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.

Event: ‘Europe & Islam: Whose Identity Crisis?’

As part of the British Council’s ‘Our Shared Europe’ project, I have been invited to participate in a debate at the European Parliament on the 19th November 2009 entitled, ‘Europe & Islam: whose identity crisis?’.

If anybody would like to attend the debate, then please contact osedebate@britishcouncil.be before the 11th November.

Full details of the event are set out below:

Europe & Islam: Whose Identity Crisis?
Hosted by Sajjad Karim MEP

Thursday 19th November 2009 – 10:30 to 13:00
European Parliament, Brussels

In a continent of diverse cultures how people choose to identify themselves is becoming increasingly important; whether through nationality, religion, language or political outlook. Can these identities mix, are they changing, and which are most important?

And is identity in Europe becoming a more complex issue for its citizens? How are European Muslims reconciling their multiple identities? And what is the basis for a European identity? Does an increase in extremism, euroscepticism, islamaphobia and a move back towards nationalism indicate that people are unhappy with those who identify themselves in different ways?

In a continent progressively challenged by mixed identities, who is it with the identity crisis? Europe, or Islam, or both?

Participants

Pal Schmitt
Vice-President of the European Parliament
Douglas Murray
Director, The Centre for Social Cohesion
Malika Hamidi
Vice-President, European Muslim Network
Dr Chris Allen
Academic, writer and broadcaster on Islamophobia in Europe
Bashy Quraishy
Chair Advisory Council, European Network Against Racism
Daniel Hannan
Member of the European Parliament

Debate moderated by Shada Islam, Senior Policy Executive, European Policy Centre.

Further information can be found at http://www.oursharedeurope.org/activities.

Islamophobia: only 10% of Muslims believe discrimination is on the basis of religion

A somewhat overlooked report by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) published towards the end of May this year has shown up some interesting findings.

The report – the second ‘Data in Focus’ report from the ‘European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey’ (EU-MIDIS) – formed part of an EU-wide survey that asked immigrant and ethnic minority groups about their experiences of discrimination and criminal victimisation in everyday life. Surveying a total of “23,500 immigrant and ethnic minority people across all 27 Member States of the EU during 2008″, the FRA claim that EU-MIDIS provides the most comprehensive evidence to date of the extent of discrimination and victimisation against minorities in the EU.

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.

New publication: “Islamophobie in Österreich”

I have contributed a chapter to a new book just published entitled, “Islamophobie in Österreich”.

Whilst the main focus of the book is – as it says on the tin – Islamophobia in Austria, my chapter opens the book with an overview of the recent history of Islamophobia in the European context. Special thanks to Lajali Abuzahra for translating this for me.

To purchase a copy of the book, you can do so by clicking here.

Alternatively, you can download the publicity about the book here.

NB: Both the book and the publication are in German.