Critical Currents in Islam Media Roundup (January 2021)

A protest in New York in 2017 in opposition to President Donald J. Trump’s executive order preventing people from several majority Muslim countries from entering the country via the New York Times A protest in New York in 2017 in opposition to President Donald J. Trump’s executive order preventing people from several majority Muslim countries from entering the country via the New York Times

Critical Currents in Islam Media Roundup (January 2021)

By : Critical Currents in Islam Media Roundup Editors

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating about Islam and reflects a wide variety of opinions and approaches. It does not reflect the views of the Critical Currents in Islam page or of Jadaliyya.]

Politics

 
The Supreme Court Upheld Trump’s Muslim Ban. Let’s Not Forget That.(28 January 2021)
An opinion piece by 1998 Pulitzer Prize winner Linda Greenhouse where she discusses that no one who cheers the end of the ban should forget the Supreme Court’s role in keeping it alive for so long. 
 
Few foreigners welcomed President Biden’s election victory as enthusiastically as the tens of thousands of Muslims who have been locked out of the United States for the past four years. 
 
Singapore has detained a 16-year-old for intending to attack two mosques, plans authorities said were inspired by the killing of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand in March 2019.
 
A U.S. Army soldier was arrested on federal terrorism charges for allegedly attempting to assist Islamic State conduct a deadly ambush on U.S. troops, the Department of Justice said in a statement on Tuesday.
 
On 18 December, the Times admitted that key parts of Caliphate fell short of its "standards of accuracy” after it concluded that its key source, Shehroze Chaudhry had fabricated his account of travelling to Syria and joining the Islamic State.Laila al-Arian writes for Middle East Eye on how the Caliphate podcast has revealed again that the paper needs to confront unpleasant truths about how it handles stories at the nexus of Islam, the Middle East and terrorism. 
 
 As undercover officers, Bob Lambert and his fellow detectives adopted the identities of dead children and had relationships with women they spied on. Then they turned their attention to British Muslims.

Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to force Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to retake their oaths on a Bible in a resurfaced video (27 January 2021)
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon-supporting Republican who is known for pushing conspiracy theories and making racists comments, previously tried to force Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to retake their congressional oaths on the Bible.

Turkish top religious authority under fire for ‘spreading extremism’ via Islam courses for children in Syria's Azaz (27 January 2021)
Turkish top religious authority's Islam courses given to Syrian children in Azaz became under fire for "spreading extremism." Footage aired by Turkey's state-run TRT showed boys sitting separately from girls, who were seen wearing burqas.

Women, Gender and Sexuality

A review of “Breaking Fast,”, the thorny intersection of homosexuality and Islam is highlighted with charm and wit in writer-director Mike Mosallam’s lively tale — based on his 2015 short film — of one man’s fraught romantic journey over the course of the holy month of Ramadan. 
 
Indonesia's Aceh province publicly canes two gay men (29 January 2021)
Authorities in Indonesia’s Aceh province publicly caned six people accused of breaching Islamic law, including two men who received 77 lashes for having a same sex relationship.
 
A Bangladeshi woman barred from becoming a marriage registrar because she is female vowed to fight for her job after the High Court said women would face “practical difficulties” conducting Islamic weddings. 
 
One year on, Muslim women reflect on wearing the niqab in a mask-wearing world (03 Febrary 2021)
Anna Piela writes about how she conducted three research projects that relied on interviews with women who wore the niqab, and discusses her findings.
 
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday dismissed the existence of the LGBT while speaking at a provincial congress for his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). 
 

COVID-19

 
Indonesia’s highest Muslim clerical council sought to issue a ruling on whether a COVID-19 vaccine is halal, or permissible under Islam, before the country was due to start a mass inoculation programme using a Chinese vaccine.
 
Pandemic feared fuelling child abuse at Nigeria's Islamic schools (28 January 2021)
According to campaigners, efforts to stop abuse and forced begging of pupils at Islamic schools in northern Nigeria are at risk as the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic could push more struggling families to enrol their children.
 
Among the first in the queue for coronavirus vaccines in Indonesia are social media influencers, a government effort to encourage the general public to have the vaccine. There has been scepticism around the safety and efficacy of any vaccine, and in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation, whether it is halal, or allowed under Islam.
 
Birmingham mosque becomes UK's first to offer Covid vaccine (21 January 2021)
The Al-Abbas Islamic Centre in Balsall Heath, Birmingham, has become the first in the UK to open as a Covid vaccination centre. 
 
A piece discussing what is currently happening at the Masjid Ibrahim and Islamic Centre in London. Situated on a busy road, with the noise of ambulance sirens regularly shattering its peaceful interior, the mosque has closed to communal prayer and is open for two other purposes - to provide a funeral service and a food bank to the local community.

Arts and Culture 

When 18-year old Manizha Talash joined a small but ardent breakdancing community in Afghanistan a few months ago she was the only woman, but she already aims to represent her country in one of the latest sports to be admitted to the Olympics.
 
Supermodel Halima Aden: ‘Why I quit’ (14 January 2021)
Halima Aden, the first hijab-wearing supermodel, quit the fashion industry in November saying it was incompatible with her Muslim religion. Here, in an exclusive interview, she tells BBC Global Religion the full story - how she became a model, and how she reached the decision to walk away.

Mental Health

 A long-read about large influxes of asylum seekers and other migrants to Europe from Muslim-majority countries have led to a significant rise in the number of Muslims in Germany. This has reduced religious tolerance towards the growing Muslim community in Germany, and continues to have significant national implications for promoting integration of recently arrived refugees. 
 

Religious Thought and Practice


He made sure the bodies of the Muslim dead faced Mecca. COVID-19 claimed his life
(31 January 2021)
For over 30 years, Hashem Ahmad Alshilleh helped to bury a generation of Southern Californian Muslims. He washed and shrouded the corpses of men per Islamic customs and drove the bodies of men and women to cemeteries from Rosamond to Victorville, San Diego to Orange County.
 
Pope Francis is set for an historic meeting with Iraq’s top Shi’ite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, during a trip to Iraq planned for March.
 
Nigerian appeals court throws out blasphemy convictions that caused outcry (21 January 2021)
A Nigerian court threw out two blasphemy convictions on Thursday that had caused an international outcry, freeing a teenager from a 10-year prison sentence and ordering a new trial for a man sentenced to death.
 
Kuwaiti broadcaster Mohammed Al Momen posted a video on social media declaring his conversion from Islam to Christianity, promting mixed social media reactions.
 
Parents threatened with legal action after Muslim schoolgirl refuses to wear shorter skirt (12 January 2021)
The parents of a Muslim girl have been threatened with court action because their daughter refuses to wear a knee-length skirt to school. 
 
The UK’s largest Muslim charity has been exonerated of institutional antisemitism in an independent report after its reputation was badly damaged and government funding suspended over the social media posts of two trustees and a senior member of staff.

Islamophobia


Pompeo says China’s policies on Muslims amount to ‘genocide’
(19 January 2021)
Just 24 hours before president-elect Joe Biden took office, Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo has hit China with new sanctions by declaring that China’s policies on Muslims and ethnic minorities in western Xinjiang province constitute a “genocide.”
 
Twitter permanently suspended Trump's account on Friday to prevent 'further incitement of violence'; Ali Harb revisits some of his controversial tweets for Middle East Eye. 
 
Rights group calls on US Muslims to be 'extra vigilant' in wake of Capitol riot (13 January 2021)
Council on American-Islamic Relations says threat posed by far-right white supremacist violence is high and Muslims may be targets. 
 
Rebecca Ruth Gould, Professor of Islamic World and Comparative Literature at the University of Birmingham talks in this opinion piece about how the book, I Refuse to Condemn, shows how the call to condemn terrorist acts of violence functions as a bludgeon, quelling innocent Muslims into silence. 
 
Remembering the Québec City mosque attack: Islamophobia and Canada’s national amnesia (28 January 2021)
On Jan. 29, 2017, six Muslim men were shot dead in a Québec City mosque. An armed white nationalist terrorist went on a shooting rampage in the Islamic Cultural Centre in Sainte-Foy, Québec, just after evening prayers. It remains the worst mass murder in a house of worship in Canada’s history.
 
 Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, the Bharatiya Janata Party government has put forward several anti-Muslim policies. The latest is a clampdown on what it sees as “love jihad,” the belief that Muslims are seeking to deceive Hindu women through marriage and convert them to Islam.
 
Muslim headscarves barred in all public areas in France under new measures proposed by Marine Le Pen (31 January 2021)
Muslim headscarves would be prohibited in all public areas in France under new measures proposed by French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. 
 

Critical Currents in Islam Media Roundup (December 2020)

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating about Islam and reflects a wide variety of opinions and approaches. It does not reflect the views of the Critical Currents in Islam page or of Jadaliyya.]

Politics


Moroccan Islamist groups reject normalizing ties with Israel
(12 December 2020)

Morocco’s main Islamist groups rejected Rabat’s plan to normalize ties with Israel following a deal brokered by the United States.

Islamic State train attacker thwarted by three California men is convicted (18 December 2020)

A French court has convicted an Islamic State operative in a 2015 train attack that was foiled by three fast-acting young California men.

Widow of Islamic State gunman is convicted in Charlie Hebdo, kosher market attacks (16 December 2020)

The widow of an Islamic State gunman and a man described as his logistician were convicted of terrorism charges and sentenced to 30 years in prison in the trial of 14 people linked to the January 2015 attacks against the newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket.

Pakistan coal miners kidnapped and killed in IS attack (03 January 2021)

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the killing of 11 coal miners in the western Pakistani province of Balochistan.

Indonesia Disbands Radical Islamic Group Over Charges of Violence(30 December 2020)

The government dissolved the Islamic Defenders Front over charges that its members committed terrorism. Its leader is already under arrest.

An Embattled Public Servant in a Fractured France(01 January 2021)

Nicolas Cadène sees the failings of France’s secular model even as he upholds it.

France Takes On Islamist Extremism With New Bill(09 December 2020)

The French government says draft legislation aimed at combating the extremist ideology that has taken many lives on French soil in recent years is a “law of freedom” necessary for peaceful coexistence.

Once a Slogan of Unity, ‘Je Suis Charlie’ Now Divides France(19 December 2020)

After the 2015 terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, “I am Charlie” became a unifying slogan of free speech. Now it fuels divisions in an increasingly polarized country.

I.C.C. Won’t Investigate China’s Detention of Muslims (15 December 2020)

The International Criminal Court’s decision angered rights activists, who had lobbied it to investigate Beijing’s repressive policies against Uighurs.

Pakistan regional gov’t to fund construction of destroyed temple (01 January 2021)

Dozens of people arrested, including a local Islamic leader, after a Muslim mob destroyed a temple in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The royal commission report on the Christchurch atrocity is a beginning, not an end (09 December 2020)

France Unveils Draft Law to Fight Islamist Radicalism (09 December 2020)

The proposed legislation targets home schools, mosques or associations that promulgate an ideology running counter to French values.

Why Muslims in the US face a crisis of leadership(08 December 2020)

An opinion piece by Dr. Hafsa Kanjwal assistant professor in South Asian history at Lafayette College. Dr. Kanjwal claims some Muslim American groups have turned into agents of oppression, and suggests that they are providing cover for harmful and destructive policies towards communities in the US. 

Women, Gender & Sexuality

Rights groups say youngsters are targeted after being abducted or tricked.

Thai women gold panners find bright spot in COVID-ravaged economy (30 December 2020)

Many Muslim women from the south of Thailand who used to sell vegetables and food to tourists have turned to panning as gold prices near an all-time high.

Young Muslim women are leading environmental movements grounded in their beliefs (22 December 2020)

An opinion piece by Memona Hossain on how Muslim women are “transcending boundaries” to create spaces of activism and being more eco-concious.

Islamophobia


2020 Marked by Rising Anti-Muslim Rhetoric
(Date unknown)

A video by TRT World on the rising rhetoric against Muslims globally.

‘Will they let us live?’ Inside Xinjiang, survivors of China’s internment camps speak (17 December 2020)

The Times met with Uighurs — they are predominately Muslim — who spoke of their imprisonment, fear and life in the region.

Justices rule Muslim men can sue FBI agents over no-fly list (10 December 2020)

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Muslim men who were placed on the government’s no-fly list because they refused to serve as FBI informants can seek to hold federal agents financially liable.

Report finds security lapses ahead of New Zealand mosque shootings (08 December 2020)

The report says New Zealand’s intelligence agencies were far too focused on the threat posed by Islamic extremism, which came at the expense of confronting other threats such as white supremacism.

Indian State Ruled by Modi’s Party Bans Islamic Schools (30 December 2020)

More than 700 madrasas in Assam will be shut by April, the state’s education minister said. Opposition politicians called the move an attack on Muslims.

The Labour Party has a problem with Islamophobia and needs to tackle it head on (14 December 2020)

An opinion piece by Taj Ali, a freelance writer and political activist based in the UK, on the alleged islamophobia in the Labour Party.

US demands release of Uighur doctor sentenced to 20 years’ jail (31 December 2020)

The US called for the release of a Uighur Muslim medical doctor whose relatives say was sentenced to 20 years in jail in China because of family members’ human rights activism in the United States.

China uses tourism to smother Xinjiang’s culture (02 January 2021)

In recent years China has worked to stamp out any hint of religious fervour in Xinjiang, as almost a million of the region’s ethnic-Uyghurs have been accused of radical Islamic thinking and sent to re-education camps.

Austrian Constitutional Court Overturns Headscarf Ban in Schools(11 December 2020)

The legislation was introduced by the ruling conservatives in Austria, and had only been referred to as 'religious clothing that is associated with a covering of the head,' but the court found that it was clearly aimed at Muslim headscarves.

Religious Thought & Practice 


Halal Debate: What Experts Say About The Covid-19 Vaccine
(21 December 2020)

Experts say that concerns about religious permissibility, speed of development as well as conspiracy theories need to be contextualised and taken seriously.

Pakistani film explores social media's role in anger over blasphemy (09 December 2020)

The creator of an animated film on blasphemy in Pakistan is hoping it will prompt discussion on tolerance at a time that rights advocates say hate speech on social media is increasingly triggering violence.

No shame in dealing with matters of the mind (28 December 2020)

In a year of strained mental health, Arab countries are doubling down on efforts to support care and break the stigma associated with such conditions.

COVID-19


Muslim charities feed lorry drivers stranded at UK border crossing
(29 December 2020)

A number of Muslim charities have provided thousands of hot meals to lorry drivers stuck at the UK's Dover ferry crossing after France closed its borders to UK traffic following the emergence in the UK of a new strain of Covid-19.

Covid-19: Scholars say having vaccine is religious duty for Egyptians (16 December 2020)

The arrival of the first shipment of the vaccine from China has raised religious, political and public debate in the country.

In Pictures: Struggling to bury COVID victims in northern Iran (24 December 2020)

How Covid-19 Muslim-Iranian victims are being buried in northern Iran, as the virus ripples across the country.

Concern Among Muslims Over Pork-derived Gelatin in COVID-19 Vaccine (20 December 2020)

The stabilizer, meant to ensure vaccines remain safe and effective during storage and transport, presents a challenge for vaccination campaigns in some communities.

Business


Islamic fintech Wahed Invest to buy UK digital banking app Niyah
(17 December 2020)

Wahed Inc, a U.S.-based Islamic-finance fintech startup backed by Saudi Aramco, will acquire Niyah Ltd, a British company that runs a digital banking app designed for the Muslim community.

Culture


Archaeologists discover ancient Islamic necropolis in northern Spain
(01 December 2020)

Construction workers in Spain have made an unexpected find that archaeologists say could help them better understand the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsular.