Beyond disproving the tired tropes of Muslims hating the west, Australian Muslims can show us what a month of practising to be a better person looks like

As Australian Muslims prepared for Ramadan this week, the leader of the second most popular political party in the country, Senator Pauline Hanson, said of them: “Their religion concerns me because [of] what it says in the Qur’an … They hate Westerners … You say, ‘Well, there’s good Muslims out there.’ Well, I’m sorry. How can you tell me there are good Muslims?”

None of this is surprising. This same senator has twice worn a burqa into parliament, wrongly claimed that halal certification funds terrorism, and wanted a royal commission into Islam.

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Pro-Palestine activism received a respite from longstanding official and unofficial repression in Britain this week with a legal order to overturn a government ban on Palestine Action, an activist organization that was banned in the summer of 2025. The High Court ruled that the ban was unlawful, giving some relief to thousands of people who had been imprisoned under the ban.

Aiming to challenge Britain’s armament of Israel through direct action, Palestine Action was founded in the early 2020s by Huda Ammori, a British researcher and activist of Palestinian-Iraqi stock, and Richard Barnard. Urgency was lent to their work by the subsequent genocide that began in Gaza from 2023, to which the British government and assorted weapons companies were linked. In a remarkable leap, the government cited the group’s raid on an arms manufacturer’s Bristol warehouse as evidence of its terrorist nature. The result was that thousands of people, including many pensioners, were imprisoned for public solidarity with the group, which the government presented as support for terrorism.

The legal proceedings launched by the British state, first under Yvette Cooper, who has since been given the foreign minister’s role, and then under Shabana Mahmood, have been notable for a reliance on rhetoric, with “terrorism” the most obvious example, in favour of legal rights and facts. Even in court, the Palestine Action legal team was at first deprived of key footage that showed armed guards bearing down on the activists who had supposedly “assaulted” them: footage with the potential to turn the claim of unprovoked assault by the “terrorist” activists on its head. Unsurprisingly, the court ruled against the ban.

Yet, the case of Palestine Action is simply part of a major campaign to crack down against Palestine support and criticism of Israel that the British state has pursued since the genocide ended. Owing to Britain’s relative familiarity with the Middle East, where its colonial conquest and misrule of the region during and immediately after the World Wars set in motion the foundation of Israel amid a mass expulsion of Palestinians, there has long been a relatively informed debate on the issue of the type that is rare across the Atlantic in the United States. In the period since, Britain has usually at least overtly avoided the tasteless partisanship with Israel characteristic of the United States.

However, this has changed enormously in the past twenty years. It changed first under Tony Blair (1997-2007), whose New Labour regime eagerly identified itself with pro-Israel neoconservatives in Washington, and who even after leaving office has personally been an unofficial eminence grise in Anglo-American policy toward the Muslim world, most recently as the prospective viceroy for Donald Trump’s grotesquely misnamed “Board of Peace” that aims to turn the wreckage of Gaza into a “pacified” colony.

Israeli Encroachment During the Tory Decade

The process intensified during the 2010s, a decade dominated by the right-wing Tory party, whose leaders were each closely identified with Israel, though some more than others. One particularly noxious mainstay was the rabidly anti-Muslim minister Michael Gove, who, as education minister, whipped up an entirely contrived Green Scare about Muslim schools acting as a societal fifth column, and also spearheaded the “Brexit” campaign to leave Europe that produced major economic repercussions for which Muslims, immigrants, and minorities more generally are repeatedly blamed. Unsurprisingly, Gove is also a major cheerleader of Israel, recently suggesting that the Israeli military be given a prize for its supposed clemency in genociding Gaza.

British Parliamentarian, Michael Gove [PC: The BBC]

Such ministers and other pro-Israel networksput constant pressure on British policy, as well as institutions such as the state-sponsored media outlet British Broadcasting Corporation, in a more pro-Israel direction. Less personally extreme figures also fell into line: cases in point were successive prime ministers David Cameron (2010-16) and Theresa May (2016-19).

May, who had been interior minister during Gove’s crusade against Muslim schools before succeeding Cameron, was nonetheless seen as insufficiently malleable: in November 2017, she had to dismiss her own interior minister, Gove’s frequent collaborator Priti Patel, for unauthorized secret meetings with Israeli leaders. In turn, the infamous American powerbroker, sex trafficker, and undisguised supporter of Israel, Jeffrey Epstein, conspired against her with her successor and then-foreign minister, Boris Johnson, and with far-right ideologue Steve Bannon.

Johnson’s own interior minister, Suella Braverman, was as ruthless a partisan of Israel as Patel: as soon as the genocide began in autumn 2023, she ordered a draconian crackdown, characterized by dogwhistling rhetoric and spurious targeting of even mild dissidence. Her cabinet colleague, defence minister Grant Shapps, arranged weapons transfers to Israel at the same time as his daughter was publicly denouncing pro-Palestine activism as a threat to Jews. This, despite the sizeable number of Jewish activists in such activism: their struggle, like that of pro-Palestine activists of other faiths, was discounted.

Braverman resigned after lambasting her own police for what she considered insufficient ruthlessness, and has since left the Tories to join the far-right party of Nigel Farage, the rabble-rouser whose views include vilification of foreigners and support of Israel, and to whom Bannon and Epstein were also linked. Farage forms part of a circle of far-right figures that pressure successive regimes to move further right and, among other things, to side with Israel. They include fascist-curious polemicist Douglas Murray and nativist thug “Tommy Robinson” Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, both of whom have since the 2000s whipped up hatred against Muslims and have gone out of their way to cheerlead Israel, frequently meeting with its officials and echoing its propaganda, since the genocide began in 2023.

Nativism with International Links

This propaganda, often relying on Artificial Intelligence-generated imagery and blatant invective, often overlaps with anti-Muslim state propaganda from India and the United Arab Emirates. India has been ruled since 2014 by the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party, which has often made violent anti-Muslim agitation a centrepiece of its policy and is, once more, particularly close with Israel. Patel and Braverman, the former British interior ministers who have so unabashedly pinned their flags to the Israeli mast, both support Modi.

The Emirates, whose Mohammad bin Zayed is infamous for an international antipathy against “political Islam”, which usually overlaps with any Muslim presence but the most obeisant to him, has likewise whipped up agitation against Muslims in the West: anti-Muslim circles frequently cite its foreign minister Abdullah bin Zayed, the ruler’s brother, when he criticized the West for its supposed tolerance of Muslim extremists. These are all talking points meant to increase pressure on Muslims in the West, as Murray has advocated for at least twenty years, and in turn dampen opposition to Western support for Israeli policy.

The crackdown on Palestine Action, and similarly heavy-handed clampdowns in France and Germany, are thus the result of years of pressure by foreign governments and local nativists, invariably linked to support of Israel.

Along with a web of ostensibly private actors linked to Israel’s government, Israeli ambassadors have constantly pressured Britain to crack down more robustly: its ambassador Mark Regev’s push to censor the presentation she arranged of a pro-Palestine Jewish speaker helped push Ammori, the Palestine Action founder, to more direct activism. This blatant case of interference in a private campus was just part of the steady inroads into British institutions that Israel’s supporters made during the Tory years. These inroads threaten the party structure itself: this winter, Robert Jenrick, another particular Israel cheerleader seen as a rising star within the Tories, was forced out of the party by its leader, Kemi Badenoch, after another plot; like Braverman, he joined Farage.

None of this is to signify moderation on the part of the plotters’ targets: with a singular lack of self-respect, the Tory leaders targeted by pro-Israel competitors have themselves gone out of their way to kowtow to Tel Aviv. Badenoch has shrilly supported Israel’s “fight against Islamist terror”, while Cameron, who had been forced to resign by Gove’s Brexit misadventure, returned to serve as foreign minister in 2024 and took such a skewed pro-Israel stance that he is even reported to have threatened the International Criminal Court’s head Karim Khan. Ironically, and underlining the regularity with which Israel’s supporters turn on one another, Khan had himself been first supported by Israel’s supporters but outraged them by investigating South African accusations of genocide.

A Laborious Campaign of Persecution

Nor should corrosively slavish partisanship to Israel be considered an exclusively Tory malady: under Keir Starmer, whose Labour party has ruled since 2024, the state has only doubled down. Starmer took over the party after his leftist predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, had been viciously smeared with, among other things, spurious accusations of anti-Semitism for his outspoken sympathy with Palestine. At the outset of the genocide, Starmer infamously endorsed Israel’s right to block the Palestinians from water, and his regime has continued its predecessor’s policy of crackdowns and frivolous “lawfare” against pro-Palestine activism. These reached a state of farce in autumn 2025 when a police ban on a notoriously violent far-right Israeli club, which had already attacked Muslims abroad, prompted keening howls of grief and outrage about alleged anti-Semitism virtually across a British political elite – only for Israel itself to cancel a local match with the club from fears of violence. The fact that legitimate fears about a demonstrably violent set of anti-Muslim hooligans could be reimagined and portrayed across the British political spectrum as anti-Semitism underscored the state of obeisance to which the British elite has subjected itself.

This month, Starmer was forced to dismiss his ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, a longstanding intimate of both Blair and Epstein, already controversial before his close ties to the latter were unearthed. The revelations also prompted a gaffe from minister Wes Streeting, who had only very narrowly held onto his seat against Palestinian activist Leanne Mohamad in the 2024 election. By his own admission, no “shrinking violet” on Israel, Streeting released his 2025 texts to Mandelson, which showed his knowledge of Israel’s “rogue state behaviour” that “Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes”. These texts show that ministers were privately aware that the same critics they were persecuting at home were correct in their condemnation of Israel and the British links to it.

An undated photograph released by the U.S. Justice Department showing Jeffrey Epstein, right, and Peter Mandelson. [PC: The NYT]

The regime has been far more sensitive to far-right agitation by Farage and Robinson, which relied heavily on the same anti-Muslim propaganda promoted by Israel: the 2020s have seen a series of protests and riots aimed at foreigners in general and Muslims most specifically, gleefully supported by far-right oligarch Elon Musk who has regularly promoted, even with the most childish attempts, the claim that Muslim immigration is destroying Britain. Rather than confront these head-on, the British government has tried to prove their patriotism with more and more draconian crackdowns that, in their haste to classify political opponents as terrorists, intersect with the crackdown on such groups as Palestine Action. That any number of corrosive, destructive precedents that bode ill for British institutions and public life are being set seems to be of no concern.

Conclusion

Palestine was impacted by Britain during the colonial period, but today the genocide in Palestine has reverberated right back into British politics, into its streets, and its public discourse. The tumultuous events of mid-2020s Britain have not only shown a moral rot at the heart of British politics, but also the fact that steadfastness of the sort that Palestine Action so sturdily displayed under so much maliciously constructed pressure, ultimately pays off.

As Allah tells us in the Quran:

“And say, ‘Truth has come, and falsehood has departed. Indeed is falsehood, [by nature], ever bound to depart.” [Surah Al’Isra: 17;81]

 

Related:

– Damning Report On PREVENT Program In The UK

– Quranic Verses For Steadfastness For The Valiant Protesters On Campus

The post Bipartisan Rot Uncovered As British Crackdown On Pro-Palestine Activists Falters appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Around the world, Muslims rejoice with anticipation and excitement for the blessed month. They get to wake up before dawn with lights on for suhoor, set “Ramadan goals,” deepen their relationship with the Qur’an, stand shoulder-to-shoulder in taraweeh prayers, retreat into the masjid for i‘tikaf, and ultimately celebrate Eid with their families in lit-up mosques. 

But for other Uyghurs and myself in the diaspora, this experience summons a different reality — one where our hearts turn to our people in Chinese-occupied East Turkistan (Xinjiang), a land whose occupation and suffering still remain largely forgotten by the ummah.

I describe the Ramadan most Muslims know, because it feels increasingly necessary to name what Uyghur Muslims have been denied, in a land where Islam has been woven into the fabric of life since the 10th century. And it still feels like the community has so much more to do and learn to understand the gravity of our genocide. 

How many years has it been since Uyghurs in East Turkistan last heard the adhan echo through their neighborhoods? How many years have they been forced to eat suhoor in darkness, fearing that a lit kitchen might be flagged as “extremism,” a suspicion that can lead to a decade or more behind torture and death-ridden prison walls? 

How many Uyghur students have been compelled to eat in daylight under the watchful eyes of teachers, forced to prove they are not fasting? How many have been publicly humiliated, coerced into drinking alcohol or eating pork during the holiest month, performing loyalty to a state that criminalizes Islam in its entirety?

What does Eid even look like when often at least one family member is in prison, parents are separated from their children because they are forcibly sent to state-run orphanages, and thousands of mosques are either closed, or demolished and repurposed into propaganda centers? What does Eid look like when the Chinese government criminalizes gatherings, despite the centrality of family visits and communal celebration in Uyghur culture?

What depths of trauma have the more than one million detainees and prisoners endured inside a system that not only stripped them of religious freedom, but twisted Islam itself into an instrument of suffering and death? What depths of trauma must someone endure to be sent to these prisons for praying, naming a child Muhammad, or owning a Qur’an — only then to be locked up, tortured, indoctrinated, and forced to renounce one’s faith?

I will never forget the stories and testimonies of Uyghur prisoners, like that of Adil Abdulghufur, an Uyghur man who told me the unfathomable horrors he experienced for 18 years behind Chinese prison walls. I interviewed him in 2016, one year before the Chinese government started rounding up over a million Uyghurs and other Turkic people into concentration camps and prisons.

“Adil Abdulghufur during an interview with the author in Istanbul, Türkiye, 2016.

 

Below are two excerpts from Adil’s interview highlighting China’s crackdown on religion in prison:

Adil: “I will tell you about one disaster that happened to me. In 2002 or 2003, they said I called the adhan in my sleep. Even saying bismillah is forbidden. We are not allowed to pray. If we sit still, they accuse us of praying. We are expected to constantly read and memorize Chinese laws.

That night, they dragged me from my bunk by my feet. I was naked. As they pulled me across the floor, the skin on my back and head tore. There was blood.

It was January. The snow outside had frozen like ice.

In the prison office, soldiers demanded to know what I had done. I told them I must have been talking in my sleep.

They said, ‘You screamed “Allahu Akbar.”’

I said I had not prayed. They accused me of lying and beat me — like wool rolled and kicked to make kighiz (a rug)  — until they were exhausted.

After nearly half an hour, I could no longer feel the blows. My body was drenched in sweat, dirt, and mud.

They threw clothes at me. Then they chained my hands and feet.

Finally, they hung a 25-kilogram cement board around my neck. Carved into it were the words: ‘For stubborn prisoners who refuse to bow to Chinese rule.’”

———

There is something else the Chinese authorities do, something the international community must hear.

Every year in March, they would administer a questionnaire to prisoners like us. Hundreds of questions are placed before those considered “patriotic” or “faithful” Turkistanis, or prisoners accused of opposing the Chinese government.

The first question is always the same:

“Is there a God or not?”

We are not allowed to explain. Only “yes” or “no.”

Then the following questions would come up:

“Were the heavens and the earth created by God or by nature?”
“Can the Holy Qur’an save mankind?”
“Is East Turkistan part of China, or is it a separate country?”
“Are you praying in prison?”
“Will you pray in the future?”
“What will you do once released?”
“What kind of person is Osama Bin Laden?”
“If Chinese and Uyghurs live together, will society flourish?”

Each answer must be reduced to a single word. Yes or no. No context. No explanation.

Based on those answers, we are sorted into four groups, each marked by a colored card.

Those assigned a red card are permitted to walk upright. They are the ones deemed compliant: prisoners who deny God, who affirm that East Turkistan is China, who give the “correct” answers.

Those given a yellow card must walk with their hands locked behind their heads. Those with brown cards are forced to move bent over, hands behind their heads. And those given green cards, my group, are not allowed to walk at all. We must crawl.

In 2002, my mother was allowed to visit for the first time. I had not seen her in four or five years. When the guards asked whether I wanted to see her, how could I refuse?

The distance from my cell to the visitors’ center was nearly a mile. They told me I could see my mother, but only if I crawled. I told them I would roll if I had to.

So I crawled.”

———

According to Gene Bunin, founder of the Xinjiang Victims Database, an online archive documenting known individuals detained in East Turkistan, more than 500,000 individuals are estimated to have been imprisoned, with roughly half believed to have been released after completing their sentences. Many of the charges stem from ordinary religious practices, prosecuted under vague accusations such as ‘extremism,’ ‘inciting religious hatred,’ and similar offenses.

The Uyghurs do not have the means to freely broadcast their suffering. Their cries are muffled by walls of fear, propaganda, and relentless censorship imposed by the Chinese government.

Ramadan is not meant to be only a personal, spiritual retreat. To isolate ourselves from the world and grow numb to suffering runs contrary to its very purpose. Rather, Ramadan should sharpen our awareness, soften our hearts, and move us toward action.

The least we can do this month is keep the Uyghurs in our conversations and our du‘a, learn their history and their stories, and strive to stand more consciously for the betterment of the ummah.

May Allah uplift and ease the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Chinese-occupied East Turkistan, Indian-occupied Kashmir, Burma, Palestine, and for Muslims oppressed in all corners of the earth.

May He grant us the strength to do more for our brethren, and never allow us to grow weary of doing even the bare minimum.

 

Related:

– Ramadan At The Uyghur Mosque: Community, Prayers, And Grief

– Is Your Temu Package Made With Uyghur Forced Labour?

The post An Unending Grief: Uyghurs And Ramadan Under Chinese Occupation appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Everyday rhythms in Gaza are dictated by water trucks, market sales and fear of famine, making rest impossible.

PenLink embraced by diplomats despite Meta ban.

“Socio-economic death sentence” makes it illegal to receive even food or medicine from a third party.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan, featuring celebrations, prayers, pre-dawn breakfasts and post-sundown meals, began at sunrise in the Middle East and a day later in much of Asia. In the Muslim lunar calendar, months begin only when the new moon is sighted, which can lead to variations of a day or two

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