Showing posts with label islamaphobia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label islamaphobia. Show all posts
Thursday, 28 October 2010
Thomas Hammarberg: European Muslims are stigmatised by populist rhetoric
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Football Leads Fight Against Islamophobia
Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand and midfielder Ryan Giggs appear alongside France international Thierry Henry, Arsenal's Kolo Toure and Chelsea 's Didier Drogba in a new video which challenges stereotypes about Muslims.
''Before you judge, you need to know people,'' said the French international forward Henry. ''People are confusing what they see on tv and what they should learn for themselves.
''No disrespect to journalists or tv but they have a big power and sometimes they use it in the wrong way.''
An education pack accompanies the video, offering lesson plans and activities for work with children and adults.
The introduction to the education pack states: ''The activities have been designed to help young people to challenge stereotypes and prejudice towards Muslims and gain greater historical and political awareness of the climate which has enabled Islamophobia to flourish in recent times.''
Show The Red Card, a campaign group based in Whitley Bay , uses football celebrities to focus attention on discrimination. It believes its current campaign is timely given the surge in Islamophobia since the terrorist attacks on the United States and the bombings in Madrid and London .
In the United Kingdom , the Dispatches programme broadcast on Channel 4 revealed that anti-Muslim attacks are now so commonplace that some violent assaults are not even reported to the police.
Writing in the Independent newspaper in July 2008, programme-maker Peter Oborne stated: ''The systematic demonisation of Muslims has become an important part of the central narrative of the British political and media class; it is so entrenched, so much part of normal discussion, that almost nobody notices. Protests go unheard and unnoticed.''
Elsewhere in Europe, evidence is plentiful that suspicion of Islam and fear of Muslims have taken hold.
In the Netherlands, the popularity of MP Geert Wilders, known for his ‘anti-Islam' film ‘Fitna' is on the rise.
In his report on the Netherlands published in March 2009, the Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg, encouraged Dutch authorities to ''take a firm stand against the anti-islamic undercurrent in society and to promote the national action plan against racism and xenophobia and monitor its implementation in close cooperation with civil society.''
The United Kingdom 's British National Party has thrived politically as popular fears about Islamic extremism have deepened. Complaints about the "Islamification of Norway” have boosted the appeal of the country's hardline, right wing politicians. In Switzerland , voters accepted a proposal to ban minarets.
A 67-page report published in February 2009 by Human Rights Watch argues that eight out of the 16 German states which ban teachers and other civil servants from wearing religious symbols and clothing discriminate against Muslim women.
The Pew survey of global attitudes reported in 2008 that more than half of Spaniards and 50% of Germans said that they did not like Muslims. The figures for those holding unfavourable opinions of Muslims in Poland and France were 46% and 38% respectively.
Such is the scale of Islamophobia that since 2005, the Council of Europe has treated inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogue as priority themes.
In March 2008, the Organisation's leaders denounced Wilders' film Fitna as ''political propaganda'' playing ''into the hands of extremists.''
Through books, conferences and the campaign 'Speak Out Against Discrimination,' the Council of Europe wants to encourage Europe 's 800 million citizens towards greater understanding and respect.
''Fact-based education on the diversity of religious and secular beliefs is indispensable if we want to be able to live together as equals in dignity,'' said Deputy Secretary General Maud de Boer Buquicchio. ''It is indeed a key element of education for democratic citizenship, human rights and intercultural dialogue.''
File: Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue
Website: Show Racism The Red Card
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
The End Of Multi-Culturalism?
Image via WikipediaThe May 2008 publication of the Council of Europe's White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue was a sign post to the drift away from multi-cultural ''old thinking.''
The report recognised that ''old approaches to the management of cultural diversity were no longer adequate to societies in which the degree of that diversity (rather than its existence) was unprecedented and ever-growing.
"The responses to the questionnaires sent to member states, in particular, revealed a belief that what had until recently been a preferred policy approach, conveyed in shorthand as “multiculturalism”, had been found inadequate.''
It is this concern that multiculturalism no longer provides full answers to today's questions about diversity and identity, which explains the volume of criticism now heard in Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy and the United Kingdom.
''Multiculturalism was intended to create a more cohesive and friendlier society by facilitating bringing people together,'' said the British Conservative MP Dominic Grieve in March 2009.
''But instead the laws and concepts underlying it seem to drive people apart endangering our traditional sense of community based on common values.''
Grieve's observation reflects the hardening of attitudes in a continent marked by the 'Islamic cartoons' dispute in Denmark and the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands.
Global recession, international terror and the spectre of 'home-grown' bombers, the far-right agenda on migration and 'political-correctness' fatigue, have also contributed to a reassessment of the multicultural contract.
The scale of this re-evaluation is still to be determined but the impact of the challenge has been felt across the political spectrum. Accordingly, governments, equalities regulators, NGO's and activists have been forced to re-think their approach to issues of diversity, discrimination and national identity.
This new analysis informed discussions at the November 2008 Council of Europe conference in the Hague on the protection of human rights in multicultural societies.
''In tense times it is more important than ever to take a firm and common line on certain questions,'' declared Dutch Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations Guusje ter Horst.
''Let us be clear that human rights, the principle of equality, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association are not up for discussion. What we need to discuss are the boundaries between them and the questions they raise in the everyday world.
''Over the last five years we have become accustomed to the idea that these questions need answers. But we have not found them yet. So, over the next five years, it is vital that we keep talking and acting, at both national and European level.''
Yet some observers remain uneasy with the calls for a ‘redefinition' of the relationship between majorities and minorities.
''The mounting campaign against multiculturalism by politicians, pundits and the press, in Britain and across Europe, is neither innocent nor innocuous,'' said Ambalavaner Sivanandan, director of Britain 's Institute of Race Relations.
''It is a prelude to a policy that deems there is one dominant culture, one unique set of values, one nativist loyalty - a policy of assimilation.''
Read more
Reference text : White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue
File Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue
File Conference in the Hague (Nov. 2008)
Friday, 23 July 2010
Profile: Naema Tahir - Dutch Human Rights Lawyer And Novelist
Her fifth book which is published next October, discusses the issues surrounding Muslim women who choose their marriage partners.
The subject material hints at autobiography. More than a decade ago, Naema stood firm against parents determined that she would accept an arranged marriage.
“If I chose myself to marry someone my parents arranged, that would be ok,” says Naema, as she prepares to take part in a Council of Europe human rights television programme on the right to free expression.
“But I didn’t choose it. It was forcibly put on me and I had to say no. It has been the most painful part of my life.”
Although Naema now 40 and her parents have reconciled, the experience may have strengthened a willingness to challenge orthodoxy.
Certainly the process of “critical rethinking” that it demanded continues to mark her work both as a writer and as a public intellectual. It is a process Naema encourages.
Naema’s first book ‘A Muslim Woman Unveils,’ published in 2005, tackles issues of inter-generational conflict, identity and migration.
The follow-up Dutch best-seller ‘Prized Possession’ (2006), deals with the reproductive and sexual rights of three Muslim women.
It helped to catapult the former Council of Europe human rights lawyer into the Dutch media spotlight. She has remained there ever since, staking out positions on religion and migration which strike at the heart of the Dutch debate on multi-culturalism.
A Council of Europe report published last February on the Netherlands, underlined how fraught the issue has become in a country noted for its tolerant and relaxed attitudes to social questions.
“The overall tone of the public discourse in the Netherlands and the new integration policy, with its particular focus on the preservation of the Dutch identity, have had negative consequences on the preservation of a climate of mutual understanding between the majority population and the ethnic minorities," the report revealed.
Undaunted, Naema enters the fray with advice for the country’s immigrants.
“If they are not integrating well, we should hold them accountable for their lack of willingness to become part of this society,” she says.
Naema also focuses her attention on the Netherlands’ Muslim community.
“There should be a discussion on Islam,” she declares. “There should be a discussion on the norms, the rules and the practice. It’s in all our interests.
“There is not always equality in those rules for men and women. There is not equality for a believer and non-believer. It‘s a religion which is monopolised by men. It’s a religion where critical thought was apparent until 11th century and then it stopped.”
As an introspective writer, Naema is not a natural fit for the slaying of sacred cows. She is determined not to be seen as a politician and is wary of the public gaining an understanding of her work solely through the media lens.
“I wish to inspire and not injure,” Naema says. “Being a member of the new immigrant communities, I felt it was my duty to communicate to the larger European group because there’s so much misunderstanding and fear.”
A self-described “Pakistani-British girl who lives in Holland “ and one who has also called Nigeria and France home, Tahir rejects any comparison between her views and those offered by the assassinated Dutch critics of Islam Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh.
“If you write about a hot potato issue like Islam, there is always a fear. But my biggest fear is being misunderstood. It’s really easy to take elements of what I say and put them in isolation as a headline. It does sound provocative.
“My task is to write in as nuanced and as detailed a way as possible, so that people cannot politicize the work.
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“If that would be my fear that rightists would hijack my work, I would never be able to write critically. Critical thought is the only way to open up. I don’t do it to criticize the community I come from. We have so much opportunity in the West but you have to be more ambitious that just wanting to integrate.”
Ambition, encouragement and positive-thinking are key to understanding Naema’s approach to multi-culturalism, which requires all groups in the Netherlands to face up to hard truths.
“We should criticise both sides,” she declares. “Migrants are worried about the closed attitude of Dutch people. We Dutch tend to say that we are open to diversity but I sometimes doubt if that is the case.
“There is this abstract on the one side Islam and the abstract of the West on the other side. We have to smash into pieces these abstracts and bring them to smaller elements.
“When we do that, we’ll see there is no clash. There are many levels on which people encounter. There is actually more communication and connections than a clash.”
The stakes may be high but Naema, who is also a visiting professor at the University of Leiden, remains optimistic about the future.
“I don’t really believe that it’s going to go badly,” she says. “People who have this attitude of critical reflection and introspection welcome new views, fresh ideas and even criticism.
“In the next 10 years we are going to see positive things coming out of the Muslim community. Muslim women will be more aware of their rights and be able to communicate about their rights. I want to write about that.”
Monday, 19 July 2010
ECRI Report: Europe's Dilemma
In an interview following the launch of the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance's annual survey, chairman Nils Muiznieks explains Europe's dilemma.
"Europe needs migrants but Europeans don't want them," he says. "The pull from the demographic crisis will continue as will the push from sending countires."
He goes on to discuss the "existential crisis" in parts of southern Europe.
Listen to interview with Nils Muiznieks
ECRI report
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