Qur’an burning in Sweden underscores need to combat Islamophobia from Europe to Latin America

The undated photo shows Muslim women holding banners to raise awareness about Islam in Colombia, South America.
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Updated 06 July 2023
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Qur’an burning in Sweden underscores need to combat Islamophobia from Europe to Latin America

  • The June 28 desecration act draws attention to hatred, prejudice believed to lie 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

 


Ukraine’s parliament cancels session after Russia fired a new missile

Updated 59 min 12 sec ago
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Ukraine’s parliament cancels session after Russia fired a new missile

  • Three Ukrainian lawmakers confirmed that the parliamentary session previously scheduled was canceled
  • President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office continued to work in compliance with standard security measures

KYIV: Ukraine’s parliament canceled a session on Friday as security was tightened after Russia deployed a new ballistic missile that threatens to escalate the nearly three-year war.
Russian troops also struck Sumy with Shahed drones overnight killing two people and injuring 12 more, the regional administration said Friday morning. The attack targeted a residential district of the city.
Ukraine’s Suspilne media, quoting Sumy regional head Volodymyr Artiukh, said the Russians used Shaheds stuffed with shrapnel elements for the first time in the region. “These weapons are used to destroy people, not to destroy objects,” said Artiukh, according to Suspilne.
Separately, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky arrived on a visit to Kyiv. He posted a photo from Kyiv’s railway station on his X account Friday morning.
“I am interested in how the Ukrainians are coping with the bombings, how Czech projects are working on the ground and how to better target international aid in the coming months. I will discuss all of this here,” Lipavsky wrote.
Three Ukrainian lawmakers confirmed that the parliamentary session previously scheduled was canceled due to the ongoing threat of Russian missile attacks targeting government buildings in the city center.
Not only is the parliament closed, “there was also recommendation to limit the work of all commercial offices and NGOs that remain in that perimeter, and local residents were warned of the increased threat,” said lawmaker Mykyta Poturaiev, who added this is not the first time such a threat has been received.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office continued to work in compliance with standard security measures, a spokesperson said.
Russia on Thursday fired a new intermediate-range ballistic missile in response to Kyiv’s use of US and British longer-range missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an address on Thursday.
It struck a missile factory in Dnipro in central Ukraine. Putin warned that US air defense systems would be powerless to stop the new missile, which he said flies at 10 times the speed of sound and which he called Oreshnik – Russian for hazelnut tree.
The Pentagon confirmed that Russia’s missile was a new, experimental type of intermediate-range missile based on its RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile.


Pope Francis to visit French island of Corsica on Dec. 15, local church says

Updated 22 November 2024
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Pope Francis to visit French island of Corsica on Dec. 15, local church says

  • Short visit to the island’s capital city Ajaccio will mark his 47th foreign trip since becoming pope in 2013
  • Corsica’s population of some 356,000 is estimated by the Vatican as 81.% Catholic

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis will visit Corsica on Dec. 15, the local diocese said on its website on Thursday, in the first recorded trip of a pope to the French island in the Mediterranean.
The short visit to the island’s capital city Ajaccio, where Francis is expected to speak at a conference on popular religiosity across the Mediterranean region, will mark his 47th foreign trip since becoming pope in 2013.
Corsica, noted for its steep, mountainous terrain and as the birthplace of Napoleon, is the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of France’s poorest regions, with government statistics estimating that about 20 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
The Vatican did not immediately confirm the local church’s announcement, but the trip is known to have been in preparation for weeks. Francis has made two prior visits to France, traveling to Strasbourg in 2014 to address the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, and to Marseilles in 2023 to attend a meeting of bishops.
But the pope, who turns 88 on Dec. 17, has never made a full state visit to France, a historic stronghold for Catholicism that is now widely secular and home to Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish communities.
French President Emmanuel Macron invited Francis to come to Paris for the Dec. 8 reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral, but the pope will be leading a ceremony at the Vatican that day to install new Catholic cardinals.
Cardinal Francois-Xavier Bustillo, originally from Spain, has led the Catholic Church in Corsica since 2021. Francis made him a cardinal, the highest rank in the Church below pope, in 2023.
Corsica’s population of some 356,000 is estimated by the Vatican as 81.5 percent Catholic.
Francis has traveled widely around the Mediterranean over his 11-year papacy, visiting Malta, the Greek island of Lesbos and the Italian island of Lampedusa.


Record 281 aid workers killed in 2024, says UN, with 1 month left

Updated 22 November 2024
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Record 281 aid workers killed in 2024, says UN, with 1 month left

  • 280 humanitarians were killed across 33 countries during all of 2023

Geneva: A staggering 281 aid workers have been killed around the world so far this year, making 2024 the deadliest year for humanitarians, the UN aid chief said Friday.
“Humanitarian workers are being killed at an unprecedented rate, their courage and humanity being met with bullets and bombs,” said Tom Fletcher, the United Nations’ new under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.
With more than a month left to go of 2024, the “grim milestone was reached,” he said, after 280 humanitarians were killed across 33 countries during all of 2023.
“This violence is unconscionable and devastating to aid operations,” Fletcher said.
Israel’s devastating war in Gaza was driving up the numbers, his office said, with 333 aid workers killed there — most from the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA — since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, which sparked the war.
“States and parties to conflict must protect humanitarians, uphold international law, prosecute those responsible, and call time on this era of impunity,” Fletcher said.
Aid workers were subject to kidnappings, injuries, harassment and arbitrary detention in a range of countries, his office said, including Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Ukraine.
The majority of deaths involve local staff working with non-governmental organizations, UN agencies and the Red Cross Red Crescent movement, Fletcher’s office said.
“Violence against humanitarian personnel is part of a broader trend of harm to civilians in conflict zones,” it warned.
“Last year, more than 33,000 civilian deaths were recorded in 14 armed conflicts — a staggering 72 percent increase from 2022.”
The UN Security Council adopted a resolution last May in response to the surging violence and threats against aid workers.
The text called for recommendations from the UN chief — set to be presented at a council meeting next week — on measures to prevent and respond to such incidents and to increase protection for humanitarian staff and accountability for abuses.


Russia says ‘derailed’ Kyiv’s war plans after uproar over test strike

Updated 22 November 2024
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Russia says ‘derailed’ Kyiv’s war plans after uproar over test strike

  • Vladimir Putin says the conflict in Ukraine had taken on a ‘global’ nature
  • NATO and Ukraine will hold talks next week in Brussels over the strike

KYIV: Russia said on Friday it had scuppered Kyiv’s military objectives for 2025 just after President Vladimir Putin issued a warning to the West by test-firing a new intermediate-range missile at Ukraine.
That assessment for next year came after a Russian drone attack at night on the eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy killed two civilians and wounded a dozen more in an attack with new cluster munitions, local authorities said.
Putin announced the missile launch in a defiant address late on Thursday, saying the conflict in Ukraine had taken on a “global” nature, while hinting at strikes on Western countries.
In a meeting with military commanders, Russian defense minister Andrei Belousov said Moscow’s advance had “accelerated” in Ukraine and “ground down” Kyiv’s best units.
“We have, in fact, derailed the entire 2025 campaign,” Belousov said of the Ukrainian army in a video published by the Russian defense ministry.
The attack, which apparently targeted an aerospace manufacturing plant in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, sparked immediate condemnation from Kyiv’s allies.
China, which has thrown its political clout behind the Kremlin, reiterated calls for “calm” and “restraint” by all parties after Russia confirmed the new missile strike.
“All parties should remain calm and exercise restraint, work to de-escalate the situation through dialogue and consultation, and create conditions for an early ceasefire,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told a regular briefing.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz meanwhile, on Friday described Russia’s deployment of the medium-range missile as a “terrible escalation.”
NATO and Ukraine will hold talks next week in Brussels over the strike, according to diplomats.
Ambassadors from countries in the NATO-Ukraine Council will hold talks on Tuesday. The meeting was called by Kyiv following the Dnipro strike, officials said.
The Russian attack came after Ukraine recently fired US- and UK-supplied missiles at Russian territory for the first time, escalating already sky-high tensions over the conflict, which is nearly in its third year.
Washington said it had granted Kyiv permission to fire long-range weapons at Russian territory as a response to the Kremlin’s deployment of thousands of North Korean troops on Ukraine’s border.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for a strong response from world leaders to Russia’s use of the new missile, which he said proved Moscow “does not want peace.”
In Kyiv, Oleksandra, a 30-year-old resident working in the media, said the Russian strike was a sign of desperation within the Kremlin.
“You could have launched a missile that is less expensive and have the same result. As long as this missile does not carry a nuclear payload, there is nothing to fear about,” she said.
Russian troops have been making steady advances in eastern Ukraine for months, capturing a string of small towns and villages from overstretched Ukrainian soldiers lacking manpower and artillery.
In the city of Sumy, authorities said a Russian drone had struck a residential neighborhood. Emergency services distributed images showing rescue workers retrieving the bodies of the dead from the rubble.
Sumy lies across the border from Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops captured swathes of territory after launching a major ground offensive in August.
The head of the Sumy region, Volodymyr Artyukh, said Russia had deployed a drone with modified munitions that were equipped with shrapnel, describing the weapons as being “used to kill people, not to destroy buildings.”


Indian commandos kill 10 Maoist rebels

Updated 22 November 2024
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Indian commandos kill 10 Maoist rebels

  • More than 10,000 people have died in the decades-long insurgency waged by the Naxalite movement
  • Gunbattle took place in a remote forested area of Chhattisgarh state, the heartland of the insurgency

RAIPUR, India: Indian security forces gunned down at least 10 Maoist rebels on Friday during a firefight, police said, as New Delhi steps up efforts to crush the long-running armed conflict.
More than 10,000 people have died in the decades-long insurgency waged by the Naxalite movement, who say they are fighting for the rights of marginalized Indigenous people of India’s remote and resource-rich central regions.
The gunbattle took place in a remote forested area of Chhattisgarh state, the heartland of the insurgency.
“Dead bodies of 10 Maoists have been recovered so far,” Vivekanand Sinha, chief of the state police’s anti-Maoist operations, said.
Sinha said the police recovered several automatic weapons from the rebels.
India’s home minister Amit Shah this year issued an ultimatum to the insurgents to surrender or face an “all-out assault.”
A crackdown by security forces has killed over 200 rebels this year, an overwhelming majority in Chhattisgarh, according to government data.
India has deployed tens of thousands of security personnel to battle the Maoists across the insurgent-dominated “Red Corridor,” which stretches across central, southern and eastern states but has shrunk dramatically in size.
India has pumped millions of dollars into infrastructure development in remote areas and claims to have confined the insurgency to 45 districts in 2023, down from 96 in 2010.
The conflict has seen a number of deadly attacks on government forces over the years. Twenty-two police and paramilitaries were killed in a gunbattle with the far-left guerrillas in 2021.
Sixteen commandos were also killed in the western state of Maharashtra in a bomb attack that was blamed on the Maoists in the lead-up to national elections in 2019.