Muslim Woman Faces Down England Trumpazoids

The “English Defense League” is the UK’s version of the US’s Trump neo-Nazis.

They decided to throw a big bash, and demonstrate on the streets of Birmingham, doing the usual terrorizing of little old Muslim ladies by screaming invective and racial slurs…

And along came this woman…

Whoops!

This Muslim Woman Faces Down Islamophobes in Iconic Image of Defiance

An image of a woman staring down a hate group has become a social media phenomenon. It’s reassuring proof of Britain’s defiance of racists and xenophobes.

Maybe she should have handed the guy a Pepsi.

A Muslim woman who was pictured this weekend calmly facing down an anti-Muslim demonstrator with an expression of amused contempt has become a social media phenomenon.

The woman was confronting a protestor from the so-called English Defense League, on the streets of Birmingham, England’s second largest city. The EDL is a far right group which describes itself on its website as “a street movement from the English working class” which is “the forefront of the counter-jihad”, refers to Islam as a “barbaric evil cult,” and frequently organizes demonstrations to protest immigration and multiculturalism.

Tweeting the photograph, Birmingham Member of Parliament Jess Phillips wrote: “Who looks like they have power here, the real Brummy on the left or the EDL who migrated for the day to our city and failed to assimilate?” Her tweet had been reposted 10,000 times by Monday morning.

The woman pictured has been identified as Saffiyah Khan, a Birmingham resident. She told the BBC that when the picture was taken, she had stepped forward to defend a woman wearing a hijab who had been surrounded by a group of men.

She said she had initially been happy “to stay out of the way”, but “stepped forward” when another woman shouted “Islamophobe” at members of the EDL who had gathered in Centenary Square.

“A group of 25 quite big-looking EDL lads surrounded her,” she said.

“I stepped forward and identified myself as someone who supported her and contradicted them.”

Khan, who was born in the U.K. and is half-Pakistani, half-Bosnian, said she “wasn’t intimidated in the slightest”.

She added: “He put his finger in my face. It was very aggressive. A police officer was there and the man took his finger out of my face. I wouldn’t have responded violently.”

“I don’t like seeing people getting ganged up on in my town,” Khan said.

The EDL demonstration attracted around 100 people, and was condemned by political leaders of Birmingham city council. The city has a 22% Muslim population in comparison to a national average in the U.K. of around 4%.

Birmingham central mosque hit back at the protest in truly British style by organizing a tea party.

 

Muhammad Ali, Jr Detained at Florida Airport For Being Muslim

Let’s face it, the folks who man customs stations and TSA lines aren’t usually drawn from the brightest on the block.Giving power to stupid is like…

Electing the Chumph.

Muhammad Ali, Jr with Mother, Kalilah

Son of boxer Muhammad Ali detained at Florida airport because of his Arabic-sounding name

A son of boxing legend Muhammad Ali was held for questioning for two hours at a Florida airport upon returning from Jamaica because of his Arabic-sounding name, US media reported.

Muhammad Ali Jr., 44, who was born in Philadelphia and has a US passport, was traveling with his mother Khalilah Camacho-Ali, the late sports icon’s second wife, friend and lawyer Chris Mancini told the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Mancini told the newspaper that both were held for questioning on the Fort Lauderdale International Airport on February 7 because of their Arabic-sounding names.

Camacho-Ali however was released after she showed US Customs agents a photo of herself with her ex-husband.

Ali Jr. however had no such photo — and according to Mancini was held for nearly two hours and repeatedly asked “Where did you get your name from?” and “Are you Muslim?”

When he said that he – like his father – was a Muslim, the agents asked further probing questions.

“To the Ali family, it’s crystal clear that this is directly linked to Mr. Trump’s efforts to ban Muslims from the United States,” Mancini told the Courier-Journal, a reference to President Donald Trump’s late January executive order imposing a 90-day entry ban for citizens of seven Muslim majority countries.

The travel ban has since been halted by a US federal court.

Mancini said that he and the Ali family are trying to find out how many other people were stopped for similar questioning, and are considering a federal lawsuit.

Airport and Customs officials did not answer queries from the newspaper about the case.

Muhammad Ali, one of the iconic 20th century sports heroes, died after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease on June 3. He was 74.

Ali was celebrated as much for his three world heavyweight titles as for his civil rights battles outside the ring.

In 1964 Ali dropped his birth name of Cassius Clay when he converted to Islam.

The Louisville, Kentucky native was married four times he was survived by seven daughters and two sons.

 

Somali-American State Congresswoman Attacked in DC

Another Trumpazoid, another hate crime…

Another question…There actually is a white, American born cabdriver in DC? I haven’t seen one of those in 30 years! The joke around DC is you can always tell where there is a war in the world by where the cabdrivers come from.

History-Making Somali-American Legislator Reports ‘Hateful’ Taunts In D.C.

For the first Somali-American lawmaker in the U.S., it was meant to be a day to remember: a visit to the White House for policy meetings before she takes office in Minnesota. But as she left the seat of U.S. power, Ilhan Omar says, she was subjected to a hateful and threatening verbal attack in a cab.

“I pray for his humanity and for all those who harbor hate in their hearts,” Omar, a Muslim who wears a head scarf, wrote of the cab driver who she says assailed her. In a Facebook post, she says the encounter took place on Tuesday.

State Representative IIlhan Omar with other women leaders, Emily’s List Wendy Davis and R. Weingarten

Saying that she was “subjected to the most hateful, derogatory, Islamophobic, sexist taunts and threats I have ever experienced,” Omar says the cab driver “called me ISIS and threatened to remove my hijab.”

Omar, 34, recounted the abusive encounter in the nation’s capital just one month after she made both history and headlines with her inspiring personal story of a former refugee who won a state House seat in southeast Minneapolis, years after her family fled Somalia’s civil war.

“This really was a victory for that 8-year-old in that refugee camp,” Omar said of her Election Day win. “This was a victory for the young woman being forced into child marriage. This was a victory for every person that’s been told they have limits on their dreams.”

This week, Omar has been in Washington, D.C., to attend the State Innovation Exchange conference along with hundreds of other state legislators. She also spoke at the U.S. Institute of Peace on Monday — Arab American Day. One day later, she was at the White House for a discussion about economic issues facing the middle class.

After the White House session, Omar said, she was verbally abused during the cab ride to her hotel, adding that she “wasn’t really sure how this encounter would end as I attempted to rush out of his cab and retrieve my belongs.”

Omar added, “I am still shaken by this incident and can’t wrap my head around” the increasing boldness of people “displaying their hate towards Muslims.”

Her Facebook post about the incident has drawn thousands of reactions and hundreds of comments from people who expressed their sympathy and solidarity with the mother of three who will be sworn into her new office in January.

One of the most popular responses to Omar’s post came from another Minnesotan who had recently visited the nation’s capital.

“I just got back from Washington too,” Christopher L. Wendt wrote. “I had a cab driver originally from Somalia. When I told him I am from Minnesota and that we have a ‘first’ Somali woman legislator, he got very excited. ‘Ilhan!’ he said – very proud. Keep it up. We’ve got your back.”

 

The Nexus between Islamophobia and Racism

For a long time non-black Islamics ran away from other minority groups, especially black folks. Indeed after the Shah of Iran fell and Iranians emigrated to the US, their political arm lobbied Congress to be classified as white. Arabic people are classified as white in the US. What Muslims have since learned is like the way Jews were treated in this country for a long time, what you are classified as, and what bigots in America see you as are two very different things.

This writer suggests that Muslim people join in the struggle along side other minority groups.

Don’t Worry!

The Entanglement of Islamophobia and Anti-Black Violence

Social justice activists working on issues related to Islamophobia must intensify their efforts to align with activists focused on anti-Black violence.

Blacks form a large portion of the Muslim population in the United States. Muslims from Pakistan, India, the Middle East, etc. who joined them later and/or who are now first or second-generation Americans, however, have maintained separate spaces of worship and recreation. This has created fissures within the American Muslim community along the lines of race and ethnicity – in addition to differences of interpretation of Islam.

In fact, there have been moments when non-Black Muslims have actively sought to set themselves apart from their Black brothers and sisters in order to partake in the racial hierarchy. South Asian Muslims, for instance, have benefited from being marked as a ‘model-minority;’ Iranian Muslims from passing as White. Others have benefited from labels such as ‘moderate or progressive Muslims.’

This self-segregation by non-Black and/or immigrant Muslims can also be read as a mode of self-preservation as they struggled to establish themselves in a new host nation. However, such actions are no longer tenable.

Non-Black Muslims in the United States, like myself, have to understand that our everyday experiences of Islamophobia today are intimately linked with the racism that our Black brothers and sisters have been experiencing for centuries.

To understand this connection, we have to first recognize how racial discrimination operates and how marginalization is an effect of institutional practices.

‘Race’ is a social construction – that is, bodies that look differently (complexion, phenotype, etc.) have historically been categorized and placed into different buckets (namely black, white, brown, etc.) as part of a societal consensus.

This social production of race entails placing certain bodies in superior positions when compared to others (such as Whites over Blacks). It also includes allocating particular characteristics to legitimize such placements (Asians are hardworking; Muslims are backward, etc.). These characteristics are often presented as ‘natural.’

For this hierarchy to be maintained day after day, a range of institutional practices and structures have to reproduce it constantly. These include policing, schooling, gentrification, employment policies, etc. Together, these practices limit the opportunity set available to Blacks, for instance, and hence reproduce the cycle of poverty and marginalization.

There is no conspiracy here – marginalization is an effect of a large number of unjust practices that work together day after day.

Thus, the oft-repeated slogan that ‘Blacks are criminals, look at the crime rates’ only points to the effect of what happens when a people are systematicallymarginalized and discriminated against. If this happened to Brown people or White people then they, too, would experience similar lived realities.

Marginalization of Blacks, hence, is a social and political process and has to be understood as such.

So why should non-Black Muslims care about racism and anti-Black violence? Because the very marginalizations that Muslims are feeling today in the era of Trump – the everyday racism, bullying, violent attacks – are part of the larger institutional processes that keep non-Whites at the periphery. Because Islamophobia is yet another aspect of structural oppression – oppression of Blacks, Latinos, women, disabled people, sexual minorities, etc.

Islamophobia, therefore, can never be understood – let alone addressed – if we do not understand how systemic oppression works.

Non-Black Muslims (and look-alikes, such as Sikhs and Hindus) have, of course, experienced racism before the recent GOP fear mongering. What is different today is the loud call to unite with other marginalized groups.

Anti-Islamophobia work must not erase the anti-racism struggles of Black American Muslims. In fact, good allyship entails sharing privileges, knowledges, and working together towards racial justice.

 

 

Retraining Orangutans. Saba Ahmed Shuts Down Faux News Hate

Great handling of an obnoxious clown Trumpite!