Beyond the Incident: Highest Number of Annual Reports Logged by Tell MAMA Since Launch in 2012

Director of Tell MAMA, Iman Atta OBE says, “We are in deeply worrying times where people are looking for certainty and what they are getting is instability at a political and societal level. This means that at times like this, minority groups are the ones who suffer the anger of those looking to vent their fears, insecurities and concerns.

“We are seeing more aggressive street-based incidents, younger perpetrators, between the ages of 13-18, increased vandalism and international interference by well organised social media accounts playing groups off in the UK. More than ever, we need to come together and redouble our efforts against those who seek to divide and play communities off against each other”.

Key Points

• In 2017 Tell MAMA recorded a total of 1,330 reports. Of these reports, 1,201 were verified as being anti-Muslim or Islamophobic in nature and as having occurred in the UK between January and December 2017. More than two-thirds of verified incidents occurred offline, or on a street-level (70%, n=839), which represents a 30% rise in offline reports when compared to the previous reporting period (n=643). An offline, or street-level, incident means that the incident occurred in-person between a victim (or property) and a perpetrator. There were therefore more street incidents of anti-Muslim hatred reported into Tell MAMA.
• Crimes or incidents that are classified as ‘online’ occurred on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, or on other Internet-based platforms, were verified as having happened within the UK, and account for a third of reports in 2017 (n=362), which represents a 16.3% rise in reports when compared with the previous year (n=311). This small rise can be partially attributed to the way in which ideologically-motivated accounts felt emboldened by major trigger events, (such as terrorist attacks) and broader Islamophobic discourses in the public sphere.
• The ‘online hate’ figure, however, should be viewed as part of a wider trend in our data sets where there has been a marked shift towards more serious offline incidents such as physical attacks, threatening behaviour and abuse more generally, along with a growing awareness of Tell MAMA in Muslim communities, among key stakeholders, and partners, resulting in a greater willingness amongst victims and witnesses to report.
• Tell MAMA has listed in its Annual Report examples of ‘Twitter bots’ that have sought to cause disruption and division in community perceptions and which have actively promoted anti-Muslim hatred. One such Twitter account was @DavidJo52951945 . Responses to the rhetoric on this account, called for violent action against Islamic institutions and on August 30^th 2017, the Times reported that this bot originated from Russia. Furthermore, a Twitter account called @SouthLoneStar, which had amassed some 16,500 followers, was responsible in starting a global trend after the Westminster terrorist attack.

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A Sri Lankan court on Wednesday handed a six-year jail term to a Buddhist monk accused of inciting violence against Muslims, holding him guilty of contempt just months after he was convicted of intimidating the wife of a missing journalist.

The monk, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, leads the hardline Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) or “Buddhist Power Force”, which government ministers and Muslims have accused of stirring up violence against Muslims and Christians, allegations he has denied.

The court sentenced him to six years’ rigorous imprisonment over a 2016 incident when Gnanasara interrupted a court hearing on the abduction of the journalist, Prageeth Eknaligoda, in which military intelligence officials were accused.

He shouted at the judge and lawyers because the military officials had not been given bail, and threatened Eknaligoda’s wife.

“The convict intentionally committed the offence to undermine the judiciary,” Preethi Padman Surasena, the president of the court of appeal, said in delivering Wednesday’s judgment, adding, “Found guilty of all charges beyond reasonable doubt.”

The monk was convicted on four counts of contempt of court, receiving terms of four years each on the first and the second counts, six years on the third and five for the fourth, all to run concurrently.

A BBS official told Reuters the group would appeal against Wednesday’s ruling.

“We feel there is an attempt by interested parties to have judicial process targeting Gnanasara, therefore, though we do not agree with the judgment, we accept the sentence, and we will appeal,” said Dilantha Vithanage, the group’s chief executive.

Gnanasara, who is being treated in hospital for an ailment, was not in court for the ruling. He has been on bail since filing an appeal against a conviction in a separate case on June 14.

In that case, he received two concurrent jail terms of six months, a fine of 1,500 rupees ($9.39), and a compensation payment of 50,000 rupees ($313) for having threatened the journalist’s wife, Sandhya Eknaligoda.

Since 2014, the monk has faced accusations in cases regarding anti-Muslim violence, hate speech, and defaming the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

That year Gnanasara signed a pact with Myanmar’s Ashin Wirathu, who once described himself as “the Burmese bin Laden”, in what the duo called a bid to counter regional conversion efforts by Islamists.

($1=159.7000 Sri Lankan rupees)

Faith Matters launches a ground-breaking paper looking at worrying levels of far-right anti-Muslim racism in Poland and anti-Muslim activism in the UK in Polish Communities

• A chronology of Islamophobic incidents in Poland demonstrates how some have exploited international events to attack Islamic institutions, including an attack on a mosque in Poznań, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks in Paris in January 2015,
• Polling of European countries in 2016 found that negative views of minorities and refugees were commonplace. Negative views of Muslims were widespread in Italy (69%), Hungary (72%), and Poland (69%). It is perhaps unsurprising that almost a quarter of Poles interviewed expressed negative opinions towards Jewish communities. Ideological leanings to the right were indicators of increased unfavourability towards Muslims.
• Anti-refugee sentiment remains stubbornly high in Poland, even though the country has hardly taken in refugees post the Syria civil war. For example, just over half of Poles polled who expressed favourable views of Muslims had agreed that refugees pose a threat, though this jumps to 81% amongst the Poles who expressed unfavourable views of Muslims. Outside of Hungary, Poles expressed the most concern (71%) that refugees will increase the risk of domestic terrorism. Almost of a third of Poles agreed that Muslims in their country support ISIS, as a similar number declined to answer this question. As with other countries, Poles also overwhelmingly agreed that refugees were ‘drains’ on the welfare system.
• Perhaps these factors help explain how many Europeans uniformly overstate the size of their respective Muslim populations. In Poland, researchers found that on average, Poles believed that of every 100 people, seven are Muslim. The reality is that this figure is under 0.1%.
• Regarding population shifts, Poles believed that Muslims would make up 13% of the population in 2020. Pędziwiatr (2016) attributes this perception gap to the misinformation presented in sections of Polish press and by certain public figures. 
• Social researchers, Gawlewicz and Narkowicz (2015), highlight how the rich Islamic history of the region is ignored, demonstrating how this panic is a modern problem, and reflective the political shifts in Poland in recent years. Some of the key social agitators, highlighted in the Faith Matters report are based in the UK and Poland.

• The history of the Polish Muslim Tatars is completely overlooked by social commentators who promote anti-Muslim hate, as though hundreds of years of engagement with Muslims that have shaped and made up a part of Poland’s history, simply do not exist.

]]> 6989 https://www.faith-matters.org/anti-muslim-hatred-terrorism-media-sources-far-right-networks-spike-points/ Fri, 13 Oct 2017 16:24:27 +0000 https://www.faith-matters.org/?p=6920

The recent Independent article highlighted the sharp rise in mosque attacks that have been seen across the country and which Tell MAMA has been systematically documenting for over 4 years now. Attacks on mosques, we have said time and time again, have a wider destructive impact on Muslim communities who use it – with some reading into the attack that they are not wanted or that they are not part of the local community. Such mosque attacks can potentially therefore cause long term impacts on cohesion, the further escalation of hate crimes and in the worst instances, the possibility of further public order offences. Allied to this, all of the data we have, shows that terrorism in particular leads to very large spike points of anti-Muslim hatred and that terrorism is the major driver of incidents and attacks against Muslim communities at specific points when they take place. This basic fact cannot be denied and it also has impacts on cohesion and with the cyclical fuelling of far-right extremism and hatred towards Muslims.

To provide context to the Independent article, it is important to state the following given the fact that there are other issues that drive anti-Muslim sentiment. Terrorism is one, inflammatory media headlines are another and we have seen this when headlines are emblazoned across front pages, only for minute retractions to be printed after IPSO complaints. Such work, (of holding to account stories that are not factually accurate and meant to sell more newspapers or drive more traffic to a web-site), is essential and we salute those who carry out this vital work since it does help to reframe facts from fiction. There are a growing number of activists from Muslim and non-Muslim communities doing this and we value their much-needed work and long may it continue.

We also understand that many people will focus on complaining about inflammatory and inaccurate press headlines, just as we focus on supporting victims of anti-Muslim hatred and in monitoring and mapping cases of anti-Muslim hatred across the country. This does not make them Islamists, nor should their work be curtailed since holding to account the powerful is a fundamental plank of a healthy democracy. What is a problem, is when some believe that the media is the only driver of anti-Muslim hatred and who choose to deny or even acknowledge that terrorist attacks create further animosity, tensions and divisions, apart from brutally murdering so many innocent people and scarring families for life.

These deniers may be led by a belief that terrorism is not their responsibility, and that is a position that they can hold. We understand that position though we do not take it, since there is a social responsibility, we believe, in calling out hate. Hate drives terrorism and has huge community impacts and we will always call it out, in all of its forms.

Others truly do not want to talk about terrorism, taking a head in the sand approach, whilst others just deny what is blatantly obvious, in some vain attempt to protect Muslims and Islam, as though not talking about it, might not shine a light on the large spike points that come about because of terrorism and the subsequent targeting of Muslims by bigots. It is the latter position, of believing that the media alone is responsible for anti-Muslim hatred, which is a position that does not hold and which may drive by ideology rather than fact.

Or take those who use any opportunity to create further hatred and division, as though they are the moral guardians of Muslim communities, when the only guardianship we should be considering around hate crime work, are the voices and well-being of victims. They might shout the loudest, but they are doing no justice to real work on the ground in supporting victims and in bringing communities together.

Additionally, it is clear is that the vast majority of anti-Muslim hate incidents are opportunistic in nature and where individuals come across visible Muslims. In many of the cases that we have worked on, language related to terrorist attacks is thrown at visible Muslims, such as “you were responsible for Manchester”. The link between terrorism, opportunism and perpetrator emboldenment are clear. Some of the emboldening of perpetrators may well be due to press articles and comment pieces which blame all Muslims for extremism and terrorism, whilst for others, they may have come across far right extremist material or anti-Muslim rhetoric. Causation factors are many, including terrorism and that is the picture. It is neither one or another, but a combination of factors.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the divisive myth-making of the far-right and the growing hostility towards Muslims,refugees, Jewish communities and other minorities.

His remarks at a General Assembly meeting marked the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21.

This growing hostility and violence is ‘manifested most directly in anti-refugee, anti-migrant and, in particular, anti-Muslim bigotry, attacks and violence’.

As moderate parties harden their positions and far-right parties sow division. The Secretary-General’s grave tone bore the weight of Europe’s violent history. As the anti-refugee rhetoric mirrored ‘the darkest chapters of the last century’.

Ban Ki-moon spoke a universal and pluralistic truth: that ‘an assault on one minority community is an attack on all’. And that requires us to speak out against antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and other forms of hate.

This year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination also focuses on the challenges and achievements of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.

The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action promised a robust response to racism. Ratified in 2001, the framework raised concerns about growing antisemitism and Islamophobia. Point 150 “Calls upon States, in opposing all forms of racism, to recognize the need to counter anti-Semitism, anti-Arabism and Islamophobia world-wide, and urges all States to take effective measures to prevent the emergence of movements based on racism and discriminatory ideas concerning these communities”.

Yet, fifteen years later, and for the UK at least, both forms of bigotry remain growing concerns. The same problems emerge in France and Germany.

A plan of action put focus on a victim-orientated approach to tackling racism. Years earlier and the Macpherson Report redefined how police in the UK investigate hate crimes following the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. Victim perception would dictate how police investigate hate crimes.

The Durban Declaration is not without criticism. Three human rights experts said “very little progress has been made in tackling racism, afrophobia, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”.

Mutuma Ruteere; the Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, and Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism; Mireille Fanon Mendes-France; and the Chairperson of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, José Francisco Cali Tzay cautioned against media and political scapegoating of minorities.

The experts also highlighted the under-reporting of racist hate crime and the need for tough policing responses. Another recommendation highlighted the need for reliable data collection in order to track the effectiveness of acti-racism action plans.

The post UN Secretary-General condemns rising anti-Muslim and anti-refugee bigotry appeared first on Religious Reader.

Sadly, as we have said before, there are groups who want to tackle anti-Muslim prejudice or Islamophobia. This is noble cause, but it is one that is based on ensuring that bigotry against other groups is not promoted or published.

How many times have we come across material from some of these groups that is deeply problematic? It is essential that where we see it, it is called out and this is even more relevant when it involves intra-Muslim bigotry.

So, it is with some sadness and trepidation that we have received the following material from a site which purports to tackle anti-Muslim hatred. The site regularly posts material about harm to Muslims and what they have previously posted is text that they have considered relevant in this area.The group is called Documenting Oppression Against Muslims or DOAM.

However, the following material is troubling and is unacceptable. Anti-Shia rhetoric, which is published on-line or stated at a street level or through leaflets is unacceptable. We cannot stand by whilst such statements are made and we need to call it for what it is – anti-Muslim bigotry.

We hope that the group changes its stance in the future around the promotion of anti-Shia rhetoric.

The post Anti-Shia Rhetoric Like This is Unacceptable. It is Anti-Muslim Bigotry appeared first on TELL MAMA.