CWU Equality Month: Tackling Islamophobia

Education, Equalities March 16 2021


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Tuesday 16th March 2021

March is CWU Equality Month

Week Three of Equality Month is BAME Week, and the focus is the ongoing fight against all forms of racism and prejudice.

Today, Fevzi Hussein from the Equality, Education & Development department highlights the need to raise awareness of Islamophobia and defend our Muslim citizens from attack.

Yesterday, March 15th, marked two years exactly since Nazi terrorist Brenton Harrison Tarrant slaughtered 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the CWU commemorated the second anniversary of this terrible event with an extremely poignant online event highlighting the danger of Islamophobia and the need to unite against it. 

Speakers included Adam Alarakhia from Leicestershire Branch and Maz Saleem, whose father was murdered by a Nazi terrorist back in 2013, just a few weeks before the murder of Lee Rigby. The event was chaired by Sajid Shaikh who is the Midlands Region political lead.

As part of his contribution, Adam reflected on when he was stopped by police at East Midlands Airport, despite just having passed through security without any issues. He told of how he put the incident down to racial profiling and had challenged the police on the supposed ‘random checks’.

Maz Saleem spoke fondly about her father and how proud she was of him. His life was brutally cut short when he was murdered on the way home from his mosque back in 2013. The Nazi terrorist who murdered her father was also responsible for a three-month bombing campaigning targeting a number of mosques in the midlands area, but the media coverage was miniscule in comparison to the coverage of the murder of Lee Rigby.

Some of the key points to come out of the session were that the media and the Government have a big responsibility on their hands and must stop fuelling the hate-filled rhetoric that we see demonizing Muslims on a daily basis.

A number of CWU Muslim members engaged with the session and questions ranged from issues such as Prevent to the Charlie Hebdo magazine. One viewer commented: “It is great to see so many visibly Muslim role models in the CWU” and the fact that Islamophobia awareness was being prioritised in the way it was prompted the member to ask how he could get more involved in the CWU.

  • Tomorrow, there is a Tackling Racism from the Workplace event commencing at 6.30pm. To locate the link to register for the event please click here. Speakers from the TUC and senior industrial representatives will join the panel in what promises to be another excellent session.

This March is Equality Month at CWU and we will be hosting a range of events, workshops and courses to celebrate. See the full programme here (some details to be added throughout the month) and register for our online events.