Wiretapping Muslims and Arabs in a generalized way for considering them “potential terrorists” happened for the first time in the 60’s of last century, professor Louise Cainkar of the Catholic Jesuite Marquette University in Wisconsin explained. At that time, Arab visiting students were interviewed and controlled by agencies like the NSA. They were “threatened” with deportation if they acted for Palestine in the context of the Six-Day War of June 1967.

“With Richard Nixon, the profiling program of Arabs and Muslims got institutionalized”

— Louise Cainkar

With Richard Nixon as president of the US, the “profiling program got institutionalized”, Cainkar said. The so-called “Operation Boulder”, was “a program that scrutinized the activities of Arab Americans and profiled visa applicants with Arab sounding names”, Sarah Laskow explained in the Columbia Journalism Reviewin 2013. The ‘Declassification Engine’ built up by history professor at Columbia University Matthew Connelly revealed it. In 1972 an article in the Washington Post informed about 2,000 students found “deportable” and 400 students had left their country on their own, the Marquette professor highlighted.

‘Operation Boulder’ was one of the first governmental moves to islamophobia, according to the panel at WOCMES.

“The discourses, representations and policies shifted after the Iranian Revolution. From Arab to this much wider group of Muslims”, she said. That was when the “Middle East” concept came into place. While ‘Arab’ and ‘Muslim’ do not mean the same thing, American policies seem to have treated both as synonymous. In fact, professor Erik Love from the Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, defended during the panel in Seville that “islamophobia is racism, [as] it fits neatly into American’s tradition of white supremacy”.

Trump’s “age is an intensification in anti- Muslim animus but not a turning point; it has reached a new watermark”, Jameel Haque summarized. This History professor at Minnesota State University describes himself as well as Muslim activist in the US. “My authority as an expert is continuously challenged as are historic facts [I present]”, he complained about one of the challenges he faces in his work.

“Trump’s age is an intensification in anti- Muslim animus but not a turning point”

— Jameel Haque

To him, “what is new in the Trump era is that the federal government is complicit” and gives a “microphone” to hate groups. He feels he always has had to challenge what he calls “islamofiction”, but at present there are two new aspects into it: a “Muslim ethnic and racial significance” and that “Muslim natives of the US are viewed as foreigners and suspicious”.

In this respect, he recalled the episode on Barack Obama’s birth certificate and his alleged Muslim faith as a matter of suspicion. Not only there was an anti-Muslim discourse there by Donald Trump, but Obama always challenged this by “affirming his Christian faith”. For Jameel Haque this was “implied islamophobia”, the same as maintaining the Guantanamo camp.

Love reminded of another episode in the past election campaign during the debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump with questions of the audience include. One woman asked: “With Islamophobia on rise, how will you help people like me not to be seen as a threat?”. Trump answered with more security and Clinton “accepted the premise” of relating Muslims to security issues with what Love defines as a “softer islamophobia”. She answered: “We need American Muslims to be part of our Homeland security”.

Haque stated US textbooks have always included “misconceptions” about Muslim and Arab people, like speaking about the “Reconquista” against Muslims, who are never called Europeans but referred to by their faith. Haque believes an “update of our [educational] curriculum should be a forward step towards understanding”.

He also proposes activists to build a community of diverse minority groups, not only ethnic, cultural or religious groups but also others like LGBT, for example. He believes a unified work would help them have their own political voice more represented.

WOCMES takes place every four years in a different city. This year it has been organized in Seville by the Three Cultures Foundation and about 3,000 researchers and experts from around 91 countries have registered to take part in this academic summit which will last until Friday, the 20^th of July.

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La entrada Is Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim policy really something new in the United States? se publicó primero en Salam Plan.

The reason for so much interest in this man is not for being an appreciated British digital artist and a Bafta award winner, but rather for his commitment to fight Islamophobia and racism after losing his brother Martyn (29) at the Manchester bombing last May. He has publicly denounced that he receives online threats from far right people, because he does not believe that terrorism is a problem related to Islam nor immigration.

Only a few days after that attack that killed 22 people, The Guardian published an interview with Dan Hett in which he explained not only his frustration about what happened, but also about the anti-immigration defenders taking advantage of the the massacre. The author of that attack on May 22, Salman Abedi, was the son of immigrants born in the United Kingdom and a resident of the same area as the Hett family.

“As a young half-Turkish Mancunian, I’m not worlds away from this guy [Abedi]. The idea that somebody would say, ‘Oh, this is an immigration problem’ frustrates me. How is this an immigration problem? A UK-born terrorist took out, among many other people, my UK-born Turkish brother … In an alternate timeline, the roles could have been reversed,” Dan Hett said at the time. “In many ways we are completely alike,” he assured, including himself in this parallelism, in another interview with Manchester Evening News.

“A UK-born terrorist took out, among many other people, my UK-born Turkish brother … In an alternate timeline, the roles could have been reversed”

He regrets -as he told the local newspaper- that there is a “pattern” by which some people take advantage of terrorist attacks to promote an anti-immigrant and Islamophobic debate. In his opinion, the real danger lies in the rethoric that comes after the attacks and alerts: adopting a hate speech against other cultures only contributes precisely to what the ISIS (Daesh) seeks. “You are part of their plan,” if you do so, he warned. He has chosen to be just the opposite and to fight actively and peacefully against the terrorists’ goals. That’s why he does not stay silent.

Martyn Hett was 29 years old when he died in the attack on the Ariana Grande concert. Source: Twitter

Dan has also spoken out against a new book by Tommy Robinson, founder of the far-right organization English Defence League (EDL) in Manchester, who has 381,000 followers on Twitter and which has earned Dan the latest wave of insults on the Internet. Robinson presented it last Friday, November 3, in an event with about thousand attendees, according to British media.

“The most dangerous book in Britain. Get a copy before they ban it,” Robinson boasts when he publicizes it. “Mohammed’s Koran: why Muslims kill for Islam” is how he has called his interpretation of jihad, equating those who profess Islam with terrorists.

>> HAVE A LOOK AT “The true meaning of ‘jihad’ and how ISIS fails to accomplish it step by step” <<

Robinson (whose real name is Stephen Christopher Yaxley) left the EDL in 2013 stating that he would only fight against the Islamist radicalization. He did it with the support of the Quilliam Foundation, known for its work against extremism, as The Telegraph recently recalled. But in 2016 he founded the British version of the German xenophobic movement Pegida. In addition, the Quilliam Foundation itself claimed that it had attacked its premises and that Robinson seemed to have experienced a setback in leaving his extremism behind.

Dan’s activism has cost him numerous attacks through Twitter, either openly or by direct messages (in private), and also through email. He shared some of the last insults he received, although he refrained from publishing the ones he considered “too offensive”.

Among the messages he has received, several include insults such as “stupid” or “dummy”. Also one he -who is also a victim of terrorism himself due to his loss- highlights: “Islam killed your brother. I bet hes [SIC] out there proud of you,”challenged one Twitter user. “Love Manchester. Hate racism,” he has tweeted these days in response to these types of attacks. And he also recalled: “I’m not afraid to raise my voice.”

Love Manchester. Hate racism (…). I’m not afraid to raise my voice

That is precisely the mission he has engaged in after losing his brother. “I want to talk about the responsibility of normal people to raise their voices and not ignore what is happening,” he explained in the already mentioned interview with the Manchester newspaper. Now, far from being daunted by the attacks, this father of two seems to gain more strength at his 32 years for his upcoming commitments: he will conduct a schools tour to talk about “the true effects of extremism” and will participate as a speaker at the next TEDX conference to be held in Manchester next February.

This Monday, Dan Hett, made clear that the attacks against him on Twitter will even be useful in his work against extremism: “The troll hits ‘send’, but never imagined that their abusive messages would add to my discussion material in schools almost instantaneously.”

La entrada He lost his brother in the Manchester attack and his response was to raise his voice against racism se publicó primero en Salam Plan.