The rights of African Muslims were trampled as the US embarked on the global war on terror after the 9\/11 attacks at the World Trade Center in New York, according to a leading academic.
\u201cThe Bush \u2018Global War on Terror\u2019 has had terrible consequences for African Muslims and Africans in general,\u201d Na’eem Jeenah, executive director of the Afro-Middle East Centre, a Johannesburg-based research institute dedicated to studying the Middle East and North Africa, told Anadolu Agency, referring to former US President George W. Bush.
He said African Muslims have been subjected to the same kind of Islamophobia as seen in Western countries, resulting in human rights abuses.
Jeenah said the US used the war on terror to put enormous pressure on African governments to comply with its security protocols, share intelligence and strengthen or develop military relations.
Jeenah cites an example of the US-Africa Command which he says was formed in the wake of the \u201cglobal war on terror.\u201d
\u201cIt now operates in most countries on the continent, with little regard for the sovereignty of African states,\u201d he said.
He claims AFRICOM and US intelligence services also assist governments in African states against political opposition.
\u201cEntrenching US military and intelligence agencies on the continent also has other objectives from a US perspective, such as opposing China\u2019s reach into the continent\u201d\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Extrajudicial killings Profiling The rights of African Muslims were trampled as the US embarked on the global war on terror after the 9\/11 attacks at the World Trade Center in New York, according to a leading academic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c102-muslim-minorities"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/strong>Rights groups on the continent have accused security operatives of wrongly arresting individuals on trumped-up terrorism charges and killing or detaining them at unknown locations.
In a 2016 report, rights group Haki Africa said Kenya’s anti-terror police reportedly carried out at least 81 extrajudicial killings in the country’s mainly Muslim coastal region since 2012.
The group claimed the number could be higher but some families had not come forward for fear of being victimized.
The report said most of those who had been killed were youths accused of being terrorists during police crackdowns.
Kenya\u2019s Independent Policing Oversight Authority said at the time that 52 police officers had been charged and hundreds of others were being probed for human rights violations.
The Somali militant group, al-Shabaab, has on several occasions, committed terror attacks on Kenya, killing dozens in retaliation for Kenya\u2019s deployment as an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.
In return, Kenyan security operatives have hunted down alleged suspects linked to the group, at times arresting innocent people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>Dr. Mustafa Mheta, a senior research fellow at the Africa Desk of Johannesburg-based think tank Media Review Network, agrees that Muslims on the continent have felt the effect of the 9\/11 attacks.
\u201cThe impact of the 9\/11 attacks did not affect only Muslims living in the US, Europe or those in the Islamic countries, but even us here in Africa,\u2019\u2019 he said from his office in Johannesburg.
He said after the 9\/11 attacks, Western media outlets started propagating hate against Islam labeling it as an enemy thus the growth of Islamophobia.
\u201cThey tried to make Islam look as though it is synonymous with terrorism, a development which is not true,\u201d said Mheta, adding that \u201cIt is now the responsibility of Muslims to dispel this myth through whatever platform they have.\u201d
Others told Anadolu Agency that getting visas to travel to western countries has proven to be difficult after the attacks, while some said they have sometimes been pulled aside for questioning at airports.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"