President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pledged late Monday that the Turkish government will decrease the annual inflation rate back to a single-digit level.

"We are in sorrow to see our yearly inflation hitting 36%," he said speaking after a weekly Cabinet meeting in the capital Ankara.

"Nevertheless, as a government that managed to decrease inflation to 6%, we will repeat our success to protect Turkish citizens from financial troubles," Erdoğan added, underlining that the government is taking necessary measures to fight inflation.

Erdoğan vowed to support families, workers, students and retired people with an assistance package that included financial aid for gas bills and wage hikes.

The president emphasized that Turkish civil servants and pensioners will be supported by new economic measures.

"Total salary raise for civil servants will be 30.5% and our retired citizens will see an inflation level-based increase in their pensions," he said.

"Salaries for any pensioners will not be lower than TL 2,500 ($191)."

Turkey’s annual inflation in December accelerated to its highest level in 19 years, official data showed on Monday.

Consumer prices rose 36.08%, the highest reading since September 2002, up from 21.31% in November, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said. The reading exceeded market forecasts of around 30.6%, with staples such as transportation and food and drink rising even faster.

In December alone, the consumer price index (CPI) took a rare step into double-digits at 13.58%, the data showed.

Reflecting soaring import prices, December’s producer price index (PPI) rose 19.08% month-over-month and 79.89% year-on-year.

Annual consumer prices were led higher by transport prices, which soared 53.66% year-over-year, while heavily-weighted food and drink prices jumped 43.8%.

Inflation has been around 20% in recent months, driven by a slide in the Turkish lira after the central bank slashed its policy rate by 500 basis points to 14% from 19% since September. It will hold its next rate-setting meeting on Jan. 20./DS

Hackers attacked the websites of one of Portugal's biggest newspapers and of a major broadcaster, both owned by the country's largest media conglomerate Impresa, taking them down over the weekend.

Expresso newspaper and the SIC TV station both said they reported the incident to the criminal investigation police agency PJ and the National Cybersecurity Centre (CNCS) and would file a complaint.

The alleged hackers, calling themselves the Lapsus$ Group, published a message on the websites saying internal data would be leaked if the media group failed to pay a ransom. The message included email and Telegram contact info.

The group did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment.

Lapsus$, which claims that it gained access to Impresa's Amazon Web Services account, also sent a phishing email to Expresso subscribers and tweeted from the newspaper's verified Twitter account.

The same group allegedly hacked the Brazilian Health Ministry's website last month, taking several systems down, including one with information about the national immunization program and another used to issue digital vaccination certificates.

CNCS's coordinator, Lino Santos, told Observador newspaper it was the first time the group had launched an attack in the country.

The websites of Expresso and SIC have been offline since Sunday, with the pages showing a message saying they are "temporarily unavailable" following the attack and would return "as soon as possible."

In the meantime, both media organizations are publishing news stories on their social media channels. They described it as an "unprecedented attack on press freedom in the digital age."/ REUTERS

Certain countries in Europe took steps to legalize Islamophobia in 2020, according to research.

The European Islamophobia Report prepared by professors Enes Bayraklı from the Turkish-German University and Farid Hafez from Georgetown University analyzed the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe, including statements in favor of laws that suppress the rights of European Muslims.

Some 37 academics, experts and civil society activists specialized in issues related to racism contributed to the report, which analyzed the current status of Islamophobia in 31 countries.

In Austria, the government established a “documentation center” in July 2020 to blacklist Muslims. The center compiles information about Muslim institutions, including over 600 mosques and education centers, their ideologies, administrators and addresses, and shared a digital map called the “Islam-Landkarte” containing all this information with the public.

The Muslim community was outraged by the government’s policy. A group led by professor Ednan Aslan from Vienna University argued that the digital map portrayed Muslims as potential criminals and resembled blackmailing. They also accused the government of manipulating the public by scapegoating Muslims to get away with corruption allegations.

In Germany, a judge of Turkish descent was removed from duty for wearing a headscarf, while the Constitutional Court in Belgium ruled that it was legal to ban political and religious symbols in post-secondary education institutions.

The Constitutional Court ruled in early June that a ban on headscarves would not go against the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).

The case was referred to the Constitutional Court by a Brussels court after Muslim students sued Francisco Ferrer Brussels University College over a ban on all religious symbols.

The ruling sparked backlash on social media among young people and students, with rights organizations also decrying the move as a violation of a basic human right.

Since the decision, 12 Belgian universities and colleges have assured students they will not impose such a ban, stressing that religious freedom is protected in their classrooms, according to The Brussels Times.

In Bulgaria, Muslim wrestler Muhammed Abdulkadir was accused of participating in terrorist acts after sharing photos of himself wearing a military uniform in Syria in 2016.

Although the parliament rejected the bill, a far-right Danish party presented a law proposing to ban headscarves in all public institutions.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron introduced a bill proposing to ban headscarves for girls under the age of 18 in public spaces and far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders also tried to introduce similar bills to ban the headscarf and the ritual of sacrifice during Qurban Bayram, also known as Eid al-Adha.

Wilders, known for his anti-Muslim stance, frequently posts against Muslims. In April, he shared a post saying “stop Islam, stop Ramadan.”

“Islam does not belong in the Netherlands,” Wilders said.

The Swedish government banned the establishment of Muslim schools in the country after Education Minister Anna Ekstrom’s announcement in support of the move against religious schools./agencies

The rising wave of hate crimes against Muslims is being witnessed in Modi’s India as Muslims suffer from hate speeches, physical attacks and Islamophobia in the country.

A report released by Kashmir Media Service said that recently Hindu leaders called for genocide of Muslims at hate speech conclave in Haridwar, adding attacks by Hindu extremists against Muslims and other minorities have intensified under Modi-led fascist Indian government.

Hate speech, crimes against Muslims and other minorities are motivated by Hindutva ideology. The RSS-BJP leaders are using hate speech to demonize Muslims and other minorities in India, the report deplored.

The report said the discriminatory measures against Muslims are clear manifestations of Islamophobia in India as Hindu religious leaders are asking Hindus to take up arms against Muslims.

It added that seventy-six lawyers of the Indian Supreme Court have written to Chief Justice of India, NV Ramana and sought suo motu cognizance to be taken of the hate speech and calls for ethnic cleansing at two religious events held recently in Delhi and Haridwar.

The report maintained that five former chiefs of staff of the Indian armed forces and over a hundred other people, including bureaucrats, journalists and prominent citizens, had written to the President of India, Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister, Narendra Modi seeking immediate action against Hindu right-wing members for inciting violence.

The recent calls were made in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar and Delhi, where the group gave open genocide calls against Muslim citizens of India. The letter also mentions targeting other minorities like Christians, Dalits, and Sikhs of the country, it added.

The report said, hate speeches by Hindutva leaders are posing a grave threat to lives of Muslim in India and Modi must be held accountable for his crimes against Muslims and other minorities in the country./ Pakistan Today

 Islamophobia worsened if not reached a “tipping point” in Europe in 2020, according to the latest European Islamophobia Report (EIR).

The report, co-edited by international relations professor Enes Bayrakli and political scientist Farid Hafez, argues that the COVID crisis has impacted the experience or manifestation of Islamophobia in Europe.

COVID and Islamophobia

“The pandemic had quite different effects on the role of Islamophobia,” Bayrakli and Hafez wrote in the report’s introductory essay.

They explained, “On the one hand, in some countries, with the forced retreat of everyday life to the intimate private sphere, physical Islamophobia has decreased. Yet, at the same time, Islamophobia has moved to the private sphere and is being spread especially in social media.”

The report also cited a decrease in physical instances of Islamophobia, while the spread of Islamophobia on social media remains prevalent.

While instances of rampant, physical Islamophia might have decreased with the COVID lockdown, “anti-Muslim hate crimes did not decrease as documentation in some countries reveals,” the report said.

The report further cited a significant increase in Islamophobic attacks in Germany as an illustration of the fact that Islamophobia has continued to surge despite a perception of a decrease in “physical Islamophobia” during the weeks of COVID-induced lockdown.

According to data compiled for the report, 901 Islamophobic crimes were committed in Germany in 2020, with 146 incidents targeting mosques and 48 targeting people.

France’s mainstreaming of Islamophobia

France is another country where a spike in far-right discourse and the government’s apparent embrace of nationalistic and sovereignist talking points ahead of elections have proven a fertile ground for the normalization of Islamophobia.

The EIR’s cover page shows a picture of Emmanuel Macron, with the report’s authors explaining that they chose to feature the French president to draw attention to a growing discrepancy between what Macron is perceived to represent and France’s increasingly grim treatment of its Muslim populations.

While the soft-spoken and multiculturalism-embracing Macron is widely regarded as “representing a centrist and mainstream political movement,” Muslims in France have faced the same hate and discrimination as their fellows across Europe.

“French and Austrian Muslims have been left in the hands of brutal state violence that has been legitimated in the name of counterterrorism laws,” the report said.

Macron faced a series of backlashes throughout 2020 after he appeared to condone right-wing discourse on the supposed threat that Islam poses to French and European enlightenment values.

He controversially claimed that Islam is a “religion in crisis” in need of reform worldwide. He also, equally controversially, spoke in support of offensive and anti-Islam caricatures while claiming to uphold France’s “republican values” of freedom of thought and conscience.

The EIR especially criticized France’s newly adopted law that urged the government to commit more resources to the “fight Islamist separatism.”

Macron has tried to tone down the new legislation’s anti-Islam undertone by arguing that France’s problem is with “Islamist separatism, not Islam.”

With reports that some countries -- Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, and Gulf countries -- have influence over some mosques on French territory, Macron maintains that France’s firm stance against “Islamist separatism” is aimed at strengthening secularism in the country and freeing Islam in France from “foreign interference.”

For authors of the EIR, however, Macron’s changing tone on questions of “French values” and secularism is a symptom of a broader reality across Europe. Islamophobia has become “quite mainstream in the political discourse of many European countries,” the report found.

In the past three months alone, France has witnessed a noted increase in vandalism against mosques and hate speech targeting Muslims.

While the French and European media in general reports on such acts of anti-Islam vandalism, it is rare to read follow-ups on the arrest of people committing these crimes.

In one of the EIR’s few positive, encouraging conclusions, the authors emphasized that many Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are genuinely concerned about the pointed rise of Islamophobia in Europe. According to the report, a significant number of MEPs are troubled by the increase of hate crimes against Muslims, particularly against women in Europe.

“They committed to continue working to tackle this dangerous development,” the report said of MEPs.

Still, one of the key findings of the EIR is that European Islamophobia has gone digital amid the continued COVID crisis and the related restrictions on daily life.

“Since private life shifted largely into the digital realm, the internet and social media became the primary space for interpersonal relationships,” the report said.

The report described social media especially Facebook as a “hotspot for the documentation of anti-Muslim hate crime.”/ Morocco World News

The Dutch Religious Foundation issued a statement Monday condemning the sending of letters to several mosques in the Netherlands with Islamophobic content. 

The mosques, which are affiliated with the foundation, also known as Hollanda Diyanet Vakfı (HDV), received the letters last week, which included cartoons insulting the Prophet Muhammad and Islam.

The foundation said in its statement that similar incidents in the past turned into assaults, noting "we strongly condemn any attack on temples and sanctuaries."

"We expect the authorities to identify the perpetrators of such attacks that disturb our community and bring them to justice," it added.

The foundation said it has been operating in the Netherlands for over 40 years, offering opportunities for Muslims in the country to fulfill their religious obligations./aa

By:Manoj Joshi

Shockingly, some campaigns are being led by people who are camouflaging their murderous rhetoric by wearing the saffron robes of Hindu renunciants. Last month, the theme of many speeches at a religious conclave in Haridwar was the need to ‘finish off’ Muslims. It would be easy to ignore this as the ranting of fringe Hindutva elements, but it’s no longer clear whether they are the fringe or the vanguard.

There is a famous Sherlock Holmes story about ‘the dog that did not bark’. Holmes solves the mystery by surmising that the murderer was known to the watchdog. In a like manner, we are witnessing scores of attacks, verbal and physical, on Muslims and Christians of the country. Yet, the watchdogs — those who rule the country and its law and order machinery — seem to have heard nothing. Perhaps, like the canine in the Sherlockian mystery, they are familiar and even friendly with the attackers and see no reason to bark, leave alone bite.

The signs have been visible for the past few years, but the crescendo has now intensified. A week ago, brazen attempts were made to prevent Christians from observing their major celebration of Christmas. Churches have been vandalised in Karnataka, Assam and Haryana.

As for the Muslims, after a string of assaults and murders by the so-called cow protection groups, they are now facing open calls for their elimination. In Gurugram, a systematic campaign is on to prevent them from offering their Friday prayers.

The reigning ideology of the country, Hindutva, is based entirely on a semi-literate, if not illiterate, understanding of history. There is the bizarre notion that the Muslim citizens of the republic today are somehow personally responsible for the atrocities that may have been committed by an invader or Muslim ruler hundreds of years ago. Christian charities and schools are accused of conversion, but there is no answer as to why after a century and a half of British ‘Christian’ rule, just 2 per cent of the people of this country profess that faith.

Most shockingly, some of this campaign is being led by people who are camouflaging their murderous rhetoric by wearing the saffron robes of Hindu renunciants. In mid-December, some of these leaders met at a religious conclave in Haridwar, where the theme of many speeches was the need to ‘finish off’ Muslims. It would be easy to ignore this as the ranting of fringe Hindutva elements, but it’s no longer clear whether they are the fringe or the vanguard of the Hindutva.

As of now, the proponents of Hindutva are happy using these elements to harvest votes, but there should be no doubt that the India we know will come apart if their project proceeds further. Just look at the map. Along the periphery, there are three Christian-majority states: Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland; Arunachal Pradesh has a plurality of Christians; Jammu and Kashmir has Muslim majority; and Punjab is a Sikh-majority state.

Worse, if threats of ethnic cleansing and mass violence are actualised, be sure that those affected will not take it lying down. It is one thing to conduct ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh, Serbia or Palestine, and quite another to contemplate it in India where the Muslim population is spread throughout the country and numbers over 200 million. As Naseeruddin Shah noted in a recent interview, “If it comes to the crunch, we will fight back”, and the country’s social and political fabric will be torn to tatters.

Note that none of the senior RSS/BJP leaders has publicly advocated any of this. The BJP governments in various states and the Centre have walked a fine line and ensured that, barring the anti-CAA riots in January, there have been no incidents of mass communal violence since 2014. But at the same time, they have looked away from individual instances of lynching, intimidation and harassment that are enabling a climate of increasing impunity.

Promoting religion by building temples is more of an opportunistic weapon to win elections than an act of religiosity. This is Hindutva whose goal is political power and, where needed, they have not hesitated to build alliances with a clutch of “Christian” parties in the North-East, the Akalis in Punjab and the PDP in Kashmir.

The anti-Muslim card has played well in a huge chunk of the country. The Godhra incident was used to mobilise for the Gujarat elections that launched Modi’s political career. Since then, anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions have been used to overcome caste divisions and polarise Hindu votes, especially in the Hindi-speaking heartland.

Most Hindutvavadis do implicitly, if not explicitly, support the notion of some kind of a second-class status for the minorities, something akin to what happens in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. But they are not aware of the price that will be paid for this. No country aspiring to be a leading economic and political power can afford to have an underclass of hundreds of millions who will, inevitably, be the source of constant social and political tension.

India’s religions have a unique political sociology, as brought out by a Pew poll in June last year. Most people — Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs — are deeply conservative and prefer to be among their own when it comes to friendships, marriages and places of residence. Yet, all of them see respecting all religions as a core value. The survey found that conversions were rare.

By promoting Hindu nationalism as a means of gaining electoral power, the ruling party and its fringe/vanguard elements are disrupting this complex pattern without a clear idea as to where they are headed.

This pattern has been fairly resilient till now. Recall that even in the high tide of Islamist radicalism in the1990s, the Indian Muslims remained largely free of the extremist virus. But today, they are being constantly hammered by discrimination and intimidation. How long they can bear the onslaught is not clear, except that the consequences of the breakdown of the Indian republic’s secular contract will not have pretty consequences./tribuneindia 

The symbols of patriotism of my childhood have now become a reminder that I, a Muslim, am not wanted here.

By: AHAMAD FUWAD

Every day, Muslims wake up to a new humiliation in this country. So much so that when I initially thought of writing this article two weeks ago, it was about the disruption of Friday prayers by Hindutva terrorists in Gurgaon. It soon became a stale subject when the emboldened mob of Hindu seers, ideologically and politically aligned with the ruling regime, openly called for the genocide of Muslims at a ‘Dharam Sansad’ in Haridwar.

Truth be told, I did not immediately know how I felt. Nevertheless, I was not surprised, as it was not the first time that I had heard about how the only solution to the "Muslim problem" is to cut down a million of them. As I was gathering my thoughts to write about the genocidal hate speeches, photos of Muslim women were being put online for auction through a new app called ‘Bulli Bai’, an apparent play of words on a similar app – Sulli Deals – a few months ago.

This is the latest in a series of attempts to dehumanise and humiliate minorities in a country where the entirety of Hindutva innovation is focused on conceiving new ways to show Muslims their place. In today’s version, the Hindutva zealots are playing upon society’s belief that they can humiliate a community by demeaning the women.

I believe, and often say this to anyone listening, that the State by nature is oppressive. It does not surprise or upset me a bit that a political party is carrying out the vision that its ideological founders laid out almost a century ago. The fact that there were riots, attacks on human rights and the civil rights of minorities, Dalits, and tribals even before the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power implies that the Indian State has always been unkind to a section of its citizens. But what is distinct this time is the indifference of individuals, the ordinary citizens of this country. For a large population in this country, the oppression and humiliation of minorities, especially Muslims, is not even an issue. For some of them, it is an issue in the sense that this is what they wanted for a long time, and now is the time to achieve the dream of Hindu Rashtra where Muslims live as second-class citizens.

It does not surprise me that an oppressive State is using every tool in its arsenal to grind down Muslims, but it is agonising to witness the citizens of this country enabling, supporting, and cheering on the regime that is doing this. Some of those have been my friends, my colleagues, and my neighbours.

Beyond the lynchings, riots, and jailing of Muslims under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), National Security Act (NSA), and the sedition law by the BJP dispensation in the last seven years, there is another apparent but invisible cost. Ask any Muslim today, and they will tell you how many friends they have lost. People they shared their childhood with, people they laughed with, people they cried with. I, for one, have lost too many.

My best friend from school? Gone! My best friend from college? Gone! For some, it simply could be a loss of friendship over the difference of political opinion. For me, it was the difference of opinion over my right to exist.

Their presence in my life reminded me that there were people, people I had loved and cherished, people I had shared meals and laughs with, who refused to acknowledge my pain and suffering. Their presence was a reminder that there were people claiming to be my friends but siding with the oppressor in my struggle for a life with dignity.

My childhood was spent in a school where most of the students were from local Hindu and Muslim families. There was Islamophobia, not so subtle sometimes. Teachers, most of them upper-caste Hindus, would comment on your “unusual” Muslim name, and ask who you are supporting when there is a match between India and Pakistan. Or the most common one, “Muslims are like this.”

Fellow students were more vicious. “Katua” and "Miyan" were usual slurs thrown at Muslims. It hurt momentarily, but never did I feel that I didn’t belong. I had similar dreams as my Hindu classmates, similar aspirations and plans, to build a life in what we knew to be one of the most diverse and tolerant nations in the world.

‘Ae Mere Watan Ke Logon…’ blaring out of loudspeakers on Independence Day and Republic Day gave me goosebumps. Those were the greatest festivals, probably only two days when a kid looked forward to going to school. My chest swelled with pride every time ‘Bharat Ka Rahne Wala Hoon’ played on the loudspeaker, which I now remember had noise louder than the music. I sang the national anthem with such devotion and adoration like it was the holiest and the grandest song on earth. I cried, tears rolling down my eyes, when some amateur actors from my school played dead in a skit to pay tribute to Kargil martyrs. So natural was the feeling that I never did think that there would be a day when I would be writing it while mourning.

India is still my home, but it feels like a rented house, from where my landlord would kick me out anytime to accommodate another tenant.

I still like the national anthem, the words written by Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, but have to force myself to get up from the seat when it is played in a theatre. ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ is not a mere slogan to me, but a warcry of a mob descending upon my home to burn it down. A picture of a green camouflage dress brings back the memory of paramilitary forces raining lathis and tear gas shells on students. Glorification of the Indian Army replays the stories my Kashmiri friends have told me, with a sense of humiliation and, sometimes, with tears in their eyes.

These symbols of patriotism of my childhood have now become a reminder that I, a Muslim, am not wanted here, in India, in my country, in my home.

The State wants me either in jail, in grave or in silence. The people of this country want me either in jail, in grave or in silence.

There are odd utterances from a section of the majority community that “this is not my country”. That common instances of hate and lynching are aberrations. They claim that people will rise up and reclaim their India. It may happen one day, but Akhlaqs, Junaids, and Pahlu Khans of this country won’t be alive to see it. Sharjeels, Umars, and Gulfishas of this country won’t get their years back. The domes of razed Babri Masjid won’t be resurrected. The dead won’t rise from the grave and the wheel of time won’t move backwards. The wounds of humiliation won’t heal, the indignation we won’t forget.

The day indeed may come one day. But what do I do till then? Drink the poison and accept the humiliation? Keep expressing my love for this country while it throws back rocks at me? Or do I keep my patriotism on hold till I get my country back? I am unable to do that anymore. My unrequited love for this country has been on life support for too long. No more!

Thus, I am pronouncing my patriotism dead for the country India has become, and this is an elegy for my dead patriotism./ The quint

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This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own