Suchergebnisse

This paper examines the global provenance of Australian Islamophobia in the light of the Christchurch massacre perpetrated by a white-supremacist Australian. Anti-Muslim racism in Australia came with British imperialism in the nineteenth century. Contemporary Islamophobia in Australia operates as part of a successor empire, the United States-led 'Empire of Capital'. Anti-Muslim stories, rumours, campaigns and prejudices are launched from Australia into global circulation. For example, the spate of group sexual assaults in Sydney over 2000–2001 were internationally reported as 'ethnic gang rapes'. The handful of Australian recruits to, and supporters of, IS, is recounted in the dominant narrative as part of a story propagated in both the United Kingdom and Australia about Islamist terrorism, along with policy responses ostensibly aimed at countering violent extremism and targeting Muslims for surveillance and intervening to effect approved forms of 'integration'.

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Book review

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This article asserts that the construction of the prevailing notion of "radicalisation" in pursuit of counter-terrorism under US-led hegemony sustains practices of "empire crime" that systematically undercut the rights of Muslim populations in countries such as the UK and the US. This argument is advanced through the case study of Babar Ahmad, who was detained without trial for eight years in the UK, before being sent, under a new and lopsided extradition treaty, to the US to face terrorism charges over his expression of support for the Taliban on his web pages in 2002. Mr Ahmad suffered torture and racist humiliation at the hands of the London Metropolitan Police (Met) after the raid in 2003 on his home by counter-terrorism officers, acting on advice from the US. Ahmad eventually won compensation for the "sustained and gratuitous violence" admitted by the Met. Nevertheless, he was held at Long Lartin high-security prison for eight years, and then extradited to the US where he spent four years on remand, under abusive conditions. The civil and political rights, as expressed in the international covenant of that name, were notably missing in the case of Mr Ahmad. His indictment in Connecticut was shown to be error-ridden and invalid. The judge whom he finally faced after a plea bargain was struck, described him as a "good person", who had never been interested in terrorism.

This special issue deals with anti-Muslim racism, crime, criminalisation and attacks – both ideological and material – on Muslims and their communities in countries like Britain, Canada and Australia. A new spectre is haunting these places: an imagined 'other' is seen to be subversively spreading Muslim 'extremism' and exhorting anti-Western violence from within these societies, supporting global terrorism abroad and at home, and espousing hyperpatriarchal, homophobic and sexually exploitative culture. The 'Muslim other' has become the folk demon of our time in a racialising ideology that circulates internationally and has strikingly similar effects in quite different local contextsTo find out more about this special edition, download the PDF file from this page.

This article argues that a concept of "empire crime" can usefully extend that of state crime to better comprehend the unlawful "extraordinary rendition", detention without trial and torture associated with the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay and other sites where imperial "exceptions" to US and international law are claimed and practiced. Other nation states have been complicit in this regime — the UK, Canada and Australia among them. Their state crimes in this respect are inextricably part of the "empire crime" of the US-led empire of capital. This article considers one case in detail: that of David Hicks, one of the two Australians rendered to and detained at Guantánamo Bay with the connivance of the Australian and other states. The US state has variously denied, rationalized, exceptionalised and blamed the victims of the state crimes in this regime, and the Australian and other states involved have falsely denied knowledge and otherwise followed suit.

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The outbreak of mass racist violence against young men of 'Middle Eastern appearance' on Cronulla beach, Sydney, in December 2005 was the culmination of a campaign of populist incitement waged in the media and by the state. The battle to reclaim control of the beach for white Australia mirrored, it is suggested here, the battle that the Howard government has waged to reclaim control of the nation itself from asylum seekers and the Muslim/Middle Eastern 'enemy'.

Over the last few years there has been a series of 'moral panics' over the introduction of Peace Studies into educational institutions. This case study examines the recent public controversy over an educational play call The Bang presented in secondary schools in New South Wales, and the associated attacks on student interest groups called Students for Nuclear Awareness and Peace (SNAP). The case study raises questions about power relations in the social construction of 'controversy' and 'objectivity' and the strategic dilemmas these imply for progressive teaching about social issues in schools.