Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia

Anti-Muslim Prejudice? It’s just Islamophobia in sheep’s clothing – reflections on Baroness Warsi & Quilliam’s comments

Islamophobia has hit the headlines again.

First it was a report from the Quilliam Foundation calling for the term Islamophobia to be replaced with ‘anti-Muslim prejudice’, ‘anti-Muslim bigotry’ or ‘anti-Muslim hatred’. Despite having been part of the social and political lexicon for almost a decade and half now, Quilliam suggest this change is necessary because of the widespread confusion about what ‘Islamophobia’ means and how it should be used.

Then, Baroness Warsi – using Quilliam’s newly preferred terminology – made a speech stating how she will use her position in the Government to tackle ‘anti-Muslim prejudice’. This was necessary, she argued, because anti-Muslim prejudice had passed the ‘dinner-table test’. It had become socially acceptable.

Fact is that Warsi’s comments tell us nothing new.

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Islamophobia and Religious Discrimination: new perspectives, policies and practices

All readers of this blog are invited to the event, “Islamophobia & Religious Discrimination: new perspectives, policies and practices”. Details as follows. If you are intending coming along to the event, please ensure that you register beforehand – scroll down for details:

Wednesday, 09 December 2009
14:00 – 17:00

Location:
G15 (Main Lecture Theatre), Muirhead Tower, Main Campus, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT

More than a decade ago, the Runnymede Trust report Islamophobia: a challenge for us all noted that Islamophobia had reached previously unprecedented levels. Shortly after, a Home Office report suggested that other forms of religiously-based discrimination was also on the increase. Since then, a whole raft of legislation has been introduced in an attempt to address this issue. Most recently, the Equality Act 2006 introduced a ‘religion or belief’ strand of equalities protection that has regularly made the headlines through a number of high profile cases, for example where a Christian registrar asked to be excluded from performing same-sex civil registrations.

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Islamophobia Redux: the ‘first’ decade

Following on from my announcement that I’m currently putting together a historiography of contemporary Islamophobia, I’m re-posting a think-piece that I wrote in October 2007 to mark the tenth anniversary of the publication of the Runnymede Trust/ Commission on British Muslims & Islamophobia report, “Islamophobia: a challenge for us all”.

“The ‘first’ decade of Islamophobia”

October 2007 marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of the groundbreaking and possibly the most influential document of its kind, the highly influential Runnymede Trust report, Islamophobia: a challenge for us all.

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The Satanic Verses and the Ayatollah’s Fatwa: 20 Years On

Saturday 14th February 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against the British author Salman Rushdie and the publication of his novel, ‘The Satanic Verses’. Based upon stories about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, the novel caused controversy due to it being interpreted by some Muslims as blasphemous and offensive. Not only against the Prophet himself but also against some of the central tenets of Islam.

Following India’s lead in banning the book in January 1989, the Ayatollah took the matter into his own hands – and to an unprecedented level – by issuing a fatwa that called for the death of Rushdie, claiming that it was the duty of every Muslim worldwide to obey his pronouncement. Reports suggest that despite the fatwa, Khomeini hadn’t read the book.

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Eastenders shows that Muslims are human…it’s Islamophobic !!!

Having been researching the representation of Muslims and Islam in the media for about the last eight years, I was amazed at a recent story that has hit the news.

The BBC has received 107 complaints – I’m guessing primarily from Muslims – about an episode of ‘Eastenders‘ that was broadcast in September. In the episode, Albert Square resident, Masood Ahmed (played by Nitin Ganatra) who is also a Muslim was seen eating during the day by Ian and Jane Beale in the month of Ramadan (for those who don’t know what this means, a short explanation about Ramadan is included at the end of this post).

As the BBC reported on their website (click here to read):

The BBC said the scene was supposed to show Massod’s “fallibilities” and did not “represent the entire British-Asian or British Muslim experience”.

“Although Masood is a practising Muslim, he has his own fallibilities as a human being,” it said in a statement.

“He’s a fictional character with flaws who realises he has let himself down in a moment of weakness.

“We would like to assure viewers it was not our intention to insult Muslim or Islamic values.”

First, well done to the BBC for not ‘apologising’. As the BBC put it, the show is about ‘his own fallibilities as a human being’. This is what all soaps are about. If those complaining were to be realistic, without human fallibilities, soaps wouldn’t have story-lines. If you want to complain about fallibilities, then why not complain about the Beales, the Mitchells etc…?

Second, do these complainants really believe that ALL Muslims fast during Ramadan? Walking through the Bull Ring Centre in Birmingham during Ramadan, I stood behind a young Muslim hijabi on the escalator who was eating a bag of Walkers crisps. Whilst the hijab provided an interesting juxtaposition with the crisp during Ramadan, I didn’t see anyone suddenly rushing up to the young hijabi to reprimand her or complain about her behaviour. And quite rightly so. She wasn’t the only Muslim during Ramadan – in the Bull Ring or indeed elsewhere – that didn’t fast. Unsurprisingly, not all Muslims are perfect and indeed, not all of them aspire to be.

Finally, complaining about Muslims being represented as ‘real’ people is a massive faux pas. For years, Muslim groups and various researchers – both Muslim and non – have been trying to construct a clear picture and coherent argument about how the media unfairly and stereotypically represent Muslims and Islam. When the media do then represent what some Muslims do in reality – that they are indeed human – the media are inundated with complaints wanting something else. Suggesting that ALL Muslims fast throughout Ramadan is as inaccurate as suggesting that ALL Muslims are supportive of terrorism.

This raises a handful of questions…

Does this type of representation really distort the religion and practice of Islam?

No.

Does it undermine or negate Islam?

No.

Is it, after many years of negative stereotyping and denigratory representations, a fair and reflective presentation of Muslims being as human as you and I?

Yes. Of course it is.

Since the publication of the Runnymede Trust’s report into Islamophobia in 1997, the reality of Islamophobia has been contested by those that suggest that it is little more than a shield against which fair and accurate criticism is deflected.

Suggesting that Eastenders’ representation is negative, stereotypical or even Islamophobic is farcical and completely unfounded. Continuing to do so will merely provide the detractors and critics of Islamophobia with further evidence against which they will try and undermine the valuable work that those who advocate and champion the addressing of Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination and racism.

Let’s be real. Because for once, the media have.

About Ramadan (reproduced courtesy of Wikipedia)

Ramadan or Ramazan is a Muslim religious observance that takes place during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar: the month in which the Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. It is the Islamic month of fasting (sawm), in which participating Muslims do not eat or drink anything from true dawn until sunset.

This work by Chris Allen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. Based on a work at www.chris-allen.co.uk.

The Satanic Verses: a 20th anniversary retrospective

Last Friday marked the 20th anniversary of the publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses. The ‘affair’ that ensued was, as the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia stated some years later, “one of the formative, defining events” in shaping how Muslims and Islam are understood in British society today. As such, I thought that I’d (belatedly) mark this anniversary with a short retrospective.

As Rushdie’s fourth novel, ‘The Satanic Verses’ was understood to be constructed around stories from the life of the Prophet Muhammad, the title referencing Ibn Ishaq’s biography of him. Causing some controversy at the time of its publication, it was interpreted by many Muslims as blasphemous with many of its analogous storylines allegedly denigrating Muhammad and his prophethood as well as his wives. Similar denigrations were also alleged against some of the theological tenets and beliefs of Islam. Following India’s lead in banning the book, in early 1989 the Ayatollah Khomeini took the matter to an unprecedented level at the time by issuing a fatwa in Iran that called for the death of Rushdie, claiming that it was the duty of every Muslim to obey his pronouncement. Despite this, at no time in his life did Khomeini read the book.

In Britain, the response to the book was overwhelming. On the 14 January 1989, a large number of Muslims took to the streets of Bradford and publicly burnt copies of it. Whilst the local and national press initially showed little interest, a small group of protesters videotaped the proceedings, later distributing it to various news agencies. Despite being poorly produced, shortly afterwards images of Muslims burning books on the streets of England were broadcast around the world. Evoking comparisons to the Reconquista, the Inquisition and the Reformation, the most damning comparisons were those that recalled Hitler’s Nazis less than a century beforehand. In what was an attempt to gain publicity, the images evolved into little more than a PR catastrophe that inadvertently signaled the beginning of much wider processes: of the widespread condemnation of Muslims and their indiscriminate vilification.

The presence of Muslims in Britain (and by default Islam too) was brought sharply under the public and political gazed, framed and informed by history and its various legacies about Islam and Muslims. More importantly, it was also informed by what had gone before and what was yet to come. Given that Muslims and their presence in Britain had previously been somewhat unacknowledged – most had previously been collectively defined within the homogenous marker of ‘Asian’ – so the first formal recognition of British Muslims and the presence of Islam in Britain was a highly politicised one and through the association with Khomeini, one that was largely indistinguishable from the ‘fundamentalist’– to employ the terminology of the day – forms of Islam that had initiated revolution in Iran.

The protests went global and within a month of the events in Bradford, similar protests had taken place in Bombay, Kashmir, Dacca and Islamabad, the latter seeing five protesters killed and hundreds more injured. Unsurprisingly, these protests were also broadcast around the world and were uncannily similar to those associated with the protests that followed the second publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons in the Danish newspaper, the Jyllands-Posten in early 2006. Both events were highly mediatised and to a great degree, hyper-real.

As with the Danish cartoons furore, so the Satanic Verses affair was seen to present a direct challenge to many of the deeply held values of Britain and ‘the West’ per se: freedom of expression, disagreement, equality, democracy and tolerance. As Elizabeth Poole has since wrote, the Satanic Verses affair was represented by the media as posing a serious threat to liberal and progressive British and Western values: threatened by archaic, retrogressive and irrational Muslims, adherents to an outdated and outmoded religious belief system that history had shown us was inherently violent, barbaric and intolerant.

Despite twenty years having passed, some Muslims, some Muslim organisations and some parts of the media appear to have learned nothing. In February this year I wrote how I was increasingly distressed by knee-jerk reactions by some Muslims and their organisations that afford the media far too many opportunities to show pictures of Muslim men or angry niqabis with placards shouting abuse whilst commentators warn of the impending clash of civilisations at the same time as opinion polls pit sharia law against democracy. Those same Muslims and their organisations then turn on the media and denounce them for further vilifying and stereotyping them. It’s a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle that neither ‘side’ seem to want to break and for whom all are equally to blame.

And it is this, for me, that perpetuates and reinforces the legacy of the Satanic Verses Affair and why this legacy continues to inform much of how all Muslims and the entirety of Islam continues to be indiscriminately presented and perceived.

Next month will see the publication of a new novel, ‘Jewel of Medina’ and the potential for a whole new’ Satanic Verses affair’ to unfold in front of our very eyes. The book is said to be about the Prophet Muhammad’s relationship with his youngest wife, Aisha, and has been described as a “soft-porn” novel. Already it is believed that emails are being circulated calling on British Muslim organisations to act now to stop its publication.

If the necessary lessons have been learned from the Satanic Verses affair, neither individual Muslims nor Muslim organisations will take the bait. If the lessons haven’t been learned, then we will see history repeat itself and the legacy of the Satanic Verses affair will likely continue for at least another twenty years also.

If however the lessons have been learnt, then we will see the beginnings of a far more mature and confident approach that may will contribute to the right to freedom of expression, the right to disagreement, the right to equality and the right to democracy that all of us have.

This work by Chris Allen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. Based on a work at www.chris-allen.co.uk.