MABDA Report 19/6/2011

An antidote to Islamophobia?

Bad news tends to drown out good news, so while Representative Peter King continues his misguided attack on Muslim Americans, it's good to know that many other people are working to create a world where tolerance and understanding win the day.

This week the New York Times ran a profile of Eboo Patel and his nonprofit organization, the Interfaith Youth Core. Patel, only 35 years old, has 31 employees and a budget of $4 million dedicated to increasing interfaith activism and bridge-building on college campuses across America. The article also mentions the "Interfaith and Community Service Challenge," an initiative announced earlier this year by President Obama in a letter to 2,000 university presidents, which encourages students to work across religious divides to improve their communities together and build understanding between people of different faiths

https://web.archive.org/web/20111123041453/http://blog.faithinpubliclife.org/2011/06/an_antidote_to_islamophobia.html

UK warned against rising Islamophobia

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) told the council's Annual General Assembly (AGB) in Birmingham on Sunday that “robust action” is needed to counter Islamophobic attacks including assaults on Muslims, vandalizing mosques and desecrating graves, the daily The Independent reported.

MCB secretary-general Farooq Murad said that minorities in the UK are 42 times more likely to be targeted under the Terrorism Act.

He challenged the "ethnic profiling" of British Muslim community, calling for anti-Muslim crimes to be monitored more evidently to encourage communities to report crimes to the police.

The calls, supported by leading academics, a counter-terrorist think-tank and Muslim groups, come as the Metropolitan Police confirmed a total of 762 Islamophobic offences in London since April 2009, including 333 in 2010/11 and 57 since this April.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/184482.html

Combating Islamophobia in Florida

Muhammad Malik is a 28-year-old Kashmiri-American human rights advocate, social commentator, and nonprofit consultant who was born and raised in Miami, FL. A former executive director of council on American-Islamic Relations (South Florida), Muhammad also worked at the ACLU Florida, coordinating its work through the Racial Justice and Voting Rights Projects.

Muhammad is a founding partner of the Black Mangrove Collective, co-producer of Miami's acclaimed "Let's Talk About It" weekly radio show (880 AM), and serves as a board member of South Florida Interfaith Workers Justice, No More Tears, and the City of North Miami Beach's Multicultural Affairs Commission. He speaks regularly at universities, places of worship, and conferences, and he's been featured by various media outlets including Al Jazeera, CNN, NPR, Democracy Now, The Miami Herald, and The Sun Sentinel.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/06/malik_interview.html

http://www.americanprogress.org/projects/faith/yma.html