What is Driving Surge in Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: Trump? Hollywood? Media?

[Riaz Haq]

Attacks against Muslim Americans are surging, according to a recently released FBI report.  There were 257 reports of assaults, attacks on mosques and other hate crimes against Muslims in 2015, a jump of about 67% over 2014. It was the highest total since 2001, when more than 480 attacks occurred in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to New York Times.

Hate Crimes Against Muslims:

An American Muslim was 4.4 times more likely to be a victim of hate crime in America than an average American in 2015.  Anti-Muslim hate crimes accounted for 4.4 precent of all hate crimes in 2015 when Muslims made up just 1% of the US population.

Hate crimes against Muslims surged 67% from 154 in 2014 to 257 in 2015, the second highest number on record since national reporting started in 1992. In 2001, the year of the 9/11 attacks anti-Muslim hate crime peaked at 481, and had been in a range of 105 to 160, until 2015’s jump. Anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2015 showed a significant increase in the proportion of hate crimes from the previous year as well.

Why the Surge:

The recent surge in hate crimes against Muslims is being attributed to President-Elect Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric against Muslims and other minorities in the United States. Islamophobia did not begin with the Trump campaign but it appears to have contributed to it in the last two years. Other factors include stereotyping of Muslims in the entertainment and news media coverage of terrorist attacks traced to individual Muslim perpetrators.

Trump Campaign:

President-Elect Donald Donald Trump's Muslim ban and Muslim registry have contributed to assigning the blame to all Muslims for acts of terror and the consequent hate crimes against Americans of Islamic faith.

Since winning the majority of the electoral college in US presidential elections 2016, President-elect Trump has begun stacking his cabinet and staff with people known for their anti-Muslim statements. For example, Trump's national security advisor pick General Michael Flynn has called Islam "malignant cancer". Mr. Trump's chief of staff pick Stephen Bannon has described Islam as "a political ideology" and Sharia as "like Nazism, fascism, and communism."

Popular Television Shows:

The US entertainment media in Hollywood has been at the forefront of promoting the image of all  Muslims as terrorists. Popular television shows like "24" and "Homeland" have done it on a consistent basis.

In a recent roundtable discussion titled "Can Television be Fair to Muslims?", Showtime's "Homeland's co-creator Howard Gordon acknowledged that his show has fed Islamophobia in America.  Participants included both Muslims and Non-Muslims engaged in writing and producing popular TV shows such as Aasif Mandvi, Zarqa Nawaz, Melena Ryzik, Joshua Saffran, Howard Gordon and Cherian Dabis.

Roundtable Discussion:

Here's a brief excerpt of the exchange:

MELENA RYZIK: The F.B.I. has said that attacks against Muslims were up 67 percent last year. Do you have any anxiety about your shows being fodder for that?

HOWARD GORDON: The short answer is, absolutely, yes.

RYZIK: What can you do to handle that?

GORDON: On “Homeland,” it’s an ongoing and very important conversation.

For instance, this year, the beginning of it involves the sort of big business of prosecuting entrapment. It actually tests the edges of free speech. How can someone express their discontent with American policy — even a reckless kid who might express his views that may be sympathetic to enemies of America, but still is not, himself, a terrorist, but is being set up to be one by the big business of government?

For me to answer, personally, that question, it’s a difficult one. “24” having been the launching point for me to engage in these conversations, which I have been having for 10 years, and being very conscious about not wanting to be a midwife to these base ideas. We’re all affected, unwittingly, by who we are and how we see the world. It requires creating an environment where people can speak freely about these things. It requires this vigilant empathy.

Mainstream News Media:

The mainstream US news media, particularly the cable news channels, have contributed to anti-Muslim hysteria after each terror attack traced to a Muslim perpetrator. The 24X7 coverage of such tragedies fails to put them in perspective.

President Barack H. Obama finally asked the questions that many American Muslim victims of Islamophobia have been asking for a long time: How many Americans have been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade?  And how many Americans have died in gun violence.

Here's the exact quote from Obama's speech after yet another mass shooting--this time in rural Oregon:

“I would ask news organizations – because I won’t put these facts forward – have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who’ve been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade and the number of Americans who’ve been killed by gun violence, and post those side-by-side on your news reports. This won’t be information coming from me; it will be coming from you. “We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?”

The President's question got the media attention. CNN, among others, compiled the data and put the following graph on its website:

Sources: CDC and US Security Officials Via CNN

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported 316,545 people deaths by firearms on U.S. soil from 2004 to 2013. This figure is 1000 times higher than the total deaths of 313 Americans by terrorism at home and abroad in the same period.

Aided by the gun lobby and its conservative supporters, anti-terrorism and Islamophobia have emerged as major new US industries in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 911. Anti-terror industry is worth trillions of dollars. Islamophobia industry, estimated at $200 million, reinforces and promotes the fear of Islam and Muslims for its own gains. With their entrenched vested interests, the growth of these industries has served to distract attention from the 1000X bigger problem of gun violence. The National Rife Association, also know as the gun lobby, has taken full advantage of the situation by buying out the majority of US Congress which opposes even most modest gun safety regulations.

In addition to distracting Americans' attention from growing gun violence, increased spending on Islamophobia is having a significant impact on Americans' perception of Muslim Americans. Results differ by political party, with the majority of Republicans holding negative views of both Arab-Americans and Muslims. Democrats gave Arab-Americans a 30 percent unfavorable rating and Muslim-Americans a 33 percent unfavorable rating, while Republicans gave Arab-Americans a 54 percent unfavorable rating and Muslim-Americans a 63 percent unfavorable rating, according to public opinion survey conducted by Zogby Analytics.

Summary:

Hate crimes against Muslim Americans are surging, rising 67% in 2015 over the prior year. A Muslim American is 4.4 times more likely to be victim of a hate crime than an average American. President-Elect Donald Trump's Islamophobic campaign and the American news and entertainment media are contributing to the rise of hatred against Muslims. The situation of Muslims is likely to get worse unless Mr. Trump speaks out against hate crimes and his administration takes steps to check organized hate groups. At the same time, the news and entertainment media need to play their role to put this genie back in the bottle.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Funding of Hate Groups in America

Hollywood: America's Ministry of Propaganda? 

Silicon Valley Stands Against Islamophobia

US Gun Violence 

Money is Free Speech in America

King's Hypocrisy

FBI Entrapping Young Muslims

Saudi Prince Funding Hate in America

[Riaz Haq]

Can the Popular #Muslim Invocation of God's Will survive ‘Inshallah’ in the Age of #Trump? #Islamophobia

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/01/inshallah-in-the-age-of-trump-...

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These days, another word is making inroads into the American English lexicon. It’s “inshallah” — an Arabic Islamic expression that means “God willing.” Inshallah first made its English debut in the 19th century, but it’s only since 9/11 that the word has become fashionable among non-Muslim, non-Arabic-speaking Americans. You’ve probably heard it already in passing, which is my point. The Atlantic’s James Fallows has tweeted it. Even actor Lindsay Lohan has made a faltering attempt. I’ve heard it in meetings, on the metro, and at a casual Sunday brunch in Brooklyn.

For all these inshallah-invokers, the phrase seems to combine the prestige of French and the multiculturalism of Sanskrit — with an added thrill of risk.

President-elect Donald Trump is stacking his administration with supporters who believe that Islam is inherently violent, dangerous, and threatening. Some who evince this view believe that anything associated with Islam has a diabolical power, an insidious evil that has to be guarded against at every turn as the Puritans guarded against witchcraft.

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The latent Islamophobia the word can conjure seems to be part of the its growing appeal among progressive urbanites in the United States. As the Islamophobia industrial complex has expanded, so has a cultural push against it. Garnishing your conversation with an inshallah or two is a small act of resistance, a direct jab at the belief that Islam — and by association, Arabic — is sinister. It’s the linguistic equivalent of donning a headscarf in solidarity for World Hijab Day. Or the spoken version of the anti-Trump ad near Dearborn, Michigan, a city with a large population of Arab-Americans, which was written in Arabic and read: “Donald Trump can’t read this, but he is scared of it.” It’s a subtle political statement, a critique of Republicans who believe certain sounds, like incantations, must cross the lips in order to defeat evil (“radical Islamic terrorism”) whereas other sounds (“inshallah,” “Allahu akbar”) must remain taboo.

But why inshallah and not some other Arabic word? There are dozens of other common Islamic expressions, including bismillah (in the name of God), barakallah (blessings of God), and alhamdulillah (praise be to God), that haven’t crossed into English (though bismillah makes a cameo in Queen’s 1975 classic “Bohemian Rhapsody”).

The reason is that inshallah is a charming, maddening, and undeniably useful expression. On paper, the word is very similar to “God willing,” its Christian, English equivalent. It’s an acknowledgment of the human inability to foresee or control the future while harking to the belief that a Greater Being holds humanity’s fragile plans in its omnipotent hands.

But unlike the English “God willing,” inshallah also serves as a convenient preordained excuse for what may go wrong. If your toilet is broken and your plumber says he’ll come “tomorrow, inshallah,” you may be in for quite a wait. In countries such as Egypt, inshallah has expanded into a society-wide verbal tic invoked by Muslims, Christians, and even the nonreligious for occasions as mundane as ordering a hamburger or riding an elevator — a phenomenon that a 2008 article in the New York Times dubbed “inshallah creep.”

That’s what has made it so easy for visitors to pick up. Inshallah conveys an uncertainty that “hopefully” lacks. “The project will be done by 9 p.m., hopefully” implies that a sense of control still resides in your hands and thus a lingering amount of responsibility if the deadline isn’t met. “The project will be done by 9 p.m., inshallah,” by contrast, indicates that some outside force — an indolent contract worker, slow trains, spotty internet, even fate itself — is now in the driver’s seat and that if things go wrong, it’s not your fault.

[Riaz Haq]

CNN commentator Van Jones calls #Muslims "model minority" and those from #Pakistan "geniuses". #Trump #Islamophobia https://www.facebook.com/startupmuslim/videos/1870421143194717/ …

[Riaz Haq]

NPR Reporter Asma Khalid's Notebook : What It Was Like As A #Muslim To Cover The Election. #Trump #Islamophobia https://n.pr/2h8KxLa @NPR

Sometime in early 2016 between a Trump rally in New Hampshire, where a burly man shouted something at me about being Muslim, and a series of particularly vitriolic tweets that included some combination of "raghead," "terrorist," "bitch" and "jihadi," I went into my editor's office and wept.

I cried for the first (but not the last) time this campaign season.

Through tears, I told her that if I had known my sheer existence — just the idea of being Muslim — would be a debatable issue in the 2016 election, I would never have signed up to do this job.

To friends and family, I looked like a masochist. But I was too invested to quit.

I was hired by NPR to cover the intersection of demographics and politics. My job required crisscrossing the country to talk to all kinds of voters. I attended rallies and town halls for nearly every candidate on both sides of the aisle, and I met people in their homes, churches and diners.

I am also visibly, identifiably Muslim. I wear a headscarf. So I stand out. And during this campaign, that Muslim identity became the first (and sometimes only) thing people saw, for good or for bad.

"Don't be a martyr"

Sometimes I met voters who questioned the 3-D nature of my life, people who viscerally hated the idea of me.

One night an old journalist friend called me and said, "Look, don't be a martyr."

It was a strange comment to me, since the harassment seemed more like a nuisance than a legitimate threat. And I knew if I was ever legitimately concerned, I had two options: I could ask for a producer to travel with me, or I wouldn't wear a headscarf. (And a couple of times I didn't.) Without a hijab, I'm incognito, light-skinned enough that I can pass as some sort of generic ethnic curiosity.

For many journalists, the 2016 campaign was the story of a lifetime. And it was indeed the story of a lifetime for me, too, but a story with real-life repercussions.

And I hung on, because the story of Donald Trump's America is not some foreign story of a faraway place; it's my homeland.

Hoosier roots

I'm from Indiana. We grew up in a mostly Democratic county. But my town was predominantly white and fairly conservative, a place where the Ten Commandments are engraved in marble outside the old County Courthouse.

I loved our childhood — summers playing basketball, winters sledding. We weren't outsiders — I sold Girl Scout cookies, was captain of the tennis team.

We were part of the club — or so we thought. 

[Riaz Haq]

People are making sure Katie Hopkins' extraordinary Mail Online apology isn't missed. #Islamophobia http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/katie-hopkins-apologises_uk_5... … via @HuffPostUK

Katie Hopkins has been forced to apologise for a string of mistruths and defamatory claims about a British Muslim family barred from travelling to the United States.

The columnist wrote in the Mail Online last year about Britain’s “Mickey Mouse” border security, and how the US’ decision to deny the family access proved it was “protecting its own people”.

In one of the pieces, Hopkins had quipped: “You can’t prosecute the truth”.

But now two articles featuring claims about the Mahmood family of Walthamstow, North London, have been taken down.

Mail Online paid the Mahmoods £150,000 in damages, the Guardian reported.

The website issued an apology on Monday for the pieces. The full statement reads: 

An article published in Katie Hopkins’ column on 23 December 2015 (’Just because Britain’s border security is a Mickey Mouse operation you can’t blame America for not letting this lot travel to Disneyland – I wouldn’t either’) suggested that Mohammed Tariq Mahmood and his brother, Mohammed Zahid Mahmood, are extremists with links to Al Qaeda; that their purported reason for visiting the USA – namely to visit Disneyland – was a lie; and that US Homeland Security were right to prevent them from boarding their flight. We are happy to make clear that Tariq Mahmood and Zahid Mahmood are not extremists, nor do they have links to Al Qaeda. They were travelling to the USA with their families to see one of their brothers for a holiday in California and they had indeed planned to visit Disneyland as part of their trip.

In addition a further article in Katie’s column on 29 December (’A brave Muslim tried to warn us their week about the extremists taking over his community. What a tragedy it is that our PC politicians would rather not know’) suggested that Hamza Mahmood (Mohammed Tariq Mahmood’s son) was responsible for a Facebook page which allegedly contained extremist material. Our article included a photo of the family home. Hamza Mahmood has pointed out that he is not responsible for the Facebook page, which was linked to him as a result of an error involving his email address. We are happy to make clear that there is no suggestion that either Hamza nor Taeeba or Hafsa Mahmood (Hamza’s mother and sister) have any links to extremism.

We and Katie Hopkins apologise to the Mahmood family for the distress and embarrassment caused and have agreed to pay them substantial damages and their legal costs.
The two articles were published just four weeks after Hopkins began working at Mail Online.

The apology was tweeted by Hopkins at two o’clock on Monday morning, and by 11am became her most re-tweeted message ever - at over 3,500 shares and counting.

[Riaz Haq]

Trevor Noah Accuses #Hollywood of negative stereotyping of #Muslims #Blacks. #MerylStreep #Trump http://thebea.st/2jxeXvI via @thedailybeast

“I thought it was a little weird last night that Hollywood celebrated itself for being progressive but ignored how much they reinforce negative stereotypes,” Noah added. “Think about it: In Hollywood, Middle Easterners are almost always terrorists. Black people are gangsters and slaves. It’s not like there aren’t other diverse stories to tell. Just look at ‘Hidden Fences,’ you know?”


Trevor Noah’s coverage of the Golden Globes showdown between Meryl Streep and Donald Trump was nothing if not surprising Monday night.

After an extended riff on the confusion that ensued between Fences and Hidden Figures—leading both Jenna Bush Hager and Michael Keaton to say “Hidden Fences”—The Daily Show host moved on to the most-talked about moment of the night: Streep’s fiery acceptance speech.
Noah admitted that Streep’s unexpectedly strong takedown of President-elect Donald Trump was “powerful” and a “highlight” of her already “distinguished” career. “Except for this one tiny part,” he continued, which, “like her character in Florence Foster Jenkins, was tone-deaf.”
The comedian was referring to the moment when Streep declared, “Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. And if you kick ’em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”

“I understand what Meryl Streep was trying to do, and I don’t know if I could have done better, but here’s the thing I feel like we could all learn as people,” Noah said. “You don’t have to make your point by shitting on someone else’s thing, because a lot of people love football and the arts.” He noted that he spent his Sunday watching football and then the Golden Globes.

To make his point, Noah joked that the NFL commissioner “acts” like he cares about concussions. He went on to undercut himself by saying that to focus on that part of the speech “undermines” her “larger point” about “respect” and “empathy.” But the bulk of his commentary centered on a lack of inclusiveness by Streep—not Trump.
Remarkably, Noah did not even bring up Trump’s petty overreaction to Streep’s speech until the second segment of his show, and when he did it was merely as a preamble to a piece about the president-elect’s response on Russia’s election hacks.

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/kmlhis/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noa... 

[Riaz Haq]

Why #American TV needs a #Muslim Modern Family by @rezaaslan. #Islamophobia https://youtu.be/KURTpn0Nuzs  via @YouTube

Writer Reza Aslan thinks a Muslim Will and Grace could truly change American perceptions of Islam.

[Riaz Haq]

In Year of Anti-#Muslim Vitriol, #Brands Promote Inclusion. #Islamophobia #Trump #Amazon #Advertising

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/01/business/media/anti-muslim-vitrio...

The gentle piano music starts as the doorbell chimes. A white-haired Christian pastor greets his friend, a Muslim imam, and the two converse and laugh over a cup of tea, wincing about their creaky knees as they prepare to part ways. Later, it spurs the same idea in each for a gift: kneepads sent via Amazon Prime. (It is a commercial, after all.)

The piano notes accelerate as the men open their deliveries with smiles, and then each uses the item to kneel in prayer: one at a church, the other at a mosque. The final chords fade.

The ad from Amazon and its message of interfaith harmony became a viral sensation this holiday season, at the end of a year in which talk involving Muslims became particularly ominous. Amazon — which aired the commercial in England, Germany and the United States — cast a practicing vicar and Muslim community leader in the lead roles and consulted with several religious organizations to ensure the ad was accurate and respectful.

“This type of a project is definitely a first for us,” said Rameez Abid, communications director for the social justice branch of the Islamic Circle of North America, one group Amazon worked with. “They were very aware that this was going to cause controversy and might get hate mail and things like that, but they said it’s something that they wanted to do because the message is important.”

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It was “a glimmer of hope in the midst of a greatly traumatic year for Muslims,” said Mona Haydar, an American poet and activist who appeared in a recent Microsoft commercial with a variety of community leaders, including a transgender teenager and a white policeman.

“For me as a Muslim woman, I represent something right now in the country that for some people incites fear,” said Ms. Haydar, 28, who wears a hijab and hails from Flint, Mich. “This normalizes the narrative that we are just human beings.”

Several advertising executives likened the movement to the decision by mass marketers to cast same-sex couples and their children in ads for the first time in 2013 and 2014, making inclusion and acceptance a priority over potential criticism from some customers.

“With the kind of gay parent issue, we’ve gotten a little closer to acceptance, but the Muslim issue in America is still pretty raw for a lot of people,” said Kevin Brady, an executive creative director at the ad agency Droga5, which worked last year with Honey Maid on a commercial about white and Muslim-American neighbors. “I don’t think it should be, but it’s one that I think brands took an extra step of courage to really go out there with in 2016.”

A campaign for YouTube Music in the middle of last year highlighted five individuals, including a young woman in a hijab, rapping to a song by Blackalicious while walking through a school corridor. The inclusion of the ad, “Afsa’s Theme,” was purposeful, said Danielle Tiedt, the chief marketing officer at YouTube, adding that highlighting diversity is “more important than ever.”

“I don’t think diversity is a political statement,” she said. “This is an issue of universal humanity.”

For its ad, Amazon was painstaking in its attention to detail, checking with religious groups about costuming and background imagery, and sending over final proofs of the ad for review, said Mr. Abid and Antonios Kireopoulos, an associate general secretary of the National Council of Churches, another group Amazon consulted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouu6LGGIWsc

[Riaz Haq]

Pankaj Mishra: "We Committed Intellectual Suicide After 9/11" By Endorsing #Islamophobia. #Terrorism http://lithub.com/pankaj-mishra-we-committed-intellectual-suicide-a... … via @lithub

Pankaj Mishara to Rafia Zakaria: " We, and by that I mean “the intelligentsia,” made a catastrophic mistake after 9/11 when we located the roots of terror in Islam, saying that there is something peculiar in their political tradition that explains an eruption of violence. That perspective looked past the mixed history of terrorism, and we now see that regardless of whether it is in Burma or Thailand or India, militancy and terrorism emerge out of a confluence of socio-economic factors. It is a sign of desperation and despair. This idea that it belongs to Islam in particular is a very dangerous idea; it was made mainstream and it was legitimated not just by the far right who are in charge of policy today (and have been engaging in this puerile debate), but also by the liberal intelligentsia.

Francis Fukuyama, for instance, said there is something intrinsic about Islam which is just not compatible with modernity. Then there is Salman Rushdie and even Martin Amis, talking about mass deportation as part of a thought experiment that he offered to a journalist. In sum, all sorts of mainstream figures were advancing this Islamophobic discourse in very holistic and dangerous ways, and in the guise of teaching Islam or understanding Islam or helping the Muslim moderates. This is why we are where we are today."

[Riaz Haq]

The Spectator Index‏ 
@spectatorindex

Following
More
US deaths cause, 2015

Suicide: 43,000
Motor accidents: 32,000
Gun homicide: 13,286
Domestic violence: 1,600
Islamic terrorism: 19
Sharks: 1 

[Riaz Haq]

THE RECLUSIVE HEDGE-FUND TYCOON BEHIND THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY
How Robert Mercer exploited America’s populist insurgency.
By Jane Mayer

He (Patrick Caddell) has not worked directly for the President, but at least as far back as 2013 he has been a contractor for one of Trump’s biggest financial backers: Robert Mercer, a reclusive Long Island hedge-fund manager, who has become a major force behind the Trump Presidency.

During the past decade, Mercer, who is seventy, has funded an array of political projects that helped pave the way for Trump’s rise. Among these efforts was public-opinion research, conducted by Caddell, showing that political conditions in America were increasingly ripe for an outsider candidate to take the White House. Caddell told me that Mercer “is a libertarian—he despises the Republican establishment,” and added, “He thinks that the leaders are corrupt crooks, and that they’ve ruined the country.”

Trump greeted Caddell warmly in North Charleston, and after giving a speech he conferred privately with him, in an area reserved for V.I.P.s and for White House officials, including Stephen Bannon, the President’s top strategist, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. Caddell is well known to this inner circle. He first met Trump in the eighties. (“People said he was just a clown,” Caddell said. “But I’ve learned that you should always pay attention to successful ‘clowns.’ ”) Caddell shared the research he did for Mercer with Trump and others in the campaign, including Bannon, with whom he has partnered on numerous projects.

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After the Citizens United decision, in 2010, the Mercers were among the first people to take advantage of the opportunity to spend more money on politics. In Oregon, they quietly gave money to a super pac—an independent campaign-related group that could now take unlimited donations. In New York, reporters discovered that Robert Mercer was the sole donor behind a million-dollar advertising campaign attacking what it described as a plan to build a “Ground Zero Mosque” in Manhattan. The proposed building was neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero. The ads, which were meant to boost a Conservative Party candidate for governor, were condemned as Islamophobic.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-hedge-fu...