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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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.

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.




Caption

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.

 


Building fire kills 17, injures others in southern India

Updated 59 min 28 sec ago
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Building fire kills 17, injures others in southern India

  • Fires are common in India, where building laws and safety norms are often flouted by builders and residents

HYDERABAD, India: At least 17 people were killed and several injured in a fire that broke out at a building near the historic Charminar monument in southern Hyderabad city, officials said Sunday.
Several people were found unconscious and rushed to various hospitals, according to local media. They said the building housed a jewelry store at ground level and residential space above.
“The accident happened due to a short circuit and many people have died,” federal minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader G Kishan Reddy told reporters at the site of the accident.
Director general of Telangana fire services Y Nagi Reddy told reporters that 21 people were in the three-story building when the fire started on the ground floor early on Sunday.
“17 people, who were shifted to the hospital in an unconscious state, could not survive. The staircase was very narrow, which made escape difficult. There was only one exit, and the fire had blocked it,” he said.
The fire was brought under control.
Prime minister Narendra Modi announced financial compensation for the victims’ families and said in a post on X that he was “deeply anguished by the loss of lives.”
Fires are common in India, where building laws and safety norms are often flouted by builders and residents.


PM seeks election win as Portugal campaigning ends

Updated 18 May 2025
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PM seeks election win as Portugal campaigning ends

LISBON: Portugal’s general election campaign ends on Friday for a vote that Prime Minister Luis Montenegro is expected to win, but with no guarantee he can form a more stable government.
Montenegro’s center-right Democratic Alliance (AD) coalition is tipped to win 34 percent of the ballot, ahead of the Socialist Party (PS) on 26 percent, according to a poll by the Portuguese Catholic University published by local media on Friday.
The upstart far-right Chega (“Enough“) party could take 19 percent of the vote — almost the same as it did in March 2024 elections — to consolidate its position as Portugal’s third political force and kingmaker.
Montenegro, as a result, risks finding himself again at the head of a minority government, caught between the PS, in power from 2015 to 2024, and Chega, with which he has refused to govern.
“People are fed up with elections, people want stability,” the premier, a 52-year-old lawyer, said during a final rally in Lisbon as he urged voters to give him a stronger mandate this time around.
Sunday’s early election will be Portugal’s third in just over three years.
It was called in March after Montenegro lost a confidence vote in parliament following accusations against him of conflicts of interest stemming from his consulting firm’s business.
As such, “staying in power would already be a good result” for the prime minister, who took a “calculated risk” in the hope of strengthening his parliamentary seat, political commentator Paula Espirito Santo told AFP.
Opinion polls appear to indicate an AD majority is unlikely but Montenegro could win the support of the Liberal Initiative party, which is predicted to secure 6.4 percent of the vote.


The PS candidate, Pedro Nuno Santos, a 48-year-old economist, has accused Montenegro of having engineered the elections “to avoid explaining himself” about his consultancy firm to a parliamentary inquiry.
“We need a change, a prudent one that will guarantee the political stability which Luis Montenegro can no longer provide,” the Socialist candidate said at a final Lisbon rally on Friday.
Faced with the risk of persistent instability, analysts and voters criticized a political class out of touch with voters who are unenthused by the prospect of another ballot.
“I’ve really had enough of all these political games. They don’t do anything for us,” said Maria Pereira, a 53-year-old saleswoman in a working-class district of Lisbon.
“Normally I vote for the small parties but this time I’m not going to waste my time going to vote.”
But Paula Tomas, a 52-year-old dentist, said Montenegro had won her confidence.
“He has the ability to get things done, but he needs time,” she said at an AD rally, waving a white-and-orange ruling party flag.
Under the Socialist Party, Portugal became one of Europe’s most open countries, but Montenegro’s government has since strengthened immigration policy.
Between 2017 and 2024, the number of foreigners living in Portugal quadrupled, reaching about 15 percent of the total population.
Immigration and suspicions about the prime minister might be fertile ground for the far right.
But Chega has also faced embarrassment, including claims that one of its lawmakers in the Azores stole luggage from airport carousels.
Its campaign was interrupted on Tuesday and Thursday when its president, 42-year-old former football commentator Andre Ventura, fell ill while campaigning and was rushed to hospital both times.
He was resting and will not longer appear at the party’s final rally. Instead he released a video message where he once again called for “an end to corruption and uncontrolled immigration.”
All political campaigning has to stop at midnight (2300 GMT Friday) before Sunday’s poll.


World Health Organization looks ahead to life without the US

Updated 18 May 2025
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World Health Organization looks ahead to life without the US

LONDON/GENEVA: Hundreds of officials from the World Health Organization will join donors and diplomats in Geneva from Monday with one question dominating their thoughts — how to cope with crises from mpox to cholera without their main funder, the United States.
The annual assembly, with its week of sessions, votes and policy decisions, usually showcases the scale of the UN agency set up to tackle disease outbreaks, approve vaccines and support health systems worldwide.
This year — since US President Donald Trump started the year-long process to leave the WHO with an executive order on his first day in office in January — the main theme is scaling down.
“Our goal is to focus on the high-value stuff,” Daniel Thornton, the WHO’s director of coordinated resource mobilization, told Reuters.
Just what that “high-value stuff” will be is up for discussion. Health officials have said the WHO’s work in providing guidelines for countries on new vaccines and treatments for conditions from obesity to HIV will remain a priority.
One WHO slideshow for the event, shared with donors and seen by Reuters, suggested work on approving new medicines and responding to outbreaks would be protected, while training programs and offices in wealthier countries could be closed.
The United States had provided around 18 percent of the WHO’s funding. “We’ve got to make do with what we have,” said one Western diplomat who asked not to be named.
Staff have been getting ready — cutting managers and budgets — ever since Trump’s January announcement in a rush of directives and aid cuts that have disrupted a string of multilateral pacts and initiatives.
The year-long delay, mandated under US law, means the US is still a WHO member — its flag still flies outside the Geneva HQ — until its official departure date on January 21, 2026.
Trump — who accused the WHO of mishandling COVID, which it denies — muddied the waters days after his statement by saying he might consider rejoining the agency if its staff “clean it up.”
But global health envoys say there has since been little sign of a change of heart. So the WHO is planning for life with a $600 million hole in the budget for this year and cuts of 21 percent over the next two-year period.

CHINA TAKES LEAD
As the United States prepares to exit, China is set to become the biggest provider of state fees — one of the WHO’s main streams of funding alongside donations.
China’s contribution will rise from just over 15 percent to 20 percent of the total state fee pot under an overhaul of the funding system agreed in 2022.
“We have to adapt ourselves to multilateral organizations without the Americans. Life goes on,” Chen Xu, China’s ambassador to Geneva, told reporters last month.
Others have suggested this might be a time for an even broader overhaul, rather than continuity under a reshuffled hierarchy of backers.
“Does WHO need all its committees? Does it need to be publishing thousands of publications each year?” said Anil Soni, chief executive of the WHO Foundation, an independent fund-raising body for the agency.
He said the changes had prompted a re-examination of the agency’s operations, including whether it should be focussed on details like purchasing petrol during emergencies.
There was also the urgent need to make sure key projects do not collapse during the immediate cash crisis. That meant going to donors with particular interests in those areas, including pharmaceutical companies and philanthropic groups, Soni said.
The ELMA Foundation, which focuses on children’s health in Africa with offices in the US, South Africa and Uganda, has already recently stepped in with $2 million for the Global Measles and Rubella Laboratory Network known as Gremlin — more than 700 labs which track infectious disease threats, he added.
Other business at the assembly includes the rubber-stamping a historic agreement on how to handle future pandemics and drumming up more cash from donors at an investment round.
But the focus will remain on funding under the new world order. In the run up to the event, a WHO manager sent an email to staff asking them to volunteer, without extra pay, as ushers.


Poles vote for a new president as security concerns loom large

Updated 18 May 2025
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Poles vote for a new president as security concerns loom large

WARSAW: Poles are voting Sunday in a presidential election at a time of heightened security concerns stemming from the ongoing war in neighboring Ukraine and growing worry that the US commitment to Europe’s security could be weakening under President Donald Trump.
The top two front-runners are Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, a liberal allied with Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and Karol Nawrocki, a conservative historian with no prior political experience who is supported by the national conservative Law and Justice party.
Recent opinion polls show Trzaskowski with around 30 percent support and Nawrocki in the mid-20s. A second round between the two is widely expected to take place on June 1.
The election is also a test of the strength of other forces, including the far right.
Sławomir Mentzen, a hard-right candidate who blends populist MAGA rhetoric with libertarian economics and a critical stance toward the European Union, has been polling in third place.
Ten other candidates are also on the ballot. With such a crowded field and a requirement that a candidate receive more than 50 percent of the vote to win outright, a second round seemed all but inevitable.
Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. (0500GMT) and close at 9 p.m. (1900GMT). Exit polls will be released when voting ends, with results expected by Tuesday, possibly Monday.
Polish authorities have reported attempts at foreign interference during the campaign, including denial-of-service attacks targeting parties in Tusk’s coalition on Friday and allegations by a state research institute that political ads on Facebook were funded from abroad.
Although Poland’s prime minister and parliament hold primary authority over domestic policy, the presidency carries substantial power. The president serves as commander of the armed forces, plays a role in foreign and security policy, and can veto legislation.
The conservative outgoing president, Andrzej Duda, has repeatedly used that power over more than the past year to hamper Tusk’s agenda, for example blocking ambassadorial nominations and using his veto power to resist reversing judicial and media changes made during Law and Justice’s time in power from 2015 to late 2023.
A Trzaskowski victory could be expected to end such a standoff. He has pledged to support reforms to the courts and public media, both of which critics say were politicized under Law and Justice. Tusk’s opponents say he has also politicized public media.
Nawrocki, who leads a state historical institute, has positioned himself as a defender of conservative values and national sovereignty.


Indian space agency’s satellite mission fails due to technical issue in launch vehicle

Updated 18 May 2025
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Indian space agency’s satellite mission fails due to technical issue in launch vehicle

  • The EOS-09 Earth observation satellite took off on board the PSLV-C61 launch vehicle from the Sriharikota space center in southern India on Sunday morning

NEW DELHI: The Indian space agency’s mission to launch into orbit a new Earth observation satellite failed after the launch vehicle encountered a technical issue during the third stage of flight, officials said Sunday.
The EOS-09 Earth observation satellite took off on board the PSLV-C61 launch vehicle from the Sriharikota space center in southern India on Sunday morning.
“During the third stage ... there was a fall in the chamber pressure of the motor case, and the mission could not be accomplished,” said V. Narayanan, chief of the Indian Space Research Organization.
Active in space research since the 1960s, India has launched satellites for itself and other countries, and successfully put one in orbit around Mars in 2014.
After a failed attempt to land on the moon in 2019, India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole in 2023 in a historic voyage to uncharted territory that scientists believe could hold reserves of frozen water. The mission was dubbed as a technological triumph for the world’s most populous nation.