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Anti-Muslim Backlash Rises in Europe as Amnesty Condemns Racist Attacks
VIENNA, Oct 5 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Attacks on Muslims have increased in a number of EU countries since last month's terror assaults in the United States, notably in Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden, as Amnesty International on Thursday released a report detailing similar attacks worldwide.
The European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) expressed its concern Thursday over the rise in these attacks, citing physical abuse of Muslims in Britain and urged politicians to counter the trend sparked by U.S. accusations that Islamic extremists were responsible for the September 11th terror attacks, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"We ask political leaders to continue in their efforts to raise awareness among the public that the terrorists cannot be equated with a particular religious community," said EUMC chairman Bob Purkiss.
In a report detailing abuse against Islamic communities in each EU state, the Vienna-based EUMC noted both verbal and physical attacks.
"In almost all countries, verbal insults towards Muslims have been reported in the days after the attack," it said, adding that abuse of Muslim schoolchildren by their schoolmates was "frequent".
EUMC Director Beate Winkler said the report showed that racial or religious prejudice had become highly sensitive in the wake of the terror attacks in the United States.
"The whole situation is extremely sensitive and it can go in a negative way, a very negative direction," she told AFP.
The EUMC reported Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden as countries where abuse of Muslims had increased the most overall.
Physical attacks were reported on mosques in The Hague and Vlissingen and an Islamic school was set on fire in the Dutch town of Nijmegen, while in the Swedish city of Gothenburg an Iranian-born taxi driver was beaten up by attackers who called him a "bloody terrorist", said the 15-page report.
In one assault in Britain, a 28-year-old Afghan minicab driver was "seriously assaulted and left paralyzed from the neck down," in an incident linked by police to the September 11th attacks in New York and Washington.
In general, the racism watchdog praised politicians' stance in the wake of the attacks.
"Politicians have quickly acted to counteract possible negative effects on the Islamic community, emphasizing that the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not support terrorism," it said.
But it noted, "In some countries some political parties [also in the government] have taken an anti-Islamic stance and tried to identify terrorism with the Islamic community."
Winkler declined to comment on which countries the accusation might be referring to, but the EUMC report included information from the Agency for the Development of Intercultural Relations in France that the National Republican Movement (M.N.R.) "has suggested an anti-terrorist plan that consists in suppressing public subsidy to Islamic Non Profits [sic] Organizations and in allowing only French workers into airports."
Italy's Cooperation for the Development of Emerging Countries warned, "It must be underlined that some political parties [in Italy] are overtly using the attack to mount campaigns against migrants in general and Muslims in particular."
And the Movement for Peace, Disarmament and Liberty in Spain reported that, "Some media try to establish the belief that all members of the Islamic community are potential international terrorist [sic]."
Aside from France and Italy, a source familiar with the report listed Sweden and Austria as countries where some politicians were causing concern, particularly citing Austria's far-right Freedom Party strongman Joerg Haider.
Winkler said, "Racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism will decrease if there is a clear political message that this is not accepted." Many of the EU states that filed reports with the EUMC said their governments had taken a strong stance against anti-Muslim sentiments.
The concern about government bodies taking an anti-Muslim stance was echoed by Amnesty International, which said in its report released Thursday, "In Europe and elsewhere, governments are rushing to the top of their political agendas laws that threaten to curb civil liberties and possibly reduce safeguards against abuses of human rights."
The London-based human rights group warned that the shock and outrage following the terrorist strikes must not be used to justify measures which may lead to further human rights abuses.
The organization highlighted "the first worrying indications that the fight against terrorism may be opportunistically used to clamp down on civil liberties and human rights."
Amnesty said it had evidence of a backlash against Muslims and people of Middle Eastern or Asian origin or appearance in at least 10 countries following the September 11th attacks, and that a number of countries were debating measures to clamp down on illegal immigrants.
The report also said that, "men and women of all ages had suffered abuse and even serious attacks in streets, schools and workplaces just because of their - real or perceived - religious or national identity."
Amnesty said that in the U.S., more than 540 attacks were carried out on Arab-Americans and at least 200 on Sikhs in the week following the attacks. As of the first week of October, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group based in Washington, said more than 780 incidents of anti-Muslim attacks and other harassment had been reported to its national chapter alone.
"It is a sad irony that, only weeks after the United Nations World Conference on Racism, many communities around the world are facing increased discrimination and racist abuse," the Amnesty report said.
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