UK 'Islamophobia' rises after 11 September

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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UK ‘Islamophobia’ rises after 11 September

By Dominic Casciani
BBC News Online community affairs reporter

Muslims in one of the UK’s most ethnically diverse cities have suffered an increase in racist abuse and attacks since 11 September, according to research.
An academic survey of racist incidents in Leicester supports fears that the UK is witnessing a rise in Islamophobia - fear or intolerance of Muslims because of their religion.

Earlier in the year, a European Union anti-racism research agency warned there was anecdotal evidence of a rise in Islamophobia.

The research by the University of Leicester is the first detailed study into the actual effects of 11 September on a Muslim community.

Research findings

Racist and religious attacks in Leicester rose dramatically after 11 September, the university’s research found, before dropping back during 2002.

Attacks included abuse hurled at children on their way to school or women shopping, to one reported incident where a baby was tipped out of a pram.

One man reported that he had eggs thrown at him outside a supermarket and then had to run as a car was driven at him.

Another victim reported that he had had to get off a bus after another passenger screamed accusations that he was a bomber.

The research also found that Hindus and Sikhs also suffered increased abuse after 11 September, although not to the same degree.

Dr Lorraine Sheridan who conducted the research for the university, said that she had been shocked by what she had found.

"The attacks are being carried out by people who don’t like Islam, the abuse is more about the religion than the race.

"They think that it victimises women and that Muslims refuse to integrate.

"The people behind the attacks think that Muslims are outside of society and they are different.

“What is of most concern is that this is happening in Leicester, a leading multi-ethnic city which is supposed to be a model for the rest of the UK.”

Suleman Nagdi of the Federation of Muslim Organisations in Leicester, said that while incidences of attacks had now fallen, the community had been shaken by attacks - but many remained reluctant to report them.

“Many of the attacks that came after 11 September were against women in the street,” said Mr Nagdi.

“They presented an easy target because people could identify their religion by their headscarves.”

‘Silent majority’

Mr Nagdi said that all mosques and community groups in the city had been put on alert to report incidents.

“Within Leicester’s ethnic minorities there is a silent majority,” he said.

"That means that many incidents go unreported. People are too timid to speak out by nature.

“We have tried to encourage people to report the incidents to the police so that they can be dealt with.”

Leicester University surveyed the experiences of all the major religious faiths as part of the research which also included Stoke on Trent.

The survey involved detailed questionnaires of experiences since 11 September 2001. Approximately 500 people responded, the overwhelming number being Muslims.

The study examined levels of both racial and religious discrimination and incidences of “implicit” racism - where people may deny being racist but treat other ethnic minorities differently.

**Dr Sheridan said: "The British Crime Survey’s own figures suggest that Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities suffer the most abuse. Our figures are the first attempt to look at this in depth in just one area. **

“But we need more research into this nationally to find out the true extent of Islamophobia.”

How many UK guppies can relate to this article?

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You know, this article sort of ties in with another thread that deals with the US forming a commission of scholars to analyze why the US is hated so much.

Perhaps a bunch of Islamic scholars ought to form a committee to analyze why Islam is so misunderstood and misperceived.

Why, for instance do people in the UK feel that Islam "victimises women and that Muslims refuse to integrate" as set forth in the article? Why do they "think that Muslims are outside of society and they are different?" Why do these misperceptions fill people with such a rage and fear that they feel they need to attack Muslims on the street?

Surely these misperceptions are growing around the world (not just in the UK) rather than abating. Usually, misperceptions come from a lack of knowledge. This would suggest that Islamic leadership is not effectively getting the word out and heard; rather, the message of the fundos is being said far louder.

The Saudis have started a multimillion dollar advertising and PR campaign in the US to dispell what they think are misperceptions about the Saudi/US relationship. Maybe, some Islamic organizations ought to consider doing the same.

3

It’s a leap forward for organizations like the BBC to do some soul searching. Once they are not too busy painting US as the biggest Evil, Brits can sure write about what is going on in their own backyard. Papers like the Guardian rarely gets their head out of Queen’s arse (to borrow Sulman Rushdie’s words) but always manages to find out problems in the United States. They need to follow BBC’s lead and put their foot where their mouth is.

4

Critical analysis by foreign media sources do perform a good service. The heavy corporate US media needs it's competition. The BBC, Guardian and the like are not always America bashers. The BBC has done inward looking pieces in the past.

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Papers like the Guardian have always been the staunchest supporters of Rushdie in the past. It was usually the right wing broadsheets like the Telegraph who launched into left wing idealogues like Rushdie so let's get the facts straight.

I live in the UK, and I can tell you that the vast majority of UK muslim citizens don't share anything in common with Bin Laden, and the vast majority don't 'victimise' women. Unfortunately that just doesn't make good news headlines, whereas a one-eyed, hooke-handed former Russian mujahid in London who might be addressing a rally of 200 people does.

myvoice, let me turn the question around and ask you why jewish leaders in America find it so difficult to condemn a hardline zealot like Ariel Sharon who actually represents the people of Israel and yet takes no action against the building of illegal settlements by religious fanatics on land snatched from former inhabitants?

As for the Saudi PR campaign, it's just further example of how low this undemocratic bunch of Royal camel jockeys will stoop in order to protect their own posiition. They must be really worried if they felt it necessary to spend the money on PR rather than casino's or hookers in LA.

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Judge mentall

I have had this experience with muslims i have met they don't support saudi arabia or egypt for example this surprised me as i generally thought they supported these countries.

For example as in your comments they consider saudi government as an embarassment who care nothing for fellow muslims and just content with holding onto power no matter what the cost.

This islamicphobia is generally atributed to media sterotypes they tend to pick out single examples and label the whole community as this one example they find.

I don't have no problem with muslims not mixing with non muslims it is there choice i don;t hear complaints of upper class snobs being persecuted in the media for not integrating with the guy in the street who flips burgers for a living.

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ISLAMAPHOBIA RISES IN AMERICA--- THAT MAY BE TRUE BUT IT WILL TAKE A LONG TIME TO CATCH UP WITH ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE ARAB WORLD AND GUPSHUP

IT IS NORMAL FOR AMERICANS TO BE AFRAID OF ISLAM. A YEAR AGO THEY SAW PEOPLE CALLING THEMSELVES MUSLIMS DESTROYING THE LIVES OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE--

I WENT TO NEW YORK IN OCTOBER LAST YEAR anD I WAS TREATED VERY WELL-- INFACT HAD A COOL CONVERSATION WITH THE GUY AT IMMIGRATION

ISLAMAPHOBIA -YEAH RIGHT

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Very factual, thoughtful article. Good read.
Islam has replaced Communism as the whipping boy of the west, and since the silent majority of Muslims does not get a word in edgewise in the mainstream press, the public takes the actions of the misguided few as Islam and reacts accordingly. The MCB in UK is attempting to counter this Islamophobia - in politics as well as media.

"Islamophobia
…
There are few things, you would imagine, that Labour’s Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane, Margaret Thatcher, the British National Party and the daytime television host Robert Kilroy-Silk would all agree on. Nevertheless, as events of the past week have shown, a deep disdain for Islam is one subject on which they can all concur whole-heartedly.
…
Yet what is more alarming than the public airing of such idiocy - ill-informed diatribes against Islam are, after all, far from uncommon in the British press - is the support that Kilroy has clearly found among the British public.
…
Yet it is still clearly acceptable to most people in Britain to make the sort of straightforwardly racist remarks about Arabs and Muslims that would now be considered quite unacceptable if made about Jews, Catholics or blacks.
…
Islam has now replaced Judaism as Britain’s second religion, and it sometimes feels as if Islamophobia is replacing anti-Semitism as the principal western statement of bigotry against “the Other”: the pre-war Blackshirts attacked the newly arrived East End Jews, and today we have their modern equivalents going “Paki-bashing”. The massacre of more than 7,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 never led to a stream of articles in the press about the violent tendencies of Christianity. Yet every act of al-Qaeda terrorism brings to the surface a great raft of criticism of Islam as a religion, and dark mutterings about the sympathies of British Muslims.
…
It is especially ironic that much of the criticism of Muslims comes from the right, given that British Islam has successfully preserved traditional conservative values: an emphasis on the family, chastity before marriage, respect for elders and weekly attendance of a place of worship, as well as observance of various important religious feasts.
…
The constant media refrain about “what went wrong” with Islam - to paraphrase Bernard Lewis - ignores its self-evident success and its increasing popularity.
…
One of Tony Blair’s most senior advisers recently told me that Labour did not take Muslim sentiment seriously as there was yet to emerge a serious lobby for Islam, capable of reacting in a politically coherent manner.
…
This is not just a British problem. In the United States recently, a Republican congressional candidate compared Palestinians to “pond scum”. And while in France Jean-Marie Le Pen may rail against Muslim North African immigrants and howl for their mass repatriation, his outbursts look positively benign beside those of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane in Israel: “The Arabs are a cancer, cancer, cancer in the midst of us . . . let me become defence minister for two months and you will not have a single cockroach around here! I promise you a clean Israel!” Equally vicious is Bal Thackeray in Mumbai (Bombay): “I believe in constructive violence . . . these people must be kicked out. Even if a Hindu is giving shelter to these Muslims he also must be shot dead.”
…
It has become increasingly clear since 9/11 that western intelligence agencies have completely failed to understand or to penetrate the networks of Islamist ultra-radicalism. No intelligence agency predicted the attacks on New York or Washington, DC. Nor were there any warnings of the attacks since then in Kenya, Bali or Morocco. Intelligence briefings linking Saddam Hussein to anthrax attacks in the US, or to a nuclear and chemical weapons programme in Iraq, have all proved wildly inaccurate or, as in the case of the documents detailing Saddam’s search for nuclear materials in Niger, they were simply made up.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair’s neoconservative chums in Washington, immune to the justifiable fears of the Muslim world, talk blithely of moving on from Iraq next year to attack Iran and Syria. They have also invited Franklin Graham, the Christian evangelist who has branded Islam a “very wicked and evil” religion, to be the official speaker at the Pentagon’s annual service - and this immediately prior to his departure for Iraq to attempt to convert the people of Baghdad to Christianity.

All the while, the paranoia and bottled-up rage in the Muslim world grows more uncontrollable, and the attacks by Islamic militants gather pace, gaining ever wider global reach and sophistication. As long as British Muslims remain at the receiving end of our rampant Islamophobia, and remain excluded from the mainstream of British life, we can expect only still greater numbers of disenfranchised Muslims in the UK to turn their back on Britain and rally to the extremists.

As Jason Burke points out at the end of his excellent book Al-Qaeda, “The greatest weapon in the war on terrorism is the courage, decency, humour and integrity of the vast proportion of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims. It is this that is restricting the spread of al-Qaeda, not the activities of counter-terrorism experts. Without it, we are lost. There is indeed a battle between the west and men like Bin Laden. But it is not a battle for global supremacy. It is a battle for hearts and minds. And it is a battle that we, and our allies in the Muslim world, are currently losing.”

This month’s upsurge of rampant Islamophobia in Britain, widely reported in Muslim countries, is the last thing we need in such a desperately volatile climate. "

http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/nscoverstory.htm

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uklawyer

on your keyboard there is a nifty lil key with the words "caps lock" written on it. please release it next time before you type, Thanks a bunch.

Anyways, sure anti-semitism is a problem in arab countries, but do 2 wrongs make a right? If we are going to justify problems in our countries because similar problems are occuring in arab countries to a larger level, I guess we sure are setting up some interesting role models or benchmarks.

and what anti semitism on this site. You see a few guys who have issues with Israeli govt, which btw is not anti semitism otherwise israeili opposition could be called anti semetic as well, and yeah there are a few idiots who have a problem with jews. Just like there are a few idiots who have a problem with Islam.

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There's no such thing as "Islamophobia". It's just hyperrationalization and falsely portraying a minority's view as the norm. People have too much time on their hands and nothing good to do with it.

There have always been fringe idiots that express ill biases. The rest of the population has their bias but they know how to live with it and with each other.

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ive recently joined a campaign
‘Stop Police Terror’](http://www.stoppoliceterror.com/)
. for those of u who believe there is no such thing as ‘islamophobia’ check the facts

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Don't get me wrong.. I believe there are violent idiots. But there is no pervasive phenomenon that can be called Islamophobia.

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wouldnt that be like denying that existance of Anti-Semitism?

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anti-semitism is only reserved for Jews.. not all Semites.. the best thing Muslims can do in their defence is get categorized as Semites..

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by uklawyer: *
....
IT IS NORMAL FOR AMERICANS TO BE AFRAID OF ISLAM. A YEAR AGO THEY SAW PEOPLE CALLING THEMSELVES MUSLIMS DESTROYING THE LIVES OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE-- ...
[/QUOTE]

You mean flying planes over Afghanistan and dropping bombs? or in Iraq?

oh wait, you don't know the religion of those bomb droppers, but perhaps you saw the pilots of those planes going into buildings.... where did you get that video clip?

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Xara: *
wouldnt that be like denying that existance of Anti-Semitism?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, but I'm not denying it outright.. just saying that it's not the big thing it's made out to be. The only reason I take issue with this is because there is a danger in confronting a problem with the wrong approach.

If the theory is that people are acting in an evil manner, those people will need to be identified or the theory will die. In identifying the people accusations must be made. If those accusations go too far, are too general, etc you will anger the accused and most likely some bystanders thereby fulfilling your prophesy. (This has happened to an extent with those that more vigorously pursue antiSemitism.)

That's not my only concern with antiSemitism/Islamophobia.. there are others. But really one must weigh the benefits and risks of pursuing an idea versus not acting. In my opinion the risks of acting outweigh the benefits, which I have yet to see in any real sense. That and the natural order of societies bring about a certain form of balance that keep these dangerous fringe elements where they belong.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by spoon: *
Don't get me wrong.. I believe there are violent idiots. But there is no pervasive phenomenon that can be called Islamophobia.
[/QUOTE]

Yes and the pope's an hasidic jew.