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Brazilian Muslims face growing Islamophobia over Gaza War

Brazilian Muslims face growing Islamophobia over Gaza War

(CTN News) – Batull Sleiman, a physician at a hospital in São Paulo, Brazil, reported that patients frequently arrived in a bad mood at the emergency room.

After all, each day brought fresh medical emergencies and pleas for urgent care. Sleiman had seen everything. But she didn’t expect the kind of rage she received many weeks ago.

A patient entered her examining room, irritated by the time he had waited for a doctor’s attention. Sleiman noted that his problem was “not urgent”. Nonetheless, he accused her of disrespect based on how she handled him.

“You’re being rude with me because you’re not from Brazil,” Sleiman recalls him saying. “If you were in your country…”

Survey findings on Muslim Brazilians experiencing harassment.

Sleiman stated that she turned away rather than hear the rest. The daughter of Lebanese immigrants believes the man’s reaction was motivated by one factor: her hijab.

“I was surprised and outraged,” Sleiman told Al Jazeera. However, she added, the mood in Brazil has become more hostile since the conflict in Gaza began. “I’ve been noticing that people have been staring more at me on the street since October.”

However, Sleiman is not alone in feeling singled out. As the battle in Gaza continues, Brazil is one of many countries concerned about religious prejudice, notably against its Muslim community.

According to a recent poll conducted by the Anthropology Group on Islamic and Arab Contexts at the University of São Paulo, Muslim Brazilians have reported pervasive harassment since the war began.

An estimated 70% of respondents indicated they knew someone who had faced religious discrimination since October 7, when the Palestinian group Hamas began an offensive on southern Israel, killing 1,140 people.

Israel has subsequently launched a military offensive against Gaza, a Palestinian territory, killing over 21,000 Palestinians. This approach has sparked human rights concerns, with UN experts warning of a “grave risk of genocide”.

According to Professor Francirosy Barbosa of the University of São Paulo, the events of October 7 resulted in religious intolerance in Brazil due to the conflation of Palestinian and Muslim identities, even though Palestinians are an ethnic community rather than a religious one.

She directed the November poll of 310 Muslim Brazilians. Respondents, she noted, reported receiving insults reflecting tensions in the Gaza conflict.

“Many Muslim women told us they are now called things like ‘Hamas daughter’ or ‘Hamas terrorist’,” she stated in an interview with Al Jazeera.

The online survey revealed that many of the respondents had firsthand experience with religious prejudice.

“About 60 percent of the respondents affirmed that they suffered some kind of offence, either on social media or in their daily lives at work, at home or in public spaces,” Barbosa said in a press release.

The study found that women reported slightly greater incidences of religious prejudice.

This month, a video on social media showed a resident of Mogi das Cruzes, a neighbourhood of São Paulo, approaching a Muslim woman and pulling her hijab, bringing the issue of Islamophobia to national attention. The footage was also aired on major networks such as CNN Brazil.

Karen Gimenez Oubidi, also known as Khadija, was married to a Moroccan guy and converted to Islam eight years ago. She told Al Jazeera that the argument involved one of her neighbours, and she was unhappy because their children had argued.

“She came down with her brother and was extremely aggressive.” She called me a ‘cloth-wrapped bitch’. I quickly saw it wasn’t only about the kids fighting,” Gimenez Oubidi stated.

The neighbours sought to separate the two women. One man in the video, however, grabbed Gimenez Oubidi from behind and wrapped an arm around her throat to restrain her. Gimenez Oubidi described him to Al Jazeera as her neighbour’s brother.

Encouraging Muslim Brazilians to speak up and raise awareness for government action.

He asked me several times, ‘What are you doing now, terrorist?’ He didn’t say it loudly; it was only for me to hear. “He knew what he was doing,” Gimenez Oubidi explained. She stated that her son’s fight with the neighbour’s youngster was also about her hijab.

Fernanda, the lady who attacked Oubidi, denied this narrative, saying she did not want her real identity exposed for fear of public outrage.

Fernanda claimed Oubidi’s son hit her son on the playground, and while she physically assaulted Fernanda, she made no mention of her faith. “I never mocked her for her religion. That did not happen. “I’d never do something like that,” she replied.

According to a July government assessment, religious intolerance “occurs most intensely against those of African origin, but it also affects Indigenous, Roma, immigrant, and converted individuals, including Muslims and Jews, as well as atheist, agnostic, and non-religious people”.

Brazil is largely Christian, with an estimated 123 million Catholics—more than any other country.

But it has a long-standing, albeit modest, Muslim community. Academics believe Islam entered the area through the transatlantic slave trade, as captured African Muslims practised their religion in their new surroundings.

In 1835, one group of enslaved Muslim Brazilians launched a rebellion against the government known as the Malê insurrection, which was named after the Yoruba word for Muslim.

Brazil’s Muslim community grew in response to waves of immigration in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly following the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Arab immigrants from Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine came to call Brazil home.

The precise number of Muslims in Brazil now remains unknown. The 2010 census counted 35,167 Muslims, although subsequent estimates put the number at 1.5 million.

Some proponents, however, argue that other demographic and political developments are laying the groundwork for rising conflicts between Muslim and non-Muslim populations.

Evangelical Christians constitute the fastest-growing religious component in Brazil today, accounting for around one-third of the population. Their numbers have transformed them into a formidable political force.

Evangelical voters were credited with helping to elect far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in 2016, with polls suggesting 70% support for him.

During his failed 2022 re-election campaign, Bolsonaro frequently used Christian imagery in his pleas to voters, describing the race as a “fight of good against evil.”

Mahmoud Ibrahim, who leads a mosque in Porto Alegre, says that the us-versus-them mindset has resulted in hostility towards his group.

During recent protests against the war in Gaza, he said that passersby branded him a “terrorist” and a “child rapist”.

“Evangelicals and Bolsonarists constantly abuse us. “They even chased a person who was going to our demonstration the other day,” he explained.

Ibrahim added that he has heard of at least one woman bleeding after attackers tried to take her hijab off, causing the scarf’s pins to burrow into her skin.

Girrad Sammour leads the National Association of Muslim Jurists (ANAJI), a body that provides legal assistance in cases of Islamophobia. He stated that the amount of reports to ANAJI has always been high, but it has increased dramatically since the war began on October 7.

“There was a 1,000 percent increase in the denunciations that we received,” he told Al Jazeera, attributing some to provocative remarks from far-right evangelical pastors.

However, Barbosa, the survey leader, believes there are ways to reduce the animosity and suspicion aimed against Muslim Brazilians. She cited a lack of media representation as an example.

“Few Palestinian leaders and experts in the Middle East with a pro-Palestine view have been invited by TV shows, for instance, to comment on the conflict in Gaza,” Barbosa said in a statement.

However, she encouraged Muslim Brazilians to share their stories to increase awareness.

“What is not denounced doesn’t exist for the government,” she said. “Only if the authorities know what is happening will they be able to take adequate measures, like investing in education against religious intolerance.”

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

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Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

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Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

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Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

trump

Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

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