this time around.
Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, who in 2020 predicted the then-president would declare victory before the race was called, advocated for a similar strategy during a recent press conference after he was released from federal prison, where he was serving time for a contempt of Congress conviction related to the investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn his loss in 2020.
“President Trump came up at 2:30 in the morning and talked,” Bannon said. “He should have done it at 11 o’clock in 2020.”
Other Trump supporters have taken a darker tone. His former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, suggested during a recent interview on the right-wing American Truth Project podcast that violence could erupt in states still counting ballots the day after Election Day because people “are just not going to put up with it.”
Trying to project a sense of inevitability about a Trump win, the former president and his supporters have been touting early vote data and favorable polls to contend the election is all but over. Republicans have returned to voting early after largely staying away at Trump’s direction in 2020 and 2022. In some swing states that track party registration, registered Republicans are outvoting Democrats in early voting.
But that doesn’t mean Republicans are ahead in any meaningful sense. Early voting data does not tell you who will win an election because it only records who voted, not how they voted.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has been explicitly targeting Republicans disillusioned by Trump. In each of those states where more Republicans have voted, there also are huge numbers of voters casting early ballots who are not registered with either of the two major political parties. If Harris won just a tiny fraction more of those votes than Trump, it would erase the small leads Republicans have.
There’s only one way to find out who won the presidential election: Wait until enough votes are tallied, whenever that is.