English

SHAFAQNA –The Olympics in Rio may have started off with fears of a terror attack, but these were soon replaced by talk of the proficiency of Muslim athletes who are breaking stereotypes. Although many Muslim athletes from around the world competed in the Games, here we highlight the stories of four exceptional Muslim Olympians. Britain’s Mo Farah overcame the shock of a mid-race fall on Saturday to take a second straight Olympic 10,000m title and extend his remarkable record at global championships. Farah tumbled in the 10th lap after being clipped by American training partner Galen Rupp. But he brilliantly recovered to accumulate a second 10,000m title to add to the 5,000m gold he also won...

SHAFAQNA –The Olympics in Rio may have started off with fears of a terror attack, but these were soon replaced by talk of the proficiency of Muslim athletes who are breaking stereotypes. Although many Muslim athletes from around the world competed in the Games, here we highlight the stories of four exceptional Muslim Olympians. Britain’s Mo Farah overcame the shock of a mid-race fall on Saturday to take a second straight Olympic 10,000m title and extend his remarkable record at global championships. Farah tumbled in the 10th lap after being clipped by American training partner Galen Rupp. But he brilliantly recovered to accumulate a second 10,000m title to add to the 5,000m gold he also won...

SHAFAQNA –(Delivered at the 12th Aual Muslim Congress in Dearbo, Michigan, on Saturday, August 6, 2016. It is a blessing, a privilege, and an honor to speak at the 2016 Muslim Congress on a subject that impacts us all: Islamophobia, the dislike of Islam and Muslims; the prejudice against Islam and Muslims; and the fear and hatred against Islam and Muslims. I wish I could tell you that everyone loved us. Unfortunately, a hell of lot of people hate us. Although we have hit rock bottom and our popularity rating is the pits, we should not despair. We should view this as an opportunity and challenge as well as a test and a trial. When you are down, the only way is up. We might be in the darkest ...

SHAFAQNA –A new interfaith group has kicked off its work in Cinciati, Ohio, to help combat anti-Muslim sentiment and promote interfaith dialogue and relationships with Greater Cinciati’s Muslim community. “I look at it this way: where do we want to go as a civilization?” Mike Yeazell, a Cinciati lawyer and lifelong Catholic, told. The group gathers several dozen people from the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities and traces to previous human relations work done by the organization Bridges for a Just Community. It was known previously as the National Conference for Community and Justice and the National Conference of Christians and Jews under the leadership of Robert “Chip” Harrod. The ...

SHAFAQNA –Muslim leaders urge members of their community to use their vote to challenge rising Islamophobia and to ‘defeat hate’. On the sidelines of the US Democratic National Convention, where delegates will formally nominate Hillary Clinton as the party’s presidential candidate, Muslim leaders gathered to push the community to vote, calling the ballot a powerful means to challenge the growing problem of Islamophobia. “You don’t have to go to Canada, just register and vote,” Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told members of the Muslim community who had come to Philadelphia for the four-day event. “We can defeat hate,” he added. “Islamo...

Theresa May has driven extreme policies that surveil and criminalize Muslims, migrants and refugees Now that the Conservative Party’s Theresa May has a clear path to becoming the next prime minister of Britain, much of the media coverage is focusing on her “unpredictability,” “resolve” and,unfortunately, her favorite style of shoes. But as the United Kingdom reels from a post-Brexit surge in racist hate crimes and xenophobia, a key aspect of May’s legacy is going underreported: her role in driving policies aimed at surveilling, criminalizing and extraditing Muslims, refugees and migrants. From the begiing of her tenure as home secretary in 2010, May has been a key backer of the controversia...

SHAFAQNA –Islamophobia has risen markedly in Germany, a study published on Wednesday showed, underscoring the tensions simmering in German society after more than one million migrants, mostly Muslims, arrived last year. Every second respondent in the study of 2,420 people said they sometimes felt like a foreigner in their own country due to the many Muslims here, up from 43 percent in 2014 and 30.2 percent in 2009. The number of people who believe Muslims should be forbidden from coming to Germany has also risen, the study showed, and now stands at just above 40 percent, up from about a fifth in 2009. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Leipzig in co-operation with t...

SHAFAQNA –Nearly 25,000 people, including Ismael Essa, gathered at the Baltimore Convention Center Saturday for a three-day conference. “It’s a lot of speakers and I can get some knowledge from great scholars all over the U.S., and to be good examples for Muslims, especially with these circumstances around the world and in the U.S., and to represent Islam in a good way,” Essa said. Organizers of the ‘Islamic Circle of North America Convention want to dispel myths about the Islamic faith. “Islam encourages us to work for justice in the society, but what extremists are doing goes directly against the principals of Islam,” said Naeem Baig, president of ICNA. According to the Pew Research Cente...

SHAFAQNA-Islamophobia in Ireland has significantly increased over the past year while incidences of racism towards ethnic minorities continue to rise across the State, NGOs and anti-racism monitoring groups have waed.The latest statistics from the Immigrant Council of Ireland reveal that reports of Islamophobia rose by 35 per cent in 2015 after the council began reaching out to Ireland’s Muslim community for more information on racist abuse. “People from Muslim communities had already been contacting us about racism, but they weren’t identifying religion as the reason. It was more skin colour or being an immigrant,” said Teresa Buczkowska from the Immigrant Council of Ireland. “Then last yea...

SHAFAQNA – The new Mayor of London is determined to hug the headlines as he offered to educate Mr Donald Trump on Islam … A career Islamophobe, Mr Trump has lived and breathed xenophobia over the past months, riding fear and prejudice to propel himself before the steps of the White House. The first elected Muslim Mayor of London, Mr Khan volunteered his time to make an honest man out of Mr Trump … “To suggest that it’s incompatible to be Weste and to be Muslim is, I think, really, really risky,” Khan said during an interview. Trump, who famouslyproposed a ban on Muslims’ entering the U.S., said this week Khan would be exemptfrom that plan. The Republican presidential front-ruerfirst suggest...

SHAFAQNA –Muslim youths are being steered towards radicalization by videos highlighting incidents of violence against their community, which then go viral on social media.This is the claim of India’s intelligence agencies, which have analysed the major reasons young people embrace terrorist ideologies as part of the govement’s counter-radicalization strategy. The agencies are attempting to use a humane approach instead of carrying out knee-jerk arrests, pointing out that both domestic and inteational factors are responsible for pushing many Muslim youths towards Daesh militants. A senior intelligence official said that US Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rants against Muslims could bec...

SHAFAQNA –Ignorant bigotry these days has become Europe’s daily bread! The very continent which lived in its flesh the infamy and shame of fascism only some decades ago, stands today to repeat the same violence, and play by the same hate. The Old Continent and its old habits … the Old Continent and its cycle of blame, and ethno-centric criminality. Will Europe ever silence its old demons to rise the civilization it claims so loudly to be, but always falls short of becoming? What is democracy if spent under the diktat of officials’ overbearing sense of political righteousness? What is Freedom if defined in absolutism, and not pluralism? What is left of people’s right to choose when choices a...

During the Utah presidential caucus, Republican voters in the state rejected Trump by a wide margin. Jeremy Pope, the co-director of the Center for Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University, said rhetoric aimed at Islam was one of many factors that caused the state to vote against Trump. There is no doubt, he added, that anti-Muslim rhetoric appeals to some Republican voters throughout the country. State Senate Majority Leader Ralph Okerlund, R-Monroe, one of two senators who endorsed Trump said he still supports the businessman despite his polarizing rhetoric. “You don’t have to agree with everything a candidate says to support him,” he said. Congressman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, ha...

SHAFAQNA-A statement by a French minister equating Muslim women’s fashion to slavery indicates the promotional hatred against Muslim people, and shows the same level of racism nowadays with just different principles, said Massoud Shadjareh. France’s Women’s Rights Minister Laurence Rossignol contrasted Muslim women wearing the hijab to American‘negroes’ who backed slavery. The comment prompted a petition calling for Rossignol to be severely reprimanded. The French politician apologized for using the offensive ’N word’, however, refused to retract ‘a single word.’ RT: What do you make of her remarks? Is she saying it’s up to Muslim women to choose, or is she saying they’re being misguided and...

SHAFAQNA –“Islamophobia” is a real thing, and it’s bad for all Americans, not just Muslims, a researcher told an audience of university students and the general public on Sunday. “Why is Islamophobia a threat to all? It’s a door to other types of racism,” said Dalia Mogahed, a Muslim and the director of research at the Washington-based Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. The institute was formed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to promote studies of Muslims. She spoke on Sunday at the University of Pittsburgh at the conclusion of a three-day intensive course on Muslims in America. Offered by Pitt’s Global Studies Center (GSC), the course is the latest of a series of mini...

SHAFAQNA – Recent reports by the press have confirmed that Daesh is working to drive a further wedge in between communities in Europe, calling on Muslims to take up arms against “Westeers.” In keeping with its hideous sectarianism, and violent ideology, Daesh militants are attempting to sell Muslims in Europe a warped narrative of resistance against the so-called “white mean” – hoping that the bigotry expressed by certain Weste officials will push more Muslims to seek refuge within Daesh’s ranks. On Sunday, Daesh recruiters dispatched text messages to young men in Brussels’ Muslim-dominated district of Molenbeek, calling on them to “make the right choice” and “fight the westeers.” The texts...

SHAFAQNA-An Alberta Muslim group has started a hotline to help people report incidents of vandalism or discrimination related to Islamophobia. The Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council launched its new toll-free phone linelast week. Faesal Khan Suri said the hotline was not set up in response to growing problems, but he did point to vandalism at Alberta mosques and an incident at the University of Alberta, where he said he was told someone spit on a young Muslim woman. “We just want to be proactive,” said Suri, president of AMPAC. “It’s not something that has happened now. But with some Syrian refugees coming in, too, there could be some possible backlashes.” People who experience Islamoph...

SHAFAQNA –There is growing fear among American Muslims that aspects of Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim proposals and Islamophobia are creeping into the political mainstream, according to Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Govement Affairs Manager Robert McCaw. Muslims inthe United States are increasingly anxious that presidential candidate Donald Trump’s call fora temporary ban onMuslims entering the United States is infecting the mindset ofUS voters, Council onAmerican-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Govement Affairs Manager Robert McCaw told Sputnik onTuesday.”There is growing fear amongAmerican Muslims that aspects ofDonald Trump’s anti-Muslim proposals and Islamophobia are creeping intoth...

SHAFAQNA- By Jaideep Singh February 10, Abdul Jamil Kamawal, a 68-year-old Afghani American man, wasbludgeoned to death with a shovel in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. Remembered as “a pillar in the Muslim community,” he had helped refugees settle in the region for over two decades. Abdul Jamil Kamawal He also founded two non-profit organizations that focused on “rebuilding lives and communities in Afghanistan.”The alleged murderer was doing construction on a home owned by Mr. Kamawal. No motive for the attack has been established. While normally experienced at a lower level, such violence is a normal state of affairs for Americans of a particular physical appearance. For three months now...

NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 26: Aliza Fatima, 12, of Queens and a descendent of Pakistani parents, participates in the American Muslim Day Parade on September 26, 2010 in New York, New York. The aual parade celebrates the presence and contributions of Muslims in New York City and surrounding areas. The parade, which attracts hundreds of participants, concludes with a bazaar selling food, clothing, and books from various Muslim nations. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) SHAFAQNA – US Muslims have now mobilized against Islamophobia, determined for their voice to be heard at govemental level through the exercise of their civil rights. And while many presidential front ruers continue to fan sectari...