Is Islamophobia a myth?

Click here to read Kenan Malik's article from the February issue of Prospect

But this conception of Islamophobia is at odds with virtually every source cited in his article. Ever since the term "Islamophobia" entered mainstream discourse following the Runnymede Trust's 1997 report on Islamophobia in 1997, it has been understood to entail a fear of and prejudice against Muslims. Such prejudice may manifest itself in ways other than physical attacks by racists or disproportionate arrests by the police, and the semantic edifice erected by Malik makes a mockery of victims of prejudice by pretending they have not been discriminated against.

In January 2005, the crown prosecution service released figures which showed that in exactly half of the 44 cases of religiously aggravated crime between April 2003 and March 2004, the religion or perceived religion of the victim was Islam. This is only the second year that the CPS has been collating these figures, but with the Muslim population making up only 3 per cent of the British total, the statistics are already quite telling.

Malik also fails to recognise how and why the likes of the British National party have switched their strategy ? for fear of being prosecuted under our incitement to race hate laws - from targeting racial groupings to explicitly targeting British Muslims as a faith group. Malik's Prospect piece and his Channel 4 documentary "Are Muslims Hated?" strangely omitted any mention of the northern riots of 2001 and the key role the BNP's Muslim-baiting played in them. Gallingly, he criticises the government's proposals to close this loophole in our legislation and prohibit incitement to religious hatred. Does Malik who describes himself as an anti-racist - think that the BNP should be allowed to continue their incitement because it is merely anti-Muslim?

Malik seems not to have read the explanatory notes of the draft law to outlaw incitement of religious hatred, which states that, what must be stirred up is hatred of a group of persons defined by their religious beliefs and not hatred of the religion itself criticism or expressions of antipathy or dislike of particular religions or their adherents will not be caught by the offence. Malik may therefore continue to be hateful of religion as long as he does not incite hatred of followers of religion, which is hardly a meritorious act worth protection.

Islamophobia is not confined to the far right. Racial discrimination in the field of employment and in the delivery of services was outlawed in the Race Relations Act 1976. Similarly, Islamophobia may be manifested by denying an individual employment based on their belief in Islam, and such conduct was only recently outlawed in the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003. There is no such 'myth' in this regard, as demonstrated for example by the survey conducted by BBC Radio 5 Live in July 2004.? The BBC sent fictitious applications for jobs using applicants with the same qualifications and work experience, but different names. The investigation found that a quarter of the applications by the candidates with traditionally English-sounding names were successful in securing an interview, compared with 13 per cent of the applicants with black African names and only 9 per cent of applicants with Muslim names.

Some writers in the mainstream media have been no less culpable in fomenting this prejudice against Muslims and contributing to their emergence as the "folk devils" of popular and media imagination. In July 2004, the Sunday Telegraph published a series of four breathtakingly anti-Muslim pieces by Will Cummins in which he compared Muslims with dogs. It is simply unthinkable that an editor of a national newspaper would still be in his job if he had allowed a similar barrage of hate to be directed at Afro-Caribbeans or Jews.

It can appear, as Kenan Malik contends that 'Islamophobia is a myth', but only if you deliberately choose to look the other way.

Inayat Bunglawala,
Secretary,
Media Committee,
Muslim Council of Britain

From Hizb ut-Tahrir
7th February 2005
The provocative use of the title "Islamophobia myth" in February's Prospect has done little to further an understanding of the extent of Islamophobia in society or its possible causes. We Muslims may sometimes be clumsy with our arguments when discussing the issue. Kenan Malik accuses some people of "inflating" minor incidents. A few may do this, but most are just using the same criteria that other communities have adopted to define an "attack," which includes verbal abuse. It is also likely to be true that the many social problems affecting the Muslim community have complex and varied causes and are not always related to Islamophobia.

However, Malik's article has three main weaknesses and two of these open him to the same accusations he levels at others. Firstly, he makes a highly partial analysis of the anecdotes he has heard in the course of his researches. Secondly, he puts his own interpretation to statistics which he himself points out are non-specific. The third weakness is that he makes an erroneous comparison with the race hatred that existed in the 1970s. It is erroneous because we have no idea whether the current phenomenon of Islamophobia has peaked or is in its earliest stages.

Malik prefers to view reports of police harassment and physical violence as perceptions of Muslims stemming from a "culture of victimhood." He implies that they are at best examples of age-old racism, only re-labelled as Islamophobia. My own experience amongst Muslims, in my role as a GP and as an active member of the community, is that hostility towards Muslims because of their religion has dramatically increased since 11th September 2001 (Of the dozens of incidents about which I have personally heard, which include physical assaults upon women in hijab, none have been reported for official statistics. Most Muslims see no point in reporting these incidents, and certainly have not caught on to the political importance of doing so.)

Additionally, the current statistical data is neither large nor specific enough to prove or disprove the phenomenon of Islamophobia. Malik is critical of those who draw firm conclusions from such statistics, yet does the same. It is ridiculously simplistic to say that the 300 per cent increase in stop and search incidents "among Asians" is a consequence of their living near Heathrow, or that only about half of these are Muslims because only about half of all Asians are Muslim.

Neither seeking "victim status" nor new legislation is likely to curtail what I see as the most prominent causes of the hostile atmosphere to Islam in society: a climate of fear of political Islam deliberately inspired as part of the "war on terror." In the long run robust expression and explanation of Islamic thoughts and practises will do more to address these root causes of Islamophobia.

Many of us are actively engaging in this but have met with mixed responses. The chattering classes, it seems, prefer a genteel chat with those who differ very little with their own views. The real challenge would be to embrace an "intelligent conversation" with those who honestly admit there are differences with the mainstream of society.

Abdul Wahid
Executive Committee
Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain