A former State Department employee charged with a hate crime in November after he harassed a halal food vendor in Manhattan, calling him a “terrorist,” may have his charges dismissed if he completes a 26-week anti-bias course and fulfills other requirements, according to prosecutors.

At a court appearance, Manhattan prosecutors said that if the man, Stuart Seldowitz, completed the program through the organization Queens Counseling for Change, had no new arrests and did not violate a protective order, they would ask that his charges be dropped. Mr. Seldowitz agreed, according to prosecutors.

However, Afaf Nasher, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of New York, said in a statement on that “light punishments are a slap in the face to the victims.”

Video recordings of the encounters between Mr. Seldowitz and the vendor spread online as tensions intensified between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups after the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7. In New York, where demonstrations about the conflict have become a near daily occurrence, those tensions have been particularly high.

The number of hate crimes logged in the city during October was more than double that of the previous October. Last year through mid-December, the Manhattan district attorney’s office initiated 111 hate crime cases, compared with 92 in 2022 and 81 in 2021, according to a spokeswoman.

The charges against Mr. Seldowitz were brought after the vendor, whom the police identified as a 24-year-old man, told officers that he had been approached by another man who made Islamophobic statements several times while he was working on the Upper East Side, causing him to feel “afraid or annoyed.”

New Yorkers from across the city came together to support halal cart operator Mohammed Hussein after watching the hateful attacks by Seldowitz, with city councilwoman Julie Menin stressing that “hate and harassment have no place in our community.”In several videos, Mr. Seldowitz can be seen taking pictures of the vendor, berating him and telling him: “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough.” Mr. Seldowitz also threatens to send pictures of the vendor to “friends in immigration.”

Mr. Seldowitz had a decades-long government career in both Democratic and Republican administrations, including as acting director for the National Security Council’s South Asia Directorate and a post in the State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs.

Source: The New York Times

New York City will offer new curriculum materials on antisemitism and Islamophobia in its public schools and train principals and teachers on how to have difficult conversations about politically charged issues, officials said on Monday in response to criticism that the system has done too little to address the Israel-Hamas war.

In higher education, colleges like Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania have faced a backlash over their responses to the war. A speech announcing the new effort by the city’s schools chancellor, David C. Banks, illustrated how difficult it has been for K-12 leaders to stay out of the fray.

“The way through this moment is not to malign our students or to impose our own ideologies on them — or to bury our heads in the sand,” Mr. Banks said on Monday. “We must educate our students, and sometimes our staff.”

He added: “We cannot and will not have schools where students feel like they can do whatever they want without accountability for their actions.”

The chancellor’s message was among the most direct acknowledgments of continued fallout over the war from a major American public school district. It came two months after a raucous demonstration at Hillcrest High School in Queens — where officials said a pro-Israel teacher was targeted — became a major flashpoint for some Jewish families, who argued the system had not done enough to quell bias in schools.

Since October, local conflicts in New York and other districts have often erupted into animated controversies on the national stage. A number of parent leaders and educators who have vocally supported Palestinians have encountered online harassment. And this month, a Brooklyn grade school faced outrage after a resurfaced social media post showed a classroom map that did not include Israel but called the region Palestine.

On Monday, Mr. Banks said all middle and high school principals would receive mandatory training in March on “navigating difficult conversations” and would then be asked to bring the training to their school staff members.

In addition to expanding teaching materials on antisemitism and Islamophobia, he said the Education Department would offer anti-discrimination workshops to parent leaders. And the chancellor said he would also convene an “interfaith advisory council” to help shape his response.

Mr. Banks was seeking to respond to criticisms, but also said his goal was to provide a more uniform plan for tackling the impact of the war in Gaza in a system that is particularly diverse, with tens of thousands of Jewish, Muslim and Arab students.

New York City’s public schools, like many districts and universities, are under a federal civil rights investigation into reports of discrimination, and Mr. Banks said the system has been fast-tracking its own inquiries into complaints of antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Source: The New York Times

By Suad Joseph

Publisher: I.B. Tauris

Publication Date: January 26, 2023

ISBN: 9780755647835

Reporting Islam examines the coverage of Muslim women in the New York Times from 1979-2011. The analysis addresses the nature of the coverage; whether there are parallels in the depiction of Muslim women from the Middle East and South Asia and with the US government policies toward these countries; and the relationship between feminism in the US and the representation of Muslim women in the US.

At a time when women often become the iconic representatives of their nations, their cultures and their religions, this book offers unique insight into how a dramatic period of contemporary history for the Middle East and South Asia was depicted by the leading print newspaper in the world. The coverage captures the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the rise of Islamist movements across the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa, the first Gulf War, the 9/11 events, the second Gulf War, the War on Terror, and the Arab uprisings. The book asks critical questions about the wider implications of the misrepresentation of Muslim women in the media, and the links between print news, US foreign policy and women.

Table of Contents

– Acknowledgements

– Preface

– Introduction Suad Joseph, University of California, Davis, USA

1. Maturing Islam: Turkey as the Site of Islamic Liberalization in the New York Times, 1980–2011, Caroline McKusick, University of California, Davis, USA

2. The Material life of Representation: “Veiled Muslim Women” in the New York Times, 1980–2011, Lena Meari, Birzeit University, Palestine

3. Specters of Islam: Anti-Islamist (Re)Presentations in Secular Media and Feminism in the New York Times, 1979–2011, Tanzeen Rashed Doha, University of California, Davis, USA

4. Friends and Foes: The Pragmatic Liberal Biases in Representation of Saudi Women vs. Iranian Women in the New York Times, 1980–2011, Hakeem Naim, University of California, Berkeley, USA

5. The Islamic World Is Flat(tened): Contesting Islam in South Asia in the New York Times, 1980–2011, Rajbir Judge, California State University, USA

About the Editor

Suad Joseph is Distinguished Research Professor of Anthropology and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Davis, USA. She founded the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies and co-founded its internationally recognized Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. She has edited or co-edited eight books, published over 100 articles, and is General Editor of the highly esteemed Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures.

Source: Bloomsbury.com

Macron has been the subject of protests for his perceived attacks on Islam, after he backed the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad and claimed in a speech that Islam “is in crisis all over the world today”. Protesters in some countries have called for a boycott of French products.

Source: The Guardian

This film appears in the third issue of Newest Americans, a collaboration between Rutgers University-Newark, Talking Eyes, and VII Photo centered around America’s changing demographics. More information can be found on the Facebook page and Twitter account. This short film is part of an ongoing series on The Atlantic from Talking Eyes Media about movement, location, and identity called State of Migration.

The New York Times recently published a “guide” to Muslim headscarves. The article intended to illuminate an Islamic concept that promotes modesty, but the associated images showed styles specific to a few countries and all of the silhouettes were faceless. These types of portrayals can contribute to a misperception among some that Muslim women who don the headscarf may lack agency.

In today’s political climate, the headscarf has become more than just a spiritual symbol of modesty. At one point, women working in government positions were not allowed to wear it in Turkey. In France, the niqab — a version of the headscarf that covers the face — is banned. In the field of counterterrorism, some view the headscarf as a manifestation of extremism. And as the number of Islamophobic attacks continues to rise in the United States so, too, does the fear among Muslim women, especially those who wear hijab, that they’ll be victims of violence.

In light of this, The Huffington Post asked women from all over the Internet to show just how beautifully diverse the hijab can be using the hashtag #HijabToMe. By showing the many different ways women choose to tie their hijab and the various meanings it takes for them, we hope to offer readers a glimpse into the diversity of Muslim women who don the headscarf. Muslim women were asked to post a picture of themselves along with a brief description of what wearing the hijab means to them.

Source: The Atlantic