American Muslim leaders Friday decried Donald Trump’s rhetoric towards their community and predicted the president’s travel ban would eventually be proven unlawful, a day after a weakened version of the measure came into force. A limited version of Trump’s travel ban — temporarily barring refugees and visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen … Read more
A radical Buddhist monk wanted in connection with a string of hate attacks in Sri Lanka surrendered Wednesday after four weeks on the run, police said. Galagodaatte Gnanasara gave himself up before a magistrate and was then arrested in connection with arson attacks targeting the island’s minority Muslim community in recent months. Police spokesman Priyantha … Read more
A Myanmar monk once dubbed the “Buddhist Bin Laden” for his extremist diatribes says he has been banned from using Facebook, as the site ramps up efforts to clamp down on hate speech. For years firebrand preacher Wirathu has used the social network as a platform to rail against the country’s embattled Muslims, comparing them … Read more
Police in Sri Lanka have arrested a key figure from an extremist Buddhist organisation blamed for a series of hate crimes against Muslims that has drawn international censure. The 32-year-old man from the radical Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), or Buddhist Force, is the first suspect to be arrested in connection with arson attacks against Muslims … Read more
Yangon authorities on Friday sued three Muslim men for holding Ramadan prayers in the street, after the local school where they used to worship was shut down by a nationalist mob. Police brought the charges after around 50 Muslims gathered to pray on Wednesday on a road in Thaketa township, the site of one of … Read more
Rights groups accused Sri Lankan police Wednesday of failing to stop a wave of hate crimes against Muslim businesses and mosques in the Buddhist-majority country. Police are yet to make any arrests in connection with more than a dozen arson attacks against Muslims shops, mosques and a burial ground in the past month. Prominent rights … Read more
Barbet Schroeder spent months with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin at the height of his power, when corpses would wash up every morning on the shores of Lake Victoria and Kampala was rife with rumours that he was eating his opponents. But in his decades of documenting evil, the veteran Swiss filmmaker says he has never … Read more
Saudi Arabia is looking to assert its regional leadership against Iran by hosting a summit between visiting US President Donald Trump and Muslim leaders from around the world, analysts say. Trump, on his first foreign trip since taking office in January, will tell Muslim leaders of his “hopes for a peaceful vision of Islam” as … Read more
Turkey is displeased by moves by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s decision to re-open monitoring procedures against it. “We strongly condemn this unjust decision of PACE taken with political motives in contravention to the established procedures,” the Turkish Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement. “Deciding to re-open the monitoring procedure on Turkey, a … Read more
Long overshadowed by the more numerous and vocal Turkish “guest worker” community, Mozambicans who arrived in Germany decades ago still struggle to assert their rights in their adopted homeland. Faced with huge industrial production problems, pre-unification East Germany relied heavily on labour from communist “brother states” such as Cuba, Hungary, Vietnam and Angola. But the … Read more
North Tongu Member of Parliament (MP), Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has expressed worry over the rising incidents of hate activities across the world. He said xenophobic attacks in Africa as well as shooting incidents such as the killing of an Indian immigrant in Kansas City in United States poison the affection and cordiality expected to exist … Read more
In a sprawling banquet hall, Ahmed Rehab walked to a lectern facing a glittering group of diners and launched into a searing speech excoriating the Donald Trump administration. “This fight is not just our fight, it is America’s fight,” Rehab told the packed room of 1,200 attendees – mostly American Muslims at a fundraiser for … Read more
A Myanmar monk infamous for his bilious anti-Muslim tirades has been banned from giving sermons for a year by the country’s top Buddhist body, an unprecedented slapdown to a man whose hate speech has galvanized religious tensions. Wirathu, a monk once dubbed the “face of Buddhist terror”, has led calls for restrictions on Myanmar’s Muslim … Read more
Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, whose novel “2084” depicted a dystopian state governed by religious law, says writers and artists need to join the fight against Islamic extremism. “Literature and the arts are not playing a big role in this struggle against barbarism,” he said. In an interview with AFP, the 67-year-old elder statesman of Algerian … Read more
“Islamophobia” in parts of the world is fuelling terrorism, the head of the United Nations said on a visit to Saudi Arabia Sunday, as anti-immigrant sentiment rises in some countries. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made the comment to reporters after talks with Saudi King Salman, Crown Prince and Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef, and Deputy … Read more
On January 27, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to make good on his promised Muslim Ban. One of the primary provisions of the order is a ban on visas to the US to nationals from seven countries: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, which are all Muslim-majority nations. There is … Read more
Pope Francis on Saturday warned against populism, saying it could lead to the election of “saviours” like Adolf Hitler. In an hour-long interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais, conducted as Donald Trump was being sworn in as US president, the pontiff also condemned the idea of using walls and barbed wire to keep out foreigners, … Read more
The first Somali-American lawmaker in the US has said she was subjected to “hateful” anti-Muslim threats from a taxi driver in Washington DC. Minnesota Representative-elect Ilhan Omar said the cabbie threatened to remove her hijab during a confrontation on Tuesday. The 34-year-old said the incident occurred just after she attended policy training at the White … Read more
US election aftermath: List of post-election hate crimes gets longer Bigotry and hate crimes have turned into reality for Americans after Donald Trump’s presidential win Fears of heightened bigotry and hate crimes have turned into reality for some Americans after Donald Trump’s presidential win. And the list of incidents keeps growing. The Southern Poverty Law … Read more
Hate crimes against Muslims in the United States shot up 67 percent in 2015 to their highest levels since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, according to new FBI statistics. Overall, 57 percent of the 5,850 reported incidents were motivated by race or ethnicity, while 20 percent of hate crimes were related to … Read more