NEWS

Awareness campaign 

These videos aim at breaking common stereotypes about Muslim men and women. They both are intended for a large public, they portray a stereotype breaking image of a young Muslim woman in one video, and of a young Muslim man in the other, and carry in them an empowering message for Muslim youth.

The written message at the end of the short video reads as follows: ‘break stereotypes, fight racism’. The hashtag that goes with the campaign is #changehappensoffline. The above mentioned slogan is followed by the message ‘like share follow, but don’t stop here, #changehappensoffline’. The idea is to make people aware that action is needed, as a victim you can (and should) report incidents of discrimination and islamophobia, and as a bystander you should definitely act as well. Depending on the timing of the legal action, the dissemination of the short videos can go hand in hand with communication about the course and/or outcome of the case.

Brussels Masterclass II : ReSisters : when women from minorities reclaim their narrative

Building Bridges workshop

– The Privilege Walk :

In the process we discuss the concept of privilege. Privileges are a difficult concept to understand. Privileges can be found on the level of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, education, health, wealth… Most people relate themselves to privileges in a personal individual way, while privileges show us how society and the fabrics of our societal system categorize people based on different elements and show what values are given to different status.

During this activity, we had the chance to host, Dr. Olivia Rutazibwa, who is an expert on post-colonial studies. She gave a presentation on the links between post-colonialism and institutional racism. We

also had the chance to have Dr. Anya Topolski who gave a presentation on the comparisons between anti-semitism in Europe and the current Islamophobia.

Legal awareness booklet

Many documentations are available on what is islamophobia, who is targeted and how to fight against it. However, there is no concise document gathering all relevant and practical information build for a digital native audience. For this booklet we have decided to make it a 5 pages easily shareable document with short and practical information on what is islamophobia, how it targets women specifically and most importantly what to do in case one’s is victim of it. The document will be available for free on our upcoming website (end of 2018). The French version is ready for publication, Dutch translation will take place in the coming months.

Brussels Masterclass I: Muslim women fight back (legal awareness and safe space)

– A jurist for MRAX held a “know your rights” workshop, which was a presentation about discriminations and the legal response to it with a special focus on islamophobia.

– The next day we organized a safe space for victims of islamophobia managed by a psychologist during which Muslim women voiced and shared their experiences which helped liberate themselves from traumatic experiences. The idea was to raise awareness about the legal means at disposal for victims of discrimination and/or Islamophobic acts.

On both afternoons we invited several organizations taking part in the fight against islamophobia at different levels. Namely: MRAX, CCIB and Collectif Kahina. The participants were exposed to different ways of tackling islamophobia and successful mobilizations.

Legal awareness workshop (Antwerp)

Other than strictly legal recourses, we offered a whole list of other instances where they can file complaints, according to the specific form of discrimination (e.g. the Council for Journalism). Our main goal is to develop a reflex within the participants to identify a problematic situation and to adopt an empowered attitude towards it as well as to think about what is feasible and which institution to contact to report the issue to.

This workshop was developed with the help of our partners; Saila Ould Chaib from Legal Clinic UGent, Rachida Lamrabet from Unia, Imane El Morabit from Unia