Ignorance is not bliss: How to empower communities through these tough times

ZAI MIZTIQ

The recent mass-shooting is not the first in the world, and anyone would be ignorantly foolish to believe that it would be the last.

But why? Why would a person be led to the ideology of thinking that what he is doing is the best thing to do and what kind of emotions are filled in the heart and head for one to voluntarily and heartlessly be convicted to take such massive actions to harm another living being?

As a life coach and motivational speaker, I am always helping clients or audiences I speak to take the first step to diagnose their strengths and identity. Through this first step, it helps a person identify with their values, their beliefs, and their norms as to why they think, feel and behave a certain way.

The next step is to have clarity of understanding in what they truly want in life. When one can pin down their goals and fill up their bucket list, they are able to align their purpose with meaning and take actions in life much easier.

Only then do we advise to take the next step in deciding how they intend to move forward. There is a popular saying that says, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” As a matter of fact, this old but golden statement stands true to its fame. If you can’t make the initial commitment to pinning down your plan, what makes you think you are able to move forward and accomplish it?  

At the very root of all of the above, there is one powerful tip that would help anyone succeed in life in all that you do. The best of you are those who learn from the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). Investing in knowledge is a life skill that you can acquire and retain for a lifetime. When you learn, you can better apply, and then you can move forward and teach it to others.

Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is the cause of why innocent lives have been taken for many, many centuries. Ignorance is the cause why divorces take place and families break up, causing further destruction to the society and leading to a fractured community. Ignorance is why we humans who are made by the One hand and One soul refuse to come together as one. Ignorance is why we fail to cultivate compassion towards each other and are moving away from real conversations. We need to enhance communication to avoid crises, or this will be a permanent disease, a vicious cycle of a generational curse.

I pray that this message gets out to one and all. I am truly sick and tired of all the mass shootings and hurting of humanity at large. It is about time we stand together to step up our game and never give up. The end is near but the last thing we need is for our people to live in fear. This life is so precious and dear, may we in solidarity come together as one to turn dreams into reality with confidence and clarity. Only then can we can collectively live in peace, unity, and harmony.

ZAI MIZTIQ

Zai Miztiq is an international speaker, celebrity author and travelling trainer. She is now accredited with Gallup Inc as a Strengths Coach and she is also a certified trainer cum assessor under WSQ’s ACTA and People’s Association. A 2x Amazon Best Selling Author of 'Turn Your Passion into Profits' & '5 Things I Love About Being a Woman', her Step Up! training and workshops aims to facilitate her clients rediscover their strengths & identity, realign their purpose with meaning, gain confidence and clarity and be happy.

'Politics of demonization': Mainstreamed Islamophobia decried in wake of Christchurch terror attack

Eoin Higgins

Massacre in New Zealand should be "moment of reckoning for leaders across the world who have encouraged or turned a blind eye to the scourge" of hateful ideology, says Eoin Higgins, in his article for Common Dreams, titled: “'Politics of demonization': Mainstreamed Islamophobia decried in wake of Christchurch terror attack”.

The conscientious people in the West, many of them Muslim, decried the mainstreaming of Islamophobia as providing fuel for the hatred and violence which led to last Friday's attack on two mosques in New Zealand that killed at least 49 people.

The one attacker that has been charged, identified as Australian Brenton Tarrant, cited a number of familiar xenophobic and Islamophobic talking points against immigrants and Muslims in a manifesto posted online. The sentiments were placed alongside more blatant white supremacist rhetoric about "white genocide" and declining birth rates.

For many, the attacker's apparent motivations were the inevitable result of years of anti-Muslim rhetoric in politics and media across the West.

Remi Kanazi, a Palestinian-American poet said on Twitter: “From the US to France to Australia, Muslims are persistently vilified and attacked, while biases against them are normalized; then when white supremacy violence kills dozens, society disingenuously throws its hands up and wonders how this could ever happen.”

Humanitarian non-profit Islamic Relief USA, in a statement from the organization's chief executive officer Sharif Aly, called for an understanding of how things got to this point while also hoping for peace and dialogue.

Aly said: “We cannot address this horrific tragedy against Muslims, without addressing the root causes of racism, bigotry, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and other forms of hatred and violence.”

Pointing out that those root causes are increasingly accepted in society, Imraan Siddiqi, the executive director for the Council on American Islamic Relations in Arizona, said on Twitter that last Friday's attack in New Zealand was something that was a long time coming.

He said: “All it takes is one individual to be radicalized by these messages and to act out violently. This is a result of the constant fear-mongering and scapegoating Muslims, refugees and people of color. All it takes is one individual to be radicalized by these messages and to act out violently.”

Amnesty International Secretary-General Kumi Naidoo in a statement on the latest act of terrorism in New Zealand, said: “The attacks were "a moment of reckoning for leaders across the world who have encouraged or turned a blind eye to the scourge of Islamophobia.”

He added: “The politics of demonization has today cost 49 people their lives. Reports that the attackers followed a white supremacist manifesto must galvanize world leaders to start standing against this hate-filled ideology.”

That may be easier said than done, however. A number of commentators pointed to statements made by influential American conservatives as indicative of the mainstreaming of the hate.

The list of mainstream media figures in the US who have built careers on casual Islamophobia is long.

A statement released by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) made clear in a statement on the attacks, the blame doesn't end there.

It said: “The US now has a President that is a global leader in spreading such bigotry and who has failed on numerous occasions to halt his hateful rhetoric and the policies that are inspired by it.”

NIAC added: “We reiterate our call for Donald Trump to make a clean break from his white nationalist and Islamophobic roots and condemn in the strongest possible terms the vile acts of terror that spring from such hatred.”

Activist Linda Sarsour, co-founder of the Muslim advocacy group MPower Change, echoed Abdi's call for the president to step up and change his way of speaking about Muslims.

She said: “That’s why we can’t be silent in the USA. What happens here sets the stage for the rest of the world. It’s all connected. Amid calls for accountability and change, many people continued to express sorrow over the attacks and returned their thoughts to the victims. I feel so sad. We begged you to stop amplifying and normalising hatred and racism. But you told us we were 'politically correct' and 'freedom of speech' was more important. The more you gave the far-right a platform, the more powerful they got.”

The longer history of the Christchurch attacks

Associate Professor David C. Atkinson

For over a century, the United States has played a role in inspiring and enabling white supremacy in Australia and New Zealand, says Associate Professor David C. Atkinson of Purdue University in his article titled: “The Longer History of the Christchurch Attacks”, for the New Republic.

On Friday, March 15, an Australian white supremacist committed a monstrous act of violence against Muslim worshippers in New Zealand. The attack, which he livestreamed, was steeped in the kind of global iconography and discourse that characterizes modern white supremacy. The assailant played a song about convicted Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic as he approached the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, and his weapons bore further testament to the global resonances of contemporary white supremacy: One rifle apparently eulogized a Swedish girl who was murdered by an Uzbek immigrant in Stockholm, while another celebrated a Frankish warlord who fought Muslim armies in Western France over a millennium ago. His manifesto cited US white supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof as inspiration, and featured a diagram promoted by US white supremacist David Duke on its cover.

In any attack like this, it is important to look at the particulars: the online hate speech the perpetrator absorbed, for example, which has proliferated in recent years. But it is equally important to remember that this latest outrage, and similar barbarities elsewhere, are not anomalies: White supremacy has a long, global history, and New Zealand and Australia have played central and interrelated roles in that history. This most recent horror is not just testament to a more recent uptick in far-right violence. It is also the latest episode in the ongoing story of antipodean white supremacism at the heart of both New Zealand’s and Australia’s national histories. And then, as now, American white supremacy has been intimately linked to that story.

The first victims of white supremacy in New Zealand and Australia, where the latest killer was born, were indigenous inhabitants. But by the late nineteenth century, white colonials had also turned that sentiment against the imagined influx of the so-called “undesirable” immigrants from Asia.

The gold rushes of the 1850s brought the first Chinese migrants to both Australia and New Zealand. Curiosity turned to hostility as the mines were exhausted and Chinese miners moved off in search of other opportunities. By the 1880s, both New Zealand and the Australian self-governing colonies had enacted immigration regulations that made Chinese immigration prohibitively expensive and therefore nearly impossible.

Remoteness from Britain and proximity to Asia, white New Zealanders and Australians proclaimed toward the end of the nineteenth century, would bring racial degeneration and ruinous economic competition unless they maintained a total commitment to white territorial, political, and economic control. As one representative explained to the Victorian Parliament in 1899, “we have a territory with a suitable climate, but with a sparse population, while on the other hand, we have quite adjacent to our shores hundreds of millions of a very undesirable class of people.”

These same racist sentiments were echoed in legislative bodies, newspapers, and trade union halls all over Australia and New Zealand, and the same solution was repeatedly volunteered. In the words of that same Victorian legislator: “It should be one of our ideals to maintain, if possible, a pure Australian blood, or a pure British blood, or a pure British and European blood, within the shores of Australia.”

What followed was the White Australia Policy and its lesser-known analog, the White New Zealand Policy. The former was enacted almost immediately upon the federation of the Australian Commonwealth in 1901.

In the words of Australia’s first Attorney General (and future prime minister), Alfred Deakin, the new Immigration Restriction Act demonstrated that “at the very first instant of our national career we are as one for a white Australia.”

This racist law empowered immigration officers to exclude non-white immigrants on the grounds of literacy rather than color.

New Zealand had instituted a similar policy in 1899. These laws—encouraged by the British government, which opposed explicit racial exclusion for diplomatic reasons—derived from a similar policy adopted by the British colony of Natal, which in turn took its cue from so-called educational tests designed to prohibit African American voting in the American South.

In 1908, some white New Zealanders and Australians sensed an opportunity to connect with white supremacist allies in the United States. President Theodore Roosevelt had recently dispatched the newly constructed American battle fleet on a circumnavigation of the globe, and from August to September 1908, that so-called “Great White Fleet” visited Auckland in New Zealand and Sydney, Melbourne, and Albany in Australia.

Some legislators embraced the racial implications of the American visit, especially in the context of deteriorating US relations with Japan over the issue of immigration restriction: Liberal MP William Steward spoke for many when he declared that “the brown and yellow races will challenge the white race for the possession and occupancy of [the earth]” unless white colonists rallied around American naval strength in the Pacific. The New Zealand Times agreed, pronouncing the fleet’s visit a “bold, emphatic assertion of the dominance of the White Race.”  Some white Australians expressed similar hopes, with Prime Minister Andrew Fisher later enunciating a plan to “to join with [the Americans] as far as we may in keeping the Pacific for the Anglo-Saxons.”

While these initiatives came to naught, their intent was unmistakable. That effort reached a dangerous zenith following the end of the First World War a century ago. In Paris, the Japanese delegation hoped to write a statement of racial equality into the constitution of the new League of Nations. Determined to protect the White Australia Policy from Japanese claims to racial equality, Australian Prime Minister William Morris Hughes repeatedly and ostentatiously scuttled those attempts.

“White Australia is yours. You may do with it what you please,” he declared to the assembled crowd upon his triumphant return to Melbourne in August 1919. While it would be an overstatement to draw a straight line between Hughes’s actions and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor some twenty years later, there is no doubt that this episode contributed to Japanese alienation and facilitated the rise of militarists and expansionists in that country.

White Australians and New Zealanders have long wrestled with the implications of white supremacy. Moreover, that history has always been inextricably intertwined, and it has often been connected to broader currents of white supremacist politics across the Pacific in North America.

In that context, it is not so strange that a white Australian terrorist might choose to make his stand in New Zealand, citing American extremists – including Donald Trump – as inspiration. How all three societies—as well as other majority-white societies across Europe—respond to this outrage will determine whether this history of trans-Tasman white supremacism can finally be brought to an end.

Trump factor stands out in New Zealand mosque massacre

A man claiming to be "Brenton Tarrant" from Australia posted a
video of his massacre of Muslim worshipers in a mosque in
New Zealand, on March 15, 2019.

Iran has strongly condemned “inhumane” attacks on two mosques in New Zealand, urging Wellington to immediately find and punish the perpetrators without any consideration.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi on Friday denounced the deadly attacks by an alleged white supremacist - reportedly an admirer of US President Donald Trump - as inhumane and totally brutal.

“Any terrorist attack must be condemned by all states no matter where in the world, by whom, and with what motivation and pretext it is carried out,” Qassemi said.

He also urged governments to prevent racist and Islamophobic movements and ideologies from threatening the security and tranquility of the citizens of states across the world.

His reaction came as political and Islamic leaders expressed their disgust at the massacre and cited rising "Islamophobia" as responsible.

PressTV-Muslims react with disgust at terrorist massacre in NZ

Political and Muslim leaders have expressed their disgust at the deadly shooting at two mosques in New Zealand.

At least one gunman killed 49 people and wounded more than 20 during Friday prayers in New Zealand's worst ever mass shooting, which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern condemned as terrorism.

The Australian gunman, identified as Brenton Tarrant, broadcast live footage on Facebook of the attack on one mosque in the city of Christchurch, mirroring the carnage played out in video games, after publishing a "manifesto" in which he denounced immigrants, calling them "invaders".

PressTV-49 killed in 'terrorist' attack on mosques in New Zealand

At least one gunman has killed 49 people and wounded more than 20 during Friday prayers at two New Zealand mosques.

In his manifesto, Tarrant said he saw Trump as “symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”

The 28-year-old terrorist said he chose to use a gun over other weapons because it would spark a debate around the second amendment.

“With enough pressure the left wing within the United States will seek to abolish the second amendment, and the right wing within the US will see this as an attack on their very freedom and liberty,” Tarrant said. 

“This attempted abolishment of rights by the left will result in a dramatic polarization of the people in the United States and eventually a fracturing of the US along cultural and racial lines.

“Eventually, when the white population of the USA realizes the truth of the situation, war will erupt,” he added.

‘Far-right terrorism on rise in US because of Trump’

In a Friday tweet, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif cited Trump’s Islamophobic remarks, and lashed out at the “Western hypocrisy of defending demonization of Muslims as ‘freedom of expression’.”

“Impunity in Western 'democracies' to promote bigotry leads to this: Israeli thugs enter mosque in Palestine to insult Muslims; terrorists in NZ livestream their murder of 49 Muslims. Western hypocrisy of defending demonization of Muslims as 'freedom of expression' MUST end,” he said.

Javad Zarif

✔@JZarif

Impunity in Western "democracies" to promote bigotry leads to this:

-Israeli thugs enter mosque in Palestine to insult Muslims;
-Terrorists in NZ livestream their murder of 49 Muslims.

Western hypocrisy of defending demonization of Muslims as "freedom of expression" MUST end

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4:21 PM - Mar 15, 2019

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Intercept columnist Mehdi Hasan told CNN Tonight that “far-right terrorism” was on the rise in the United States and blamed President Trump for attacks both in the US and abroad.

“Western government has turned a blind eye to domestic terrorism, to domestic far-right terrorism,” Hasan said.

He went on to say that there were “more attacks, more casualties from domestic terrorist groups - far-right groups - than there are quote-unquote jihadist or Islamist groups.”

According to Hasan, not only was Trump’s rhetoric responsible for attacks in the US, he was also responsible for attacks in other countries.

“You have Muslim victims of terror in New Zealand. I mentioned the attack in Canada -- Quebec City shortly after Trump was inaugurated, there's been attempted attacks and attacks in Minnesota and various places across the US.

"We do need to start taking this seriously. Crimes against minorities, Jewish groups, against Muslim communities, against people of color are on the rise in Britain, across western Europe, United States, Canada, Australia, and now sadly New Zealand,” he said.

“I mean, less than six months ago we know one of his big supporters sent pipe bombs in the mail to dozens of people who Trump had personally attacked and demonized. Who was driving around in a van with pro-Trump imagery and anti-CNN imagery. We know lots of far-right attackers have claimed to be Trump supporters in recent months,” Hasan noted.

“So, this is not just about Trump but about politicians especially on the right taking seriously this problem and really being careful about their language at the very minimum,” he added.

Christchurch shooting is ‘white supremacist terrorism’

By Syed Zafar Mehdi

TEHRAN - Islamophobia is not a cock and bull story or a figment of some fiction writer’s imagination. It is a disturbing reality unfolding before our eyes, almost everywhere.

Attacks against Muslims have assumed alarming proportions in recent years, especially in the Western world, mostly carried out by far-right white supremacists filled with unexplainable hatred for Muslims. 

On Friday, the normally quiet and peaceful Christchurch city of New Zealand witnessed ghastly attacks at Al Noor and Linwood mosques during congregational Friday prayers. 

More than 40 people were killed after an attacker carrying automatic weapons barged inside the mosques and opened indiscriminate fire at the worshippers in what is being called an unprecedented mass shooting in the Pacific country’s history.

Police immediately took some suspects in their custody and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern termed it “one of New Zealand's darkest days.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said one of the suspects was an Australian national, calling him an “extremist, right-wing, violent terrorist”.

The dastardly attack was livestreamed on Facebook by the attacker who identified himself as Brenton Tarrant. The video was later taken down, but not before it was shared widely in Whatsapp groups. 

The attacker also reportedly left behind racist literature at the scene, denouncing “invaders”. 

Muslims in New Zealand account for just one percent of the country’s population, according to a 2013 census. Most of them are immigrants and refugees.

While the police authorities in New Zealand stopped short of calling it an act of ‘terrorism’, the Islamic Council of Queensland spokesman Ali Kadri said “this has to be called terrorism”.

He said the incident has shaken a small minority of Muslims in the country but they will continue to go to mosques for prayers. He said if far-right extremism and radicalisation is not stopped then “these types of attacks will continue”.

Kadri said people are getting radicalized by the extreme right through an underground movement.

“They talk about Muslims being cockroaches, they talk about Muslims breeding like anything, taking over Australia and European land and the need to fight back – that’s where these people get radicalized,” he was quoted saying by Courier.

Dr. Rateb Junaid, who heads Muslims Australia – the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils –, said the massacre at Christchurch mosques is the “consequence of Islamaphobia and marginalisation of Muslims”.

A manifesto attributed to Tarrant was posted on 8Chan, an unregulated website known for hate speech and Islamophobia. It credited U.S. President Donald Trump and his ultra-conservative supporter Candace Owens as ‘inspirations’ for the mosque attacks. 

“Well, it’s time to stop shitposting and time to make a real life effort post. I will carry out an attack against the invaders, and even live stream the attack via Facebook link,” Tarrant wrote on 8Chan on Thursday, which carried links to his “writings” and his far-right extremist views. 

How the counter-terrorism and law-enforcement authorities in New Zealand missed the warning is incredibly astonishing. 

A day earlier, he had posted a picture of his automatic weapon on Twitter, with the words “Here’s your migration compact” written on the rifle. 

In one of his posts on Facebook, he singles out Candice Owens to be the “particular person” who radicalized him the “most”. 

“Each time she spoke I was stunned by her insights and her own views helped push me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness,” he wrote. 

Trump and Owens have played a key role in fueling hate crimes against Muslims in the Western world through flagrant hate speech, anti-immigration policy and travel ban on Muslims. 

Trump famously told Anderson Cooper in 2016 that “Islam hates us”. This imprudent declaration has over the past few years manifested itself in blatant Islamophobia in America and elsewhere.

Anyone standing up to this powerful lobby comes under fire. The latest example is that of U.S. Congress member Ilhan Omar, who has been attacked for speaking about the influence of the Zionist lobby in U.S. politics and policy.

The American-Somalian congresswoman has been ridiculed, denigrated and threatened in recent weeks with assassination simply because she has the audacity to call spade a spade. 

This vilification of Omar and many others like her is the direct result of the bogey of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric that has been normalized in the Western societies. 

Studies show that over the past few years, hate crimes and attacks against Muslims in the U.S. have skyrocketed. According to Pew Research analysis, attacks on Muslims have “easily surpassed” post 9-11 levels, and one of the factors is the rise of Trump.

However, author and commentator Khaled Beydoun says Islamophobia has “deep roots” in American history, but now it has been given a “new face”, intensified by the rhetoric of characters like Trump.

In UK, which is considered the hub of Islamophobia in Europe, a record number of anti-Muslim attacks were reported last year, according to the monitoring group Tell Mama.

In its report, the group noted a surge in Islamophobic attacks, with 1,201 cases reported in 2017, the highest number since it began recording incidents.

According to Hope Not Hate, an anti-racism charity, Islamophobia has become the driving force behind the rise of far-right movements in the UK. It says “anti-Muslim prejudice” has replaced immigration as the “key driver” of far-right groups.

A report published by the charity said 35 percent people in UK thought Islam was “generally a threat to the British way of life”.

In Canada, hate crimes against Muslims have grown sharply in last few years, with 349 documented cases in 2017 — nearly one every day. Anti-Muslim hate crimes account for 17 per cent of all crimes in Canada, according to reports.

In Netherlands, just last week a mosque was attacked by members of the far-right German group Pegida, who defaced the building with racist banners, a mosque official was quoted as saying.

But, unfortunately, Islamophobic bigotry in the West does not get the kind of media coverage as attacks carried out by ‘Muslim’ groups do. When the perpetrator is a Muslim, it is termed an “act of terrorism”, but when it’s a white supremacist, it’s smartly downplayed as an “act of extremism”.

This ‘extremism’ is the classical euphemism for white supremacist terrorism and not only talked down but even defended by deranged politicians like Fraser Anning. 

This is the kind of Islamophobia peddled by the likes of Donald Trump and Candace Owens, who ‘inspired’ the Christchurch attacker, with their blatant hate speech targeting Muslim and immigrants.