SEOUL: On a sunny afternoon in the second week of Ramadan, hundreds of Muslims gathered at the Seoul Central Mosque in the district of Itaewon for their weekly Friday prayer.
Those who could not fit inside the mosque sat on their prayer mats outside the main prayer hall. Most of the worshippers were immigrants from Southeast and Central Asia.
“I was travelling an hour from Ansan (southwest of Seoul) by train and bus to perform a prayer along with my two children,” Ahn, a Korean Muslim, told Arab News.
“It’s a ritual to come here every Friday afternoon, and the past two weeks have been special as we’ve entered Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic religion.”
Living as a Muslim in South Korea has been tough, and is getting tougher due to Islamophobia, said Ahn, who converted to Islam a decade ago after marrying a Pakistani Muslim.
“Lots of incidents occur allegedly in connection with Islamist extremists and terror groups, and many Korean people just think all Muslims could be associated with them,” she added. “Hatred and prejudice against Muslims still prevail here.”
Park Si-eun, 36, who converted to Islam in 2010, said: “Even some of my family members feel inconvenienced being with me just because I’m Muslim. There are a lot of challenges for Muslims in Korea, and even more for Korean Muslims. Nevertheless, I feel there have been some changes in the public perception of Islam, slowly but surely.”
Islam has a very small presence in South Korea, where Protestantism is dominant. According to the Korea Muslim Federation, the number of Muslims in the country stands at about 150,000, some 0.3 percent of the population. Of them, Korean Muslims account for 35,000.
There are at least 30,000 Protestant churches in the country but only eight mosques, including the Seoul Central Mosque, which was built in 1976 with the help of a large monetary contribution from Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations.
Rahman Lee Ju-hwa, imam at the Seoul Central Mosque, said despite widespread misunderstanding and ignorance about Islam, there is a slow but steady change in perception.
“The 2007 hostage crisis in Afghanistan was a major turning point in the history of Islam in South Korea,” he told Arab News, referring to the kidnapping of 23 South Korean missionaries by members of the Taliban, who executed two of the hostages.
“The incident had many more South Korean people think negatively about Islam. But on the other side, many people were beginning to be curious about the religion and wanted to know it better,” he said.
“The number of Muslims in the country is stagnant, but the public perception and understanding of Islam are getting better, slowly but surely,” he added.
“An increasing number of students visit the Seoul Central Mosque to attend lectures and study the Muslim culture.”
The number of visitors to the mosque peaked at 2,500 last year, a 10-fold increase from a decade ago, he said.
During a visit by Arab News on May 8, a group of middle-school students was touring the mosque.
“We came here for a cultural study class to help students understand different cultures and religions,” said Lee Eun-il, a teacher at Shindong Middle School in Seoul.
“In particular, Islam wasn’t familiar to students and misunderstood by many people. That’s why we came here, to understand it better.”
The imam said: “Social media is an effective tool for providing accurate information on Islam. Wrong information spreads so fast online, but that information can be fixed instantly on social media.”
Park Dong-shin, a South Korean Muslim, runs two YouTube channels — one for the Arabic language and the other for Islam. They have about 10,000 and 50,000 viewers, respectively. He also has a Facebook account with approximately 200,000 followers.
“I started running YouTube channels in 2011 with the goal of providing accurate information on Islam, and they’ve gained popularity fast in recent years thanks to the YouTube boom,” Park, who converted in 2009, told Arab News.
“Many of the viewers post malicious comments insulting Islam and Muslims, but I feel that’s a very normal process of a new culture being mixed in a society. It’s a process of people learning a new culture and religion,” he said.
“I’m super surprised to see a number of Christians join my channels to get to know Islam better, not criticizing Islam,” added Park, who studied the Arabic language and Muslim theology at the Islamic University of Madinah, Saudi Arabia, and subsequently majored in Shariah law at Al-Azhar University in Cairo.
Safiya Kang Na-yeon, a female manager at the Seoul Central Mosque, is an Instagram user with nearly 50,000 followers.
Having converted in 2015, she posts photos and videos of Islamic food, fashion and cultural events, which she said help bridge the gap between Korean and Muslim cultures in a more effective way.
“Youngsters in South Korea show a big interest in hijab fashion and halal food,” she said. “I also post photos related to South Korean culture, such as hanbok, traditional Korean clothing. That helps Muslims understand Korea well.”
Since the 1990s, an increasing number of migrant workers from Muslim countries have been settling in South Korea.
“The image of most Muslim migrants has been improved to an extent due to their hard work and faithfulness,” said Safiya Kang.
“Their children with multicultural backgrounds are growing up, and they’ll be able to play a role in finding a common denominator with Korean people.”
Muslim tourism has become a key growth area for South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy, since the number of Chinese travelers declined in the aftermath of a diplomatic row over the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system in 2017.
The South Korean government has laid out a tourism initiative aimed at attracting 1.2 million Muslim visitors annually.
Last year, 971,649 Muslim tourists visited the country, an 11 percent increase from 865,910 in 2017, according to the Korea Tourism Organization.
Despite efforts to increase halal restaurants, 34 percent of Muslim visitors said food was their biggest inconvenience in South Korea, whose people enjoy pork and alcohol, according to a 2018 survey conducted by the tourism organization.
“The government should address the lack of infrastructure for Muslim tourists, such as halal restaurants, prayer rooms and other Muslim-friendly facilities, which could attract many more Muslim visitors and boost the national economy,” Imam Lee said.
Still, South Korean Muslims pride themselves on keeping their faith in the face of numerous challenges.
“Practicing Islam is such a difficult mission in this country, where our religion is marginalized in many cases,” Safiya Kang said.
“In another sense, I’m proud of keeping the faith in this most challenging of environments. I find peace in Islam.”
Young Muslims become flag-bearers of Islam in South Korea via social media
Young Muslims become flag-bearers of Islam in South Korea via social media
- Islam has a very small presence in South Korea, where Protestantism is dominant
- According to the Korea Muslim Federation, the number of Muslims in the country stands at about 150,000, some 0.3 percent of the population
US congressman praises heckling of war protesters, including 1 who made monkey gestures at Black woman
JACKSON, Mississippi: Israel-Hamas war demonstrations at the University of Mississippi turned ugly this week when one counter-protester appeared to make monkey noises and gestures at a Black student in a raucous gathering that was endorsed by a far-right congressman from Georgia.
“Ole Miss taking care of business,” Republican US Rep. Mike Collins wrote Friday on the social platform X with a with a link to the video showing the racist jeers.
The Associated Press left voicemail messages for Collins on Friday at his offices in Georgia and Washington and sent an email to his spokesperson, asking for an explanation of what Collins meant. There was no immediate response.
The taunting brought sharp criticism on and off campus.
“Students were calling for an end to genocide. They were met with racism,” James M. Thomas, a sociology professor at the University of Mississippi, wrote Friday on X.
The Rev. Cornell William Brooks, a former president and CEO of the NAACP and professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, wrote on X that a white man mocking a Black woman as a monkey “isn’t about ‘Stand With Israel’ or ‘Free Palestine.’ This is protest as performative racism.”
Collins was first elected to Congress in 2022 and made several social media posts criticizing campus protests.
Nobody was arrested during the demonstration Thursday at the University of Mississippi, where hecklers vastly outnumbered war protesters. According to a count by AP, more than 2,400 arrests have occurred on 46 US university or college campuses since April 17 during demonstrations against the war.
The student newspaper, The Daily Mississippian, reported about 30 protesters on the Oxford campus billed themselves as UMiss for Palestine. Videos and photos from the event showed the protesters were in a grassy area near the main library, blocked off by barriers erected by campus security.
They chanted “Free, free Palestine,” and carried Palestinian flags and signs with slogans including, “Stop the Genocide” and “US bombs take Palestine lives.”
Student journalist Stacey J. Spiehler shot video that showed campus police officers and the dean of students standing between anti-war protesters and hecklers. After the Black woman protesting the war had what appeared to be a heated exchange of words with several white hecklers, one of the men made the monkey gestures and noises at her.
About 76 percent of the university’s students were white and about 11 percent were Black in 2022-23, the most recent data available on the school’s website.
University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce said the school is committed to people expressing their views. He said some statements made on campus Thursday were “offensive and unacceptable.”
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves reposted a video on X that showed counter-protesters on the campus singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
“Warms my heart,” Reeves wrote. “I love Mississippi!”
US campus protests wane after crackdowns, Biden rebuke
- More than 2,000 arrests have been made in the past two weeks across the US
NEW YORK: Pro-Palestinian protests that have rocked US campuses for weeks were more muted Friday after a series of clashes with police, mass arrests and a stern White House directive to restore order.
Police in Manhattan cleared an encampment at New York University after sunrise, with video posted to social media by an official showing protesters exiting their tents and dispersing when ordered to do so.
The scene appeared relatively calm compared to crackdowns at other campuses around the country — and some worldwide — where protests over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza have multiplied in recent weeks.
University administrators, who have tried to balance the right to protest and complaints of violence and hate speech, have increasingly called on police to clear out the demonstrators ahead of year-end exams and graduation ceremonies.
At the University of Chicago, law enforcement appeared set to dismantle an encampment Friday after the school’s president said talks with protesters on a compromise had failed.
Before the clearing operation began, dozens of American flag-wielding counter-protesters showed up and confronted the pro-Palestinian group, but police separated the two sides, local media reported.
More than 2,000 arrests have been made in the past two weeks across the US, some during violent confrontations with police, giving rise to accusations of use of excessive force.
President Joe Biden, who has faced pressure from all political sides over the conflict in Gaza, gave his first expansive remarks on the protests Thursday, saying that “order must prevail.”
“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent,” Biden said in a brief address from the White House.
“But neither are we a lawless country. We’re a civil society, and order must prevail.”
His remarks came hours after police moved in on demonstrators at the University of California, Los Angeles, which had seen a violent confrontation when counter-protesters attacked a fortified encampment there.
A large police contingent forcibly cleared the sprawling encampment early Thursday while flashbangs were launched to disperse crowds gathered outside.
Schools officials said that more than 200 people were arrested.
On the US East coast Thursday, protesters at New Jersey’s Rutgers University agreed to take down their camp after reaching a compromise with administrators — a similar deal to one made at Brown University in Rhode Island.
Republicans have accused Biden of being soft on what they say is anti-Semitic sentiment among the protesters, while he faces opposition in his own party for his strong support for Israel’s military offensive.
“There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for anti-Semitism, or threats of violence against Jewish students,” Biden said.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona echoed the condemnation in a letter to university leaders on Friday, pledging to investigate reports of anti-Semitism “aggressively,” CNN reported.
Meanwhile, similar student protests have popped up in countries around the world, including in Australia, France, Mexico and Canada.
In Paris, police moved in to clear students staging a sit-in at the Sciences Po university.
An encampment has grown at Canada’s prestigious McGill University, where administrators on Wednesday demanded it be taken down “without delay.”
However, police had yet to take action against the site as of Friday.
The Gaza war started when Hamas militants staged an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel estimates that 128 hostages remain in Gaza. The Israeli military says 35 of them are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 34,600 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Biden to host Jordan king next week amid Gaza talks
- Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday of trying to derail the proposed Gaza deal with his threats to launch an operation in Rafah
- Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden will host Jordan’s King Abdullah II next week, the White House said Friday, as negotiations continue in the Middle East for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The meeting will be “private” and will be followed by a readout, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, without giving a date for the encounter.
The meeting comes against the backdrop of talks for a deal to release hostages and secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza after nearly seven months of war.
The talks, which come after months of efforts by mediators Egypt, Qatar and the United States to broker a new agreement between the combatants, are at a critical juncture.
The United States has urged the Palestinian militant group to accept the “extraordinarily generous” offer.
But Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday of trying to derail the proposed Gaza deal with his threats to launch an operation in Rafah.
King Abdullah II last visited the White House in February when he called for an immediate ceasefire and warned an attack on Rafah would cause a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
In April, Jordan worked alongside the United States and other allies to shoot down Iranian drones that Tehran sent toward Israel, with the kingdom keen to avoid a wider conflict.
Austin: No indication Hamas planning attack on US troops
- Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he did not see any indication Hamas was planning any attack on US troops in Gaza but added adequate measures were being put in place for the safety of military personnel.
“I don’t discuss intelligence information at the podium. But I don’t see any indications currently that there is an active intent to do that,” Austin said during a press briefing.
“Having said that ... this is a combat zone and a number of things can happen, and a number of things will happen.”
Austin’s remarks came as the US military said it was temporarily pausing the offshore construction of a maritime pier because of weather conditions and instead would continue building it at the Israeli Port of Ashdod.
FASTFACT
The US military says it is temporarily pausing the offshore construction of a maritime pier because of weather conditions.
The maritime pier, once built, will be placed off the coast of Gaza in a bid to speed the flow of humanitarian aid into the enclave.
“Forecasted high winds and high sea swells caused unsafe conditions for soldiers working on the surface of the partially constructed pier,” the US military said in a statement.
“The partially built pier and military vessels involved in its construction have moved to the Port of Ashdod, where assembly will continue,” it added.
Earlier this week, the Pentagon said about 50 percent of the pier had been constructed.
Israel has sought to demonstrate it is not blocking aid to Gaza, especially since President Joe Biden issued a stark warning to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying Washington’s policy could shift if Israel fails to take steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.
US officials and aid groups say some progress has been made but warn it is insufficient, amid stark warnings of imminent famine among Gaza’s 2.3 million people.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza — which has been devastated by more than six months of Israeli operations against Hamas — remains dire, with a senior US administration official saying last week that the territory’s entire population of 2.2 million people is facing food insecurity.
Canada police charge three with murder of Sikh leader Nijjar
- Nijjar was a Canadian citizen campaigning for the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh homeland
OTTAWA: Canadian police said on Friday they had arrested and charged three Indian nationals with the murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June 2023 and said they were probing possible links to the Indian government.
Nijjar, 45, was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has cited evidence of Indian government involvement, prompting a diplomatic crisis with New Delhi.
Assistant Commissioner David Teboul said the matter was still under investigation and other probes were being carried out. These “include investigating connections to the government of India,” he told a televised news conference.
Nijjar was a Canadian citizen campaigning for the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh homeland carved out of India. The presence of Sikh separatist groups in Canada has long frustrated New Delhi, which had labeled Nijjar a “terrorist.”
Last week the White House expressed concern about the reported role of the Indian intelligence service in assassination plots in Canada and the United States.
