From 1983 to 2009, Sri Lanka saw a bloody civil war between the majority Buddhist Sinhalese and the minority Tamils. The conflict led to invaluable losses both economically and politically. To this day, the deep socio-religious wounds have yet to heal on the island in South Asia. Since the war...
Islamophobia in the US has increased ever since the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Discrimination and hate crimes against American Muslims skyrocketed immediately after the deadliest assault on US soil took place. Despite sporadic efforts by former President Barack Obama to bridge the religious and racial...
The horrific attacks on February 19 at two shisha bars in Hanau, Germany, have led to several questions concerning motivation, activation and implication. It was the third attack by far-right extremists in nine months. In many respects, Eugenicism is making a comeback of sorts. Increasingly,...
The rise of Islamophobia and the increase in hate crimes targeted at Muslims point to the lasting effect of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis. Twenty-three years after the publication of his book, the image of a “violent and irrational” Muslim continues to...
Driven by the rise of the far right and white nationalist movements, Islamophobia is on a rising tide, with widespread discrimination and record-high attacks on Muslims across the Western world. Norway recently avoided a tragedy when three Muslim men prevented a 21- year-old gunman from carrying...
In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Peter Riddell, vice-principal at the Melbourne School of Theology in Australia. Islamophobia can be seen in a variety of ways. As a form of intolerance and discrimination, it risks affecting relations between Muslims and non-Muslims and...
Linking hate speech or extreme language with humor looks disturbing, since it is assumed that prejudice, intolerance and fanaticism are humorless per se. Memes have a frequent presence in our daily lives. They flood our timelines on different social media platforms, usually to provide us with a...
“It absolutely could happen here.” This was the Minister of State for Security Ben Wallace’s response on BBC Radio 4 to the question many in the United Kingdom and around the world have asked themselves in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of 50 people praying in...
The presence of Muslim-American women in Congress is a rare opportunity, and Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar should make their voices heard. History has been made in America. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar will be the first Muslim women to serve in the US Congress. The 2018 midterm elections saw a...
The demonization of Muslims may be less a cudgel to wield against the small Muslim-American community than against Democratic opponents who can be lambasted as “soft on terrorism.” These days, our global political alliances seem to shift with remarkable rapidity, as if we were actually...
In France, laïcité became enshrined as a fundamental principle through a 1905 law applying to all religions. French society — and specifically the traditional left — is undergoing a raging cultural battle around a sociological and political concept encapsulated in the word laïcité, which...
Is the media responsible for the far-right backlash following acts of terrorism? * In 2016 the different types of far-right extremism and its new, lowest-common denominator, anti-Muslim hate incidents, have taken leaps and...
When will Muslims stop being fodder in the American political process? Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s now famous “I think Islam hates us” barb is fitting for his role as the loudest Islamophobe in mainstream politics. However, since the 9/11 attacks, Muslim-bashing has...
Brexit was the most recent achievement for the politics of populism in Europe. Up until a few years back, populist radical-right parties, which are mainly single-issue ones, were marginalized as a political group. The core ideological tenets of populist radical-right parties—nativism,...
Since the terrorist attacks in France, assaults on Muslims have been on the rise in Britain. In the wake of Paris attacks on November 13, fear is more widespread in Britain than ever before. The number of attacks on Muslims is currently at an all-time high. According to police figures, assaults...
