Across the globe, violent attacks motivated by Islamophobia are on the rise
The jfa editorial board
Please note that this article contains discussion of violence.
Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2019, August 22 is the International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief.
In March 2021, UN experts submitted a special report to the Human Rights Council documenting the increase of Islamophobia across the globe. Alarming trends of global Islamophobia have included, but are not restricted to: hijab bans, violent attacks on Muslim people and property, and nationalist discourse that excludes Muslims.
To spotlight increasing acts of violence and Islamophobic rhetoric, the jfa editorial board examines three case studies globally: the implications of anti-Muslim nationalism in India, tudung bans in Singapore, and systematic religious discrimination in the European Union.
Anti-Muslim, anti-minority nationalism in India
In India, anti-Muslim sentiment has resulted in multiple violent attacks against Muslim individuals, including an increase in mob lynchings. Dangerous rhetoric has been stemmed from several incidents, including a 2020 citizenship amendment law that fast-tracked citizenship for immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh - so long as they were not Muslim. The law’s announcement sparked violence in New Delhi, resulting in Muslim shops being looted, homes burned down, and the death of 53 people, 36 of whom were Muslim.
As the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in 2020, anti-Muslim rhetoric surged after Indian authorities announced a number of positive Covid-19 cases after a religious Islamic congregation in Delhi. While Muslims were labeled as “corona spreaders,” no condemnations were issued against the millions of Hindus who gathered for a religious festival this year. In August, a Hindu nationalist mob in New Delhi chanted, “When Muslims are killed, they will call out for Lord Ram,” referring to the increasingly common crime of beating Muslims and forcing them to praise Hindu gods. Some in the crowd were as young as children, holding signs calling for the “annihilation of Islam.”
India’s religious intolerance stems from its widely influential nationalist movement, also known as Hindutva. Backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party, Hindutva supporters believe that India should be a Hindu nation rather than a secular one, and that Hindus should receive preferential treatment. This ideology most directly affects Muslims, who are demonised as “anti-national” and “foreign,” but it has also resulted in increased violence against Christians and Sikhs.
Tudung bans in Singapore
In Singapore, debate in Parliament has continued over what has been called the “visibility of religious markers”, which has notably singled out the wearing of the tudung, or hijab, by Muslim women. During the pandemic, the debate intensified particularly around women working in the healthcare sector.
However, the parliamentary debate over the tudung goes further back. Singapore has a history of not allowing women to wear tudungs under the guise of work uniform rules and religious neutrality. Even enshrined within key guiding principles, Singapore’s Constitution allows for a person’s freedom of religion to be “restricted by a general law relating to public order, public health or morality” under Article 15(A).
In one of the first recorded incidents, in 2002, four Muslim children wore modified versions of the tudung to primary school and were sent home. This incident however, did not generate a significant public response. It was only in 2013, following a Facebook post made by then Minister-in-charge of Muslim Affairs, Yaacob Ibrahim, banning the tudung for certain professions, that the issue was catapulted into the local political conscience.
An online petition seeking to allow Singaporean women to wear the tudung in the workplace garnered more than 12,000 signatures in two weeks before being taken down. Several parliamentary members defended the action by stating the online petition could not be ‘properly verified’.
In 2020 and 2021, discussion over Muslim women wearing the tudung while serving in public sectors has taken place in closed door parliamentary discussions, which means that the decision-making conversations between politicians are not accessible to the public. Absent from the prominent sphere of discussion are tudung-wearing Muslim women, who are actually affected by laws that prohibit tudungs from being worn at work or school. High-level politicians, entirely men, have also made several controversial remarks, including one from Minister-in-charge of Muslim Affairs Masagos Zulkifli that stated that work uniforms adhere to “practices we inherited from the British Government, [our] uniform policy in the public service cannot be tilted towards any particular religious belief.”
Xenophobia and Islamophobia in the EU
In July 2021, the EU Court of Justice ruled against two Muslim women in Germany that brought cases after they were suspended from work for wearing hijabs. The court ruled that companies can ban employees from wearing hijabs under the guise of neutrality and if it stems from ‘genuine need’.
Islamophobia in EU countries is pervasive and combined with xenophobia. A UN special report cited discrimination of candidates that identify as Muslim on their CV, especially Muslim women, and also included alarming data showing persistent hate crimes. Other research has shown deliberately anti-Muslim sentiments from an alarming majority of people who responded to surveys in Germany, Switzerland, France, and Spain.
In June 2020, Belgium’s constitutional court ruled that prohibiting religious symbols (including hijabs) in higher education did not constitute “a violation of freedom of religion or the right to education under the Belgian Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights” after the Francisco Ferrer Brussels University prohibited people from wearing headscarves within their grounds.
This decision received backlash on social media as well as from several anti-racist, feminist organisations and activists, who created the movement #HijabisFightBack, and which gathered over 1,000 people at a protest organised in July 2020. Rulings like these are a violent attack on the fundamental rights of Muslim women to practice and express their faith, and contribute to continuing structural discrimination in Belgium’s education system.
After the ruling was published, 12 Belgian academic institutions stated their commitment to protecting religious freedom and to welcome all students regardless of religion, gender, or social status. In January 2021, Wallonie-Bruxelles Enseignement (WBE) announced that from September 2021 onwards, religious symbols (including the hijab) will be authorised in all 49 of WBE’s institutions.
Xenophobia and Islamophobia in the EU has stemmed from racism, religious prejudice, and political and social rhetoric from politicians across both sides of the political spectrum. In 2020, French president Emmanuel Macron, for example, called Islam a “religion in crisis all over the world today.” In 2021, he pulled support for a Muslim woman running in a local election after she wore a hijab in campaign flyer photos. His party then banned her from running altogether.
Anti-Muslim rhetoric and imperialist sentiments are a danger to Muslim people
Many countries cite religious extremism as grounds for anti-Muslim sentiment and actions. This type of rhetoric actively endangers Muslim people and erodes respect for Islam as a religion and faith. Moreover, it ignores the very real grievances that Muslim-majority nations have suffered as a result of foreign occupation, colonialism, racism, and imperialism. These historical wrongs have resulted in socioeconomic conditions that breed resentment towards the West, and in some cases create refugees fleeing from unstable puppet governments.
It is critical to remember that for every instance of “Islamic” extremism, there is a history of foreign invasion, whether that be the brutal French colonisation of Algeria, or Israel’s attacks on Palestinians, or the U.S.’s support of the Mujahideen - who would later become the Taliban - from 1979 to 1989. Externally-charged conflicts such as these within majority Muslim countries have also systemically displaced people who then have to face xenophobia and anti-refugee sentiment in addition to religious discrimination.
Religious extremism in Muslim countries, which often rises from historical grievances like settler-colonialism and Western imperialism and is not representative of the faith of Islam, affects and endangers Muslim communities the most, yet most media outlets tend to dismiss this violence as “unpreventable” and focus more on attacks and threats in the West.
Consistent debate over hijabs has pointedly excluded the voices of Muslim women and has even led to criticism that Islam “opresses” women who wear the hijab. However, such criticisms often ignore the real oppression that Muslim communities face across the globe. Meanwhile, Muslim men are demonised as being uniquely misogynistic, and somehow unworthy of saving. This is the rhetoric of imperialism, which deems Black and brown women as incapable of caring for themselves, criminalises Black and brown men, and upholds Western culture as the only indication of progress.
In order to dismantle extremism, it is necessary to take an honest look at the history of nations that claim to be the saviours of Muslim people.
This editorial is an extension of our weekly segment This Week in Human Rights News.
Sources: United Nations (1, 2, 3), IFSW, Al Jazeera, Mothership, DW, Rice, Mothership, New Naratif (Youtube), AA, TRT World, Global Citizen, RTBF