Afroze

A government-led definition of Islamophobia won’t save Muslims The Starmer government’s attempt to define Islamophobia is worthless given it continues to criminalise politically outspoken Muslims, argues Afroze Zaidi.

I wrote about why a new definition of Islamophobia won't bring the change British Muslims need, for the New Arab @thenewarab.bsky.social

Pls read/share; keen to hear thoughts as interaction on this platform is still limited for me
www.newarab.com/opinion/gove...

#Islamophobia #BritishMuslims

A definition is not a magic spell, though it can do useful work. Politicians could have got on with doing that work using the definition we already have if they really wanted to counter Islamophobia.

We have a good enough definition of Islamophobia already, defining Islamophobia is not the issue. The issue is continuously going on and on about how complex it is and convening more and more groups to re-define it in an endless loop rather than actually working to counter it.

I think that this new working group is a deliberate attempt to roll back the work we have all been doing to understand the systemic, political, ontological, historiographical etc ways that Islamophobia manifests. I think we risk the same move following for other racisms too.

Someone who sees a demonstration against genocide as a threat doesn’t necessarily hate all Muslims, there may be Muslims (eg “moderate” / “liberal” / “apolitical” Muslims etc) who they like. But however many Muslims they don’t hate, they still perceive that threat because of Islamophobia.

It will put back decades of work on racism, and it will also make eg the Islamophobic persecution of pro-Palestinian voices easier because it will make the very obvious structural operations of Islamophobia harder to demonstrate.

Something I think is missing from lots of discussions (and well brought out here) about Labour’s new plan to delay actually doing anything about Islamophobia is that to Islamophobia, like racism, is also structural. Calling it “hatred” will make it seem like it is only interpersonal.

Placard showing watermelon slice and the words "FREE PALESTINE"

good morning and

with thanks to IHRC @ihrc.bsky.social and Arzu Merali @arzumerali.bsky.social for their comments

A government-led definition of Islamophobia won’t save Muslims The Starmer government’s attempt to define Islamophobia is worthless given it continues to criminalise politically outspoken Muslims, argues Afroze Zaidi.

I wrote about why a new definition of Islamophobia won't bring the change British Muslims need, for the New Arab @thenewarab.bsky.social

Pls read/share; keen to hear thoughts as interaction on this platform is still limited for me
www.newarab.com/opinion/gove...

#Islamophobia #BritishMuslims

A government-led definition of Islamophobia won’t save Muslims The Starmer government’s attempt to define Islamophobia is worthless given it continues to criminalise politically outspoken Muslims, argues Afroze Zaidi.

The Starmer government’s attempt to define Islamophobia is worthless given it continues to criminalise politically outspoken Muslims, writes Afroze Zaidi ⬇

Headline: MMR safe? Baloney. This is one scandal that's getting worse The Melanie Phillips Column from the Daily Mail in October 31, 2005

“Vaccine fatigue” started back in 1998 with Andrew Wakefield’s MMR autism fraud boosted by our trashfire right wing media

✅Measles was declared eliminated in U.S. in 2000 due to the measles vaccine.

📍Today, Mexico has issued a warning to avoid traveling to the U.S. because of measles outbreaks in Texas and 7 other U.S. states.

From bbc website: In an interview with BBC Politics East, Farage said: "If we really can't recruit people in Britain to work in care - and I believe we could with some tweaks to the tax system - recruit them on a time-specific contract with no entitlement to health care or social benefits. "We give people who come in indefinite leave to remain and once they have got that they can then bring in their mum, their dad, their aunty, their uncle, theirs. That's what's gone wrong. We have been way too lax on this."

So often people seem to be objecting to an immigration system which they’ve made up in their own heads

J K Rowling might have badly written some popular wizard books but it’s important to remember she is really not very bright at all and only gets listened to because of said popular wizard books making her extremely rich.

Will never forget the fawning treatment certain journalists in Westminster gave this guy when he was merely privately WhatsApping his vile opinions, rather than publishing them openly for everyone else to see

Just to be absolutely clear, Morgan McSweeney, the guy running the UK Labour Party in Government set out, in 2017, to ensure his own party, Labour, would not win the next General Election - because the party was too left wing for him.

See it
Say it
Sorted. ✨

one of the most jarring things about this app is that you don't get notifications for engagement with retweets like hello IS ANYBODY THERE

picture: A health worker administers a polio vaccine to a child at a school in Peshawar, Pakistan in September. Photograph: Muhammad Sajjad/AP Aid Cuts to UK vaccine funding could lead to 'huge numbers' of child deaths overseas Exclusive: Hundreds of thousands of world's poorest children could die if aid programme slashed, experts warn

Tough luck kids, Keir Starmer needs to create a lot of value for BAE Systems shareholders

Every mainstream attempt to grapple with the rise of Tate and other misogynist ideologues have posed them as a product of men’s despair. Few have posited them as an assault on women’s safety and dignity.

Suella Braverman: Englishness has never been static or simple. From the arrival of the Romans to the waves of Saxons, Vikings, and Normans, English culture has always absorbed and adapted. How many generations must pass before one can claim to be English? Five? Six? It is a question without an easy answer. If we are to defend Judeo-Christian civilization, British values, and the distinctiveness of English culture, there must be some form of consensus.

That famed Judeo-Christian English history in which Jews were expelled and then banned from openly living in the country for 350 years

fyi this means somebody deliberately added Russian state media either w/o comms approval or comms approved and is now backtracking

Manufacturing consent

"America First" is a slogan that is - and long has been - a codeword for "nazi shit" so yea

Liberals and leftists picked up that term where the right wing took it and essentially gave it the same treatment that reactionaries gave critical race theory. It’s become a stigmatized catchall devoid of its history and scholarship.

obvs there are all of 3 Muslims on this app so I'm aware that I'm just ranting to myself atp

BREAKING: The mass firing of upwards of 1,800 workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including top climate scientists and weather forecasters, has begun.

The firings reportedly include workers at the National Weather Service.