#Islamaphobia

[vague-humanoid]

[our-trans-punk-experience]

FAR RIGHT RIOTS

REBLOG THIS PLEASE!!

shit is bad in the UK but obviously it is immensly confusing and I know some people wouldn't want to search up the news given how volatile it is, so here is a timeline of events. warnings for talk of violence, child death, racism, police ect

Monday 29/07: mass stabbing occured in Southport at a kids dance class, three girls died on scene, several others were hospitalised. An at time unnamed 17 y old boy was arrested on suspicion, and a knife was seized. later

Tuesday 30/07: having read false news suggesting that the attacker was a muslim immigrant who had arrived on a small boat, far-right groups with links to the EDL their leader Tommy Robinson took to the internet to imply the attacker was Muslim attacked a mosque in Southport, and after being declared a public disturbance, the police showed up and started trying to disperse them. This very quickly spiralled into a riot in which 39 police were hospitalised. Also on this day, Nigel fucking Farage, leader of far-right party Reform UK tweeted a video in which asked if the police were lying that the attack was not "terror related", furthering belief that the attacker was Muslim

Wednesday 31/07: violent anti immigrant protest continued, and there were mass riots in London. The PM spoke out denouncing the far right rioters as "violent thugs who would feel the full force of the law"

Thursday 01/08 : to try and curb the spread of misinformation, the police released the identity of their suspect - Axel Rudakubana, born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents in hope that the confirmation that he is not a Muslim immigrant would stop the rioting. It has not. PM Starmer released a statement saying that these were "coordinated attacks by the far right. " and that "this is not a protest that got out of hand these are individuals bent on violence"

Friday Night 02/08: Riots started in Sunderland late at night with reports of "serious violence". Starmer announced he had a plan to tackle far right violence.

Saturday 03/08: New far right mob action started in Manchester, Bristol, Hull, Belfast, Stoke, and Nottingham. Nottingham saw the first counterprotest, and as I write this, clashes between antifacist protestors and the far right is on going. The racists are setting fire to migrant housing buildings and attacking both police and counterprotestors countrywide. Dispersal orders have been issued for every city centre and major town centre across the UK.

Sunday 04/08: a "nick em quick" approach is to be used against the rioters in a hope to remove the far right mob from the street as soon as possible. There have been over 100 arrests. There are no plans to bring in the army, say ministers. There is a current attack on a migrant housing building in Rotherham.

I will keep posting updates as this unfolds so watch this space. This is obviously terrifying, so I want you to focus on actionable points.

stop the spread of misinformation. i can cite all my sources on a different post if you would like, but know that i visited ten different news sites, and also watched all the live news coverage to make this post. if you see any new information, fact check it. if you see someone spreading misinformation anywhere, DO SOMETHING. call them out and correct them and if they don't fix it, report them.

take care of any of your friends who aren't white, or if you aren't white, consider not going anywhere alone. racists don't discriminate in their discrimination. they are violent, deranged, and several are armed.

unless you are attending a counterprotest, stay the fuck out of town and city centres!!!!

STAY SAFE OUT THERE!! always in solidarity

[moonyluv-s]

“b-b-but From the River to the Sea is hate speech 😭😭🥺🥺” give me a break.

[kick-a-long]

for those who don't remember 9/11 or why terrorists are literal poison in humanity:

my dad was working in fidi and had a meeting at the twin towers at 9:30am that day. He was late but had to walk home in the ash. the cell phones didn't work and the subway was down so he had to walk a hundred blocks to get home. I didn't have any contact from my parents and had to wait in school alone for hours while the kids who lived in brooklyn had to find kids who lived in manhatten to room with. no one had a car or anything so everyone was just walking and calling on the one pay phone. no one knew who's parents were alive and who's were dead. my friend's step dad died, bett middler sung at his funeral, but because her mom hadn't married him she was left homeless and I never saw her again.

we didn't know if my dad was alive or dead for the entire day, she was pretty sure he was dead because his office was in the building.

the flip side of the islamaphobia after 9/11 is the rabid hyper christian cultural reaction. suddenly the tv was flooded with shit from south park and other "jokes" about jews, and how terrorists wouldn't have attacked if not for all the jews. kids from a visiting school chanted shit about bagels and kosher food at our games.

but funnily enough... my dad looked too middle eastern for the airport and the subway. He had to change his passport photo and shave his beard. he even stopped playing tennis and swimming outside for a long time so he wouldn't look as tan.

anyone who 'jokes' about it is at best a naive infant and at worst a school shooter wannabe in my opinion.

for those people: try to empathize with how it would feel to suddenly lose your parents, everything about the best and worst parts of your relationship permanently unresolved, and then have to watch whoever survives them try to figure out how to financially and emotionally restructure their lives. how to cope with how your parent has become a symbol instead of your dad. how you have to hear about 9/11 constantly, grifters raking in the cash, politicians doing things in your name, and you can't get away from it. your tears, or lack thereof, become a performance for strangers across the country to spend 20 years fighting when you have no say out of it. how depersonalizing it is to have left and right fight about what it means to them and who deserves vengeance with no respect to what it means to you.

anyway, fuck 9/11 jokes and all the fucks slurping up the terroristic and USSR style tankie propaganda.

[the-eldritch-it-gay]

It’s been 0 days since someone was Islamophobic on one of my posts. Reported it but I doubt staff will do shit.

[thestarsandnightskies]

fyi i do NOT give a fuck about the white person's definition of terrorism. so when you got them calling muslims, palestinians and h*um*us terrorists i do not give a fuck and will not try convincing them otherwise.you all should do the same. these are the people that defined the black panther party and movement as an "extremist", "beastly", "barbaric" organization, eventually equating it to terrorism and these are the people who have yet to declare the KKK one.

So ya i do not, did not and will not define my words from the common white man's dictionary so forgive me (sarcasm, do not forgive me) for not speaking their language, i refuse to speak in their tongue because why is it that they can not speak in mine

[pomegranatecookiez]

uh. hope all my muslim followers are having a good ramadan!!

[timetravellingkitty]

It is truly amazing to see Indian Islamaphobes using the persecution of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh to fuel their Hindutva propaganda. I'm sorry but if you really cared you'd be bringing them up elsewhere, not just when you wanna use them as a scapegoat to call for the genocide of Indian Muslims, to justify why India MUST be a pure Hindu nation. You'll never see them bring up Sri Lanka, where the Rajapaksa family is trying to maintain a Sinhala-Buddhist hegemony and persecuting a minority that is mostly Hindu, because it doesn't fit their Islamaphobic agenda

It's also really baffling when they argue that "Oh Muslims have so many countries why can't we have ONE Hindu nation why must WE be secular" do you realise that Muslim theocracies are not good either. Do you not see the harm inflicted onto people there in the name of Islam. Not a single religion out there deserves their own state. Islam isn't exempt from this

[kick-a-long]

so this is why i don't trust conservatives or the far right even if I also don't trust tankies and the far left. islamaphobia is the twin of antisemitism. EVEN IF the teen who stabbed those kids was an islamic terrorist WHICH IS TOTALLY UNCONFIRMED AND THERE ARE PLENTY OF FAR RIGHT WHITE CHRISTIANS WHO ATTACK PEOPLE to attack a house of worship is disgusting. it's no surprise that now that violence has been normalized that it's being used against muslims as well.

the target changes, the political alignment changes, but the message is the same: "if you are different, you don't deserve to exist."

never accept religious or ethnic violence, call it out where you see it.

[ashadowofburnedoutstardust]

🤍🪽✨

[gwydionmisha]

Republlican Christo-fascism has reached it’s logical conclusion.  Tjis is where the Republican mainstream is now.  This is an existential to all of us who aren’t Christo-fascists.

We hang together or we hang separately.

[mylight-png]

This is going to be a little different from my usual posts, but here I go anyways.

It is rare, especially now, for online content to make me really and truly happy. But today I saw something that both made me really happy and also made me think.

I was scrolling through TikTok and came across multiple videos of the same kind. A woman wearing a hijab was finding other Muslim women and was helping them try on a hijab for the first time. These videos brought me so much joy. The hijabi woman's gestures were so kind and loving, she seemed almost like an older sister to the other women. The care with which she helped them put on the hijab was so sweet. And then there was the reaction of the women to wearing a hijab for the first time. There were before and after shots, and every single time, the "after" photos of them in the hijab were so happy. It was so pure to see women finding joy in dressing in a way that brought them comfortable.

But even more interestingly, it was a joy I recognized. The sisterly and caring gestures of the more experienced hijabi were familiar too.

The joy I saw in the "after" photos was reminiscent of my emotions when I first intentionally dressed tznuis (Jewish modesty). It was recent, and I felt so comfortable and safe in the clothes I was wearing, and I recognized that comfort in the faces of the women in the videos.

The sweet and caring gestures of the experienced hijabi reminded me a bit of my interactions with rebbetzins and other older religious women in various communities. They're always so sweet and kind (in my experience of course), and I noticed that they frequently try to connect through touch. You know, putting a hand on my shoulder or elbow. Hugs, of course. Using those gestures to make people feel heard and listened to.

And that made me think. We are so much more similar than the media gives us credit for. In fact, it reminded me of an interaction I had with a classmate just last week.

In one of my classes, we were talking about cultural traditions, and we were supposed to pair up and discuss family traditions we have. I mentioned that I love celebrating New Year's because my family doesn't celebrate Christmas, but due to them coming to the US from ex-USSR countries, they brought over similar yet secular and unique traditions for New Year's.

The girl I ended up pairing up with mentioned that she also didn't celebrate Christmas, because she was Muslim, and then she started talking about what her family does for Ramadan.

We ended up having a really nice discussion, connecting over having to fast for holidays, being surrounded by a majority Christian world, and other things we had in common.

And at the very beginning of the year, a Jewish friend of mine and I were complaining to each other about how lame it was that there were only two cheese pizzas at the event, and the rest were all pepperoni (and therefore not kosher), which led into a discussion of accommodating dietary restrictions. We unintentionally ended up sitting next to a few Muslim girls who heard our conversation and joined in, and we had the fun experience of bonding over the pork-obsessed world we all live in.

So yeah. We're actually not as different as the media and politicians make us look.

This is why, as much as I try to advocate about antisemitism, I still try to call out Islamaphobia in my day-to-day life.

There really isn't an excuse for hating an entire group. No excuse for awful and slanderous generalizations, which I've seen made about both us and Muslims. Just as antisemitism shouldn't have any place in these discussions, neither does Islamaphobia.

In fact, I think it would be amazing if we could set aside our differences and unite on this issue.

I know we may feel adversely towards each other in regards to the Israel-Hamas war and our views on it. And I'm not going to force anyone to agree/disagree on all the same things about it. Both sides are hurt. Both sides are accusing each other of genocide, and neither one (majority, I know extremist views exist on both sides, that's not who I am talking about here) actually hates all of the other side to the point of wanting to kill each other.

Yes, we disagree. Yes, our disagreement right now is serious and valid. But there is something we can, I hope, agree upon, and that's the fact that neither side of what's happening should employ Islamaphobic/Antisemitic rhetoric.

So here's a summary of what I'm trying to say:

We aren't as different as we are portrayed to be. We aren't "natural enemies" or whatever people think. We are all human, and we should all be united in the fact that generalized hate has no place on either side.

Both Antisemitism and Islamaphobia are rising right now. We may not see eye to eye on everything, but we are all human, and we should all do our part in dealing with that rise in hate. Not contribute to it.

...

Even though I am trying to speak against hate and division right now, I am certain that I'm probably going to receive at least a few hateful or negative responses to this. But you know what?

I don't really care anymore. Those hateful people are not anyone I could ever change or convince. So I'm going to try and remind myself to pick my battles and not waste energy on pointless arguments. Hateful responses to this post will be blocked and deleted.

However, Muslims of Tumblr, if I did say anything culturally problematic or inaccurate (for example, if the term "hijabi" or "experienced" in regards to being a hijabi is somehow a problem) (or like if comparing wearing a hijab at all to tznuis clothing is an issue) please let me know so I can fix it! I tried to not be culturally insensitive but I don't really know all that much so please do let me know!

...

[kosmic-apothecary]

Take a moment to think about how you be acting and what you’d be saying if a movement of Evangelical Christians were committing this genocide.

Now compare that to the window of what is acceptable to say about Israel doing it.

Now ask yourself “is antisemitism really the urgent problem we’ve been trained to believe it is, or was that just a technique to silence criticism of the world’s 4th largest military?”

[meret118]

According to Pete Hegseth, the “Fox & Friends Weekend” host and potential future defense secretary, the tattoo was a large Jerusalem cross on his chest. The Jerusalem cross originated with the Christian Crusades nearly a millennium ago. These days, it can be a simple marker of Christian beliefs ― or, in some settings, a symbol for the conquest and domination of Muslims or non-white minorities.

. . .

But Hegseth is a surprising pick to lead the most massive military bureaucracy in human history for a few reasons, including his assertion that women should not serve in combat roles; his successful lobbying during the first Trump administration for pardons for convicted and alleged war criminals; his description of “a war on two fronts” ― one against “radical Islamist ideology” and the other against “domestic enemies,” namely, “the Left”; his opposition to the supposed “infection” of left-wing policies in the military; and his assertion a few years ago that “the Iraq War is an example of what America got right when we got it right.”

In his 2020 book “American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free,” Hegseth wrote, “Just like the Christian crusaders who pushed back the Muslim hordes in the twelfth century, American Crusaders will need to muster the same courage against Islamists today,” the liberal watchdog group Media Matters flagged Tuesday. In the same book, he echoed the white nationalist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, saying that ”American leftists insist on pursuing the very same policies that led to the cultural invasion in Europe” by “Islamists.”

. . .

“Ultimately, members of my unit in leadership deemed that I was an extremist or a white nationalist because of a tattoo I have, which is a religious tattoo,” he said separately in a Fox News interview. “It’s a Jerusalem cross. Everybody can look it up, but it was used as a premise to revoke my orders to guard the inauguration.”

Hegseth also has a tattoo that reads “Deus vult,” or “God wills it,” which he has confirmed to be a reference to the Crusades.

. . .

Imagery with the Jerusalem cross as well as phrases such as “Deus vult” have in recent years grown more common as stand-ins for signifiers of right-wing beliefs and sometimes far-right beliefs. For example, Donald Trump Jr. once modeled an assault rifle customized with the Jerusalem cross and an image of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton behind bars. In 2020, a Delaware man firebombed a Planned Parenthood facility after writing “Deus vult” on the building’s exterior. In 2023, a gunman who committed a mass shooting at a Dallas-area mall had both a “Deus vult” and a swastika tattoo, as well as Nazi SS bolts and other markers of extreme beliefs.

On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump announced former Fox News host Pete Hegseth was his pick for secretary of defense. The choice is iconoclastic to say the least. Although Hegseth served as an Army National Guard officer, he has no experience in government leadership that could inform the management of the federal government’s largest agency.

What Hegseth does have, though, are connections to the TheoBros, a group of mostly millennial, ultra-conservative men, many of whom proudly call themselves Christian nationalists. Among the tenets of their branch of Protestant Christianity—known as Reformed or Reconstructionist—is the idea that the United States should be subject to Biblical law.

Last year, the magazine Nashville Christian Family ran a profile of Hegseth, in which he mentioned being a member of a “Bible and book study” that focused on the book My Life for Yours by Doug Wilson, the 71-year-old unofficial patriarch of the TheoBros. Patriarch is the right word: When I interviewed Wilson a few months ago he said that he, like many other TheoBros, believes women never should have been given the right to vote.

. . .

Hegseth’s involvement with Wilson’s schools goes beyond his own children’s education. In 2022, he co-authored Battle for the American Mind, with the group’s president, David Goodwin. In the book, they argue that Americans have “ceded our kids’ minds to the left for far too long” and promise to give “patriotic parents the ammunition to join an insurgency that gives America a fighting chance.”

. . .

In 2020, Hegseth turned his obsession with the Christian Crusades into a book, American Crusade. In a piece this week, Media Matters noted that one of its central themes is the destruction of Muslim holy sites in order to reclaim them for Christianity. Hegseth also rails against Muslims’ “well-documented aversion to assimilation.” Julie Ingersoll, a University of North Florida religious studies professor who has studied the Reconstructionist tradition that the TheoBros are part of, told me she finds Hegseth’s fixation on the Crusades “really troubling—but also it’s completely consistent with the Christian Reconstructionists. That’s particularly troubling for someone who might have the biggest military in the world under his control.”

Taylor, too, said he was concerned about the idea of Hegseth controlling the military. He pointed to Hegseth’s urging Trump to pardon Edward Gallagher, the US Navy SEAL who was accused of killing an Iraqi prisoner and posing for pictures with his dead body. Taylor noted that the US military has recently struggled to control the radicalization of its members. He told me he worried Hegseth’s appointment “will only allow this far-right radicalization in the military to fester and grow unregulated, if not even encouraged.”

-----

Congratulations single issue Gaza voters who didn't vote or voted for anyone other than Harris! You've helped make things worse for Palestinians and Muslims overall, but you showed the Dems and made yourself feel better, and that's all that counts, right?